1980 Week: Home Movies

Brian De Palma took a break from his successful career as a Hollywood director to teach filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’d done graduate work in theater, and this project resulted from student exercises. Despite the involvement of marquee names including Kirk Douglas, who has a small recurring role, the smart move would have been to let Home Movies linger in the relative obscurity of academia, because it’s an embarrassment. Not only is Home Movies amateurish and silly, but it’s suffused with crass elements including scenes during which the white leading character wears blackface as a disguise. Credited to seven writers, including De Palma, the narrative follows Denis Byrd (Keith Gordon), a young man who takes a filmmaking course from “The Maestro” (Douglas). Egomaniacal and overbearing, “The Maestro” encourages Denis to use his eccentric family as fodder for a class project, so Denis tracks his philandering father (Vincent Gardenia) and his older brother, James (Gerrit Graham), an insufferable college professor who pummels his fiancée, Kristina (Nancy Allen), with absurd rules about abstinence, diet, and exercise. Somehow this resolves into Denis surreptitiously filming people having sex. The story is coherent, but the events are pointless and random and tacky. James throwing food at Kristina because she broke a rule. Denis rescuing a lingerie-clad Kristina from a rapist. “The Maestro” climbing a tree to shame Denis for doing exactly what “The Maestro” asked, filming real life. Wasted are Allen’s girl-next-door charm, Gardenia’s impeccable comic timing, and Graham’s intense weirdness. Plus, seeing as how De Palma extrapolated many story elements from his own life experiences, the odor of self-indulgence permeates.

Home Movies: LAME

Jenny (1970)

          Thanks to a one-night stand, small-town girl Jenny is pregnant. Confused and naïve, she moves to New York, hoping to figure things out at some undetermined point in the future. Then she has a meet-cute with Delano, a self-assured filmmaker who makes arty independent projects when he isn’t directing commercials for rent money. Turns out he’s got a problem, too. He’s eligible for the draft, and doesn't much like the idea of dying in Southeast Asia. After they spend some time together, Delano proposes a pragmatic suggestion: marriage. That way, her baby-to-be gets a father with a good income, and Delano gets a chance at persuading the government his domestic obligations preclude military service. Never mind that Delano has a girlfriend and zero romantic interest in sweet, sheltered Jenny. That’s the basic setup for Jenny, a slight but well-observed dramedy starring Marlo Thomas, then at the height of her success in the sitcom That Girl, and Alan Alda, two years before his own sitcom success with M*A*S*H. Both actors imbue their roles with nuance and sensitivity, and the direction and screenplay give them interesting emotional terrain to explore.
          In many ways, Jenny is a respectable character piece touching on weighty social issues. However, the film falls into two easy traps. First, it uses lightheartedness to wriggle out of tricky narrative situations, and second, it cops out with a fashionably ambiguous ending. The most ambitious elements of the picture demand serious treatment for the issues they raise, and the sincere work by the leading actors warrants a proper conclusion. That’s why watching Jenny is as frustrating as it is rewarding.
          Nonetheless, Thomas deepens a potentially simplistic role with real emotion, so we feel her character’s anguish at being used by Delano, even though she entered into the sham marriage fully aware of its parameters. Similarly, Alda does a fine job of playing a heel whose conscience nags at him—Alda sketches the vivid picture of a sophisticate who has difficulty reconciling emotions and intellectualism. Also noteworthy is Vincent Gardenia, who appears as Jenny’s father in a brief but effective sequence. With a few simple moves of behavior and physical carriage, he speaks volumes about the Generation Gap, expressing the pain straight-laced parents felt watching their children experiment with new and untried social structures. There’s much to like here, not least being the imaginative camerawork by director George Bloomfield and cinematographer David L. Quaid. Ultimately, however, Jenny falters by not seeing its premise through.

Jenny: FUNKY

Lucky Luciano (1973)

          One of myriad mob flicks made after The Godfather (1971) restored the gangster genre to its place in the mainstream, Lucky Luciano is a discombobulated affair. Buried inside the movie’s confusing sprawl is a passable character study of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the individual credited with establishing the Mafia’s foothold in New York City. Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté renders an adequate portrayal, illustrating Luciano’s descent from a position of remarkable power to life as a marked man. At his best, Volonté sketches a cocksure criminal who deftly employed the media while all but daring authorities and enemies to come at him. Had the makers of this multinational coproduction limited their efforts to describing Luciano’s eventful career in organized crime, the picture would have been more effective. As is, the movie lacks flow thanks to a disjointed timeline, excessive focus on supporting characters, and the failure to clearly define Luciano as an individual before the plot kicks into gear. Throughout the first half-hour, Luciano is so incidental to his own story that it’s difficult to track what the movie’s about. Then, just when it seems as if the filmmakers have found their way, they detour into a pointless informant subplot that features a typically grandiose turn by Rod Steiger. Oh, well.

          After glossing over one of Luciano’s most important milestones, the mass murder of 40 bosses and the subsequent consolidation of power, the picture winds through perplexing scenes about profiteering in post-WWII Italy and vignettes of a Senate investigation. Actors including Charles Cioffi and Vincent Gardenia come and go in meaningless roles before the story proper gets underway. Thanks to a controversial deal with government officials, Luciano receives extradition to his native Italy instead of jail time for alleged crimes. While in Italy, Luciano tries operating his criminal enterprises from afar, but investigators and mobsters close in on him. Some want Luciano behind bars, while others want him dead. The quality of the filmmaking is never superlative. In one bit, a tired-looking Edmund O’Brien spews reams of dull exposition, and in another, a somewhat exciting chase scene gets smothered beneath overly explanatory voiceover. By the time the movie reaches its final stretch, depicting Luciano’s reaction to government pressure and threats from adversaries, it’s difficult to care about his plight or even to parse exactly why things are happening. So while Lucky Luciano has enough in the way of familiar faces and production values to qualify as passable mob-movie fare, it’s a dud from a narrative perspective.

Lucky Luciano: FUNKY

The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery (1975)

          Raise your hand if you knew that two of the Dead End Kids, actors who rose to fame as juveniles in the 1930s, reunited as middle-aged adults in the ’70s to make a spoof of The Maltese Falcon noteworthy for its inclusion of bestiality, gore, and incest—even though the movie was released with a family-friendly PG rating. If you haven’t raised your hand yet, rest assured you’re not alone. The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery is among the least remembered big-studio releases of the ’70s, and with good reason. It’s awful. Worse, it’s the most frustrating kind of awful, because everyone involved in the picture has a measure of talent. Some of the acting is quite sly, so it’s depressing to watch skilled comic performers flail about in search of proper jokes. The camerawork by stone-cold pro Bill Butler (of Jaws and Rocky fame) is nuanced and slick. Furthermore, buried somewhere within the unsalvageable disaster of the script is a funny notion about a detective trying to solve a crime in a tiny town where everybody knows everybody else’s business.

          Star Gabriel Dell, a onetime Dead End Kid, plays Malcolm, a poultry engineer in a small desert town filled with farms and trailer parks. He dreams of bigger things, which is why he took a mail-order course to become a private investigator. In quick succession, Malcolm gets hired by several residents to solve seemingly unrelated mysteries. This leads him to discover that the town doctor (Will Geer) is a drug addict, his best friend’s wife (Nita Talbot) is a boozy nympho, local rich guy Big Daddy Jessup (Vincent Gardenia) appears to be screwing his own daughter (Anjanette Comer), and a party yet to be identified has a thing for goats and other animals.

          Dell, who cowrote the picture, plays everything straight, which is a bizarre choice given the simultaneously campy and gruesome nature of the situations—for example, the final shootout has more bloodshed than the Black Knight sequence in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974). Subtle was not the way to go. Yet nothing, really, could have helped Manchu Eagle take flight. During the rare moments when the film isn’t utterly confusing, it’s deeply stupid. Not inspired, off-the-wall, Mel Brooks stupid, mind you, just plain childish and unfunny.

          Seeing as how four editors are credited, one suspects that Dell and cowriter/director Dean Hargrove had a hell of a time trying to wrangle this picture into releasable shape. They managed to compile an 80-minute trifle with a beginning and an ending, but what happens between those milestones is a whole lot of shapeless nonsense. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the other Dead End Kid in the cast is Huntz Hall, who plays a small role as an idiot deputy; he shares most of his scenes with another former child star, Jackie Coogan, who plays the town’s portly sheriff.

The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery: LAME

Firepower (1979)

          A bad movie that occasionally manages to hold the viewer’s attention through a combination of familiar faces and spectacle, Firepower tells a convoluted story about mercenaries trying to kidnap a reclusive billionaire whom the U.S. government hopes to prosecute for criminal acts. Helmed by British action specialist Michael Winner, best known for Death Wish (1974), the picture showcases a truly odd collection of actors: James Coburn, Sophia Loren, and O.J. Simpson are the big names, while the supporting cast includes Billy Barty, Anthony Franciosa, Vincent Gardenia, Victor Mature, Jake LaMotta (!), and Eli Wallach.

          The plot is as overstuffed as the cast. In the opening sequence, Adele (Sophia Loren) watches in horror as her husband, a pharmaceutical researcher, dies in a lab explosion. Convinced her husband was murdered by operatives of a mysterious industrialist named Karl Stegner, who owns a drug company that’s under government investigation, Adele provides incriminating evidence to federal agent Frank Hull (Gardenia). Frank wants to arrest Stegner, but Stegner lives on a remote estate in the Caribbean, protected by anti-extradition laws. And that’s when things get really confusing.

          Frank seeks help from mobster Sal Hyman (Wallach), who offers to kidnap Stegner in exchange for a blanket pardon. Sal then calls in a favor from retired assassin Jerry Fanon (Coburn), who agrees to do the Stegner job for $1 million. Yet Jerry’s got a secret of his own. Jerry enlists his twin brother, Eddie, to . . . seriously, it’s not even worth explaining. Firepower is bewildering from a narrative perspective, but one gets the sense Winner realized he was building a giant heap of nothing, because he cuts the movie at an absurdly fast pace, rushing from chose scenes to double-crosses to explosions to gunfights to nighttime invasions. At any given moment, lots of colorful stuff is happening, even if it’s virtually impossible to know who’s doing what to whom, or why.

          Coburn somehow manages to emerge unscathed, his coolness seeing him through the movie’s muddiest sections, though others don’t fare as well. Loren seems perplexed by her constantly changing characterization, so she spends most of her time posing for Winner’s myriad ogling shots of her cleavage. Simpson delivers his usual perfunctory work, while stone-cold pros ranging from Gardenia to Wallach try to ensure that individual scenes make as much sense as possible. For all his shortcomings on this project as a storyteller, Winner compensates somewhat by shooting violence well, so it’s possible to absorb the most vivacious scenes of Firepower as straight shots of adrenalized nonsense.

Firepower: FUNKY

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)

          While basically heartfelt and sincere, this downbeat saga of male friendship—set in the world of professional baseball—offers a litany of teachable moments for cinematic storytellers. At the most fundamental level, the film’s inconsequential plot overwhelms what should be a substantial story. But that’s not the only tactical error. Cornball music cheapens quiet moments that could have attained power if left unvarnished. Vincent Gardenia’s highly entertaining supporting performance, which earned the actor an Oscar nomination, is played so comically that it distracts from the film’s overall dramatic intentions. Worst of all, costar Robert De Niro’s presence—upon which the entire story hinges—is strangely minimized, which has the effect of transforming his crucial characterization into an abstraction. So, while it would be overreaching to describe Bang the Drum Slowly as a mess, it’s fair to say the movie has a significant identity crisis.
          Adapted by Mark Harris from his own novel of the same name, Bang the Drum Slowly depicts the exploits of a fictional New York baseball team, the Mammoths. Star pitcher Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) is best friends with second-rate catcher Bruce Pearson (De Niro), who just received a terminal diagnosis. Determined to help Bruce enjoy one last season of baseball without playing the sympathy card, Wiggen threatens not to sign his new contract unless Bruce’s position on the team is secured. This maneuver enrages coach Dutch Schnell (Gardenia), who then expends considerable effort investigating lies that Henry tells in order to obscure the real reason why he’s protecting Bruce. The whole business of Dutch parsing Henry’s stories is so contrived and silly that the amount of screen time given to that subplot is irritating, even though Gardenia’s slow burns and tantrums are great fun to watch. Similarly, Harris and director John Hancock push the mildly eccentric Henry to the foreground of the story—even though the real drama revolves around Bruce—and they fail to persuasively explain why Henry is so attached to Bruce.
          Seeing as how Bang the Drum Slowly hit theaters two years after the far more effective Brian’s Song scored on television, Bang the Drum Slowly pales by comparison. Still, the picture is not without its virtues, mostly related to acting. Beyond the wonderful Gardenia, De Niro overcomes miscasting as a redneck to create a likeably slow-witted persona; Moriarty contributes his signature style of cerebral weirdness; and Barbara Babcock and Selma Diamond, respectively, lend enjoyable flavors of aristocratic haughtiness and scratchy-voiced crudeness. As for the film’s would-be heartbreaker of an ending, it’s a nonevent compared to the climax of Brian’s Song, which has been making grown men cry since 1971.

Bang the Drum Slowly: FUNKY

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

          One of the most endearing love stories of the ’70s, Heaven Can Wait boasts an incredible amount of talent in front of and behind the camera. The flawless cast includes Warren Beatty, Dyan Cannon, Julie Christie, Vincent Gardenia, Charles Grodin, Buck Henry, James Mason, and Jack Warden; the script was written by Beatty, Henry, Elaine May, and Oscar-winner Robert Towne; and the picture was co-directed by Beatty and Henry. With notorious perfectionist Beatty orchestrating the contributions of these remarkable people, Heaven Can Wait unfolds seamlessly, mixing jokes and sentiment in an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser that’s executed so masterfully one can enjoy the film’s easy pleasures without feeling guilty afterward.

          Furthermore, the fact that the underlying material is recycled rather than original works in the picture’s favor—Beatty found a story that had already been proven in various different incarnations, cleverly modernized the narrative, and built on success. No wonder the film became a massive hit, landing at No. 5 on the list of the year’s top grossers at the U.S. box office and earning a slew of Oscar nominations.

          The story is fanciful in the extreme. After Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a second-string quarterback for the L.A. Rams, gets into a traffic accident, his soul is summoned to heaven by The Escort (Henry), an overeager guardian angel. Only it turns out Pendleton wasn’t fated to die in the accident, so in trying to save Pendleton pain, The Escort acted too hastily. Enter celestial middle manager Mr. Jordan (Mason), who offers to return Pendleton’s soul to earth. Little problem: His body has already been cremated. Pendleton adds another wrinkle by stating that he still intends to play in the upcoming Super Bowl. Eventually, Mr. Jordan finds a replacement body in the form of Leo Farnsworth, a ruthless, super-rich industrialist.

          Joe becomes Farnsworth—although we see Beatty, other characters see the industrialist—and Joe uses his new body’s resources to buy the Rams so he can play for the team. The delightful storyline also involves Joe’s beloved coach (Warden), Farnsworth’s conniving wife and assistant (Cannon and Grodin), and the beautiful activist (Christie) campaigning against Farnsworth’s ecologically damaging business practices.

          Heaven Can Wait is a soufflé in the mode of great ’30s screen comedy, featuring a procession of sly jokes, inspirational moments, and adroit musical punctuation. Every actor contributes something special—including Gardenia, who plays a detective investigating misdeeds on the Farnsworth estate—and the memorable moments are plentiful. Beatty’s legendary charm dominates, but in such a soft-spoken way that he never upstages his supporting players; Heaven Can Wait features some of the most finely realized ensemble acting in ’70s screen comedy. And, as with the previous screen version of this story—1941’s wonderful Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which was adapted, like the Beatty film, from Harry Seagall’s play Heaven Can Wait—the ending is unexpectedly moving. Whatever Heaven Can Wait lacks in substance, it makes up for in pure cotton-candy pleasure.

Heaven Can Wait: RIGHT ON

Death Wish (1974)

          Among the most controversial movies released by a major studio in the ’70s, Death Wish turned vigilantism into a hot topic around America’s water coolers and a perennial theme for action movies. Whereas the Clint Eastwood vehicle Dirty Harry (1971) manifested late-’60s frustration with the expansion of accused criminals’ rights, Death Wish works on an even more visceral level: It dramatizes the anguish felt by crime victims. Although novelist Brian Garfield, upon whose novel the film is based, reportedly disliked the movie because of the way it seemingly condoned vigilantism, the picture has a measure of nuance—while star Charles Bronson, producer Dino De Laurentiis, and director Michael Winner focus on no-nonsense action, the underlying premise is so provocative that thematic heft unavoidably permeates the bang-bang thrills.

          Bronson plays New York City architect Paul Kersey, whose wife (Hope Lange) and daughter (Kathleen Tolan) are attacked by criminals. The thugs beat Joanna, causing injuries that lead to her death, and rape Carol, sending her into a catatonic state. Shattered, Paul takes a working holiday to Tuscon, where he befriends a gun-enthusiast client (Stuart Margolin), who gives Paul a revolver as a gift. Returning to New York and learning that his family’s assailants will probably never be caught, Paul becomes so preoccupied with street crime that he starts packing heat and looking for trouble. Before long, he’s wiping out every lowlife who crosses his path, thus becoming a folk hero to crime-fatigued New Yorkers. Once the plot gets cooking, the movie depicts the dicey relationship between Manhattan’s mysterious new avenger and the police, notably Detective Frank Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia); while city officials condemn the vigilante’s lawlessness, they relish the downtick in street crime attributed to fear of the gunman.

          While Death Wish is unquestionably lurid and sensationalistic, the harshest criticism of the movie—that it glamorizes vigilantism—is not entirely justified. The first time Paul kills a crook, he rushes home and vomits. Furthermore, the crisp screenplay by Wendell Mayes tightens the noose around Paul from the moment he begins his crusade. On a deeper level, the vengeance mission alienates Paul from society, even though he gets a perverse new spring in his step once he takes matters into his own hands.

          That said, the depiction of criminals as interchangeable ciphers makes it impossible to take the movie completely seriously. In this movie’s vision of New York, the streets are crawling with subhuman monsters, mostly African-American, and only a gun-toting cowboy can make the city safe. Even more troubling is the implication that every petty criminal deserves to die. But that’s what’s interesting about Death Wish, above and beyond the fact that it’s an exciting thriller—the movie tackles big themes, albeit clumsily. (Added novelty stems from the presence of future stars Christopher Guest and Jeff Goldblum in small roles, plus the kinetic funk/jazz score created by Herbie Hancock.)

          Death Wish was a major hit with lasting repercussions, vaulting Bronson to the A-list and triggering endless copycat movies. No official sequel appeared until 1982, but Death Wish II is putrid and the subsequent three pictures in the series are even worse, so everything worthwhile about Death Wish resides in the first movie.

Death Wish: GROOVY

Little Murders (1971)

          Written by celebrated cartoonist/satirist Jules Feiffer, and based on his successful off-Broadway play of the same name, Little Murders is one of the most oppressively cynical Hollywood movies from a period during which audiences briefly embraced downbeat subject matter because of a dour national mood. So, even though the picture is way too weird for most viewers, Little Murders is significant as an illustration of just how bummed-out some Americans were in an era characterized by political assassinations, social unrest, and the Vietnam War. Chronological context is necessary for discussing the picture, because otherwise, the storyline would seem pointlessly absurd and sadistic.

          Elliot Gould stars as Alfred, a New York City photographer so numbed by societal decay that he endures daily beatings from local thugs without complaint, and makes his living taking photographs of excrement. Alfred meets Patsy, an overbearing New Yorker who decides to pull Alfred from his stupor, and he halfheartedly commits to a relationship. Patsy drags Alfred to meet her loony family, which includes a motor-mouthed father (Vincent Gardenia) who’s perpetually on the verge of a heart attack, a somnambulistic mother (Elizabeth Wilson) who pretends everything happening around her is hunky-dory, and a perverted little brother (Jon Korkes) who giggles inappropriately and hangs out in closets.

          This leads to an outrageous wedding scene officiated by a sardonic hippie, the Rev. Henry Dupas (Donald Sutherland), during which Alfred and Patsy exchange vows to tolerate each other until they don’t feel like tolerating each other, and to screw around if they feel like doing so. (The wedding scene ends with Patsy’s father tackling the reverend.) Then, after a bleak plot twist, a weird police detective named Lt. Practice (Alan Arkin) arrives to add a layer of officially sanctioned insanity to Feiffer’s satirical universe.

          Making his directorial debut after achieving fame as a comic actor, Arkin plays this outlandish material straight, even though some of the performances (notably his own) are so broad they seem better suited to other movies. Additionally, cinematographer Gordon Willis shoots Little Murders in the same shadowy style he later brought to the Godfather pictures, making an already gloomy narrative feel even more oppressive. This sober approach makes it difficult to find humor in the film’s barrage of random violence and senseless tragedy. Even more problematically, Feiffer’s characterizations are so odd that his underlying literary intention is unclear: Are these characters meant to be people or metaphors?

          Not knowing whether to invest emotionally in the characters, or simply observe them like animals in a zoo, is the biggest challenge in watching Little Murders. There’s no question that the picture is made well, particularly in the area of cinematography, and the acting is formidable: Gardenia expends Herculean effort riffing through dense dialogue, Gould finds pathos in his sad-sack characterization, and Sutherland is very funny in his single scene. But does it all add up to anything more than, “Life’s a bitch and then you die?” Maybe.

Little Murders: FREAKY

Cold Turkey (1971)

          Although he’s best known as one of the most successful comedy producers in the history of television, Norman Lear dabbled in features during the late ’60s and early ’70s, scoring a few minor hits as a screenwriter. His lone effort as a director was not as successful. The hyperkinetic satire Cold Turkey boasts an outlandish premise and impressive production values, to say nothing of a few wickedly funny moments, but the picture falls victim to its own ambitions. Based on a novel by Margaret Rau and Neil Rau called I’m Giving Them Up for Good, the movie begins when tobacco-company executive Mervin Wren (Bob Newhart) contrives a publicity stunt: His company pledges $25 million to any American town whose residents can give up smoking for an entire month. The offer is not sincere, however, because Wren figures nobody can muster the necessary willpower—but Wren didn’t count on Eagle Rock, Iowa, a struggling town where Rev. Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke) is eager to demonstrate leadership so he can win a transfer to a more affluent parish.

          Brooks makes it his mission to win the $25 million, so the bulk of the movie comprises his farcical attempts to keep residents from smoking, even as he fights off his own nicotine cravings. The unsubtle message is that Americans are so addicted to creature comforts they can’t make sacrifices under any circumstances, and Lear goes way over the top skewering American gluttony. During Eagle Rock’s smoke-free month, couples turn into sex maniacs to subvert their cravings; the local doctor (Barnard Hughes) becomes a scalpel-wielding maniac; the town drunk (Tom Poston) flees Eagle Rock rather than take part in the experiment; and so on. Lear stocks the picture with so many great comedy professionals—including the aforementioned plus Vincent Gardenia, Woodrow Parfrey, Jean Stapleton, and the comedy duo of Bob & Ray—that some of the gags connect even though the satire is incredibly obvious. There’s also a lot to be said for the film’s frenetic pace, since the movie zooms along at a crazy speed as it builds toward greater levels of chaos. In fact, had Lear found an ending that justified the manic buildup, Cold Turkey might have become a comedy classic. Instead, he opted for a dark ending that jarringly transforms the movie from sly to cynical. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Cold Turkey: FUNKY

Fire Sale (1977)

At his best, Alan Arkin is a one-of-a-kind actor who blends humor, intelligence, and sensitivity into vibrant performances. At his worst, he’s a screamer whose characterizations are abrasive in the extreme. Unfortunately, Fire Sale—the second theatrical feature Arkin directed—plays to his worst instincts on every level. Arkin’s acting in the lead role is loud and whiny, he lets other actors deliver numbingly overwrought performances, the film’s jokes are insultingly stupid, and every character is so unpleasant that even at 88 minutes (including a lengthy animated title sequence) the movie goes on way too long. One of those “madcap” comedies about a bunch of people whose insane behavior collides in an allegedly humorous fashion, Fire Sale stars Arkin and Rob Reiner as the sons of an aging Jewish retailer (Vincent Gardenia). Arkin is a ne’er-do-well high school basketball coach, and Reiner is the heir apparent of the family’s foundering department store. Various subplots involve Arkin’s offensive scheme to “adopt” a black teenager who can serve as a ringer for his basketball team, Reiner’s plan to burn down the family business for an insurance settlement, and crazy uncle Sid Caesar’s escape from a mental institution to conduct a military mission because he thinks it’s still World War II. Despite the presence of so many comedy pros, Fire Sale somehow manages to be completely obnoxious and unrelentingly boring at the same time. Thanks to competent technical execution, it’s not the worst comedy of the ’70s by a long shot, but it’s still truly unwatchable.

Fire Sale: SQUARE