Assault on the Wayne (1971)

          Mostly of interest for Leonard Nimoy fans curious to see how the beloved actor handles one of his rare leading-man roles, Assault on the Wayne is a brisk made-for-TV thriller that crams a respectable amount of plot into its fleeting runtime of 74 minutes. Nimoy plays uptight Cdr. Phil Kettenring, the skipper of a nuclear submarine carrying material related to an experimental program testing the ability of subs to launch counter-strikes against ICBMs. Naturally, bad guys conspire to steal the valuable material, so the fun is seeing how the villains try to engineer a high-seas heist. In classic potboiler fashion, every featured member of the vessel’s passenger list has a corrupt agenda and/or a melodramatic backstory. For example, one of Ketternring’s trusted sidekicks is an aging sailor (Keenan Wynn) whose struggles with booze have kept him from rising in rank. Kettenring also tussles with a subordinate officer (Dewey Martin) who once overstepped his role by trying to referee Kettenring’s marital troubles. Is it even necessary to mention that most of the folks aboard the sub worry about the skipper’s wellness because he’s on the mend from a bad medical episode? You see, he’s got troubles, man, so the last thing he needs is attempted larceny while his boat is underwater.

          To some degree, describing Assault on the Wayne in such flip terms is fair because the picture was made in the days when networks cranked out disposable telefilms for undemanding audiences—such was the nature of the marketplace during the heyday of three-network domination. Yet Assault on the Wayne, while hardly imaginative or lush or stylish, boasts a measure of professionalism. The script, by small-screen vet Jackson Gillis, delivers perfunctory elements of characterization and plot with slick efficiency, so what Assault on the Wayne lacks in depth, it makes up for in propulsion. Additionally, the combination of decent production values and a proficient cast yields a palatable experience. (Beyond Nimoy and Wynn, the picture also features Joseph Cotten, William Windom, Malachi Throne, and a pre-moustache Sam Elliott.) As for the main attraction, Nimoy’s just fine here—expressing everything from anguish to desperation to rage, he reaffirms that he was a nimble performer capable of doing many things credibly.

Assault on the Wayne: FUNKY

Lifeguard (1976)

          Based on its title alone, to say nothing of the wretched poster that Paramount created to market the picture, Lifeguard should be a sleazy sex comedy. Instead, it’s a fairly serious character piece about an iconoclastic man wrestling with other people’s perceptions of his prolonged-adolescent lifestyle. Sam Elliott, his signature sweet ’stache already firmly secured on his upper lip, plays Rick, an L.A. lifeguard in his 30s, making him a good ten years older than most of the other buff dudes running up and down Southern California’s beaches in little red shorts. Over the course of one summer, he trains a young apprentice (Parker Stevenson), dallies with a precocious teenager (Kathleen Quinlan), tries to rekindle an old spark with his high-school girlfriend (Anne Archer), and listens to family and friends who say it’s time to put away the SPF and get a real job. Coloring the storyline is the enduring allure of the mythic SoCal lifestyle as celebrated in the songs of the Beach Boys, among myriad other pop-culture artifacts, because virtually no mention is made of current events or even the turbulent goings-on of the late ’60s—which would have been the period of the protagonist’s early adulthood. Therefore, one gets a sense of a man who’s been hiding from the ugliness of the outside world by grooving on the beauty of the rays and the waves. In one telling scene, Rick explains that he likes winters even more than summers because during the cold months, he has the beach all to himself. So even though nothing about Lifeguard invites deep analysis, there’s something meaningful pulsing beneath the film’s bronzed skin.

          Rest assured, however, there’s a touch of raunchiness here and there—think sexy flings at Rick’s bachelor pad, pervy teenage boys chasing busty women at the beach, a senior-citizen flasher, etc. Yet Ron Koslow’s competent screenplay mostly focuses on Rick’s sun-kissed ennui. For instance, the vignette of Rick getting his aging ass kicked by younger lifeguards in a running/swimming race is poignant, especially because that’s when his under-aged playmate (the Quinlan character) first realizes her lover isn’t the immortal hero she thought him to be. In fact, that whole relationship is handled intelligently and tenderly, with the filmmakers neither celebrating nor condemning Rick’s decision to sleep with a teenager. Similarly, the textures of the protagonist’s relationship with his old flame discourage simple reactions. To be clear, Lifeguard has a certain kitsch factor (two words: theme song), and Rick’s I-gottta-be-me attitude is so ’70s that it’s almost a cliché. Yet like its title character, the movie displays unexpected depth, an effect complemented by Elliott’s surprisingly nuanced performance. Koslow, by the way, later wrote the charmingly weird comedy Into the Night (1984) and created the supernatural TV series Beauty and the Beast and Moonlight.

Lifeguard: FUNKY