The P.O.W.

          A microbudget antiwar picture that received a limited release, The P.O.W. is presented as a nonfiction portrait of Howie Kaufman, a Vietnam veteran navigating a return to civilian society after a war wound left him paralyzed below the waist. In fact, Howie is an actor, and so are the filmmakers who follow him around. In fact, everyone who crosses paths with Howie onscreen is performing, with the cast comprising non-actors improvising based on prompts from director Philip Dossick. Given that the meandering picture doesn’t really go anywhere, it’s unclear why Dossick chose the mockumentary route, except perhaps to allow for the intrusion of crew members and film equipment into the frame, thereby facilitating loose production. Arguably, a more purposeful application of this style would have used verité technique to sell a narrative that might otherwise feel bogus, or to pull viewers deep into a world most people don’t usually see. Still, contemplating how The P.O.W. might have been more stylistically or thematically grounded serves little purpose because this modest film is what it is.

          At its best, The P.O.W. dramatizes the challenges of its protagonist’s transition. As played by Howard Jahre, Howie Kaufman is a remarkably sane and together dude, given how massively his life was disrupted—viewers learn that Howie worked in sales before getting drafted, and now he’s faced with the difficulty of resuming a career that usually requires constant travel. In one of the picture’s strongest scenes, an executive says he can’t hire Howie because he might have difficulty reaching file-cabinet drawers from a seated position. Equally interesting are vignettes during which friends push Howie to get his life back on track, as if that complicated task can be accomplished at will; in one sharp exchange, Howie tells civilians they can’t comprehend emotions felt during combat. Too often, however, The P.O.W. gets mired in dull hangout scenes, as when Howie plays word games while on a date. Furthermore, cutaways of Dossick reviewing footage in a cutting room add little.

          Still, the movie has good intentions, and the timing of its release is noteworthy—in 1973, the war was still raging, despite Nixon’s pledges s to wind down the conflict, and pacifistic Americans were still figuring out how to hate the war but not the warriors. (For context, The P.O.W. arrived five years before mainstream Hollywood’s first major exploration of this subject matter, Coming Home.) While this may seem like a patronizing way of complimenting the film, there’s a reason Dossick never directed another picture, instead focusing on a writing career that has yielded numerous books and one produced teleplay—despite its abundant compassion, The P.O.W. lacks dramatic energy.

The P.O.W.: FUNKY  

Johnny Vik (1977)

          Tucked into the deepest crevasses of the ’70s-cinema landscape are a few low-budget obscurities that are interesting because of their aspirations even though the films are amateurish and unsatisfying. Johnny Vik, for example, aligns with familiar tropes by centering an emotionally disturbed Native American who endures PTSD and socialization problems following service in Vietnam. Yet the picture differs in an important way from others that explore similar terrain—Johnny Vik is almost completely devoid of onscreen violence. Instead, the clumsily rendered picture tries to reveal the turbulent inner life of its protagonist, with writer-director Charles Nauman occasionally employing bizarre hallucination scenes to show viewers how the title character sees the world. The fact that you’ve never heard of Johnny Vik, together with the fact that Nauman’s only other credit is a documentary released in 1968, rightly indicates that Johnny Vik doesn’t achieve its goals. The movie is alternately confusing, dull, melodramatic, silly, and weird, without ever committing strongly enough to any of those sensibilities to make a strong impression. Nonetheless, Nauman and his collaborators deserve some credit for inverting the paradigm that yielded so many disposable flicks about crazed vigilantes.
          When we meet him, Johnny (Warren Hammack) comes across as a small-town simpleton who can’t hold down a job. Typical of the muddled first act is a scene of Johnny pointlessly watching two guys vandalize a cop car to the accompaniment of music that sounds like the Benny Hill theme. Eventually, circumstances compel Johnny to become a fugitive/recluse hiding in the forest outside his hometown, and once Nauman reveals the transformed Johnny—long hair, thick beard—the movie finds a bit more focus with scenes of Johnny experiencing visions in the wilderness. (In one vignette, he imagines a faceless figure of death sitting atop a pile of branches.) Meanwhile, Johnny befriends local teen Pola (Kathy Amerman), who takes horseback rides near Johnny’s hiding place. Hence her delivery of ponderous voiceover lines (“The emptiness followed him, haunted him, like a caravan of death”). None of the metaphysical stuff makes much sense, but one can feel Nauman grasping for profundity. Despite performances that range from inept to pedestrian, and notwithstanding his lack of cinematic prowess, Nauman conjures a handful of oddly soulful moments when he’s not distracted by nonsense including gratuitous nudie-cutie scenes.

Johnny Vik: FUNKY

Delirium (1979)

Is Delirium a conspiracy thriller disguished as a slasher flick? Or is it a provocative story about PTSD and vigilante justice rendered inert by clumsy execution? Or is it just a hot mess resulting from filmmakers jamming as many genre-movie signifiers as possible into one production? The answer to each of these questions is “yes,” but Delirium is less than the sum of its parts. An amateurish low-budget endeavor filmed in St. Louis, Delirium toggles between craven exploitation-flick sleaze and laughable attempts at thematic heaviosity. It’s possible to follow what’s happening, and the picture rarely wants for narrative events, so it’s not unwatchable. However there’s no good reason for most viewers to endure the movie’s 85 minutes—those eager to find hidden pulp-fiction gems should try digging elsewhere. Nonetheless, here are the details for bold souls who can’t be dissuaded. After a young woman is impaled in her apartment, stalwart policeman Larry (Terry TenBroek) questions the victim’s pretty roommate, Susan (Debi Chaney), for clues about the killer’s identity. Concurrently, the film tracks the killer, Charlie (Nick Panouzis), as his rampage continues. Viewers learn that Charlie is an unhinged Vietnam vet associated with a cabal that kills criminals who get off on technicalities. Realizing that Charlie has gone rogue by murdering innocents, the conspriators try to neutralize him before he leads cops to their lair. In competent hands, some of this material might have worked (see 1983’s The Star Chamber), but everything about Delirium is rushed and sloppy, from the anemic acting to the ridiculous use of St. Louis as stand-in for Vietnam during flashbacks. Worse, the presence of grindhouse extremes—unpleasnant scenes of women getting slaughtered—makes the movie’s nods to postwar anguish feel like crass add-ons.

Delirium: LAME

Captain Milkshake (1970)

          While the meaning of the film’s title is a mystery, Captain Milkshake is in many other respects a fine time capsule, capturing the mellow textures of the hippie lifestyle, the difficult interpersonal dynamics between Establishment and counterculture types during the Vietnam War, and the confusing experience of a young man who finds himself caught between these worlds. On a stylistic level, the movie brims with hot tunes by Quicksilver Messenger Service and other significant acts of the period, while also beguiling viewers with psychedelic visuals. Some scenes are in black and white, others are in color, many involve trippy superimpositions, and the much of the film unfurls like an extended music video, with rapid-fire edits timed to the beat of energetic rock songs. Sometimes the immersive approach works, creating a vibe almost as intoxicating as the weed that characters often smoke, and sometimes the approach seems enervated and repetitive.
          The problem is that for all of its slick photography and hip gimmicks, Captain Milkshake doesn’t have much of a script.

          Paul (Geoff Gage) is a Marine home from Vietnam on a two-day leave. Living in the shadow of his late father, who was also a Marine, Paul has an attitude that’s partly pacifistic and partly patriotic, so he’s conflicted about his role in the military. Listening to a racist uncle rant about how cool it is that Paul gets to kill Asians doesn’t help matters. Gradually, Paul becomes more and more involved with two hippies he meets by happenstance, fast-talking agitator Thesp (David Korn) and Thesp’s sorta-girlfriend, Melissa (Andrea Cagan). Over the course of his leave, Paul becomes sexually involved with Melissa and, without realizing it, criminally involved with Thesp—Paul tags along for a trip to Mexico, only discovering after the fact that Thesp smuggled dope across the border. Yet not much really happens in Captain Milkshake. There’s a lot of talk about planning a demonstration, for instance, but the demonstration doesn’t amount to much. Accordingly, the “shock” ending feels contrived and inconsequential.

          Still, Captain Milkshake gets lots of points for vibe. Excellent black-and-white photography grounds the picture in cinematic professionalism, providing a strong baseline for freakier visual elements. Some of the editing (credited to costar Korn) is also impressive, especially an exciting montage set to an acid-rock cover of “Who Do You Love?” That one scene, which has enough editorial whiz-bang for an entire episode of The Monkees, encompasses everything from lava lamps to motorcycles to sex. And even if the film’s acting is mostly quite tentative, some scenes land simply because the hippie ethos is conveyed so effectively. In one choice bit, Thesp imitates John Wayne’s voice during a speech while hippie chicks play “America the Beautiful” on kazoos.

Captain Milkshake: FUNKY

Welcome Home Soldier Boys (1971)

          Something of a thematic predecessor to the Sylvester Stallone hit First Blood (1982), this grim melodrama depicts the travails of four Green Berets who return to the U.S. after service in Vietnam, only to discover that their personalities are so fundamentally changed by their harrowing overseas experiences that they no longer fit into normal society. Released amid the first wave of pictures exploring the impact of PTSD on Vietnam vets, writer-director Guerdon Trueblood’s movie has as many problems as it does virtues. The character work is thin, the psychology is dubious, and the story becomes cartoonish toward the end. Yet alongside Trueblood’s countless missteps are several vivid moments, a pervasive sense of melancholy, and a propulsive overall narrative—even though it’s hard to believe a lot of what happens, viewers never doubt that something terrible is imminent.

          Leading the vets is Danny (Joe Don Baker), a hulking country boy enamored of traveling to California with his comrade-in-arms, Kid (Alan Vint), in order to start new lives as farmers. The plan is to raise some hell along the way, accompanied by Fatback (Elliot Street) and Shooter (Paul Koslo). Viewers’ first clue that all is not right with the group occurs when they pick up a sexy hitchhiker, take turns with her, and toss her out of a moving car when she has the temerity to ask for money. The vets share a moment of panic before pressing onward as if they just narrowly escaped a skirmish with enemy combatants. Later, things get even more debauched when a creepy hotel clerk (Geoffrey Lewis) gives the vets the run of his place while also providing a steady supply of booze and women. By the time the group reaches Danny’s childhood home, they’ve crossed some point of no return, morally speaking. Violence becomes inevitable.

          It’s hard to imagine what Trueblood might have done differently to put this thing over, since Welcome Home Soldier Boys operates well outside human reality for much of its running time, and the climax is as outrageous as it is disquieting—at some point the picture transitions from metaphorical to silly. Nonetheless, the actors, Baker especially, convey a sense of tragedy, as if the vets don’t realize how deeply years of killing for Uncle Sam scarred their souls. The vets also seem bewildered by the scorn they encounter from civilians. In one scene, Danny reveals to a woman that he’s killed 113 people. She laughs. Small moments like that resonate even when Trueblood’s clumsy attempts at grandiosity don’t.

Welcome Home Soldier Boys: FUNKY

My Old Man’s Place (1971)

          Possibly the first American theatrical feature to explore the impact of PTSD on vets returning from Vietnam, problematic drama/thriller My Old Man’s Place has a plot similar to that of The Visitors, a vastly superior picture released the following year. Both films dramatize the issue of soldiers bringing the war home with them by depicting close-quarters tension in remote areas. Yet while the Eliza Kazan-directed The Visitors has meticulous character work and a propulsive storyline, My Old Man’s Place is dubious and episodic. The personalities in this movie range from nonsensical to shallow to trite, and the narrative proceeds haphazardly—one gets the impression of filmmakers perpetually reaching for but not quite grasping heavy symbolism. Nonetheless, My Old Man’s Place is watchable thanks to its attempt at cultural relevance, and thanks to a couple of fine performances.

          At the beginning of the picture, three soldiers return to California from Southeast Asia. Trubee (Michael Moriarty, in his film debut) and Jimmy (William Devane) are combat buddies glad to be done with their military service, but Sgt. Martin Flood (Mitchell Ryan) thinks he might sign up for another tour of duty after a 30-day leave. Thoughtful Trubee and animalistic Jimmy spend time in San Francisco chasing women, then encounter Martin beating up a cross-dressing hustler. Presumably out of respect for a fellow veteran, Trubee and Jimmy offer Martin refuge on a farm owned by Trubee’s father, WWII vet Walter (Arthur Kennedy). The minute the group arrives at Walter’s farm, things turn sour. Walter has no use for Jimmy, a vulgar idiot, and doesn’t immediately notice that Martin is a tightly wound sadist. The situation worsens once Jimmy brings college student Helen (Topo Swope) to the farm. It’s giving nothing away to say the whole situation moves inexorably toward tragedy.

          Beyond the basic premise of war having different effects on different men, not much in My Old Man’s Place makes sense. It’s hard to imagine Trubee and Jimmy becoming friends, the idea they would glom onto the frightening Martin is bizarre, and Helen makes spectacularly stupid decisions. Thus it’s pointless trying to watch My Old Man’s Place as a proper story. Better to absorb the picture as a clumsy effort to engage with something provocative. To that end, Moriarty’s casting is just right, since he effectively captures anguish. Casting Kennedy, a star from a simpler time in movies, works just as well, because his presence illustrates the generation gap. Ryan is good, too, infusing his restrained characterization with unnerving madness. The performer who misses the mark most widely is the usually reliable Devane, because he’s distractingly cartoonish playing a crass simpleton.

My Old Man’s Place: FUNKY

Ride the Hot Wind (1971)

Faced with the familiar conundrum of crafting a new image as an adult, former Mickey Mouse Club child star Tommy Kirk signed on to play a disgraced Vietnam veteran in this downbeat drama from cowriter/director Duke Kelly, who never made another theatrically released film. Conceptually, Ride the Hot Wind is rich. Kirk plays Captain Gregory Shank, a character inspired by William Calley, the real-life American officer responsible for the My Lai massacre. In Ride the Hot Wind, Gregory is accused of orchestrating a My Lai-type slaughter, then tried and briefly imprisoned by the Army. All the while, he claims innocence. After enduring abuse in military prison, Gregory tries to start fresh in civilian life, but his past haunts him—employers fire Gregory once they learn his true identity, strangers drag him into brawls, and women can’t handle his emotional baggage. Eventually, Gregory finds a new tribe with a group of bikers, but that situation turns sour when the bikers’ propensity for pointless violence leads to a crime spree and then a manhunt by police who assume Gregory is the ringleader. One wishes Kelly had sold his concept to reputable producers, thus resulting in a better script, a proper budget, and more impressive casting. Just imagine a slick version of Ride the Hot Wind starring, say, Bruce Dern—I mean, like, wow, man. Despite obviously trying hard, Kirk is not anywhere near that level. His acting is as inconsistent and labored as Kelly’s direction and scripting, so Ride the Hot Wind in a deeply underwhelming (and sometimes unintentionally funny) viewing experience. What a bummer of a missed opportunity.

Ride the Hot Wind: LAME

The No Mercy Man (1973)

          One of those disjoined drive-in flicks combining several lurid story elements without much care given to how they mesh, The No Mercy Man is a crime picture, a heist thriller, a revenge saga, and a Vietnam-vet tale. On the plus side, the picture has a slick look, marking the first feature credit for cinematographer Dean Cundey (later to collaborate with John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg). What’s more, lots of stuff happens, some of which is moderately exciting. On the minus side, characterizations are shallow at best, and the episodic nature of the script prevents the movie from gaining any real momentum until the final act. Still, there’s a reason why The No Mercy Man is yet another obscure B-movie that Quentin Tarantino admires—with its convoluted plotting, perverse villains, and scenes of everyday people under siege, it occupies his cinema-of-savagery wheelhouse. That being said, The No Mercy Man isn’t one of those gonzo grindhouse pictures overflowing with gore and sex, and in fact it’s relatively restrained.

          The plot concerns WWII veteran Mark Hand (Richard X. Slattery) and his extended family, who live together on a remote spread in Arizona. The day Mark’s son Ollie (Steve Sandor) is set to return from service in Vietnam, Mark’s wife goes to collect him from the airport, leaving Mark home with his nubile daughter. Vagabond criminal Prophet (Rockne Tarkington) and his twitchy sidekick, Dunn (Ron Thompson), attack the family’s house, but the assault gets interrupted by Ollie’s arrival. Although Mark tries to cajole Ollie into chasing the escaping hoodlums, Ollie is strangely reluctant, so Mark agrees to let police handle the matter. Meanwhile, Prophet and Dunn return to their home base of a traveling carnival, then make plans for their next criminal enterprise; the murky scheme involves stealing guns that Prophet spotted at Mark’s place, joining forces with a biker gang, and committing a brazen robbery. Woven into all of this whiplash-inducing plot material is a PTSD subplot, because Ollie returned from Vietnam with serious problems.

          A generous reading would suggest that cowriter-director Daniel Vance imagined a thematic parallel between Prophet, a natural-born killer, and Ollie, a trained killer. Alas, nothing in The No Mercy Man invites or justifies a generous reading. Some aspects of the film’s execution are satisfactory, including Don Vincent’s suspenseful scoring and most of the performances, but the story is a shapeless mess. It should also be noted that the film’s theme song—yes, it has a theme song—contains these highly questionable lyrics: “Love and lust are the same to him, like being raped by the devil!” Sorry, could you run that by me one more time?

The No Mercy Man: FUNKY

There Is No 13 (1974)

          In the abstract, There Is No 13 sounds like the ultimate lost classic of the New Hollywood era. Made on a limited budget but reflecting both artistic ingenuity and thematic ambition, the picture uses a surrealistic approach to explore the inner life of a soldier traumatized by experiences in Vietnam. The title refers to the soldier’s twelve sex partners, so the phrase “there is no thirteen” indicates his ambivalent feelings toward the future. Will he ever know love again? Has war ruined him for civilian life? Did Vietnam drive him insane? Yet, as happens with disappointing frequency when sifting through film history, one discovers upon watching There Is No 13 a massive gulf between the potential of the picture and the picture itself. Writer-director William Sachs, who spent most of his subsequent career making schlocky exploitation films (e.g., 1980’s abysmal sci-fi flick Galaxina), lacks the cinematic skill and intellectual dexterity to render the novelistic picture There Is No 13 so desperately wants to be, a combination of Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun and Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

          Instead of making a Grand Statement™ about war, Sachs offers an intermittently distracting compendium of hazily considered vignettes, without anywhere near a sufficient volume of connective tissue. Some moments are funny, some moments are sad, and some moments are weird, but the whole thing feels aimless and episodic. Worse, Sachs indulges in certain tropes that simply don’t work, such as a half-hearted motif featuring close-ups of mouths chewing food. One gets the impression Sachs wanted to skewer American consumerism as long as he was probing beneath the country’s sociocultural skin, but if so, he overreached.

          The figure at the center of the story is George Thomas (Mark Damon), ostensibly a new patient at a military hospital. He hallucinates an alternate (or remembered) reality in which he’s actually a filmmaker applying for work with a production company. In this thread, he considers a job offer to write a sexploitation-flick script, enjoys a tryst with an eccentric rich girl (Margaret Markov), and completes a tryout assignment for a hospital seeking instructional films. (The less said about his magnum opus, How to Fingerprint a Foot, the better.) Bracketing and interrupting this more-or-less linear narrative are weird interludes. A vaudeville-type comedy/music routine in a hospital hallway. A demonstration of the Moog synthesizer system in a barren field. Shots of people wandering through New York City as George’s snotty voiceover dismisses them as “pea-brains” driving “turds” (his nickname for cars).

          There’s a student-film quality to all of this, which makes sense given that There Is No 13 was Sachs’ first directorial effort after having served as a sort of cinematic repairman on previous films, including the acclaimed Joe (1970) and the not-so-acclaimed South of Hell Mountain (1971). Clearly, Sachs had a lot to say—and just as clearly, his desire to express himself exceeded his ability to do so.

There Is No 13: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Exterminator

Offering a glimpse of where action movies were headed in the ’80s—less nuance, more ultraviolence—this borderline incompetent exploitation flick was the second directorial effort from shameless hack James Glickenhaus. Stealing the basic plot of Death Wish (1974) and juicing the material with a crass Vietnam-vet angle, Glickenhaus tells the ugly story of John Eastland, a former soldier who turns vigilante after Mafia thugs paralyze his best friend. Dubbed “The Exterminator” by reporters, John  feeds a villain into an industrial meat grinder, and he leaves a pair of criminals tied up on a garbage heap so they can be eaten alive by rats. Yet the most horrific sequence is a prologue set in Vietnam, during which John and his best friend witness enemy soldiers committing atrocities including beheadings. The idea, presumably, is that “The Exterminator” became a monster because his overseas experience made him that way. But then again, ascribing psychological depth to this movie is unwise, because Glickenhaus—who also wrote the screenplay—seems unfamiliar with the human experience that the rest of us acknowledge as reality. In Glickenhaus’ skewed universe, violence justifies violence, so it’s okay that, for instance, the movie’s antihero murders a guard dog with an electric knife because he’s on a mission to steal money from mobsters. The Exterminator has a fever-dream quality, seeing as how many pieces seem to be missing; the story makes bizarre leaps forward, and it frequently appears Glickenhaus got only two-thirds of the shots needed for each scene. What’s more, whenever The Exterminator veers into a laughable subplot about a cop (Christopher George) romancing a doctor (Samantha Eggar), it’s as if pieces of another bad movie got spliced into Glickenhaus’ vile revenge fantasy. The Exterminator is brisk and eventful, but if this is your idea of a good time at the movies, seek help.

The Exterminator: LAME

1980 Week: Ruckus

          Essentially a dunderheaded precursor to First Blood (1982), this silly action picture falls midway through the cycle of ’70s and ’80s movies about PTSD-addled Vietnam veterans, both in terms of chronological release and quality. Written and directed by onetime stuntman Max Kleven, Ruckus avoids the sleazy extremes of some PTSD flicks, because it doesn’t edge into kinky sex stuff or linger on violence. Unfortunately, by taking the genteel approach, Ruckus ends up seeming cartoonish, a problem exacerbated by Kleven’s genuinely terrible screenplay. Characters in Kleven’s world do things simply because they’re convenient for the story, or because some similar character took a similar action in another movie. Nothing here rings true. Kleven’s direction isn’t much better than his writing, and he regularly slips into unintentional goofiness, as during the spectacularly dumb dirt-bike scene (more on that later). In the first-time filmmaker’s defense, he did not land top-shelf actors for the leading roles. He got Dirk Benedict and Linda Blair.

          The story starts the usual way, with a drifter ambling into a small town. Locals hassle him simply because he’s different. The drifter is Kyle Hanson (Benedict), who for reasons that are never explained has thick mud caked onto his face. While eating lunch at a roadside stand, Kyle encounters Sam Bellows (Ben Johnson), a rich guy whose son is an MIA soldier. This explains why Kyle finds a receptive audience when, later, he breaks into Sam’s home and meets Sam’s voluptuous daughter-in-law, Jenny (Blair). She helps Kyle hide from the locals who are chasing him. Eventually, Ruckus becomes a weird survival story because Kyle occupies a small island and uses guerilla tactics, martial arts, and stolen explosives to rebel invaders.

          None of this makes sense, but Kleven bombards viewers with colorful images. At his worst, he loses his grip on what should be a serious tone—witness the bizarre spectacle of Jenny and Kyle doing coordinated dirt-bike jumps in slow-motion as if they’re Mr. and Mrs. Evel Knievel. Benedict is quite bad, too big in unhinged scenes and too small in quiet scenes, while Blair is blandly sweet and Johnson phones in a non-performance. Only Richard Farnsworth, playing a seen-it-all sheriff, hits the right notes. Incidentally, it’s fun to survey the film’s various posters, seeing as how this picture was marketed as everything from a laugh-a-minute lark to an ultraviolent shoot-’em-up. Alternate titles include Big Ruckus in a Small Town, Eat My Smoke, The Loner, and Ruckus in Madoc County.

Ruckus: FUNKY

Just Be There (1973)

          Earnest drama Just Be There epitomizes the strengths and weaknesses of low-budget indie filmmaking circa the early ’70s. On the plus side, the movie has abundant local flavor, with real locations throughout the Minneapolis/St. Paul area providing the backdrops, and the use of amateur and semiprofessional actors means there isn’t any trace of Hollywood slickness in the performances. On the minus side, no film-industry veterans were present to push producer-star Michael Montgomery outside his comfort zone of gentle character work, so the picture lacks anything resembling commercial elements. In fact, it barely even has a story, since Just Be There mostly depicts the protagonist’s angst upon returning from Vietnam. To Montgomery’s credit, he avoids the cliché of presenting his main character as a PTSD-addled psycho, but to Montgomery’s detriment, the protagonist handles wartime trauma so well that seems as if he endured a tiring overseas voyage rather than soul-searing jungle combat. Timidity is the watchword here, both in terms of the storytelling and the style. And that’s why Just Be There is such a quintessential indie: Whereas the worst Hollywood pictures bludgeon viewers with overstatement, Just Be There nearly puts viewers to sleep with understatement.

          The narrative begins with Mitchell (Montgomery) returning home to his girlfriend, Kathy (Lynn Baker), and his parents. Dad runs an investment firm selling futures in pork bellies and the like, while Mom is a housewife. Mitchell longs to write a novel about his wartime experiences, an ambition that Kathy supports, but Dad wants Mitchell to join the family business. Upon doing so, Mitchell succumbs to the lure of steady money and upward mobility. Soon, he is so lost that he begins an affair with an alluring coworker. Through it all, Mitchell treats Kathy worse and worse, blowing up whenever she has the temerity to call him on his bullshit. Yet we, the viewers, are meant to sympathize with Mitchell, because, y’know, he’s goin’ through a heavy scene, man. Just Be There is relatively well made, so the movie exists on roughly the level of an advanced film-school project. Because Montgomery never made another picture, it’s unknown whether he could have improved upon this first effort. Also known as Comin’ Home and Stranger at Home, the movie was reissued—with a change in rating from PG to R—as Swinging Teacher, so presumably racy footage was added. These remarks pertain to the original version.

Just Be There: FUNKY

My Friends Need Killing (1976)

          Yet another story about a crazed Vietnam vet on a crime spree, My Friends Need Killing nearly works. The premise is intriguing and tragic, leading man Greg Mullavey’s performance is fairly credible, and writer-director Paul Leder came up with an offbeat ticking-clock device because the vet’s girlfriend shares her fears with a psychiatrist who determines that action must be taken to prevent bloodshed. Unfortunately, Leder’s direction is hopelessly inept, and the film’s production values are distractingly shoddy. What should have been a crackerjack thriller with a humanistic core—something on the order of a good Larry Cohen movie—instead becomes a dreary slog with too much gore and too little momentum. Worse, Leder slides into the exploitation-movie gutter with an unnecessary subplot during which the vet becomes a rapist. Since My Friends Need Killing probably isn’t exciting enough to stimulate the lizard-brain crowd, it’s unfortunate that Leder’s sleazy extremes alienate the thinking audience.

          After returning from Vietnam, Gene (Mullavey) suffers night terrors, alarming his wife, Laura (Meredith McRae). Turns out Gene believes that he and his comrades committed such heinous war crimes that all of them must die. He writes letters to his war buddies saying he’s going to visit them, and during each visit, Gene savagely murders one of his friends. Back home, Laura pieces together clues and talks to Gene’s shrink, so they eventually try to stop Gene’s bloody vengeance mission. Sometimes, Leder reveals what this movie might have been, as when Gene becomes conflicted about murdering a sensitive (read: gay) veteran. Other times, Leder follows the mindless thrill-kill path, devolving My Friends Need Killing into typical grindhouse junk. Still, the film has just enough compassion that it’s unwise to completely dismiss the endeavor. If nothing else, examining the way various filmmakers dealt with PTSD provides insights regarding attitudes toward veterans during a fraught time in American history.

My Friends Need Killing: FUNKY

Jud (1971)

          Released fairly early in the cycle of movies about Vietnam vets wrestling with PTSD upon returning to America, Jud deserves some credit for tackling serious issues at the very moment they were gaining sociopolitical relevance. Unfortunately, writer-director Gunther Collins has more passion for his subject matter than he does cinematic skill or psychological insight, so Jud echoes its protagonist’s angst-ridden journey by flailing about in search of meaning. The title character brawls, mopes, and wanders, pushing away nearly everyone who tries to form an emotional connection with him, and he endures flashbacks to horrific moments from overseas combat. Collins does an adequate job of conveying his leading character’s anguished metal state. Yet Collins fails to build an actual story around the character, so events in Jud just sort of happen, without any sense of a narrative shape. Worse, the climactic moment, which involves the death of a supporting character, is extrinsic to Jud’s journey, because the doomed character had major psychological problems well before he crossed Jud’s path. A more unified approach to this sort of material would have tethered the narrative’s ultimate tragedy to Jud’s PTSD, thereby conveying a theme about war claiming victims even after soldiers leave the battlefield, somewhat in the vein of the classic WWII drama The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). With its barrage of directionless ennui and empty lyricism, Jud is a jumble.

          Set in Los Angeles, the picture begins with Jud Carney (Joseph Kaufmann) renting an apartment in a small building run by busybody landlord Fred Hornkel (Norman Burton). Two tenants glom onto Jud immediately—lonely single lady Shirley (Alix Wyeth) and self-loathing closeted homosexual Bill (Robert Deman). Jud shuns both of them, gravitating to pretty girls for company, first Sunny (Claudia Jennings), with whom Jud trysts on the beach, and later Kathy (Bonnie Bittner), with whom Jud attempts to build a real relationship. Sometimes, Jud seems like he has everything together, as when he expertly prevents a used-car salesman from swindling him, and sometimes, he’s a hair-trigger menace, as when he beats a guy whose girlfriend resembles the woman who dumped Jud while he was in Vietnam. Despite smothering the film with plaintive folk songs, Collins never gives the audience a clue as to what they’re supposed to make of everything that happens onscreen. At the time of its release, perhaps Jud said something fresh about how the experiences of Vietnam veterans differed from those of servicemen in previous wars. Seen today, it’s sincere but inadvertently shallow, a near miss at best. For cult-movie fans, the main point of interest is presumably Jennings’ participation, as Jud was the first movie credit for the short-lived Playboy model-turned-actress.

Jud: FUNKY

There’s Always Vanilla (1971)

          Horror-cinema icon George A. Romero’s first movie, Night of the Living Dead (1968), was a huge hit proportionate to its miniscule budget, but Romero didn’t take the obvious path of following up with another shocker. Instead, he made a romantic comedy infused with hip counterculture attitude, resulting in the muddled curiosity known as There’s Always Vanilla. Romero was the film’s director, cinematographer, and editor, so his gifts and shortcomings as a storyteller and technician are on full display, though viewers must dig deep to find traces of Romero’s signature themes, since he didn’t originate or write the material. In fact, the only distinctly “Romero” scene is a jarring late-movie sequence with horror-movie affectations. Suffice to say, this bit clashes badly with the rest of the film, and the presence of this discordant note accurately reflects how unfocused There’s Always Vanilla feels from start to finish.

          Set, naturally, in Romero’s longtime home base of Pittsburgh, There’s Always Vanilla concerns twentysomething slacker Chris Bradley (Raymond Lane), who speaks directly to the camera in documentary-style interludes that add little to the experience. Viewers learn that he’s a Vietnam vet disenchanted with Establishment values, that his father runs a successful manufacturing business, and that he knows more about what he doesn’t want to do with his life than what he actually wants to do with his life. Telling stories about passive characters is always difficult, and the team behind this movie didn’t meet the challenge well. Although the main thrust of the picture involves Chris’ romance with model/actress Lynn (Judith Ridley), much of the screen time, inevitably, concerns Chris talking about doing things instead of actually doing them. Whenever he stops philosophizing long enough to take action, he’s either a clown or a self-indulgent jerk. For instance, he talks his way into an ad-agency job, then walks out the minute he’s asked to generate work product.

          Among the film’s myriad narrative problems is indecision. It’s never clear if There’s Always Vanilla is an opposites-attract romance involving a guy with counterculture values and a woman with more conservative ideals, or if it’s a larger statement about the way society bludgeons iconoclasts. Sometimes, the picture is about all of those things, and sometimes it’s about entirely different things, because the script—credited to Rudy Ricci—meanders aimlessly. And then there’s the scene in which Romero falls back on his reliable horror-movie tricks. When Lynn goes to an abortionist, Romero shifts to angular, shadowy camerawork and uses aggressively paced editing to create a disquieting rhythm. It’s a potent scene, but it belongs in another picture. There’s Always Vanilla has some interesting moments, the acting is fairly naturalistic, and every so often, Romero channels his wry sense of humor effectively. Yet this one’s a footnote at best, not only to Romero’s filmography but also to the litany of movies about disaffected ’70s youth.

There’s Always Vanilla: FUNKY

Wolf Lake (1979)

          Shamelessly borrowing elements from Deliverance (1972), Joe (1970), and Straw Dogs (1971), this violent melodrama pits a Vietnam-era deserter against an unhinged Gold Star parent, with various innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. As written and directed by Burt Kennedy, a solid helmer of midgrade action pictures, Wolf Lake unspools smoothly, with every scene focused, purposeful, and tight. Plus, with Rod Steiger giving a relatively contained performance as the deranged dad, the movie’s intensity level never falters, even during the many, many passages when logic falls victim to narrative expediency. The plotting of Wolf Lake is similar to that of a typical horror movie, and like many films in that genre, the whole premise hinges on someone remaining in a dangerous place despite being fully aware of the danger. Which brings up interesting questions regarding what sort of thrill Wolf Lake is meant to provide viewers. The story is too far-fetched to work as social commentary, and it’s too nasty to qualify as escapism, so watching Wolf Lake requires the viewer to revel in the suffering of others. The picture is made with enough skill that it cannot be dismissed, but at the same time, it’s creepy to imagine that Kennedy and his collaborators envisioned 90 minutes of rape and murder as a fun night at the movies.

          Set in Canada circa 1976, the story opens with Charlie (Steiger) and his WWII buddies arriving at a hunting lodge for a getaway. The regular caretaker is away, so shaggy-haired twentysomething David (David Huffman) and his girlfriend, Linda (Robin Mattson), are looking after the place. Once it comes out that David deserted his Army unit, Charlie becomes enraged, because his own son died in Vietnam. Charlie tells David that he plans to kill him, but Charlie inexplicably remains until the inevitable violence explodes. First Charlie goads his men into gang-raping Linda, and then David fights back, leading to a war of attrition that leaves bodies everywhere. Kennedy’s strangest storytelling choice involves peppering the first half of the movie with flash-forwards of bloody finale. While presumably meant to juice tension, these flashes have the opposite effect, removing any mystery about what happens next. On the plus side, Kennedy manages other storytelling tasks well. In addition to staging action expertly, Kennedy keeps Steiger on a tight leash until it’s time to let the chronic overactor loose. Among the so-so supporting cast, Jerry Hardin stands out as the story’s requisite spineless toady.

Wolf Lake: FUNKY

Green Eyes (1977)

          War leaves many victims in its wake, not just the soldiers and civilians directly affected by combat. In the case of the Vietnam War, sexual liaisons between American troops and indigenous women led to the birth of thousands upon thousands of children, many of whom were abandoned by their fathers and thereby consigned to lives of loneliness and poverty. The humanistic made-for-TV drama Green Eyes offers a poignant look at this cycle.

         Paul Winfield, in a touching performance, plays a U.S. Army veteran who returns to Vietnam in order to search for the son he left behind. Upon arrival, however, the soldier discovers that war orphans have become a major national problem, that the survival rate among such children is poor, and that because of economic and political strife lingering in Vietnam, the best chance for some children is adoption by foreigners. Based on a story by Eugene Logan and written with considerable sensitivity by Hollywood veteran David Seltzer, Green Eyes is the cinematic equivalent of encountering a social problem, looking up to the heavens in anguish, and asking, “What can I do?” Yet while bleeding-heart liberalism of the noblest energizes this project, the filmmakers don’t let their editorializing impede the telling of a good story.

          At the beginning of the picture, African-American Lloyd Dubeck (Winfield) returns home with a heavy heart and a limp, having escaped Vietnam with injuries but cognizant that he impregnated the Vietnamese woman with whom he once cohabited. Lloyd has difficulty settling back into civilian life, and his conscience gnaws at him, so he arranges transport back to Southeast Asia, even though the war has not yet ended. Returning to safe zones occupied by American advisors and their colleagues in South Vietnam’s armed forces, Lloyd begins a quest to find his lost lover. Aiding him is Margaret Sheen (Rita Tushingham), an English social worker who operates a bustling orphanage. Lloyd also has a number of encounters with Trung (Lemi), a wide-eyed street urchin who exploits the naïveté of foreigners while using various scams to survive. All of Lloyd’s experiences educate him about the plight of children whose parents are, for all intents and purposes, the war itself.

          Director John Erman does a more than serviceable job of delivering the narrative, utilizing the film’s locations in the Philippines to create a strong sense of verisimilitude. Scenes in slums are particularly evocative. Given the picture’s downbeat storyline, the filmmakers wisely modulate tone by including flashes of humor and playfulness. Better still, moments designed to tug at viewers’ heartstrings have impact without being needlessly maudlin. Driving the whole piece, of course, is Winfield’s warm persona. His pain at witnessing deprivation feels credible, and his joy during the rare moments when his character is able to have a positive impact is contagious.

Green Eyes: GROOVY

Clay Pigeon (1971)

Hollywood also-ran Tom Stern must have made a lot of friends or a lot of money, if not both, during the early years of his career as an actor and occasional director—because calling in favors or writing checks seem like the only means by which Stern could have cajoled Burgess Meredith, Telly Savalas, and Robert Vaughan into appearing in Stern’s misbegotten magnum opus, Clay Pigeon. A sloppily constructed story about a dude roped into a convoluted sting operation by government agents, the picture attempts to connect themes related to drugs, hippie culture, police corruption, and Vietnam. Abstract artists and exotic dancers are involved, as well. Even the main character, whom Stern portrays, is confusing: He’s a Vietnam veteran turned flower child, and yet he’s also periodically described as an ex-cop, and he may or may not be a drug addict. (Between the rotten storytelling and the intrusion of trippy drug sequences, it’s hard to tell what’s happening throughout most of the picture.) Stern, who codirected Clay Pigeon with Lane Slate, seems perplexed about what sort of movie he’s trying to make. At various times, Clay Pigeon is an action picture, a heavy drama, and a sexy thriller replete with abundant female nudity. At other times, the movie stops dead for interminable and meaningless discursions, as if Stern felt obligated to use every frame of film he shot. For example, consider the very long scene of Stern and Meredith riding a dune buggy through sandy hills while police vehicles follow, culminating in a slow-mo shot of a police car tumbling down a hill. The shot lingers onscreen so long that it almost qualifies as a subplot. Elsewhere in the movie, Savalas delivers this head-scratcher of a speech: “Quite by accident, we stumbled upon a ding-a-ling with a great deal of ability. I want to use that ability. I want to rouse the conscience of this freakout in order to succeed where you and I have failed, and that's to arrest a malignancy.”

Clay Pigeon: LAME