1980 Week: In God We Tru$t

          Improving somewhat over his weak directorial debut, The Last Remake of Beau Gueste (1977), actor Marty Feldman does an okay job as a storyteller with this satire of for-profit religion, which he cowrote with Chris Allen. Naturally, Feldman also plays the leading role, employing the same comic dexterity that made him a star in his native England before American audiences embraced his performance as Igor in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974). Featuring supporting turns by Peter Boyle, Andy Kaufman, and Louise Lasser—plus an extended cameo by Richard Pryor—In God We Tru$t never wants for skillful comedians. It also presents appealing themes of piety over profit and intimacy over repression. But In God We Tru$t disappoints more often than it connects. The characterizations are contrived, the satire is shallow, and most of the jokes misfire, especially the borderline distasteful sex gags. Slick work by the aforementioned big names compensates mightily, as do polished production values, so In God We Tru$t is basically watchable. Yet that’s about as far as one can go in terms of praise.

        The picture starts at a financially troubled monastery, where Brother Ambrose (Feldman) gets assigned to raise money. He sets his sights on televangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Kaufman), but the super-wealthy preacher refuses to see the penniless monk. Ambrose then meets a prostitute named Mary (wink-wink) and an insane con-man preacher named Dr. Sebastian Melmoth, who drives a school bus converted into a traveling church, complete with a shingled roof and a steeple. Those roles are played by Lasser and Feldman’s Young Frankenstein costar Boyle, respectively. Most of this movie’s screen time gets chewed up by scenes of Mary giving Ambrose a sexual education and by scenes of Thunderbird, who sports an absurdly gigantic pompadour, fleecing his flock whenever he’s not consulting with a computer program called G.O.D. (voiced and eventually played onscreen by Pryor).

          Typical jokes include a punny monastery sign (“Keep Thy Trappist Shut”) and the bluntly satirical name of a house of worship (“The Worldwide Church of Psychic Self-Humiliation”). Sex gags feature Feldman taking cold showers until Mary sleeps with him, at which point the “Hallelujah” chorus fills the soundtrack. The picture also has slapstick chase scenes and a vignette of Feldman screaming a lustful confession to a deaf priest while the whole congregation listens intently. Alas, no matter how sincerely Feldman wanted to skewer Christians foibles, Monty Python’s outrageous Life of Brian (1979) was a hard act to follow. That said, it’s a shame this mediocre effort was Feldman’s final major project. He died in 1982, leaving behind only supporting roles in the ghastly Jerry Lewis flop Slapstick of Another Kind (1982) and the mediocre UK comedy Yellowbeard (1983).

In God We Tru$t: FUNKY

1980 Week: Stir Crazy

          After Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder scored as a comedy team in the 1976 farce Silver Streak, a reunion was inevitable. As directed by the venerable Sidney Poitier, Stir Crazy emulates certain elements of the Silver Streak formula—but it never quite matches the earlier film’s frenetic energy. Worse, Stir Crazy bungles a romantic subplot, which is problematic since the sparks between Wilder and leading lady Jill Clayburgh were a big part of Silver Streak’s appeal. Yet the biggest shortcoming of Stir Crazy is the fact that Pryor and Wilder are separated for long stretches of screen time. Whenever the actors are together, Stir Crazy vibrates with good-natured silliness, and whenever they aren’t, the movie gets mired in the humdrum machinations of its contrived plotting.

          The movie begins in New York, where wannabe actor Harry (Pryor) and wannabe playwright Skip (Wilder) work, respectively, as a store detective and a waiter. Both men get fired on the same day, so ultra-optimistic Skip proposes they relocate to Hollywood. Car trouble stands them in Arizona, at which point Skip offers another dopey suggestion—he and Harry don bird costumes to perform a musical number inside a bank as part of a promotional event. Later, two criminals steal the costumes and rob the bank, thereby framing Harry and Skip for the crime. Up to this point, about 30 minutes into the movie, things are going well—the gags are weak but plentiful, and the plotting approaches a farcical level of lunacy. But then our intrepid heroes get thrown into prison, which brings the fast-moving narrative to a screeching halt. Once behind bars, Harry and Skip have predictable (and occasionally offensive) encounters with stereotypical characters including a gigantic serial killer, a tough gang leader, and a queeny homosexual. Meanwhile, Warden Beatty (Barry Corbin) improbably discovers that Skip has natural talents as a bull rider (!), so he orders Skip to perform in a corrupt prison rodeo. (Shades of 1974’s The Longest Yard.)

          Flashes of amusement emerge during the picture’s fleshy middle, such as physical-comedy bits of Pryor and Wilder trying to fit into a miniscule prison cell, but the overall vibe is needlessly heavy and tiresome. By the time the movie grinds toward its bland conclusion, Stir Crazy becomes an elaborate prison-break saga with virtually zero laughs. On the plus side, the picture’s technical execution is impeccable, and the best moments in Pryor’s and Wilder’s performances are highly enjoyable. After Stir Crazy, the actors reunited twice more, for See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991), both of which tarnished the legacy of a once-promising screen pairing.

Stir Crazy: FUNKY

Some Call It Loving (1973)

          Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to show what happens when a beautiful young woman awakens from years of slumber to discover the crass realities of the early ’70s. Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to explore the life of a fabulously rich (and fabulously narcissistic) jazz musician who uses his mansion as the stage for a life lived as a kind of avant-garde performance art with an erotic edge. Some Call It Loving: the movie that dares to ask the question, “Will I always be your jellybean?” If all of this sounds bewildering, there’s a good reason why—the deeply strange Some Call It Loving is best described as an arthouse treatment of a B-movie concept.

          Meticulously crafted and yet at the same time quite inept—much in the same way the film is both pretentious and sincere—this movie commits wholeheartedly to characters and events that exist far outside the spectrum of recognizable human behavior. However, it’s not as if Some Call It Loving provides an ingenious metaphor representing some foible of the species. Quite to the contrary, the picture unfolds like an anthropological study of people who are so odd that they might as well be aliens from outer space. Compounding the weirdness, Some Call It Loving is made with the leisurely pacing and pictorial beauty of a European auteur piece.

          Giving an alternately somnambulistic and whiny leading performance, Zalman King plays Robert, a gentleman of leisure who wanders through a carnival until he encounters an exhibit promising a real-life “Sleeping Beauty.” She's Jennifer (Tisa Farrow), a lovely young woman who, according to her keepers, has been unconscious for years. Bewitched, Robert pays the keepers $20,000 for Jennifer, bringing her to his mansion. Instructed that she will wake if not consistently sedated with drugs, Robert cuts off her supply. Upon regaining consciousness, Jennifer accepts her new surroundings as if they’re normal, whereas the reaction one might expect is utter horror at being turned into chattel. Robert woos Jennifer with weird rituals, often involving his live-in companion Scarlett (Carol White), hence myriad scenes of role-playing and theatricality. (In one bit, Robert actually controls a curtain behind which two women perform a sapphic dance.)

          The film’s dialogue is as absurd as the accompanying dramatic events. Consider this riff from Scarlett: “Yes, I can understand. I’ve always understood. I’ve always understood because I love you. And when a woman loves a man, there’s no limit to her understanding.” The punch line? Two minutes later, Scarlett concludes the scene by saying, “Then maybe I don’t understand.” (That’s okay, honey—viewers are just as confused.) Woven into this bizarre narrative, which one fears was conceived as an offbeat romance, are pointless scenes featuring Richard Pryor as Robert’s drug-addicted best friend. Although Pryor’s appearances are high points because his acting is full of believable pathos, his scenes feel like they belong in a different movie.

          Directed by James B. Harris, whose sporadic output includes a number of gritty genre pictures, Some Call It Loving benefits from gorgeous cinematography. Italian DP Mario Tosi shoots the whole movie with gauzy frames, languid camera movies, and vividly colorful lighting patterns. Accordingly, it's tempting to peer deep into the movie’s mysteries and search for something resonant. Good luck with that.

Some Call It Loving: FREAKY

The Phynx (1970)

          As did Otto Preminger’s disastrous Skidoo (1969), the musical comedy The Phynx charts the most batshit-crazy extremes of the Vietnam-era collision between Establishment values and youth-driven counterculture. A frenetically paced phantasmagoria filled with emptily groovy music, painfully unfunny jokes, pointless cameos by Hollywood stars from yesteryear, and enough sexual humor to make a horny 13-year-old boy blush, The Phynx is very much of the so-wrong-it’s-right variety. Taken at face value, the picture is a juvenile satire of the hysteria surrounding rock bands, fused to a bizarre story about celebrity kidnappings and global intrigue. It’s too hip for the geezers, too square for the kids, and too over-the-top stupid for anyone with a working cerebellum, even if by sheer statistical inevitability, one joke per thousand displays a glimmer of wit.

          Viewed ironically, however, The Phynx is priceless. With some bad movies, the lingering question afterward is why anybody saw value in the underlying premise. With The Phynx, it’s not just the premise that causes befuddlement—literally every single scene in the picture is a colossal misstep, from the puerile sequence about using X-ray specs to ogle ladies in their underwear to the insane finale during which a parade of vintage celebrities are introduced as they enter a room, like guests at some Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences retirement party.

          From start to finish, The Phynx is sure to leave even the most adventurous viewer aghast, flummoxed, and stupefied.

          The plot involves a scheme by a secret government agency to retrieve dozens of American celebrities who have been kidnapped by the communist government in Albania. Upon receiving orders from “Number One,” a version of President Nixon portrayed with a giant wooden block for a head and Rich Little’s voice emanating from within, the secret agency devices its master plan: create a rock band that becomes so popular the Albanian government will request a command performance, at which point the musicians can free the celebrities. Huh? After recruiting the would-be rock stars, the secret agency employs a strange group of people to train the youths. Actor Clint Walker, playing himself, serves as a drill sergeant. Harold Sakata, reprising his “Odd Job” character from Goldfinger (1964), teaches combat. Richard Pryor, playing himself, teaches the lads how to have soul. (Yes, atop everything else, The Phynx is stunningly racist.) Dick Clark, playing himself, appraises the lads’ ability to scale the pop charts. Ed Sullivan introduces the first performance of The Phynx, which is the name given to the group. There’s also a character named “Phil Groovy,” a record producer modeled on Phil Spector.

          Much of the film comprises the members of The Phynx tracking down a set of pretty girls, each of whom has part of an important map tattooed on her body. At one point, the musicians literally shack up in hotel rooms and have sex with 1,000 women in order to find the one with a map tattoo. (This should not be confused with the earlier scene containing the line, “Gentlemen, the United States government is pleased to announce an orgy!”) The madness concludes with an endless sequence during which the dictator of Albania presents his “guests,” the kidnapped celebrities: choreographer/director Busby Berkeley and the original “Gold Diggers” dancers, the Lone Ranger (John Hart) and Tonto (Jay Silverheels) from the old Lone Ranger TV show, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Johnny Weissmuller from the old Tarzan movies, and so on. After the celebrity parade, the Phynx plays a patriotic tune about how much America misses its stars (“The neck bone and the backbone of showbiz was gone, and it nearly blew my mind!”), and then the heroes help the celebrities attempt a mass escape.

          Amazingly, this overview of the film’s contents leaves out many gems, like the supercomputer called M.U.T.H.A., which is shaped like a woman and issues data cards from its nether regions. Clearly transmitted to our planet from some distant dimension, The Phynx is as weird as big-budget American cinema gets. Not surprisingly, the film had such a meager release that images of the original-release poster are hard to find, so I pulled screen grabs and made a collage hinting at the onscreen chaos. Wow.

The Phynx: FREAKY

1980 Week: Wholly Moses!

Unfunny, uninteresting, and unmemorable, this half-assed comedy set in Biblical times offers a drab Hollywood counterpart to the previous year’s Life of Brian, a controversial satire created by the madmen of Monty Python. Whereas Life of Brian is a deliberately offensive movie that asks provocative questions about the nature of religion, Wholly Moses! is a brainless compendium of sketches posing as scenes. Dudley Moore, trying but not succeeding to slide by on charm, stars in a modern-day wraparound sequence as Harvey, a New York City history professor taking a low-budget tour of the Holy Land. While exploring a cave with fellow tourist Zoey (Laraine Newman), Harvey discovers an ancient scroll that tells the story of a man named Herschel. Most of the movie depicts that story. Born to corpulent slave Hyssop (James Coco), Herschel (played as an adult by Moore) was set adrift on the Nile at the same time as Moses, but, by an accident of timing, led a life of little consequence instead of finding a grand destiny. Thus, the central joke in the movie is painfully similar to the central joke in Life of Brian—a schmuck’s existence runs parallel with that of a Biblical icon. Director Gary Weis and screenwriter Guy Thomas use this scenario as a framework for a string of uninspired gags, occasionally juicing the mix with cameos by familiar actors. (Dom DeLuise, John Houseman, Madeline Kahn, and Richard Pryor are among those who appear.) Typical of the lame gags in Wholly Moses! is the S&M-laden puppet show in the city of Sodom, or the throwaway reference to a graven-images store called “Chock Full of Gods.” Moore’s appeal isn’t nearly strong enough to make Wholly Moses! bearable, and Newman, of Saturday Night Live fame, is a non-presence. The only time the movie sparks briefly to life is during John Ritter’s droll cameo as Satan, even though Ritter wears a cheap satin costume and carries a plastic pitchfork. Despite the tacky trappings, Ritter injects amusing world-weariness into his role, at one point whining, “Well, here come the damned—they’ll be expecting me.”

Wholly Moses!: LAME

Uptown Saturday Night (1974) & Let’s Do It Again (1975) & A Piece of the Action (1977)

          Though he’s best known for his ultra-serious onscreen persona, Sidney Poitier not only starred in but also directed the hit comedy Uptown Saturday Night, the first of three Poitier-helmed ’70s pictures in which the actor shares the screen with funnyman Bill Cosby. The movies are not a series, since neither characters nor storylines recur from film to film. However, the movies all boast impressive casts, slick production values, and a certain kind of moral integrity, since they emulate the blaxpoitation aesthetic without perpetuating blaxploitation stereotypes. They’re celebratory movies designed to entertain and inspire African-American audiences.

          Uptown Saturday Night is the weakest of the trio, partially because of an episodic story structure and partially because Poitier and his collaborators let scenes drag on to excessive lengths. Another issue, which troubles the entire series, is that Cosby rarely gets to embark on comedic flights of fancy. Whenever he does, the movies receive a huge uplift, which means that any time he’s stuck delivering exposition or playing bland dramatic scene, the series’ best resource is untapped. Uptown Saturday Night stars Poitier as Steve, a steelworker, and Cosby as Wardell, a cab driver. One evening, Wardell persuades Steve to visit an expensive brothel/gambling joint/nightclub called Madam Zenobia’s. The blue-collar guys pay dearly for visiting the high-roller establishment, because robbers invade the club and steal personal items from everyone in attendance. The next day, Wendell realizes that his wallet, which was taken by the crooks, contains a winning lottery ticket worth $50,000.

          In order to find the stolen goods, the friends infiltrate the local underworld, which puts them in the middle of a war between gangsters Geechie Dan (Harry Belafonte) and Silky Slim (Calvin Lockhart). Culture-clash gags ensue, climaxing in a goofy finale that involves a car chase, cross-dressing, and a funkadelic picnic. While Poitier displays almost zero control over pacing and tone, the movie features excellent supporting turns by Roscoe Lee Browne and Rosalind Cash. (The less said about Belafonte’s embarrassing Marlon Brando imitation, complete with cotton-stuffed cheeks, the better.) By far, the best scene in Uptown Saturday Night is Richard Pryor’s extended cameo as a nervous con man, because he explodes with the edge and energy the rest of the film sorely needs.

          Poitier and his collaborators righted the ship for Let’s Do It Again, the best of the trio. A straight-up caper comedy filled with colorful characters and crazy schemes, the movie works fairly well almost from start to finish, though it should’ve been 15 minutes shorter. This time, Billy (Cosby) and Clyde (Poitier) are blue-collar types who run a con in order to raise money for their fraternal lodge, a vital community hub. Traveling to New Orleans with their wives—and $18,000 in purloined lodge money—the boys secretly hypnotize prizefighter Bootney Farnsworth (Jimmie Walker), then place huge bets on Bootney before a title match. Scenes of Billy and Clyde dressing like pimps while they pretend to be players are cheerfully outlandish. Predictably, fixing fights gets our heroes into hot water with two New Orleans gangsters, Biggie Smalls (Lockhart) and Kansas City Mack (John Amos). Once again, high jinks ensue.

          Some of the material is wheezy, like the bit of escaping a hotel room with tied-up bedsheets, but most of the scenes are inventive and lively. Cosby also gets to do more pure shtick this time around, and the tunes on the soundtrack are fantastic—soul-music legend Curtis Mayfield composed the score as well as several original songs, recruiting the Staple Singers to perform the songs. Let’s Do It Again has many famous admirers, including the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., who borrowed his nickname “Biggie Smalls” from the movie.

          The quasi-series took a strange turn with the final entry, A Piece of the Action, which is a social-issue drama disguised as a comedy. Running an exhausting 135 minutes, the movie opens with three vibrant heist sequences. The robbers are Dave (Cosby) and Manny (Poitier), who neither know each other nor work together. Enter Detective Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones), a recently retired cop who summons the crooks to a hotel room and blackmails them. In exchange for sitting on evidence that could put them in jail for years, Joshua forces the thieves to volunteer at a community center for at-risk youth. Once this plot twist kicks in, the movie becomes a riff on Poitier’s hit To Sir, With Love (1967). While Dave tries to find jobs for the youths at the community center, Manny becomes the kids’ teacher, giving tough-love lessons about dignity and responsibility.

          Many scenes in A Piece of the Action are downright heavy, such as a fierce showdown during which brash student Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) drives idealistic teacher Sarah (Hope Clarke) to tears by characterizing her as a dilettante exploiting poor African-Americans. Later still, the movie becomes a sort of thriller, because thugs from the heroes’ pasts show up for revenge. Despite featuring strong performances and sincere rhetoric, A Piece of the Action is awkward and unwieldy. Therefore, while it’s easily the most edifying of the three pictures, it might also be the least entertaining. Worse, the movie features Cosby delivering a crass rape joke that now has unwanted associations.

          Rumors have swirled for years that one or all of the Cosby/Poitier pictures would be remade, with Will Smith’s name perpetually floated as a likely participant.

Uptown Saturday Night: FUNKY

Let’s Do It Again: GROOVY

A Piece of the Action: FUNKY

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979)

          Given the popularity of rock-concert movies in the ’70s, it was only a matter of time before some producer tried releasing a stand-up-comedy concert movie. Luckily for audiences, the canary in this particular coalmine was Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, which captures one of the greatest comedians of all time at the height of his powers. Shot at a theater in Long Beach, California, with the simplest possible visual style—mostly just one camera tracking Pryor as he bops around the stage—the picture is 78 minutes of pure foul-mouthed pleasure. Not every bit or line kills, but the overwhelming majority of the material is at least solid, energized by Pryor’s boundless energy, imagination, style, and talent. Few comedians painted more effective word pictures or slipped as gracefully in and out of characters as Pryor did, and few have found such a perfect synthesis of medium and message. For, while Pryor’s myriad jokes and monologues about race were not overtly political, per se, it’s no accident that at one point during Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, he gives a heartfelt shout-out to audience member Huey P. Newton. Similarly, the mildly subversive nature of Pryor’s act is plainly evident during the opening moments of the concert, when he skewers white people scrambling to their seats and marvels at the novelty of a black man performing in a decidedly pale-faced municipality just north of Orange County.

          Amazingly, Pryor manages to come across as endearing even when he’s at his most incendiary. In addition to making light of his then-recent arrest on drug-related charges, Pryor takes himself down a notch for moments in life when he stupidly succumbs to machismo. Yet not everything in Pryor’s act is edgy. He also gets tremendous mileage out of animal psychology, of all things, and he’s sincere—but still hilarious—while discussing the heart attack that took him out of circulation for a while in the late ’70s. All in all, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert stands as a testament to the man’s genius and honesty, even though it frankly references Pryor’s tragic penchant for self-destructive behavior. The comedian released two more concert movies, Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983), both of which are darker than Live in Concert. (In Live on the Sunset Strip, for instance, Pryor talks about his notorious freebasing accident.) Thanks to its brevity, consistency, and simplicity, Live in Concert is arguably the best of the batch.

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert: GROOVY

Dynamite Chicken (1971)

Equal parts self-congratulatory and self-destructive, this noisy comedy/literature/music anthology was undoubtedly envisioned by its creators as a bracing attack on mainstream sensibilities. Luminaries including Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Richard Pryor, and Andy Warhol contributed sequences, with Pryor appearing onscreen the most frequently. In lieu of a proper overriding aesthetic, producer-director Ernest Pintoff merely assembles unrelated pieces into a sloppy collage. Long sequences of Dynamite Chicken comprise jump-cut montages of images, news headlines, performances, and photographs, accompanied by lofty allusions to censorship and freedom and rebellion—as well as leering shots of naked women. It says a lot about Dynamite Chicken that one of the participants is Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein, one of history’s sleaziest pornographers; Goldstein’s inclusion proves that many important progressives of the ’60s and ’70s blurred the lines between fighting Establishment inhibitions and inflicting lowbrow tastes onto an unsuspecting public. Furthermore, it’s impossible to imagine that Dynamite Chicken changed any minds during its original release—the piece is so abrasive that it simply represents true believers preaching to other true believers. After all, the film’s many laments about censorship ring hollow considering the presence of myriad full-frontal shots, since it’s not as if Dynamite Chicken was impacted by censorship. Anyway, Pryor delivers a few sharp lines, even though most of his material is skewed toward shock value (“I think the American flag would make a great douche bag cover”), and it’s interesting-ish to note contributions by future comedy notables Michael O’Donoghue and Fred Willard. Yet the non-appeal of Dynamite Chicken is summed up by a quick shot featuring a sound tech generating atonal feedback—this one’s all about sound and fury, signifying nothing. That is, unless a close-up of Lennon picking his toes is your idea of entertainment.

Dynamite Chicken: SQUARE

Hit! (1973)

          Absurdly overlong given its slight storyline, the crime thriller Hit! somehow manages to sustain interest even though leading man Billy Dee Williams delivers one of his patented laconic non-performances, and even though the contrived plot gene-splices elements from the vigilante genre with tropes from The French Connection (1971). Directed by Sidney J. Furie, who has proven time and again that he’s allergic to logic and subtlety, Hit! thrives on texture. Extensive location photography in Canada, France, and the U.S. fills the movie with vibrant images of diverse places; the sizeable ensemble cast allows Furie to cut back and forth between subplots to ensure narrative variety; and some of the supporting actors, including Richard Pryor, deliver excellent work.

          The story begins in Chicago, where federal agent Nick Allen (Billy Dee Williams) attends the funeral of his teenaged daughter, who died of a drug overdose. Nick finds the pusher who supplied his girl with dope, then nearly kills the guy until the pusher says he’s just a street-level nobody. This plants the idea in Nick’s head of traveling to Marseilles, the headquarters of the heroin syndicate that feeds Chicago’s street trade. However, because Nick doesn’t have official sanction for his crusade, he tracks down criminals who have grudges against drug dealers and manipulates these folks into joining his team. This is where Hit! locks into a groove, because Nick’s operatives include a cold-blooded killer (Paul Hampton), an emotionally unstable mechanic (Pryor), an old Jewish couple (Janet Brandt and Sid Melton) whose son died of an overdose, and a sexy junkie (Gwen Welles). In other words, Nick’s team is forever on the verge of self-destructing.

          The middle of Hit! is an enjoyably unruly sprawl during which Furie lets his cameras roll while actors simply behave, instead of doing the rigid work of communicating story information. As such, the picture benefits from scenes of Pryor ad-libbing comedy bits, of Williams seething so quietly that he reveals the intensity beneath his supercool façade, and of key supporting players, especially Brandt, articulating anguished emotions. As for the film’s actual thriller elements, they’re derivative but effective. Furie shoots action scenes—as well as long sequences of Nick’s team training for their mission—with the loose verité style that William Friedkin employed for The French Connection. The resulting jittery camerawork invests the movie with tension and urgency, even during passages when the  story is treading water.

          Holding the whole thing together is the simplicity of Nick’s scheme—he doesn’t want arrests, he wants bodies. His team’s brazen goal is to slip into France, kill as many drug kingpins as possible, and get out. Watching Hit!, one can easily imagine a more rational treatment of the same material—a terse 90-minute thrill ride with an assertive badass like Fred Williamson in the lead. And while that version would have worked, the wide-open spaces of Hit! make a tale that should have seemed trite come across as fresh and visceral. The trick to enjoying the picture, of course, is surrendering to its leisurely rhythms.

Hit!: GROOVY

Wattstax (1973)

          During his opening remarks at the 1972 Wattsax Music Festival, an all-day concert designed to celebrate black pride on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots, politician/preacher Jesse Jackson captured the moment with his typical rhyming flair: “We have shifted from ‘burn, baby, burn’ to ‘learn, baby, learn.’” In that spirit, the festival—commemorated in this excellent documentary, which was released a year after the event took place—featured uplifting messages about community, love, and respect. And yet Wattstax director Mel Stuart also widened his focus to address some of the issues that provoked the Watts riots in the first place. At regular intervals during the movie, Stuart cuts to incendiary funnyman Richard Pryor providing irreverent comedy, as well as thoughtful commentary. (Pryor’s material was filmed after the concert.) For instance, Pryor does several hard-hitting minutes on the eternal quandary of the LAPD’s trigger-happy attitude toward black suspects.

          These combative moments mesh surprisingly well with such soothing scenes as the Staple Singers performing “Respect Yourself” onstage at the Los Angeles Coliseum during the festival. Combined with Stuart’s documentary footage of everyday life in Watts—much of which is cleverly juxtaposed with music—all of the elements coalesce into a mosaic about race in America circa the early ’70s. In fact, many of the film’s best scenes feature ordinary men and women speaking casually—but passionately—about the indignities they suffer. In one memorable sequence, several men recall the first time they were called “niggers,” pointedly describing the explanations their parents offered when asked about the hateful word. (One of the man-on-the-street interviewees is actor Ted Lange, who later played the bartender on The Love Boat.)

          Yet the music, of course, is the main attraction. Since the concert was sponsored by Stax Records, many icons of ’70s black music—from James Brown to the entire Motown roster—are conspicuously absent. Nonetheless, the onstage lineup makes for a varied and vibrant mix. The Bar-Kays tear through their swaggering funk number “Son of Shaft,” Luther Ingram sings a heartfelt “If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want to Be Right,” Jimmy Jones represents the gospel genre with “Someone Greater Than I,” Albert King lays down two slinky Delta blues numbers, and Rufus Thomas gets the crowd going with his novelty number “Do the Funky Chicken.” Funkmaster General Issac Hayes closes the evening with an epic reading of his Oscar-winning “Theme from Shaft,” as well as the softer number “Soulsville,” which suits the peace-and-love mood of the event. (As one concertgoer says succinctly when asked for his reaction: “Like, shit, the whole thing is going on.”)

          Thanks to Stuart’s holistic approach to depicting the festival and its larger context, thanks to the great tunes from Stax artists, and thanks to remarkable editing by David Blewitt, David Newhouse, and Robert K. Lambert, a unique historical moment was preserved in a suitably unique fashion.

Wattstax: RIGHT ON

Carter’s Army (1970)

          Formulaic, predictable, and shot on a meager budget, the made-for-TV war picture Carter’s Army, often marketed by the alternate title Black Brigade, is nothing special from a cinematic perspective. However, because the movie features several noteworthy black actors, including future box-office heavyweights Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams, Carter’s Army is enjoyable as a sort of all-star African-American riff on The Dirty Dozen. Set in 1944 Germany, the exceedingly simplistic movie revolves around U.S. Army Captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racist southerner given the thankless task of capturing a heavily guarded dam from the Nazis. Unfortunately for Carter, the only squad available to assist him is an all-black unit that’s never seen combat. Working reluctantly with the squad’s formidable commander, African-American Lieutenant Edward Wallace (Robert Hooks), Carter leads six enlisted men on the mission even though it’s likely to end in tragic failure. Along the way, the born-and-bred cracker learns to respect black people because of the bravery the soldiers demonstrate and because he witnesses the everyday humiliation the men suffer at the hands of fellow Americans.

          Not a single frame of Carter’s Army will catch viewers by surprise, and in fact, some scenes are a bit hard to take seriously because the forests of Germany look suspiciously like the high-desert woods above Palm Springs. (One could never accuse TV kingpin Aaron Spelling, who cowrote and coproduced this project, of overspending on location photography.) In lieu of a novel story, what keeps Carter’s Army lively is the cast.

          Moses Gunn appears as a professor suffering wartime indignities with grace, Pryor plays a soldier so afraid of fighting that he attempts desertion, Glynn Turman portrays a young man keeping a journal of the action-packed war that he wishes he could tell the folks back home he’s fighting, and Williams plays a tough guy from Harlem whose racial anger matches the intensity of Carter’s bigotry. Also in the mix are gentle giant Rosie Grier, the NFL star-turned-actor, and the stalwart Hooks (Trouble Man), who lends gravitas to the role of the squad’s leader. This being a Hollywood movie of a certain time, of course, the title character is a white guy whose journey to enlightenment is portrayed as having more narrative value than the lives of the black men around him. Veteran big-screen stud Boyd delivers adequate work as Carter, complete with a litany of disgusted facial expressions and an amusingly soupy accent.

Carter’s Army: FUNKY

Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

          Slick and tough—or at least tough enough to avoid accusations of whitewashing history—this biopic of legendary singer Billie Holiday benefits from casting kismet. By the early ’70s, Motown star Diana Ross was emerging as a major solo artist after having led the quintessential “girl group,” the Supremes, through a string a pop hits in the ’60s. Public fascination with Ross was at a peak when Motown kingpin Berry Gordy decided to introduce her as an actress, and Gordy took a big risk by presenting Ross in a complex role as an iconic historical figure. Ross rewarded his confidence with a star-making performance that earned Ross not only a second career as a film star but also an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Comparisons to the multimedia career of Barbra Streisand, another ’60s singer who scored on the big screen, are inevitable, but the differences are telling—Streisand emerged from musical theater, so she transitioned easily to a multifaceted screen career.

          Ross, conversely, seemed to have just one memorable acting performance inside of her, perhaps because she found some special insight into Holiday’s troubled soul. Plus, of course, the fact that Ross sings much of her role—effectively delivering such angst-ridden Holiday compositions as “Don’t Explain” and “Strange Fruit”—means that the diva known as “Miss Ross” played to her strengths.

          Presented in the standard biopic style of episodic flashbacks connected by a wrap-around vignette depicting Holiday’s worst moment of crisis, Lady Sings the Blues is ordinary in conception and execution. Lavish production values are used to convey historical periods, and every juncture of the protagonist’s emotional life is articulated so clearly it’s impossible to see Holiday as anything but a troubled heroine. Whether she’s subverting the dehumanizing treatment of singers in a Harlem nightclub by refusing to sexualize her performances, or losing her soul to the heroin addiction she picks up during a rigorous touring schedule, Holiday is idealized as a once-in-a-lifetime talent whose songs emanated from deep emotional scars. Thanks to this oversimplification, Holiday the person gets subverted into Holiday the role. The name of the game is giving Ross dramatic things to do, and she does them well enough to make an impression.

          Director Sidney J. Furie, a competent storyteller but never a great artist, keeps things moving quickly, though the blandness of his approach is particularly visible in the film’s supporting performances. Billy Dee Williams is saddled with a one-dimensional part as Holiday’s long-suffering boyfriend, so the actor relies on charm and swagger to carve a niche for himself. Despite similar limitations, comedian Richard Pryor—who plays Holiday’s sidekick and fellow addict, known simply as “Piano Man”—nearly steals the movie with his tragic final scene. As for “Miss Ross,” she mostly squandered the opportunity created by Lady Sings the Blues. After starring in the widely panned melodrama Mahogany (1975) and the equally derided musical flop The Wiz (1979), she withdrew from acting until appearing in two minor movies during the 1990s.

Lady Sings the Blues: GROOVY

Plaza Suite (1971) & California Suite (1978)

          During the ’70s, it seemed as if playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon was an industry rather an individual—every year except 1978, he unveiled a new play, and from 1970 to 1979 no fewer than 11 features were released with Simon credited as writer. When the man slept is a mystery. In fact, he even managed to crank out a quasi-sequel to one of his own hits. Plaza Suite premiered on Broadway in 1968 before hitting the big screen in 1971, and its follow-up, California Suite, debuted onstage in 1976 before becoming a movie in 1978. Neither project represents the apex of Simon’s artistry, but both are rewarding. The title of Plaza Suite is a pun, because the film comprises a “suite” of three mini-plays, each of which takes place within the same suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

          In order of appearance, the vignettes concern a middle-aged couple breaking up when the husband’s infidelity is revealed; a tacky Hollywood producer inviting his childhood sweetheart, now married, to his room for a tryst; and another middle-aged couple going crazy when their adult daughter won’t leave the suite’s bathroom even though guests are waiting downstairs to watch her get married. The first sequence is a bittersweet dance, the second is bedroom farce with a touch of pathos, and the third is an explosion of silly slapstick. Plaza Suite grows more entertaining as it spirals toward its conclusion, finally achieving comedic liftoff during the third sequence, which is by far the most fully realized.

          Walter Matthau somewhat improbably plays the lead roles in all three sequences, and he’s terrific—chilly as the adulterous husband, smarmy as the producer, enraged as the would-be father of the bride. His primary costars are a poignant Maureen Stapleton in the first sequence, a delicately funny Barbara Harris in the second, and an entertainingly frazzled Lee Grant in the third. Plaza Suite drags a bit, and it’s tough to get revved up for each new sequence, but the fun stuff outweighs everything else.

          California Suite wisely takes a different approach—although the play of California Suite featured four separate stories, in the style of Plaza Suite, the film version cross-cuts to create momentum. And while Matthau is back (in a new role), California Suite benefits from a larger cast and more use of exterior locations. The film is primarily set in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but Simon (who wrote the screenplays for both adaptations) includes many places beyond the hotel. One thread of the story involves a New York career woman (Jane Fonda) bickering with her estranged screenwriter husband (Alan Alda) over custody of their daughter. Another thread concerns a British actress  (Maggie Smith) in town for the Oscars, accompanied by her husband (Michael Caine), a gay man she wed in order to avoid gaining a reputation as a spinster. The silliest thread involves a Philadelphia businessman (Matthau) trying to keep his wife (Elaine May) from discovering the prostitute in their room. And the final thread depicts the deteriorating friendship between two Chicago doctors (Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor), who bicker their way through a catastrophe-filled vacation.

          Smith won an Oscar for California Suite, and her storyline benefits from the way Caine and Smith expertly volley bitchy dialogue. The Alda/Fonda scenes are more pedestrian, and they’re also the most stage-bound pieces of the movie; still, both actors attack their roles with vigor. Matthau’s vignettes are quite funny, with lots of goofy business about trying to hide the hooker behind curtains, under beds, and so forth. Plus, as they did in A New Leaf (1971), May and Matthau form a smooth comedy duo. Only the Cosby/Pryor scenes really underwhelm, not by any fault of the actors but because both men have such distinctive standup personas that it seems limiting to confine them within the light-comedy parameters of Simon’s style. Unlike its predecessor, California Suite eventually sputters—the funniest scenes occur well before the end.

          As a final note, it’s interesting to look at both pictures and see how two very different filmmakers approached the challenge of delivering Simon’s work to the screen. For Plaza Suite, Arthur Hiller simply added close-ups and camera movement to accentuate the rhythms of the stage production, and for California Suite, Herbert Ross took a more holistic path toward realizing the work as cinema. Yet in both cases, of course, Simon’s wordplay is king.

Plaza Suite: GROOVY

California Suite: GROOVY

The Wiz (1978)

          Catering a new version of The Wizard of Oz to African-American audiences was a novel idea—hence the success of the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, which combined funky songs and an urban milieu to draw a parallel between L. Frank Baum’s timeless Oz stories and the longing for a better life that’s experienced by many inner-city denizens. Yet one could argue that generating an all-black show marginalized African-American culture as much as, say, the lily-white casting of the beloved 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie. However, it’s probably best not to delve into thorny racial politics here. Rather, the relevant question is whether The Wiz justifies its own existence in purely aesthetic terms. Based on this lavish film adaptation (which, to be fair, involved heavy changes to the source material), the answer is no. Dull, gloomy, overwrought, and weighed down by Diana Ross’ ridiculous casting as a fresh-faced youth, The Wiz is a chore to watch.

          Improbably, the film was directed by Sidney Lumet, best known for making such gritty dramas as Dog Day Afternoon (1975), though trivia buffs may dig noting that Lumet cast his then-mother-in-law, singing legend Lena Horne, in a pivotal role. Anyway, the basic story is familiar: Dorothy (Ross) gets transported to the magical land of Oz, where she hooks up with companions for a trip down the Yellow Brick Road to see the Wiz, whom she hopes can help her get home. You know the drill—wicked witch, enchanted shoes, click your heels together, and so on. Every element is tweaked with an African-American vibe, so in addition to all of the actors being black, this movie’s version of Oz is a funhouse-mirror version of New York, complete with subway stations and urban blight.

          Ornately designed by Tony Walton, who received two Oscar nominations for his work on the picture, The Wiz is a strange hybrid of chintzy stagecraft and elaborate cinematic techniques—the costumes and sets in Oz look deliberately bogus, and the big musical numbers unfold on a proscenium facing the viewer. Therefore, notwithstanding screenwriter Joel Schumacher’s changes to the play’s dialogue, this is less an adaptation of a stage show than a filmed record of one. In a word, flat. Ross is awful on myriad levels, from being too old for the role to over-singing her endless solo ballads—star ego run amok. The supporting players generally try too hard, resulting in oppressive energy and volume, though Michael Jackson (no surprise) stands out as the loose-limbed, sweet-hearted Scarecrow. As for featured player Richard Pryor, who plays the Wiz, he comes and goes so quickly that he can’t make an impact.

          Whether the music works is of course a highly subjective matter, but to my ears, only “Ease on Down the Road” (this film’s version of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”) and the Wicked Witch’s number, “Don’t Bring Me No Bad News,” linger—most of the songs are gimmicky or syrupy, if not both. Yet the biggest problem with The Wiz—and there are lots of big problems—is that it’s not fun. The dialogue is stilted, the mood is glum, the narrative drags, and the production design is so artificial it can’t elicit any genuine reactions. If ever, oh ever, a Wiz there was, this Wiz ain’t it.

The Wiz: LAME

Which Way Is Up? (1977)

          The same year their far superior collaboration Greased Lightning was released, funnyman Richard Pryor and director Michael Schultz unveiled this peculiar project, a quasi-blaxploitation comedy that was adapted from an Italian art movie. While the source material, Lina Wertmüller’s 1972 film The Seduction of Mimi, blended left-leaning sociopolitical commentary into its satire, Which Way Is Up? features a middling combination of crude sex humor and shallow take-this-job-and-shove-it posturing. One element of the original movie, a poignant exploration of the challenges faced by a blue-collar man who’s trying to navigate a white-collar world, survives the translation more or less intact, but this worthy theme is surrounded by so much stupidity it loses much of its intended impact. And though a great deal of blame must fall on the shoddy screenplay, which is designed to showcase farcical setpieces that never achieve comedic liftoff, Pryor is a major culprit for the picture’s mediocrity, since he plays three roles and therefore dominates the movie from beginning to end.

          Pryor is best as the protagonist, Leroy Jones, a poor everyman swept up in absurd circumstances. Specifically, he’s a farm worker who inadvertently becomes a poster boy for unionizing efforts and gets exiled from his small town. Relocating to L.A. and subsequently mistaken for a labor-movement hero, Leroy starts a new life with beautiful activist Vanetta (Lonette McKee), even though he’s got a family back home. Eventually, Leroy returns to his small town for a middle-management job and tries to maintain two homes—keeping Vanetta and the child she had with Leroy secret from Leroy’s wife, Annie Mae (Margaret Avery). This balancing act works until Leroy discovers that a local preacher, Reverend Lenox Thomas (Pryor), is sleeping with Annie Mae. Despite himself being an adulterer, Leroy becomes enraged and upsets the fragile life he’s built for himself. Undercutting the promising aspects of this storyline, Schultz spends way too much time on insipid sequences like Annie Mae’s attempts to get Leroy sexually excited. (She tries everything from S&M gear to vibrators.) Similarly, Pryor’s foul-mouthed rants lose their shock value quickly, especially when he’s dressed up in old-age makeup to play Leroy’s salty father. Having said all that, Which Way Is Up? has a few small insights into the black experience, the lives of the working class, and the vicissitudes of the labor movement. Yet as a whole, the picture is as unsatisfying as its “comically” downbeat ending.

Which Way Is Up?: FUNKY