Rio Lobo (1970)

          The last movie directed by the revered and versatile Howard Hawks, Rio Lobo would seem—if based solely on the genre, star, and title—to be a quasi-successor to Hawks’ wonderful 1959 adventure film Rio Bravo. Yet even though Rio Lobo is a Western with John Wayne in the lead role, Rio Lobo is no Rio Bravo. Whereas the 1959 film bursts with excitement, humor, and vivid characterization, the 1970 film is a turgid slog through random plot elements piled indifferently onto a heap. Everything in Rio Lobo feels half-hearted, from the flat cinematography to the mindless music to the stiff acting. The picture starts out as a Civil War-era heist story, with Confederate soldiers stealing gold from a Union train, but then the narrative shifts into a postwar justice saga, with now-retired Union officer Cord McNally (Wayne) chasing after the traitors who sold information about the train to the Confederacy.

          And since that premise, apparently, was deemed insufficient by the filmmakers in terms of plotting, the picture gets mired in various subplots about wronged women seeking vengeance against bad men. Furthermore, to justify the title, there’s another subplot, about the liberation of a small town from oppression by crooked varmints. There’s enough story in Rio Lobo for several different movies, and as a result, everything gets short shrift. The characters feel either clichéd or underdeveloped (sometimes both), the action scenes are confusing (since there are too many players on the filed), and the whole thing is directionless (in every sense of the word, with all due respect to Mr. Hawks).

          As usual, appraising Wayne’s “performance” is a pointless endeavor, since the veteran star simply drawls and struts through a rote demonstration of his familiar persona. Luckily, reliable character actors lend flavor to minor parts, with Jack Elam and David Huddleston providing humor and gravitas, respectively—but their work isn’t enough to compensate for the overall mediocrity. Unfortunately, much of Rio Lobo’s cast comprises young actors whose work here explains why they never achieved stardom. Fresh-faced studs Christopher Mitchum and Jorge Rivero aim for likability but instead come across as vapid, while beautiful starlets Susana Dosamantes, Sherry Lansing, and Jennifer O’Neill embarrass themselves with amateurish line deliveries.

          In fact, it’s quite shocking to look at the sprawl of bad performances in this movie and realize that such a venerable filmmaker was calling the shots. Clearly, the muse was not with Hawks while he assembled this picture. The pervasive blandness of Rio Lobo also drags down the normally excellent composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose score only catches fire during the big shootout at the end.

Rio Lobo: FUNKY

Every ’70s Movie is Three Years Old Today!

Amazingly, the halfway point in this blog’s life cycle is in sight—of the 2,700 titles that I’ve identified as meeting the criteria for inclusion, just over 1,200 have been reviewed so far, which menas the halfway mark of 1,350 movies isn’t too far away. Although I’ve intentionally held back a few major titles, to ensure that the second half of this journey isn’t entirely dominated by low-budget obscurities, the adventure of Every ’70s Movie should get even more illuminating from this point forward. My ultimate goal, of course, is to track down and review every single feature film that received a significant American release between 1970 and 1979, and I’m employing a broad definition of the term “significant release.” That’s why, in addition to conventional fiction films that were shot and released in English, I’m giving attention to key documentaries and foreign films, as well as selected TV movies—since, let’s face it, telefilms along the lines of the Steven Spielberg-directed Duel (1971) are more noteworthy than many ’70s features that were originally exhibited in cinemas. As promised in last year’s birthday post, the purview of this site will eventually expand to include selected “Honorary ’70s Movies,” meaning releases from the early ’80s that either continued stories begun in the ’70s (here’s looking at you, The Empire Strikes Back) or represented the final expressions of aesthetics that dominated the ’70s (watch out for remarks on Cutter’s Way). Obviously, however, the meat-and-potatoes content of this blog will continue to be theatrical features, and at a certain point not too far in the future, finding the most obscure movies will involve cumbersome expenditures. Therefore, please consider this birthday post my annual invitation for donations. If you’re digging this groovy scene, help keep the party going, friends! To make donations, simply click the PayPal button on the upper-right hand side of the blog, just under my profile. Plus, as always, it’s great to hear from you via the comments function, so keep the feedback coming. Here’s to the next three years!

Are You in the House Alone? (1978)

Based on the title and premise, it’s easy to get this TV movie confused with the theatrical feature When a Stranger Calls (1979), which employs the same gimmick of a babysitter terrorized by creepy phone calls, but the similarities mostly end there. When a Stranger Calls is a straight-up thriller about a deranged killer, while Are You in the House Alone? is a serious-minded drama about rape that simply happens to employ horror-movie elements. That said, Are You in the House Alone? is not exceptional—in fact, the movie is quite clumsy, even though the filmmakers treat touchy subject matter with respect. Wide-eyed starlet Kathleen Beller brings sweet vulnerability to the role of Gail, a suburban high-school student who dreams of becoming a photographer. Since her parents (played by Blythe Danner and Tony Bill) squabble regularly, Gail finds solace in her friends and in babysitting—until an unknown admirer starts pestering her with suggestive calls. Meanwhile, Gail becomes involved with sensitive classmate Steve (Scott Colomby), which enflames her stalker’s rage. Eventually, the stalker emerges from hiding and rapes Gail, which transforms the latter half of the movie into an oh-the-humanity treatise on the way the law protects criminals instead of victims. Suffice to say, the various elements of Are You in the House Alone? clash. Sometimes, the picture’s a lurid saga about a girl being menaced; at other times, it’s a gentle love story about Gail and Steve opening their hearts to each other. In a peculiar way, the most memorable aspect of this picture (the social-injustice material) is the least organic—Are You In the House Alone? is a message movie wrapped inside a genre picture. In trying to do too many things, alas, the filmmakers achieve only moderate success with each of those things. Still, Beller’s naturalistic appeal—which often exceeds her acting skill—provides a sympathetic viewpoint, and the picture benefits from the talents of Bill, Danner, and costar Dennis Quaid, who made his big-screen breakout a year later in Breaking Away (1979). Although his role is smallish, Quaid’s intensity demonstrates how ready he was for bigger things.

Are You In the House Alone?: FUNKY

Conrack (1974)

          Southern novelist Pat Conroy has enjoyed a productive relationship with Hollywood; of the four theatrical features adapted from Conroy’s books, one is a glossy, Oscar-nominated melodrama (1991’s The Prince of Tides), one is a respected character study that also received Oscar-nomination love (1979’s The Great Santini), and only one is middling (1983’s The Lords of Discipline). The other Conroy adaptation (which was, chronologically, the first cinematic translation of his work) is a small-scale charmer drawn from a vivid episode in the author’s early life. Before embarking on his literary career, Conroy worked as a teacher in an impoverished and mostly African-American community located on a tiny island in South Carolina. Adopting a hip, humanistic approach that rubbed conservative administrators the wrong way, Conroy made friends among students and their families but was fired for refusing to treat his charges with the cynicism that was previously the norm. Translating his struggles into art, Conroy wrote an autobiographical book called The Water Is Wide, which formed the basis of this film.

          Adapted by the reliable team of Martin Ritt (director) and Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch (screenwriters), Conrack stars Jon Voight as Pat Conroy, who is portrayed as the quintessential rebel with a cause. Pat drifts into his new job filled with bold educational aspirations and a deep desire to treat the people he encounters as human beings, rather than statistics or stereotypes. Continuing the long tradition of heroic-teacher movies that stretches all the way from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) to Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) and beyond, Conrack focuses equally on the noble sacrifices of a dedicated educator and the way students’ lives are elevated by the nurturing qualities of a supportive classroom environment. In lesser hands, this material could have been saccharine, especially given the way racial divisions in the story create opportunities for cheap moralizing. Yet because Ritt and his collaborators approach the story with such realism and taste, shooting the film on real locations and eschewing cheap sentiment, Conrack feels like a believable sketch of a difficult challenge faced by a principled man. (Make what you will of the self-aggrandizement inherent to autobiographical material that positions the author as a saintly figure.)

          Ritt’s conscientious approach is supported beautifully by Voight’s warm and funny performance in the leading role. Whereas Voight sometimes slid into show-boating tearfulness in later dramas, he’s spot-on here, channeling the indignation of a decent man faced with a stubborn system—and the genuine joy of a born leader who finds just the right followers. Marching behind Voight is an eclectic supporting cast (including Hume Cronyn, Antonio Fargas, Paul Winfield, and Madge Sinclair) all of whom hit their respective notes of guilelessness and inflexibility in credible ways. FYI, Conroy’s source material was revisited for a 2006 TV movie, which bore the book’s original title, The Water Is Wide. And, in case you’re wondering, the title Conrack comes from a persistent mispronunciation of his Conroy’s surname that he encountered on the job in South Carolina.

Conrack: GROOVY

One Is a Lonely Number (1972)

         Several years before Paul Mazurzky made An Unmarried Woman (1979), now generally considered one of the definitive studies of how females experienced the ’70s divorce spike, MGM released this competent but vapid drama about a woman in her twenties whose ordered world is rocked when her husband abruptly quits their marriage. Over the course of the story, the heroine attempts to find herself in romance and work, all the while convinced her husband will take her back. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with this subject matter, and the screenplay by David Seltzter—though unrelentingly trite in many important regards—approaches the heroine’s crisis with respect. Unfortunately, there’s so little substance to this journey that One Is a Lonely Number disappears from the memory at the same moment it’s unfolding. This ephemeral quality is exacerbated by Trish Van Devere’s stiff performance in the leading role. Although Van Devere is lovely in an understated, East Coast blueblood sort of way, she delivers all of her dialogue with such formality that she botches this shot at an iconic performance.

          Van Devere plays Amy, the housewife of a San Francisco college professor. After the professor dumps Amy in the opening scene, she finds work as a lifeguard at a public pool, and the position comes complete with a lecherous employment-office staffer who makes passes at her. Amy consoles herself with the company of friends including elderly grocer Joseph (Melvyn Douglas), and eventually she meets gentle-mannered stud Howard (Monte Markham) at a party. While enjoying her new romance with Howard, Amy contrives with her lawyer to force her husband into returning to San Francisco from Reno, where he’s establishing residency for divorce. She also commiserates with gal pals Madge (Jane Elliot) and Gert (Janet Leigh), the latter of whom runs a support group for divorced women. (The movie would have benefited from a lot more Leigh, who plays her character as a likably saucy broad.) Director Mel Stuart shoots One Is a Lonely Number smoothly, employing the loping hills of San Francisco for atmosphere, and the picture captures a fashion moment with its cavalcade of awful polyester clothes. Alas, the only real emotion in the picture stems from Douglas’ poignant turn, especially since the main character is a doormat for most of the story. By the time Amy grows a spine in the movie’s final scenes, it’s hard to care much what happens, even though her plight should be highly relatable. FYI, MGM made a pathetic attempt at re-releasing this middling movie after its initial box-office nonperformance by reconfiguring the title as Two Is a Happy Number.

One Is a Lonely Number: FUNKY

Smile (1975)

          Several unique talents operating at the top of their respective games converged for Smile, a wicked satire of American values viewed through the prism of a second-rate beauty contest. Skewering ambition, competition, consumerism, hypocrisy, vanity, and other unbecoming qualities, the movie achieves a fine balance of humor and pathos while juxtaposing absurd situations with believable characterizations. The project’s key players include screenwriter Jerry Belson (a TV veteran doing some of his best-ever work), director Michael Ritichie (in the middle of a hot streak that included 1972’s The Candidate and 1976’s The Bad News Bears), and actor Bruce Dern. Though normally cast as psychos, Dern plays a normal character here, channeling his natural intensity into the fierce characterization of a small man grasping for social position. His terrific performance sets the pace for an eclectic cast including such veteran character actors as Geoffrey Lewis and Nicholas Pryor, plus newcomers Colleen Camp, Melanie Griffith, and Annette O’Toole. (TV beauty Barbara Feldon, of Get Smart fame, contributes a rich supporting performance as a contestant-turned-coordinator.)

          Ritchie films the story somewhat in the style of a Robert Altman movie, with lots of intermingled storylines revolving around the central event of the American Miss Pageant, so the movie winds through backstage politics, onstage disasters (some of the “talents” the contestants display are anything but), and the funny/sad melodramas of characters’ private lives. At the center of the story is Big Bob (Dern), a used-car salesman with way too much of his identity invested in the role of head judge. He spends the entire movie trying to hold the pieces of his life together even as the various illusions upon which his existence is predicated fall apart; his dissipation is an arch but effective metaphor representing the way some people blindly pursue the American Dream. O’Toole, appearing in her first major film role, personifies the other end of the spectrum—a cynical operator who’s learned the ways of the world at a young age, thanks to years of having men ogle her curves. (O’Toole’s character offers less experienced contestants such advice as using Vaseline to lubricate the mouth during hours of endless smiling.)

          Although Smile isn’t purely a comedy, since many passages of the picture are so pathetic that they’re more sad than funny, the picture works equally well as a romp and as a rumination. The spectacle of coaxing teenagers onto a stage so they can pretend viewers are interested in their ideals and skills—when, really, the name of the game is peddling flesh—is a fine proxy for the filmmakers’ observations about the avarice hidden behind American can-do attitudes. No surprise, then, that Belson’s script was nominated for a WGA Award, or that Smile was revisited for a new medium in 1986, when a musical based upon the film debuted on Broadway.

Smile: GROOVY

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1974)

          Producer-director Dan Curtis, the king of small-screen ’70s horror, struck again with this restrained adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel. (Jack Palace stars as the world’s most famous bloodsucker.) The question, of course, is whether “restrained” was the right approach for a story about sex and vampirism. Therefore, while Curtis is to be commended on some level for exercising good taste, this picture is ultimately as bloodless—metaphorically speaking—as any of the victims Dracula leaves in his wake. Penned by the great Richard Matheson, who was apparently instructed to exclude his wonderful sense of humor from the screenplay, Bram Stoker’s Dracula sticks closely to certain elements of the source material. The picture begins in central Europe, where English lawyer Jonathan Harker (Murray Brown) arrives to present various UK properties to a rich client, Count Dracula (Palance). The count and his three bestial brides prey upon Jonathan. Then Dracula takes a ship to England, where he menaces Jonathan’s fiancée, Mina (Penelope Horner), and her best friend, Lucy (Fiona Lewis), until the intervention of wily Dr. Van Helsing (Nigel Davenport).
          According to the fine folks at Wikipedia, this adaptation was the first to include two clever nuances: Dracula being the same person as real-life warrior Vlad Teppes (better known as “Vlad the Impaler”), and Dracula stalking a woman whom he believed to be the reincarnation of a lost love. (These nuances were later repurposed for Francis Ford Coppola’s frisky big-screen 1992 smash, also titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula.)  Notwithstanding its admirable literary properties, Curtis’ movie is turgid because of flat direction and even flatter performances. Palance is okay, clearly relishing a chance to play something other than a generic goon, and he strikes some facial expressions imbued with real pathos. Yet Brown, Davenport, Lewis, and Simon Ward (playing Lucy’s betrothed) seem stiff as they churn through leisurely dialogue scenes in between the film’s too-few fright sequences. Clearly, Curtis wanted to transpose the Gothic-romance formula of his enduring Dark Shadows franchise onto Stoker’s narrative, but it’s easier to appreciate what he tried to do than what he actually accomplished.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: FUNKY
 

Switchblade Sisters (1975)

           A cartoonish exploitation movie rescued from obscurity by grindhouse godhead Quentin Tarantino—who re-released the picture theatrically and on home video through his short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures imprint—Switchblade Sisters is a distaff precursor to Walter Hill’s infinitely superior gang-warfare thriller The Warriors (1979). Like the latter film, Switchblade Sisters features action and characterization that wouldn’t be out of place in a comic book, even though the lurid storyline’s tropes of rape and sexual politics are strictly for grown-ups. Directed by ’70s staple Jack Hill, who made most of Pam Grier’s best vehicles, Switchblade Sisters has been exhibited under many titles, including The Jezebels and Maggie’s Stiletto Sisters. As the various monikers imply, the story revolves around an all-girl street gang. Led by tiny but vicious Lace (Robbie Lee), the Dagger Debs get caught in a turf war with a rival male gang at the same time a new member, Maggie (Joanne Nail), discovers misdeeds by Lace and slowly usurps Lace’s role as leader. By the end of the story, the Dagger Debs have become the Jezebels, a hardcore outfit with a fierce reputation and a violent track record.
          The movie is filled with fights, prison scenes, and undercover missions, so nearly every cliché of female-centric action cinema is represented. Bull-dyke prison boss? Check. Climactic catfight? Check. Babes using their wiles to outsmart men? Check. None could accuse the makers of Switchblade Sisters of shortchanging the audience in terms of silly violence, especially since the ending features a full-fledged street war involving armored vehicles, machine guns, and—just for good measure—an all-black gang comprising nothing but militant females. There’s even room in the flick for a Dagger Deb named Patch who has—you guessed it!—an eye patch. The acting in Switchblade Sisters is generally awful, though leading lady Nail has a certain sexy swagger, but the dialogue is so cheesy it’s not as if highly developed dramatic skills were required. Similarly, while the story is highly predictable, Hill delivers the goods so abundantly that the picture never fails to generate something resembling excitement. And because Hill goes much lighter on nudity than usual, it’s easier to except the quasi-feminist posturing of Switchblade Sisters than it is to accept similar rhetoric in Hill’s other drive-in flicks.

Switchblade Sisters: FUNKY

Peopletoys (1974)

Taking the evil-child genre a bit too far into the realm of sleazy exploitation, the horror flick Peopletoys features a quintet of murderous preteens attacking the residents of a remote ski lodge. Because few things are more disturbing than mentally ill children going on bloody rampages, the most intense parts of this wildly uneven movie have lurid impact. (At one point, the killer kids plant an adult corpse in the snow transform the dead body into a snowman they can decorate for fun. Yikes!) The problem, aside from bad acting and flat scripting, is that Peopletoys is sensationalistic when it should be provocative. There’s something almost pornographic, for instance, about the scene in which a young boy affixes a scythe to the bottom of a swing—the blade protruding between his legs, phallic symbol-style—and then flies the swing toward a victim so the filmmakers get to present a nasty death-by-penetration image. Notwithstanding the questionable psychology of someone who could conceive of such a scene, wasn’t it outrageously irresponsible to ask children to participate in the shooting of this material? Anyway, larger questions of artistic integrity are probably moot, since artistry is not something Peopletoys possesses in abundance. Quite to the contrary, the picture’s running time is padded with boring scenes of the adults having raunchy adventures before the kids show up to incite mayhem; poor starlet Carolyn Stellar (who vaguely resembles modern-day actress Christina Hendricks) suffers through two different nude scenes and a catfight sequence. Furthermore, the editing is choppy, the music is terrible, and the production values are cheap. Still, all would be forgiven were the acting at least passable. Alas, no. The biggest name in the cast is Leif Garrett, appearing here shortly before his ascension to late-’70s teen-idol status, although the top-billed actor is Sorrell Booke, who later played the villain on awful TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. Those two names should give a sense of the level of talent on display. Had it been executed with any sophistication, Peopletoys could have been a creepfest for the ages; as is, it’s drive-in junk. FYI, the picture is often exhibited under alternate titles including Devil Times Five, The Horrible House on the Hill, and (arguably the best of the batch) Tantrums.

Peopletoys: LAME

The Rescuers (1977)

          Sticking to its core formula of warm-hearted stories about anthropomorphized animals, the Walt Disney Company offered The Rescuers as its last animated feature of the ’70s. Since the feature-length ’toons Disney released in the following decade all fell short of commercial and critical expectations—until 1989’s The Little Mermaid began a mega-successful renaissance—it’s possible to look at The Rescuers as the end of the classic era for Disney animated features. And, indeed, the film is made with the studio’s customary care, combining clear plotting, intricate comedy, smooth onscreen movement, and tearjerker story elements into something that vaguely resembles the earlier peaks of, say, Lady and the Tramp (1955) and 101 Dalmatians (1961). Alas, whereas those pictures earned iconic status through the combination of ingenious stories and vivid characterizations, The Rescuers represents style in search of substance. The narrative is inherently diffuse because the lead characters are merely bystanders to the emotional core of the tale—they’re the rescuers, after all, not the rescued—and far too many aspects of the picture feel recycled from previous Disney fare.

          Adapted from a book series by Margery Sharp, the picture concerns an organization called the Rescue Aid Society, comprised entirely of mice from around the globe; the group’s mission involves saving people who’ve been kidnapped. Whatever. When the story opens in New York City, posh lady mouse Miss Bianca (voiced by Eva Gabor) recruits the group’s shy janitor, Bernard (voiced by Bob Newhart), for help in responding to a message in a bottle sent by an abducted young girl. The mice hitch a ride on an albatross, make their way to bayou country, and tangle with evil human woman Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page), who swiped young orphan Penny (voiced by Michelle Stacy) as part of a scheme to find a massive diamond. There’s also a lot of business involving Madame Medusa’s pet alligators and a perky dragonfly.

          Nothing in The Rescuers is objectionable, in the sense that everything is presented with professionalism and a measure of artistry. However, there’s not a lot of meat on the bone. The banter between Bernard and Miss Bianca is fine, with Newhart doing his usual stammering bit and Gabor breathing her lines with aristocratic flair, but the story’s only nominally about their characters, so the Bernard/Bianca scenes don’t command much attention. The Madame Medusa bits, meanwhile, feels like lukewarm riffs on Cruella DeVil. Still, one point in The Rescuers’ favor is that the characters don’t sing. Instead, moody songs about loneliness appear on the soundtrack to accentuate scenes. Combined with lush background paintings, the music conveys a sense of atmosphere, particularly during the bayou sequences. Given such admirable components, The Rescuers isn’t bad by any measure, and in fact it was a significant hit, eventually generating a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, in 1990. Nonetheless, one would encounter difficulty arguing that this picture represents Disney animation at its best, except perhaps on a technical level.

The Rescuers: FUNKY

Virgin Witch (1972)

The first half-hour of the lifeless UK horror flick Virgin Witch seems like some sort of randy fantasy that Austin Powers might envision—two comely sisters in London entertain notions of becoming nude models, which means they repeatedly disrobe and talk about disrobing. This dull but salacious stretch of the movie also features such pervy signifiers as a pretty young woman giggling after she’s casually groped by a stranger on the street, and—of course—a creepy-but-attractive older lesbian eye-raping a hottie while taking measurements of her nude body. Think Penthouse Forum: UK Edition. Then, once the action shifts from London to a country estate, where older sister Christine (Ann Michelle) has been hired for a weekend-long photo shoot, things slowly evolve from saucy to satanic. After several more nude scenes—bath, shower, photography session, and more—Christine and her younger sibling Betty (Vicki Michelle) discover that their hosts for the weekend are a coven of witches. Yet while the high priest claims he’s only interested in white magic, the aforementioned lesbian, Sybil (Patricia Haines), wants to dabble in something darker. Eventually, Christine is invited to a ceremony where she’s deflowered by the high priest while the other witches go-go dance naked around the copulating couple. Meanwhile, Betty’s boyfriend follows the sisters’ trail, fearing Betty has gotten mixed up with something dangerous, so by the time he reaches the estate, Christine has become consumed with whatever evil spirit controls the coven. This leads to the finale, during which it’s Betty’s turn to get stripped naked, slathered with oil, and serviced by the high priest while the other witches go-go dance some more. Cue orgy intercut with violence, then roll credits. Even though it features enough nudity for a porno movie—Ann Michelle seems allergic to clothing—Virgin Witch is incredibly dull. There’s no real story until halfway through the movie, the characterizations are nonexistent, and scenes drag on forever. On the plus side, the two ritual scenes have a certain sensationalistic appeal (think sexed-up riffs on Wicca), and the go-go dancing is unintentionally hilarious.

Virgin Witch: LAME

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

          An unusual thriller that’s constantly on the edge of becoming a full-on horror movie, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane plays a clever game of making the audience wonder whether the title character is a victim or a villain. Jodie Foster, who wasn’t even 15 when she made the picture, gives a characteristically precocious performance as Rynn Jacobs, a teenager occupying a remote house in a coastal Maine town. Most of the picture comprises attempts by local residents to determine the whereabouts of Rynn’s father, whom she alternately claims is away on business or home but unavailable to receive callers. Some of the people poking around Rynn’s house have good intentions, including fellow teenager Mario (Scott Jacoby), and some have nefarious designs, such as pedophile Frank (Martin Sheen).

          Written by Laird Koenig (from his novel of the same name) and directed by Nicolas Gessner, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane does a lot with a little, concentrating most of the action in one location (Rynn’s house) and creating a great deal of Edgar Allen Poe-styled tension from the creepy premise of a young girl living alone with mysteries and shadows. The presence of Sheen’s character ups the anxiety level considerably, and Sheen creepily delivers many lines in a seductive whisper—watching such a good actor incarnate a predator is genuinely disturbing. Furthermore, the fact that young Foster is so formidable only makes the overall situation more believable. Some elements of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane are formulaic, such as the nosy neighbor who pays a price for searching inside the basement of Rynn’s house, but Koenig’s use of stock components helps answer logic questions before they become problematic; for instance, the presence of a diligent local cop (Mort Shuman) explains how Rynn’s resourcefulness has kept authorities from digging too deeply into her circumstances.

          The final revelation of how Rynn found herself alone is a stretch, and the payoff to Mario’s character arc is even more outlandish, but The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane ultimately pays off well with a climactic confrontation that’s satisfying and unnerving at the same time. Since the picture was made as a low-budget French-Canadian production, it’s easy to see how a bit more Hollywood polish could have smoothed off the rough edges, but it’s impossible to imagine anyone surpassing either Foster or Sheen in their roles. So, while The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane might not meet the criteria for anyone’s list of the best ’70s shockers, it’s at the very least an atmospheric diversion with memorably grim nuances.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane: GROOVY

A Real American Hero (1978)

          The colorful crime-fighting career of real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser had already inspired three installments of the Walking Tall film series before this unrelated take on Pusser’s life was made for the small screen, and in fact a second small-screen spin on Pusser, the TV series Walking Tall, was to follow in 1981. Plus, to make things even more complicated, the Pusser role was originated by Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall (1973) and then played by Bo Svenson in every other ’70s/’80s iteration except for this TV movie, which stars Brian Dennehy. Anyway, although Dennehy is by far the best actor associated with the various Pusser projects—his talents so greatly dwarf those of Baker and Svenson that any comparison between the players is ridiculous—A Real American Hero is as generic as its title. The picture starts out in standard Walking Tall fashion, with Pusser reacting to a drunk-driving tragedy by taking his signature wooden club into a bar that sells moonshine and trashing the joint. Then, as the picture grinds through familiar chapters of Pusser’s life—frustration at the way the legal system protects criminals, followed by imaginative use of arcane laws to beat the crooks at their own game—A Real American Hero becomes monotonous.
          Dennehy is formidable during action scenes, whether he’s intimidating suspects or pummeling opponents, but the filmmakers provide such limp material during non-action scenes that vignettes of Pusser’s home life are boring. It doesn’t help that the picture’s main villain, Danny Boy Mitchell (Ken Howard), is an unimaginative stand-in for the various organized-crime forces that preyed upon the real Pusser’s beloved McNairy County. Danny Boy is a cocky thug with a seemingly endless supply of henchmen and lawyers, but he never seems like a legitimate threat to Pusser because he’s not connected to a larger criminal enterprise. Weirdly, the makers of A Real American Hero entered Pusser’s story after the death of his wife—an alleged murder that drove the man to step up his anti-crime crusade—so there’s a sizable subplot involving Pusser’s friendship with a former hooker, Carrie Todd (Sheree North). This generates several scenes in which Pusser stands up for Carrie’s right to re-enter polite society, a story thread that seems unnecessarily off-topic for a brief movie that runs about 90 minutes. (There’s also some blah comic-relief material with Forrest Tucker as Pusser’s pa.) Still, Dennehy’s innate charisma and the utterly believable way he incarnates righteous indignation snaps A Real American Hero back into focus whenever Dennehy gets his teeth into a meaty scene, and the final shoot-out is exciting.

A Real American Hero: FUNKY

Charley Varrick (1973)

          B-movie director Don Siegel was on a serious hot streak in the ’70s, capping his previously erratic career with a run of wonderfully entertaining dramas and thrillers, notably the four ’70s movies he made with actor Clint Eastwood. Charley Varrick was Siegel’s first movie after he and Eastwood scored with Dirty Harry (1971), and the picture proved the director’s appeal wasn’t predicated solely on his access to the former Man With No Name. A tight little crime thriller with a sense of playful humor (even though it contains plenty of vicious violence), Charley Varrick stars the inimitable Walter Matthau as a pilot-turned-crook who inadvertently steals over $750,000 from the Mob, then tries to wriggle free of the ensuing hit that’s ordered on him. Based on a novel by John Reese, the picture stacks one clever twist upon another, so even though the plot’s a bit overstuffed—the picture runs 111 minutes, and it could have lost a supporting character or two without any diminishment in quality—Charley Varrick moves along at a zippy pace.
          Set in the Southwest, the movie begins when Charley (Matthau) and his accomplices rob a small-town bank. The crime goes badly, resulting in several deaths, so a police manhunt begins. But that’s not the real trouble. It turns out the bank was a dead drop for laundered Mafia money, which means Charley pilfered from the wrong people, and, alas, giving the money back and apologizing won’t satisfy the aggrieved parties. Crooked banker Boyle (John Vernon) enlists brutal but silver-tongued enforcer Molly (Joe Don Baker) to track down and kill the thieves. Since Charley did a stretch in prison and knows his way around the underworld, much of the picture comprises fascinating scenes of Charley planting seeds for his ultimate escape plan while constantly remaining a step ahead of his relentless pursuers. Along the way, Charley expertly handles a hot-tempered accomplice (Andrew Robinson), a duplicitous counterfeiter (Sheree North), an opportunistic secretary (Felicia Farr), and other shifty characters.
         Because Matthau was always so good at making devious characters seem likable, it’s great fun to watch him incarnate a calculating son of a bitch who’s perfectly willing to throw accomplices in the line of fire if that’s what it takes to survive. Plus, because the story establishes that the people chasing Charley are completely reprehensible, our sympathies always lie with the “hero,” even though he’s a liar and thief. Siegel gets a lot of visual mileage out of such dilapidated locations as junkyards and trailer parks, sketching a netherworld of career criminals who hide their illegal enterprises behind borderline legitimate businesses—a crappy photo studio on a second-floor walkup in an apartment building, a crop-dusting concern in the middle of nowhere, and so on. Better still, Siegel hits the perfect everyone’s-expendable tone for this sort of thing, using low angles and quick cuts and the nerve-rattling rhythms of Lalo Schifrin’s score to amplify the danger in every corner of this seedy little universe. The acting is uniformly colorful, with Farr and North, among others, contributing seen-it-all stoicism while Baker and Vernon incarnate gleefully sociopathic attitudes. Flying above it all—sometimes literally, since he pilots a biplane during the thrilling finale—is Matthau, caustic and unimpressed even during the most frightening of circumstances.

Charley Varrick: GROOVY

Night of the Cobra Woman (1972)

Never mind that the title is deceptive because the accompanying storyline sprawls over a lengthy period of time—dubious naming is the least of this movie’s problems. A painfully dull horror movie with zero scares and even less narrative interest, this schlocky shocker concerns a woman in the Philippines who flees from creepy Japanese soldiers during World War II, hides in a cave, and gets bitten by a supernatural cobra that imbues the woman with its serpentine spirit. Or something like that. This is one of this poorly conceived were-monster flicks that’s supposed to have a tragic element—in this case, the woman eventually becomes more cobra than person, so she longs to slip her human skin for a life inside scales—but every element is executed so incompetently that nothing connects. The acting is, no surprise, the only aspect of the picture that’s worse than the direction and screenplay; lifeless performers amble through scenes as if they just received their dialogue an instant before the cameras rolled. The movie also gets caught in a quagmire of supporting characters, from the cobra woman’s deformed accomplice to the young researcher whom she indoctrinates (once the story cuts ahead to the present day) as her lover/successor/whatever. And let’s not even talk about all the boring scenes of the researcher’s girlfriend searching for him and/or writhing as snakes crawl over her body but never bite. Leading lady Marlene Clark, as the cobra woman, is a statuesque African-American beauty who’s not shy about nude scenes, so the picture provides a measure of sleazy eye candy. Furthermore, the old-fashioned effects scenes (think dissolves to simulate the passage of time during transformations) provide kitsch value. Plus, as you might expect, there are snakes. Lots of snakes. Nonetheless, good luck finding even five moderately interesting minutes amid the 85-minute sprawl of this low-budget junk.

Night of the Cobra Woman: LAME

Macbeth (1971)

          Roman Polanski’s intense adaptation of Shakespeare’s legendary “Scottish play” arrived in theaters with unwanted baggage. On a superficial level, the project raised eyebrows because it was the first feature film financed by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and some critics made sniggering connections between the picture’s startling nude scene (more on that later) and Hefner’s skin-trade notoriety. On a deeper level, however, Macbeth was the first movie Polanski made after his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was murdered by crazed followers of Charles Manson. Accordingly, a lot of critical ink has been spilled analyzing the parallels between the bloody style of Macbeth and Polanski’s presumed need for catharsis after a horrific tragedy.
           Both attempts to draw a line between real life and reel life probably have some basis in validity, but it’s equally fair to simply say that Polanski found a gritty style suiting the morbid nature of Shakespeare’s play—after all, Macbeth traffics in such dark subject matter as betrayal, guilt-ridden hallucination, lethal ambition, and witchcraft. So, while there’s no question that Polanski made the material very much his own (lest we forget, he was making creepy movies before the Manson massacre), it’s wrong to marginalize this powerful film by relegating it to the status of a salacious historical footnote.
          Adapted for the screen by Polanski and Kenneth Tynan, the movie stars brooding UK actor Jon Finch as Macbeth, the nobleman who fulfills a supernatural prophecy by seizing the Scottish throne after murdering a king. Fierce and lean, with deep-set eyes and a honeyed voice he uses to spit daggers of dialogue, Finch gives an extraordinarily committed performance. He’s matched in potency by beautiful leading lady Francesca Annis, who portrays the scheming Lady Macbeth; the aforementioned nude scene, one of Polanski’s boldest directorial flourishes, features a deranged Annis sleepwalking while she delivers the play’s famed “Out, damned spot!” speech.
          Right from the beginning of the film, Polanski immerses viewers in a gritty vision of 17th-century Scotland. Clothes are tattered, skies are gloomy, and terrain is wet with mud. Combined with the shadowy cinematography by Gil Taylor and the churning score by The Third Ear Band (whose music employs instruments and modalities extrapolated from the story’s historical epoch), Polanski employs his unglamorous realism to create a world where death and intrigue feel commonplace. Yet the director also employs his special gift for cataloguing the madness of men by accentuating the fevered quality of speeches that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth deliver; one gets a sense of two people driven mad by exploring the outer edges of avarice. Macbeth isn’t a pleasant film to watch, aside from the gorgeous music of Shakespeare’s words, but it deserves a place among the most distinctive screen treatments of the Bard’s work.

Macbeth: GROOVY

Junior Bonner (1972)

          Although it’s a horrible cliché to say that Hollywood success is a double-edged sword, the sentiment is apt when considering Junior Bonner, a lovely dramatic film that probably would have enjoyed broader acceptance had the reputations of the film’s director and star not created inappropriate expectations. The director is Sam Peckinpah, who made this soft-spoken movie as a reprieve from the violent action sagas for which he was famous, and the star is Steve McQueen, whose most popular films involve glossy escapism. As the quiet story of an aging rodeo champ who returns to his hometown with an eye toward resolving longstanding family strife, Junior Bonner is probably the last thing anybody anticipated from Peckinpah or McQueen. Combined with the near-simultaneous release of several other movies about rodeo riders, the disconnect between what audiences wanted from the people behind Junior Bonner and what the picture actually delivers helped ensure a rotten performance at the box office. Happily, critics and fans have elevated the movie to greater notoriety in the years since its original release, because Junior Bonner represents a nearly pitch-perfect collaboration between director and star. (It’s also a damn sight better, in terms of resonance and substance, than the duo’s hit follow-up, 1974’s The Getaway.)

          When the movie begins, Junior (McQueen) trots into Prescott, Arizona, after a grueling and unrewarding rodeo ride. While recuperating in preparation for another shot at the bull that threw him, Junior wades into the fraught relationship of his parents, hard-drinking carouser Ace (Robert Preston) and no-bullshit survivor Elvira (Ida Lupino). As Junior tries to help mend fences, he also must contend with the crass ambitions of his little brother, Curly (Joe Don Baker), who wants to raze old homes (including his parents’ house) in order to build a cookie-cutter development. The contrast between Junior’s old-fashioned independence and his brother’s ultra-modern avarice allows Peckinpah to channel one of his favorite themes—the passing of the West, and the values it represents—through the tidy narrative of Jeb Rosebrook’s screenplay.

          McQueen proves once again that there was more to him than just an impressive macho image, using precision of language and movement to express his character’s inner life as efficiently as possible. McQueen is loose when he needs to be, as during scenes of barroom rowdiness, and tight when he needs to be, as during vignettes illustrating subtle family tensions. Preston channels his charming boisterousness into the character of a loveable rascal, and Lupino is believable as a woman who’s been put through the wringer by a challenging marriage. Baker and costar Ben Johnson contribute two different types of manly energy, with Baker conveying winner-takes-all selfishness and Johnson tight-lipped toughness. For the most part, Peckinpah eschews his signature excesses—the trademark slow-motion shots are used sparingly—so Junior Bonner is a great reminder that before he was a provocateur, Peckinpah was a storyteller. If only by dint of lacking mythic characterizations and over-the-top violence, Junior Bonner is probably the simplest Peckinpah feature, and that’s a good thing.

Junior Bonner: GROOVY

Going Home (1971)

          While I admit that I’m a sucker for Robert Mitchum in nearly any context, and that my appreciation for the early work of Jan-Michael Vincent defies all reason, I’m confident that the praise I’m about to lavish on the little-seen drama Going Home legitimately reflects the film’s intensity, rather than just my predilection toward its stars. A grim chamber piece about a family suffering the lingering impacts of a decade-old tragedy, the movie asks the question of whether some sins are beyond forgiveness. Mitchum plays Harry Graham, a blue-collar guy recently paroled from prison after serving a long term for killing his wife in a drunken rage. Vincent plays his son, Jimmy, who was a child when the crime occurred; he’s now an angry adult who rightfully blames all his emotional difficulties on his father’s alcoholism and violence.
          When the story begins, Harry attempts a transition back into normal life by getting a job and a new relationship—with seen-it-all local dame Jenny Benson (Brenda Vaccaro). Harry also tries to reconnect with his son, whom he barely knows. Even though Mitchum was such an innately interesting presence that he commanded the screen whether he was making an effort or not, it’s a special pleasure to watch him in Going Home because he seems to form a real emotional connection with his character. The anguish he manifests at not being able to distance himself from past misdeeds feels palpable, as does the longing he displays for a father/son bond that’s fated to remain beyond his reach. Plus, there’s a tender quality to the romantic scenes between Mitchum and Vaccaro, because they portray adults who recognize that a union with baggage is better than no union at all. Vincent, who shares with Mitchum a tendency to deliver phoned-in performances, seems at or near the top of his game, perhaps elevated to a higher-than-usual degree of effort by the presence of a strong costar. He seethes believably throughout the picture.
          Director Herbert B. Leonard, who spent most of his Hollywood career as a TV producer, does surprisingly smooth work considering this was only his second feature. (It was also his last.) Together with cinematographer Fred Jackman, Leonard generates gritty texture while shooting the bowling alleys and parking lots and trailer parks of a small city that could be Anywhere, U.S.A. This realistic visual style meshes well with the naturalistic acting of the principal players. Wearing cheap clothes as they trudge through ordinary lives colored by extraordinary hardship, the characters in Going Home feel like people one might pass on the street and never give a second glance. Constructed as a slow burn toward an explosive climax, the script by Lawrence B. Marcus pushes Harry and Jimmy closer and closer toward their inevitable showdown, so it’s painful to watch these men miss every possible opportunity for reconciliation. And then, when the climax arrives, it’s indeed horrible—the means Jimmy finds to exact revenge upon his father reveals that savagery didn’t skip a generation. Some might find this picture hard to take because the final act is so rough, but for those willing to take the journey, Going Home offers the rewards of potent acting and resonant themes.

Going Home: GROOVY

The Tattoo Connection (1978)

Weirdly, some of the most authoritative reference sources available describe this picture as Black Belt Jones 2, perpetuating a misrepresentation created by the picture’s after-market exhibitors—most copies of the movie’s DVD bear the bogus sequel signifier. Yet The Tattoo Connection is unrelated to Black Belt Jones (1974) beyond the fact that both are martial-arts flicks starring Jim Kelly. Whereas Black Belt Jones is an American production with English-language dialogue, The Tattoo Connection is a Hong Kong production in which all actors are dubbed, badly, into English no matter what languages they spoke on set. Further, Kelly plays a dude named Lucas, whereas in Black Belt Jones he portrays (you guessed it!) a martial artist named Black Belt Jones. (Adding to the confusion: the awful 1976 Kelly movie Hot Potato, which isn't precisely a sequel to Black Belt Jones but stars Kelly as a martial artist named Jones.) Anyway, The Tattoo Connection is a turgid thriller about Hong Kong criminals who steal a valuable diamond, then scheme and squabble among themselves. Meanwhile, an American martial artist (Kelly) is sent to track down the diamond and, if need be, chop and kick and punch his way through bad guys while he recovers the stolen gem. Notwithstanding the terrible soundtrack (on which bad dubbing is accompanied by chintzy music), The Tattoo Connection has passable production values, with the lighting in particular more professionally executed than one might expect in a low-budget chop-socky joint. Alas, all of the genre’s usual problems are evident: interminably long fight scenes, muddy storytelling, terrible acting. There’s also a significant sleaze element, because the plot involves a twisted love triangle between mobster Mr. Lu (Sing Chen), his trusted lieutenant Tin-hao (Tao-ling Tan), and the stripper (Nami Misaki) they both want. This subplot “justifies” copious nude scenes by Misaki, culminating in a rape sequence that’s intercut with shots of a powerful racecar. (Because, y’know, the stripper revs the rapist’s engine.) Classy!

The Tattoo Connection:  LAME

Voyage of the Damned (1976)

          Based on a horrific real-life incident and featuring an enormous cast of international stars, Voyage of the Damned should be powerful, but because the filmmakers opted for a talky approach—and because so many actors were relegated to minor roles that no single character provides narrative focus—Voyage of the Damned is merely pedestrian. The opportunity to make something great was so broadly missed, in fact, that it’s possible some enterprising soul in the future will revisit the subject matter and generate a remake with the impact this original version should have had.

          Set in 1939, the picture depicts one of the Third Reich’s most brazen propaganda schemes. The Nazis loaded hundreds of Jews, some of whom were extracted from concentration camps, onto a luxury liner headed from Europe to Cuba. The passengers were told they were being set free, but the Nazis’ plan was to publicize the inevitable refusal by the Cuban government to accept so many unwanted immigrants. Per the insidious designs of Third Reich official Joseph Goebbels, the plan was to “prove” that Jews are unwanted everywhere, thus justifying the Final Solution. And therein lies the fundamental narrative problem of this picture—every person on board the ship, save for the captain and a few Nazi functionaries—is essentially a pawn in a larger game that’s taking place in Berlin. Thus, none of the characters in the movie truly drives the action, although some brave souls among the passengers prepare political counter-attacks once the true nature of the journey becomes evident.

          Intelligently but unremarkably written by David Butler and Steve Shagan, from a book by Max Morgan-Witts and Gordon Thomas, Voyage of the Damned was directed by versatile journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, who generally thrived with pulpier material; his long dialogue scenes end up feeling stilted and theatrical, especially because some actors ham it up to make the most of their abbreviated screen time. Surprisingly, performers Lee Grant, Katharine Ross, and Oskar Werner each received Golden Globe nominations (Grant got an Oscar nod, too), even though their roles in Voyage of the Damned are so ordinary—and the overall story so turgid—that nothing really lingers in the memory except the haunting real-life circumstance underlying the story. (The picture’s shortcomings are exacerbated by an anticlimactic ending, which apparently represents a somewhat rose-colored vision of what happened in real life.)

          Nonetheless, the luminaries on display in Voyage of the Damned are impressive: The cast includes Faye Dunaway, Denholm Elliot, José Ferrer, Ben Gazzara, Helmut Griem, Julie Harris, Wendy Hiller, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Warden, Orson Welles, and the great Max von Sydow, who plays the ship’s noble captain. (Watch for Billy Jack star Tom Laughlin in a minor role as an engineer.) Fitting the posh cast, Voyage of the Damned is somewhat like an elevated riff on the disaster-movie genre, but the lack of truly dramatic events means the film is less an all-star spectacular and more an all-star mood piece. Grim, to be sure, but not revelatory.

Voyage of the Damned: FUNKY