L.A. 2017 (1971)

          While the 1971 telefilm Duel was the first standalone feature-length project that Steven Spielberg made as a professional, he directed two other pieces with commensurate running times the same year, namely the first weekly episode of the long-running detective series Columbo and this installment of a series called The Name of the Game. Given how central science fiction subsequently became in Spielberg’s work, L.A. 2017 is of particular interest. Additionally, L.A. 2017 plays like standalone piece because its only narrative connection to The Name of the Game is protagonist Glenn Howard (Gene Barry), who time-travels away from the series’ modern-day milieu for the duration of this adventure.

          While driving through smoggy canyons in Los Angeles, socially conscious magazine publisher Glenn succumbs to noxious fumes and crashes his car. Emergency personnel wearing gas masks and protective suits extract Glenn from his vehicle and drive him to a sprawling underground campus. Through interactions with psychiatrist/policeman Cameron (Severn Darden) and high-powered politician Bigelow (Barry Sullivan), Glenn learns that he’s in the Los Angeles of the future, and that civilization has been driven underground by environmental degradation. Per the talky script by Philip Wylie, what ensues has more exposition than excitement. In this grim future, America functions as a corporation with totalitarian control over citizens. People exchange math equations instead of jokes, much of the population is sterile, and everyone is under constant surveillance. Given Glenn’s unique status as a man out of time, Bigelow asks him to become a propogandist for the government, but he rebels—with the assistance of Sandrelle (Sharon Farrell), an attractive woman assigned to be Glenn’s consort.

          Watching L.A. 2017, it’s possible to discern why the piece, in tandem with Spielberg’s other 1971 work, helped raise his profile—the director does a lot with a little. Frenetic movement and tight angles make scenes in underground tunnels feel appropriately claustrophobic, and Spielberg guides actors portraying villains to underplay, which adds to the general air of menace. Moreover, the piece’s biggest shortcomings (flat scripting, meager budget) originated above the young director’s pay grade. While nowhere near as revelatory as Duel, this piece demonstrates that even in his earliest efforts, Spielberg had a formidable skillset. No wonder he graduated to theatrical features after a relatively short run as a Universal Television worker bee.

L.A. 2017: FUNKY

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

It’s Alive (1974) & It Lives Again (1978)

          Arguably the most enduring creation of B-movie auteur Larry Cohen’s colorful career, the It’s Alive franchise depicts the bloody rampages of killer mutant babies born with claws, teeth, and bad attitudes. Surprisingly, the first picture is as much of a melancholy tragedy as it is an out-and-out horror show. Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) is a successful Los Angeles PR man expecting a second child with his easygoing wife, Lenore (Sharon Farrell). Yet as he stands outside the delivery room waiting for news, Frank hears screams and then sees a doctor stagger out, bloodied and dying. Frank runs into the operating room and discovers an abattoir, because his “child” came out of the womb and killed the whole surgical staff before escaping. This outrageous scene sets the tone for the whole picture, and indeed the whole franchise, by turning a universal experience into a nightmare. The scene also initiates a disquieting odyssey during which Frank becomes a social pariah, Lenore loses her mind, and the escaped “infant” racks up a horrific body count.

          Cohen’s filmmaking style is unpretentious to a fault, with many sequences marred by dodgy cinematography, but he’s aided immeasurably by the participation of legendary composer Bernard Hermann (Psycho). Hermann layers the film with one darkly insinuating theme after another, creating uncomfortable levels of menace and suspense that accentuate Cohen’s scheme of juxtaposing normalcy and the supernatural. This effect is aided by Ryan’s tightly wound performance; the actor does a great job of conveying angst beneath a veneer of stoicism. So while Rick Baker’s creature FX are a bit on the goofy side, and while some viewers may quibble about the lack of any scientific explanation for the killer-baby phenomena, It’s Alive has an undeniable mood all its own.

          Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the first sequel, It Lives Again. Once again written and directed by Cohen, the picture meanders through a contrived storyline that lacks the insistent momentum of the first picture. Ryan returns as Frank Davis, only this time he’s part of an underground group helping couples pregnant with killer mutant babies like the one Davis’ wife delivered. In trying to aid one particular young couple (Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd), Davis runs afoul of a government operative (John Marley) assigned to annihilate the killer mutant babies as they’re born. Intrigue and mayhem ensue, but the excitement level is never particularly high, and by the time two killer mutant babies escape for a rampage, the picture has settled into a dreary rut of people waiting around for haphazardly staged attacks.

          Cohen resurrected his infantile monsters one more time for the 1987 threequel It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, and the original picture was remade in 2008.

It’s Alive: FUNKY

It Lives Again: LAME