Bad (1977)

          The full title of this picture is Andy Warhol’s Bad, and although the possessive phrasing reflects artist/provocateur Warhol’s role as the film’s producer, the title could also be interpreted as a sentence: Andy Warhol Is Bad. Given that this movie, like so many other Warhol productions, was designed to offend everyday people and to delight nonconformists, Andy Warhol Is Bad seems like a fair statement. After all, the picture’s most memorable scene, and easily one of the most deliberately repulsive images Warhol’s troupe ever captured on film, involves a depraved woman tossing her infant out a high-rise window. The baby cascades through the air before hitting the sidewalk headfirst with an impact so catastrophic that blood and viscera splatter onto bystanders. The scene, it should be noted, is played for laughs. You see, Bad is a social satire of sorts, presenting the worst people imaginable without any editorial commentary—a sitcom about scumbags, if you will.

          Director Jed Johnson, working with Warhol’s biggest-ever production budget and benefitting from the presence of several legitimate Hollywood actors, gives the piece a much more polished look than the average Warhol scuzzfest. Nonetheless, the material—and more importantly the attitude—is just as punk as everything else Warhol made in the ’70s.
          Bad concerns Hazel Aiken (Carroll Baker), a middle-aged woman who runs an electrolysis business out of her home in the suburbs of New York City. Yet Hazel’s real income stems from a murder-for-hire business that she operates on the side. Hazel’s clients are horrific people who give absurd reasons for wanting their enemies killed. One slob of a woman, Estelle (Brigid Berlin), wants a neighbor’s dog murdered because the neighbor had the temerity to say that Estelle looks ugly in shorts. Another customer wants her autistic son murdered because the boy is an inconvenience. And so on. Hazel never does the killings herself, enlisting hustlers and junkies. The main drama of the movie, such as it is, stems from Hazel’s tense relationship with L.T. (Perry King), the first man Hazel has ever hired to complete an assignment. A slovenly drug addict, L.T. loafs around Hazel’s house until she’s so sick of him that she sprinkles broken glass on the floor the minute she sees him walking around barefoot. Hazel also employs a pair of loudmouthed prostitutes who burn down a movie theater for kicks one evening, killing 14 people. And then there’s Mary (Susan Tyrrell), Hazel’s simple-minded daughter-in-law; Hazel spends inordinate amounts of time telling Mary that Hazel’s son will never return to be with his dowdy wife and their ugly infant son. Because Hazel is a bad person, get it? The movie’s called Bad, remember?

          Even though it’s relatively slick, and even though some of the performances are tasty—Baker opts for a dryly funny spin on viciousness—Bad is so excessive, nasty, and obvious that the central joke takes a while to coalesce, and then almost immediately loses its potency thanks to endless repetition. Is it fun to watch a craven woman crush a man beneath the hydraulic lift in a garage, and then cut off his finger for a souvenir? Despite the glimmer of hope peeking through the grim final scenes, Bad is an exhibition of ugly primal urges, and the picture’s sense of humor is juvenile and perverse. The movie imagines an alternate universe without conscience, inhibitions, and morality, so watching Bad is a bit like listening to someone hit the same gloomy notes on a piano’s lower register over and over again for 105 slow-moving minutes.

Bad: FREAKY

Wizards (1977)

          The weirdest thing about Wizards is that the movie isn’t particularly weird. After all, the animated adventure was the first full-on fantasy film from maverick animator Ralph Bakshi, who made his mark with the X-rated cartoon feature Fritz the Cat (1972). Yet for this project, which is a hybrid of Tolkein-esque medieval/magic tropes and ecologically themed sci-fi, Bakshi mostly dialed back on the provocation and concentrated on spinning a yarn. Unfortunately, the yarn isn’t very good.

          In the distant future, after man has turned Earth into a wasteland, two sibling wizards—good Avatar (voiced by Bob Holt) and evil Blackwolf (voiced by Steve Gravers)—battle for control. Avatar’s all about nature, since he’s a mellow little dude who lives in a castle with a sexy faerie, whereas Blackwolf is a demonic-looking creature ruling an army of hell-spawned monsters, homicidal robots, and killer mutants. The bulk of the story depicts Avatar’s difficult trek from his castle to Blackwolf’s lair for a final standoff, and a major subplot involves Avatar’s conversion of one of Blackwolf’s assassins—a robot whom Avatar captures and renames “Peace” (voiced by David Proval)—into a soldier for good.

          This is all exactly as heavy-handed as it sounds, though the hipster prism through which Bakshi tells his tale makes the movie a bit more palatable than it might have otherwise. For instance, Avatar is prone to saying things like “this has been the biggest bummer trip I’ve ever been on.” He’s an appealing character, even though his attitude and lingo now seem dated.

          Bakshi employs the crude but innovative animation techniques that were his ’70s signature, occasionally sprucing up traditional cel-animation shots with trippy backgrounds that are generated by optical effects. He also spotlights herky-jerky images created by filming real actors and then tracing their basic shapes onto film frames to provide an effect akin to moving silhouettes. (During the picture’s climax, Bakshi takes the experiment further by integrating live-action footage, cutting to real shots of airplanes and tanks while Avatar’s army tangles with Blackwolf’s forces.) The oddest—and least effective—of Bakshi’s gimmicks involves cutting to montages of still drawings for transitional moments. As an uncredited Susan Tyrell soberly intones expositional voiceover, renderings by comic-book/magazine artist Mike Ploog depict scenes that Bakshi didn’t bother to animate. In addition to slowing down the action, these transitional moments make the rest of the movie look crappy by comparison, since Ploog’s drawings are beautifully detailed.

          Another significant problem with Wizards is that Bakshi, who also wrote and produced the film, can’t decide on a consistent tone—the movie lurches back and forth between action and slapstick and social commentary. In short, it’s a mess. Still, every so often Bakshi’s mad-scientist approach results in something exciting or funny or touching, and the one thing the movie can’t be said to lack is imagination.

Wizards: FUNKY

Zandy’s Bride (1974)

          Of the many peculiar ’70s subgenres for which I have undying fondness, the revisionist Western is perhaps the most rewarding. Filmmakers in the ’70s went nuts overturning the tropes of a beloved Hollywood genre, using gritty realism to transform Westerns into social commentary. Those highfalutin ambitions go a long way toward explaining Zandy’s Bride, the story of a grudging romance that develops between a son-of-a-bitch rancher and his mail-order bride. While the underlying story is familiar, the sort of thing John Wayne might have made in the ’40s or ’50s, the execution is unsentimental. It’s hard to envision Wayne proclaiming, as the lead character in this film does, that he doesn’t need his wife for sex, because he’s content with “the five sisters,” meaning the fingers of his right hand. Similarly, it’s difficult to picture the Duke ditching his long-suffering spouse every time the local tramp comes sniffing around. None of this should create the illusion that Zandy’s Bride fully overcomes the trite rhythms of its storyline. Rather, these remarks should contextualize Zandy’s Bride as a nasty ride through terrain that, seen previously, might have seemed idyllic.

          Gene Hackman, adding yet another scowling meanie to his gallery of cinematic pricks, is frightening as reclusive rancher Zandy Allen. Eking out a rugged existence on his small California homestead, he sends away for a spouse, expecting nothing more than someone to share his workload and spew children. Matching Hackman’s energy is the formidable Swedish actress Liv Ullmann, who plays Hannah Lund, the woman who accepts Zandy’s overture. She alienates Zandy the moment she arrives, because she’s in her 30s and not the dewy young thing he expected. Having left her old life behind, so she has no choice but to endure his abuse for as long as she can. Once the couple experiences assorted frontier travails together, they fight burgeoning affection, as if warmth is a sign of weakness. Yet the more they fortify their respective emotional boundaries, the more they realize they’re compatible enough to coexist.

          The picture’s evocative portrayal of the natural world makes sense, seeing as how director Jan Troell previously made the acclaimed foreign films The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972), which dramatized the experiences of Swedish people relocating to the American frontier. The film’s dour portrait of life for women in the Wild West also rings true, and vivid characterizations by supporting players Frank Cady, Eileen Heckart, Harry Dean Stanton, and especially Susan Tyrell add to the effect. Though Zandy’s Bride is too long at 116 minutes, the ending pays things off nicely, and the picture is replete with gorgeous images: Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth creates the palpable sense of a frontier that’s simultaneously liberating and oppressive.

Zandy’s Bride: GROOVY