Song of Norway (1970)

          A lavish widescreen musical romance set in the mountains of Europe, Song of Norway was plainly envisioned as a successor to The Sound of Music (1965), but Song of Norway contains exactly none of the charm and wit that made The Sound of Music one of the most beloved Hollywood films of all time. Like the earlier picture, Song of Norway was adapted from a successful Broadway musical. Unlike the earlier picture, Song of Norway was adapted badly—from material that was probably questionable in the first place. Norwegian star Torlav Maursted, a capable singer and dancer but merely a serviceable actor, stars as Edvard Grieg, the real-life Norwegian composer who overcame early struggles to become an important voice on the international music scene during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Awful songs interrupt the narrative at regular intervals, thereby pushing the film to undeserved epic length. (The stage show added insipid lyrics to Grieg’s melodies.)

          To understand how cloying and milquetoast this movie gets during its worst moments, one need only note that the picture’s female lead is Mrs. Brady herself, Florence Henderson. Soullessly directed by Andrew L. Stone, Song of Norway bludgeons viewers with suffocating optimism during the first hour and a half, then returns after an intermission for a final act containing weak attempts at heavy drama. The gist is that young Edvard Grieg finds himself torn between his first love, Therese (Christina Schollin), and his first cousin, Nina (Henderson). Even after he marries his cousin, Edvard accepts patronage from the wealthy Therese. Meanwhile, Edvard makes grand plans with his best friend, Richard (Frank Porretta), the composer of Norway’s national anthem, only to disappoint Richard at a crucial moment. If Song of Norway is any indication, Edvard was a bit of a jerk.

          Costars Robert Morley and Edward G. Robinson—each of whom seems as believably Norwegian as Henderson—try to enliven their scenes, but the sheer weight of the movie’s happy-shiny bloat defeats them. Everything in Song of Norway is so false and sickly-sweet, right down to the partially animated scene with evil giants (!), that the high point is probably the moment when Edvard hits a petulant young piano student. For a few seconds, believable human behavior breaks the tra-la-la tedium.

Song of Norway: LAME

Death Promise (1977)

A rotten martial-arts revenge flick set in the urban jungles of New York City, Death Promise concerns a young man who vows payback after someone kills his father. As an indication of how dopey this movie is, the young man cobbles together a list of suspects and then kills each suspect one at a time. Yet during the film’s climax, he learns that none of the folks he murdered was directly responsible for his father’s death, meaning that he killed a bunch of bad people, but for the wrong reason. Anything in the name of justice, right? Whatever. Charles Bonet, a skilled athlete but a not-so-skilled actor, stars as Charley Roman, a martial-arts student who lives with his father, Louis (Bob O’Connell). Together with his fellow martial-arts student Speedy (Speedy Leacock), Charley and Louis repel goons sent by slumlords to force the Romans and their neighbors out of their decaying apartment building. Turns out the slumlords, including corrupt Judge Engstrom (David Kirk), want to raze the building and make way for a lucrative development project. When Charley comes home one day to find Louis dead, he decides the developers are responsible—and then leaves town for six months to study deadly techniques with a martial-arts guru. Huh? After completing his training, Charley reconnects with Speedy and begins his rampage. (Death Promise takes place in an alternate universe where there are no police and where people like Charley don’t need jobs in order to live.) Shot in a haphazard fashion with a meager budget, Death Promise looks and sounds cheap from beginning to end. Every so often, there’s a glimmer of imagination—like the bit in which Charley ties a victim to the back of an archery target, ensuring that the man is mistakenly killed by his own underling. However, most of the movie comprises silly martial-arts fights during which participants scream so much they sound ridiculous. Again, whatever. Oh, and it sure looks as if comic-book legend Neal Adams drew the poster art. Not his best work.

Death Promise: LAME

Rich Kids (1979)

          A tender character study about two children from entitled families reacting in different ways to the breakups of their respective families, Rich Kids does a lot with a little. The story is microscopic in scale, and the stakes are as small as the 12-year-old hearts that get broken when two households implode. Rich Kids is akin to same year’s Kramer vs. Kramer, but while Kramer made a serious statement about the impact of shifting gender roles on the nature of the American family, Rich Kids approaches the subject matter from a more lighthearted perspective. Perhaps that’s why the film, despite its convincing you-are-there textures, its endearing characterizations, and its wonderful acting, sometimes drags: Rich Kids is a piffle about a weighty topic.

          The film’s protagonist is Franny Phillips (Trini Alvarado), a wise-beyond-her-years preadolescent living in New York City’s tony Upper West Side. Her parents, Paul (John Lithgow) and Madeline (Kathryn Walker), have been separated for weeks, but they endeavor to hide that fact from their only child—for instance, Paul sneaks into the house around six o’clock every morning to create the illusion he’s waking up there, even though he resides elsewhere. Yet Franny has pieced clues together, so she shares her discoveries with Jamie Harris (Jeremy Levy), the new kid at school. Because his parents recently divorced, Jamie tells Franny what to expect, becoming Virgil for her travels through an emotional inferno. Almost inevitably, Franny and Jamie develop romantic feelings for each other, eventually creating a fake “marriage” with the idea of coupling more successfully than their parents.

          Directed by the sensitive Robert M. Young and overseen by Robert Altman, whose company produced the film, Rich Kids is filled with believable characters. Lithgow personifies a man struggling to reconcile his selfish qualities (he ditches his wife for a younger woman) with his selfless ones (he doesn’t want his daughter to become another sad victim of a broken home). Conversely, Terry Kiser—who plays Jamie’s dad—represents a midlife crisis in full bloom, right down to the bimbo girlfriend, the fast car, and the tricked-out bachelor pad. However, it’s the kids who truly resonate. Alvarado and Levy give fully realized performances, conveying depth and dimension without any hints of cloying cuteness. Rich Kids is far from perfect. Writer Judith Ross pulls her punches at regular intervals, just as she fails to deliver laugh-out-loud comic highlights; the movie is mildly amusing and mildly moving. That said, better to strive for those lofty sensations and nearly achieve them than not to try at all.

Rich Kids: GROOVY

The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972)

          Released a year before The Exorcist (1973), this intense thriller offers a much different approach to similar subject matter. Virtually no special effects were used for The Possession of Joel Delaney, and the spirit inhabiting the title character belongs not to a demon but to a person. Elegantly photographed, intelligently written, and filled with credible performances, The Possession of Joel Delaney treats its outlandish storyline with respect—so even though the film isn’t especially frightening, it makes for an immersive viewing experience. And while The Possession of Joel Delaney is not up to The Exorcist’s level, it’s still fun to play the contrast-and-compare game. The earlier picture is insinuating and restrained, while the latter is confrontational and spectacular. What both films share the deeply frightening notion of losing control over one’s soul.

          Set in New York City, The Possession of Joel Delaney revolves, as does The Exorcist, around a woman who watches in terror as a loved one succumbs to possession. In this case, the woman is Norah Benson (Shirley MacLaine), an affluent mother of two. (The children’s father doesn’t figure into the story.) Norah worries about her younger brother, Joel Delaney (Perry King), a handsome twentysomething who seems adrift in his life. Then an incident reveals that she has reason to worry—after Joel is arrested for attacking a man, Joel claims he has no memory of committing the crime. Norah arranges to get Joel freed from jail so long as he sees a therapist, but Joel insists he’s fine. Later, when a woman of his acquaintance is murdered, clues suggest an unhinged Joel was the killer. However, clues also point to an at-large Cuban immigrant. Conveniently, Norah has a Cuban maid, so the maid introduces Norah to the world of Santería and the possibility that the Cuban immigrant’s spirit entered Joel’s body.

           The Possession of Joel Delaney takes its time during the investigative phase of the narrative, allowing ambiguity to seep into the storytelling. MacLaine thrives here, showing how her character struggles to comprehend things way behind her normal experience. She’s also fierce and understandably terrified during the film’s creepy finale. King, appearing in his first movie, does well playing a willful young man whose first manifestations of possession seem like mere petulance to those around him. If there’s a big flaw to the film, besides some sketchy gore effects, it’s that neither King nor the filmmakers create much empathy for the Joel character—a greater sense of what is lost by the corruption of Joel’s soul would have deepened the film’s emotional impact. As is, the picture is tense and unnerving, but it lacks the pathos that made The Exorcist work. That said, The Possession of Joel Delaney is among the rare horror pictures that take themselves seriously without seeming ridiculous for doing so.

The Possession of Joel Delaney: GROOVY

Truck Stop Women (1974)

Difficult as it might seem to make a boring movie about mobsters fighting a madam who runs a whorehouse out of a truck stop, one should never underestimate director Mark L. Lester’s capacity for turning promising notions into terrible movies. During the ’80s, he spent wads of cash on such turkeys as Firestarter (1984) and Commando (1985), but during the early to mid-’70s, when he was just beginning his directorial reign of terror, Lester employed budgets as meager as his cinematic gifts. Lester’s third feature, Truck Stop Women, is truly abysmal thanks to this combination of brainless storytelling and yard-sale production values. The gist of the piece is that blowsy, middle-aged Anna (Lieux Dressler) operates a successful brothel along a trucking route, aided by her sexy daughters Rose (Claudia Jennings) and Tina (Jennifer Burton). Big-city gangster Smith (John Martin0) tries to muscle in on the business, eventually turning Rose against her mother. Violence ensues. The grimy nature of Truck Stop Women is made clear by the opening scene: Smith murders a naked man and women while they’re screwing in a bubble bath, to the accompaniment of an upbeat country song containing the lyrics, “if it feels good, do it.” Huh? The story unravels at regular intervals, the numerous sex scenes have the sleazy quality of no-budget porn, and the underscore is excruciatingly bad. (The music in some scenes sounds like it resulted from a concussion victim reflexively flailing fingers across a keyboard.) Even the presence of red-hot strawberry blonde Claudia Jennings, a onetime Playboy model, isn’t enough to make this bilge tolerable.

Truck Stop Women: SQUARE

Country Blue (1973)

The lovers-0n-the-run saga Country Blue has abundant local flavor, immersing viewers in the sweaty everyday reality of life among poor folks in rural Georgia, but that’s the only kind thing one can say about the picture. Amateurish and boring, Country Blue tracks the exploits of a young man who is unwilling to work for a living and angry that the world demands he must do so. Further aggrieved by having served time in prison after committing a crime, the young man rails against the constraints of small-town life even though a crusty old mechanic provides employment and the mechanic’s pretty daughter provides companionship. In sum, Country Blue is the character study of an asshole. Had a dangerously charming actor been cast in the starring role, the desired illusion of a romantic rebel might have been put across, but leading man Jack Conrad—who also cowrote, produced, directed, and edited this film, earning his only credits in many of these craft areas—is a hopelessly generic screen presence. With his lackadaisical manner and his quiet drawl, he seems like some random dude who wandered in front of the camera, not a professional actor. Viewers are likely to be just as disappointed by Conrad’s costar, Rita George; she adds nothing to her generic girlfriend role, essaying a character so passive that watching her drift indecisively through scenes quickly becomes irritating. The film’s top-billed actor is reliable big-screen coot Dub Taylor, playing the aforementioned mechanic. Watching Taylor chortle and scowl his way through scenes, wearing an undersized ballcap and sweat-stained T-shirts while casually spewing epithets about blacks and gays, one can only marvel at the effortlessness of Taylor’s acting, even if a little of his cantankerous shtick goes a long way.

Country Blue: LAME

The Devils (1971)

          By the mid-’70s, British director Ken Russell’s penchant for shock value took him deep into the realm of self-parody, despite his myriad gifts as a filmmaker and storyteller—it seemed as if he couldn’t stop himself from creating cartoonish excess. Many would say that Russell lost the thread while making two 1975 movies starring rock singer Roger Daltrey, Lisztomania and Tommy, both of which explode with juvenile imagery. Yet an earlier Russell film, The Devils, is likely the most extreme thing he ever made.

          Cruel, perverse, repulsive, sacrilegious, and vulgar, The Devils dramatizes a gruesome historical incident that occurred in the 17th century. On one level, the movie is purposeful and serious, exploring such heavy themes as groupthink, paranoia, political conspiracies, and unrequited love that sours into deadly animus. Washing over this highbrow material is a geyser of effluvium—Russell depicts enemas, orgies, the sexualized defiling of religious artifacts, torture, and even the vile act of sorting through a person’s vomit for clues. In some scenes, The Devils presents intimate drama with far-reaching moralistic implications, and in other scenes, The Devils presents cheap jokes straight out of burlesque. In sum, those seeking a microcosm of the identity crisis at the core of Russell’s artistic output need look no further. Everything bad about his style is here in abundance, and so, to, is everything good.

          The broad strokes of the narrative are as follows. Charismatic priest Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) gains control over the French city of Loudon during a time of religious conflict. Specifically, the Vatican has persuaded King Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) to demolish walls around cities, including Loudon, in order to quell an incipient Protestant revolution. Meanwhile, Sister Jeanne of the Angels (Vanessa Redgrave), the deformed and disturbed Reverend Mother of a Loudon convent, is sexually fixated on Father Urbain. When Father Urbain marries his lover, Sister Jeanne goes insane, accusing Father Urbain of witchcraft. Hysteria ensues, leading to the spectacle of the nuns in Sister Jeanne’s convent becoming sex fiends. Sadistic witch-hunter Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard) arrives in Loudon to exorcise demons from the “bewitched” nuns, but few of the players realize that all of these events have been manipulated to scapegoat Father Urbain.

          Grasping the story’s deeper implications is challenging, and even simply tracking the events depicted onscreen requires close attention. Not only are the politics dense, but Russell drifts in and out of phantasmagorical sequences. Even the “real” stuff is sufficiently bizarre to confound many viewers. In the opening scene, Louis XIII performs a cross-dressing stage show. Later, viewers are shown a skeleton with maggots crawling in its eye sockets; Sister Jeanne giggling like a fool before climaxing from the mere sight of Father Urbain; and a silly bit during which the king shoots a man dressed in a bird costume, then says, “Bye bye, blackbird!” (Russell was fond of comedic anachronisms.)

          The movie crosses so many lines with its religiously themed imagery that it’s like a hand grenade thrown into the middle of a crowded church. In a dream sequence, Reed is envisioned as Jesus stepping off the cross, complete with a crown of thorns, and Redgrave licks his bloody wounds as if the act gives both of them sexual pleasure. During the long mass-hysteria sequence passage, Russell bashes the audience with forced enemas that are staged like anal rapes, armies of half-naked nuns, and money shots of said nuns gyrating atop a figure of Christ. The film’s climax contains horrors all its own.

          Saying there’s a resonant movie buried inside The Devils isn’t exactly correct, because there’s no way to separate the tale from the telling. Any dramatization of the Grandier story would be extreme. Furthermore, Redgrave and Reed give exceptionally committed performances, so much so that they risk becoming comical at times. The Devils is what it is, an assault on the senses and a scabrous sort of social commentary. Weirdly, the film was made in such a way as to repulse the very people who might otherwise have engaged most deeply with the subject matter, since it’s hard to imagine the faithful enduring more than a few minutes of The Devils. Even for nonbelievers, the film is as much of an endurance test as it is an artistic expression.

The Devils: FREAKY

The Wrestler (1974)

Part promotional item and part vanity piece, The Wrestler was produced by real-life sports champion Verne Gagne, who also plays the leading role. Offscreen, Gagne ran the American Wrestling Association, which thrived in the Midwest from 1960 to 1991. Onscreen, he plays Mike Bullard, the aging star athlete of a Midwestern league. Mike clashes with a promoter over the prospect of squaring off against a formidable younger opponent, because Mike is reluctant to risk losing his title before retirement, even though he’s already become as famous for his altruism as for his competitive ability. Yes, The Wrestler is a self-financed hagiography disguised as fictional entertainment—although using the word “entertainment” is a stretch seeing as how The Wrestler is dull, flat, and repetitive, suffering from cheap-looking photography, lifeless musical scoring, and terrible supporting performances. How shoddy does The Wrestler look? Whenever the film cuts to a shot taken with a wide-angle lens during a wrestling scene, the corners of the frame are obscured by the matte box that shielded the lens from extraneous light during filming, meaning that either nobody looked at dailies or that the wrestling scenes were all shot in one marathon session. Either way, it’s a rookie mistake. Despite looking bored in some scenes—no surprise, given how little energy he gets from his scene partners—top-billed actor Ed Asner is okay as the conflicted promoter who wants to do right by his biggest earner and yet also wants to make a splash by invigorating the league. Gagne is stiff as the screen version of himself, often laughing and smiling but failing to convey much emotion, and Billy Robinson is wooden as his would-be challenger. Worse, The Wrestler frequently devolves into tedium, thanks to the unconvincing subplot about Asner’s character romancing his pretty young secretary, dull scenes involving organized-crime goons, and an endless bar brawl.

The Wrestler: LAME

The Bears and I (1974)

          One of the better live-action dramas made by Walt Disney Productions in the ’70s, The Bears and I presents the familiar trope of a man who leaves civilization to find solace in nature, then builds emotional bonds with wild animals until he must resolve the inherent problem of living in two worlds at once. Although The Bears and I is a simplistic  homily compared to the best Disney movie of this type— the extraordinary Never Cry Wolf (1983)—it is nonetheless a humanistic film with a credible approach to ecology and race. The movie has some of the usual kid-cinema extremes, notably an excess of cute-animal antics, and leading man Patrick Wayne is hopelessly bland. However, young viewers could do much worse than exposure to a story about treating animals, land, and people with respect.
          The film’s source material is a nonfiction book by Robert Franklin Leslie, who ventured into the woods of British Columbia during the 1930s to work as a trapper, inadvertently becoming the guardian of three cubs after their mother died. In the modernized Disney version, Bob (Wayne) is a Vietnam vet who travels into the wilderness near the Canadian Rockies to find Chief Peter A-Tas-Ka-Nay (Chief Dan George). Bob served with Peter’s son, who died in combat, so Bob returns the son’s personal effects and seeks permission to camp near the small Indian settlement that Peter oversees. Hostile toward all whites, Peter and his tribesmen accept Bob’s money but not his companionship, and the friction increases once Bob adopts the cubs. Peter says his people are a “bear tribe,” so they view the domestication of the bears as sacreligious. Nonetheless, Bob teaches the bears basic survival skills, such as foraging for insects and hiding in trees when stalked by predators. This being a Disney picture, several subplots impact the action, notably the impending transformation of the Indian settlement into the hub of a national park and the one-dimensional villainy of Sam Eagle Speaker (Valentin de Vargas), a drunken troublemaker.

          Presented with dense narration during animal scenes, The Bears and I goes down smoothly. Shot at gorgeous outdoor locations, the picture comes complete with a John Denver theme song {“Sweet Surrender”), so it meshes well with the back-t0-nature ethos of the early ’70s. Is it cutesy and manipulative? Of course. But there’s a bittersweet emotional peak buried inside the movie’s tidy third act, ensuring that the picture ultimately endorses a realistic view of how people and wild animals can safely interact.

The Bears and I: GROOVY

The Pied Piper (1972)

          It’s tricky to guess which audience the producers had in mind when they made this dreary, quasi-musical fantasy, which is set in medieval times. Seeing as how the Pied Piper myth involves a minstrel using his magical music to escort children from a corrupt village, it would seem as if The Pied Piper was made to attract young viewers. Then again, because the producers cast grizzled British character actors in many key roles and infused scenes with lengthy debates about political strategies, perhaps the film was meant for adults. Making the whole business even more perplexing is the presence of Scottish pop star Donovan in the title role. A real-life minstrel whose ethereal music and lyrics epitomize the hippy-dippy 1960s, Donovan would have been appealing to college kids and young adults circa 1972. Oh, and parts of the movie are disgusting, what with shots of plague-carrying rats crawling through houses and neighborhoods. The Pied Piper looks expensive, Donovan sings a few tunes, and the script is fairly intelligent—but the picture is too glum for viewers seeking escapism, and too lightweight for those craving something serious.
          It’s not a mess, per se, but it’s not really much of anything.

          Set in the German town of Hamlin during the year 1349, the movie opens with Piper (Donovan) joining a group of traveling players before entering the town. Inside Hamlin, the bürgermeister (Roy Kinnear) worries over his ailing daughter, so he demands assistance from “Melius the Jew” (Michael Hordern), the local alchemist. When that doesn’t work, the bürgermeister realizes that his daughter reacts to Piper’s music, so Piper is hired to play for the daughter. That’s why Piper is at the center of the action when the bürgermeister and other officials discuss solutions for a rat infestation. (Little problem: Officials risk heresy if they embrace Melius’ theory that rats carry plague, since Vatican doctrine defines the plague as God’s work.) Piper offers to solve the problem by using music to lead the rats from Hamlin, and the situation spirals from there.

          Considering that he plays the title character, Donovan isn’t in the movie very much, which is no big loss, given his stiff line deliveries. With the Piper character sidelined, the story focuses on Melius’ plight. This creates problems for the viewing experience: Whereas the Melius scenes are grounded, the Piper sequences are fanciful, and vignettes depicting a love story between the bürgermeister's daughter and Melius' assistant are sickly-sweet. None of this material hangs together very well, and by the time Piper’s legendary exodus gets intercut with a scene of a character burning at the stake, The Pied Piper has become as unpleasant as it is tonally inconsistent.

The Pied Piper: FUNKY

Take Down (1979)

A bland sports drama containing anemic attempts at comedy, Take Down depicts the struggles of an English teacher forced to coach a wrestling team, as well as the journey of a young man who becomes a star athlete. Even this brief description should be sufficient to indicate that Take Down comprises nothing but clichés, so while the picture has adequate production values and a personable leading performance by Edward Herrmann, Take Down is completely forgettable. Not coincidentally, Take Down contains one of Lorenzo Lamas’ first major roles. The sun-kissed hunk who later played “Lance Cumson” during the 1981–1990 run of the nighttime soap Falcon Crest is among the most vacuous actors ever to appear on film, and Take Down hinges on scenes in which Lamas is asked to convey deep wells of emotion. He can’t, and as he struggles, so too does the film. Protagonist Ed Branish (Herrmann), a scholar finishing his Ph.D. dissertation, teaches English to unreceptive small-town kids and rebuffs entreaties from his wife, Jill (Kathleen Lloyd), who wants to start a family. Ed blocks the graduation of lackluster student Nick Kilvitus (Lamas), who has missed school because he’s filling in at a local factory for his drunken father. When the principal tasks Ed with coaching the wrestling team, Ed must reach out to Nick for help. Cue predictable scenes of Ed growing to love his small-town neighbors, Nick realizing that it's okay to believe in people, and so on. Filled with unimaginatively filmed wrestling scenes, Take Down fails when it tries for high comedy (e.g., Ed talking a wrestler through the bowel movement that will help the wrestler make his weight for a competition), and it doesn't do any better when it tries for high drama.

Take Down: LAME

Jim, the World’s Greatest (1976)

          When examining the domestic melodrama Jim, the World’s Greatest, which concerns alcoholism and child abuse, it’s helpful to consider that the picture’s co-creators, Don Coscarelli and Craig Mitchell, were only 17 when their parents bankrolled the low-budget project. Whereas some movie-crazy kids might have used this opportunity to put sex fantasies or sports fables onscreen, Coscarelli and Mitchell attempted to diagnose a social ailment. Therefore, even though the movie doesn’t quite work, thanks to clumsy plotting and leaden pacing, Jim, the World’s Greatest is in some ways a noble endeavor. Furthermore, seeing as how the project got both filmmakers started on idiosyncratic careers, good things sprang from these humble beginnings.

          The “Jim” of the title is a high-school athlete, Jim Nolan (Gregory Harrison), who lives with his preteen brother, Kelly (Robbie Wolcott), and their drunken father, Russell (Angus Scrimm). Because Russell’s emotional problems and substance-abuse issues prevent him from holding down steady jobs, Jim keeps the family afloat with a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant. Jim also serves as his little brother’s protector whenever booze causes Russell to vent his anger by beating Kelly. The story, which is more of a rambling travelogue through Jim’s life than a proper narrative, tracks Jim’s struggles to reconcile all the confusing things he encounters. In terms of girls, Jim likes a smart classmate named Lisa, even though he appreciates sexual advances from another girl. In terms of sports, Jim enjoys doing well on the field but seems unsure whether his future involves athletics or something else. And at home, Jim faces the biggest challenge—standing up to an abusive parent.

          Some of the episodes in this film connect, such as Jim’s discovery of why his father resents Kelly, and some feel more like filler, notably a discursive bit during which Jim and Kelly encounter a hang-glider pilot while they’re out wandering one day. Directors Coscarelli and Mitchell shoot the film inconsistently, presenting some scenes economically while letting others drag on and on. Their storytelling is especially unfocused during the climax and the coda, since the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner. However, the overall tone of the film is mature and sincere, with Harrison endeavoring to infuse his scenes with heartfelt emotion. Accordingly, Jim, the World’s Greatest is best viewed as a promising first stab at filmmaking, particularly for Coscarelli. Later the same year, he released his first solo directorial effort, the youth adventure Kenny & Company, and then, three years later, he found his groove with the cult-fave horror flick Phantasm (1979). The iconic “Tall Man” character in Phantasm and its many sequels was played by Angus Scrimm, the bad dad in Jim, the World’s Greatest. 

Jim, the World’s Greatest: FUNKY

Fear in the Night (1972)

          Among the softer offerings from Britain’s Hammer Film Productions—although still quite gruesome in parts—Fear in the Night is an old-fashioned psychological thriller about a young woman who worries that she’s going mad because she repeatedly experiences assaults but cannot convince others that the assaults have occurred. The situation drives her to a paranoid frenzy, leading her to commit violence, so the film’s major narrative question is whether the circumstances are the result of malicious attackers, an odious conspiracy, or something supernatural. Unfortunately, not many viewers will feel invested in solving the central mystery of Fear in the Night, because the movie is far-fetched, repetitive, and slow-moving, problems accentuated by the overly polite and reserved performances of the actors comprising the small cast. As with most of Hammer’s pictures, Fear in the Night is an attractive film thanks to colorful photography and intricate set design, and the film also benefits from a supporting turn by Hammer regular Peter Cushing. Nonetheless, the picture is disposable.

          In contemporary England, 22-year-old Peggy (Judy Geeson) leaves her job as a caregiver in a mental-health facility—where she once received treatment for a nervous breakdown—in order to join her new husband, Robert (Ralph Bates), at the remote boarding school where he teaches. Upon arrival, Peggy meets the school’s kindly old headmaster, Michael (Cuashing), and his sexy younger wife, Molly (Joan Collins), quickly deducing that all is not right. One rather large clue: Despite Michael acting as if school is in session, no students are present. All the while, Peggy suffers assaults—or delusions of assaults—during which she’s grabbed by a one-armed man. Cowritten, produced, and directed by Hammer stalwart Jimmy Sangster, Fear in the Night strives for complexity, instead delivering underwhelming results thanks to silly contrivances and thin characterizations. Still, the movie has a couple of adequate jolts, some imaginative imagery, and an enjoyably overwrought finale during which everything that came before is explained in almost laughable detail.

Fear in the Night: FUNKY

Sunday in the Country (1974)

          A minor contribution to the early-’70s conversation about cinematic vigilantism that primarily revolved around Straw Dogs (1971) and Death Wish (1974), Sunday in the Country benefits from immersive location photography and a zesty leading performance by Ernest Borgnine. The filmmakers take a bit too much time setting their narrative trap, then end up spinning in circles toward the end while searching for the satisfying conclusion that they never find. Nonetheless, Sunday in the Country is very nearly a serious film questioning how far citizens are entitled to go while endeavoring to preserve public safety. Borgnine plays a farmer who learns that three escaped bank robbers have been sighted in his rural county, so he loads his shotgun just in case he needs to protect himself and his teenaged granddaughter. By the time the crooks inevitably reach his property, the farmer knows that they’ve killed two local residents, so he surprises the crooks by immediately shooting one of them down. Thereafter, he imprisons the other two and commences psychological torture, aggrieving his granddaughter’s more liberal notions of justice.

          Director John Trent does a fairly good job of creating mood and texture, contrasting the film’s ominous first act with peppy country songs, and it’s fun to watch Borgnine think on camera while his character contemplates where events might be headed; too often during the ’70s and subsequently, Borgnine was asked only to be crude and loud. Yet there’s only so much Borgnine and Trent can do with the overly schematic storyline. The criminals are one-dimensional, and there’s never any question of whether they’ll reach the farm. Therefore, after the film plays its one ace—the moment when Borgnine greets the criminals with a loaded gun—believable suspense gives way to silly contrivances, like a far-fetched sequence involving the criminals and the granddaughter. As for the picture’s third act, it starts strong but then spirals into nonsense. Also spiraling into nonsense is costar Michael J. Pollard’s annoying supporting performance as the most trigger-happy of the criminals—Pollard’s work is a compendium of pointlessly weird flourishes, right down to the pastel-colored briefs his character wears.

          FYI, this picture is sometimes marketed under the titles Blood for Blood and Vengeance Is Mine.

Sunday in the Country: FUNKY

Homer (1970)

          Set in a small Wisconsin farming community during the height of the Vietnam War, the gentle drama Homer does a fine job of illustrating the Generation Gap, pitting a longhaired son against his straight-laced father while emphasizing that the two men share more love for each other than they do animosity. The son wants no part of his parents’ values, because he sees the generation that came up during the Depression as unquestioning warmongers, while the father struggles to understand that his son perceives apathy and the escapism of listening to and performing rock music as means of conscientious objection. That’s why the movie opens with the son making a failed attempt at running away from home—with neither participant in this conflict willing to budge, something has to give, even if that means the dissolution of the family unit.

          If only the filmmakers behind Homercould have realized other aspects of the story as well as the main plot. After the failed getaway, Homer (Don Scardino) returns to his frustrating routine. He fights with his father (Alex Niccol), even as his mother (Lanika Peterson) tries to keep the peace. Homer also explores a touch-and-go romantic relationship with pretty fellow high-school student Laurie Grainger (Tisa Farrow). He likes her and lusts after her, but he doesn’t stand in the way when a slightly older mutual friend, Eddie (Tim Henry), makes a pass at Laurie before Eddie ships out to Vietnam. Through it all, Homer develops his considerable musical talent, even scoring a paying gig with his band, though his ideas of how to transform art into a career are abstract at best. The point is that Homer is confused about everything except music and sex, and that he’s on the verge of becoming part of the nation’s burgeoning antiwar movement.

          Some episodes resonate loudly, like the touching scene in which Eddie bequeaths his beloved motorcycle to Homer and the tender vignette of Homer sleeping with Laurie for the first time. Other episodes meander, such as overlong musical montages. Those montages, coupled with a general sluggish pace, sap much of the vitality from Homer, revealing that the film doesn’t contain sufficient story material to support its own weight. There aren’t enough characters, and the people onscreen behave the same way in every scene, so the film only makes a few small points over the course of 91 minutes. The rest is filler. However, there’s much to like about this little picture: Scardino’s earnest leading performance meshes well with Farrow’s quiet sexiness and Niccol’s heartland toughness, and Homer boasts a potent soundtrack featuring tunes by the Byrds, Led Zeppelin, and others.

Homer: FUNKY

Massacre in Rome (1973)

          The European-made World War II drama Massacre in Rome depicts a 1944 incident during which the Third Reich killed 335 citizens in reprisal for a partisan attack that left about 30 German soldiers dead. The so-called “Ardeatine Massacre” carried sociopolitical implications extending beyond the war itself, since the Vatican was asked to intervene but refused to do so. Written and directed by George P. Cosmatos, who adapted a book by Robert Katz, Massacre in Rome is a serious attempt at cataloguing the myriad factors that led to the slaughter, although the process of dramatization led Cosmatos toward both oversimplification and turgidity. Regarding the first extreme, Cosmatos transformed historical figure Herbert Kappler, the German officer tasked with organizing the reprisal, into a cinematic protagonist, which necessitated some sanding of edges. In the movie, Kappler—as played by Richard Burton—is a pragmatist who urges his commanders to exercise restraint not out of any great wellspring of human compassion, but because he knows that an excessive response will energize opposition among the Italian citizenry. Historical accounts suggest that the real Kappler had no such reservations about following the company line.

          Regarding the second extreme, that of turgidity, Cosmatos created a composite character, Father Pietro Antonelli—portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni—to represent the tricky relationship between the church and Italian partisans. Many scenes involving the priest devolve into pretentious debates about morality. Worse, the priest ultimately serves no discernible narrative function—despite fretting a lot, he never impacts the action in a meaningful way. Given these problems, Massacre in Rome is a middling film even though it’s also a sober undertaking with terrific production values. At his best, Cosmatos conveys a vision of the Third Reich’s high command as a dysfunctional family, with insane leader Adolf Hitler (who is never shown onscreen) creating a top-down climate of paranoia and savagery while more rational people eye the inevitable future after Hitler’s power structure collapses. Marginalized in this treatment of the story are the people affected by the massacre, because Cosmatos doesn’t spend enough time with the partisans or with the common people of Rome. That said, Cosmatos and producer Carlo Ponti honor the dead with a closing text crawl featuring the names of the victims.

Massacre in Rome: FUNKY

Burnout (1979)

Sadly, this isn’t a character study of a Jim Ignatowski-style drug casualty, since the title stems from another use of the term “burnout.” Apparently, in the world of high-stakes drag racing, a “burnout” is a pre-race ritual during which drivers rev their wheels in order to get the treads hot for improved traction. Said ritual is shown in this film about 10 zillion times. Also repeated endlessly are shots of blue methane jets sparking from engine blocks, parachutes deploying after races are completed, and, of course, top-fuel dragsters blasting down tracks at speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. Burnout seems very much like a movie that was constructed around available footage, either because the filmmakers got access to a vault of racing shots or because they got permission to film a season’s worth of high-test action. However it came together, Burnout is vapid in the extreme. A good 60 percent of the movie comprises generic racing scenes that the filmmakers try to enliven with voiceover in the form of play-by-play commentary. The remainder of the film tells the uninteresting story of a spoiled rich kid from California named Scott. who decides for no special reason to become a drag racer. (The character is lifelessly portrayed by Mark Schneider, star of yet another vehicular dud, 1977’s Supervan.) Scott’s dad buys him a custom-made car, but Scott washes out in his first race, so he abandons the car and takes a job on a pit crew, eventually subbing for a driver during a big race. Give or take a few details, that’s the whole plot, and it’s delivered by way of laughably emotionless acting. Offering nothing in the way of characterization or dramatic stakes, Burnout will appeal only to those with a fetish for drag racing, but even those viewers are likely to get bored after a while.

Burnout: LAME

Top of the Heap (1972)

Top of the Heap represented a big professional leap for actor Christopher St. John, seeing as how he had only four screen credits to his name previously, including a supporting role in Shaft (1971). St. John wrote, produced, directed, and stars in Top of the Heap, but he botches all four of his jobs over the course of the glossy but misguided crime drama. George Lattimore (St. John) is an African-American beat cop in Washington, D.C., who resents that racist superiors prevent him from moving up in the ranks. Meanwhile, civilians and crooks alike regard George as an Uncle Tom, and George’s marriage to Viola (Florence St. Peter) has turned bitter. Had St. John kept things simple with a racially changed character study, he could have made something meaningful. Unfortunately, he overreached. St. John unwisely gave his protagonist a long-suffering mistress, identified only as “Black Chick” (Paula Kelly), and it’s hard to root for a philanderer who abuses both the women in his life. Worse, St. John interspersed the movie with bizarre dream sequences, mostly showcasing two recurring tropes—in one, George imagines that he’s an astronaut, and in the other, George imagines that he’s a naked savage running through a jungle. (The jungle scenes climax with an eroticized vignette of George and a woman slathering each other with pieces of watermelon, after which George inexplicably yells, “Jambalaya!”) The hallucinations give Top of the Heap an incoherent quality, but even the dramatic scenes are confusing, as when George, in uniform, scares a vituperative cab driver (cameo player Allen Garfield) nearly to death. By the time the movie’s pointless bummer ending rolls around, it seems like unreasoning rage, rather than righteous indignation about racism, is the protagonist’s real problem. Not exactly, one presumes, the point the filmmaker wanted to make.

Top of the Heap: LAME

The War Between Men and Women (1972)

          The title of this romantic comedy is a misnomer, because the picture doesn’t pit archetypal representatives of opposite genders against each other. Rather, the film tracks the unlikely romance between a misanthropic cartoonist and a compassionate divorcée. These two characters engage in conflict, but their clashes stem from the cartoonist’s disagreeable personality and the divorcée’s lingering affection for her ex-husband. Therefore, the only reason the title makes any sense is that the cartoonist often departs on flights of fancy in which he imagines men and women battling each other with weapons. Yet the muddiness of the title is but one of many problems plaguing The War Between Men and Women, which has several meritorious elements despite being a disappointment overall. Not least of the film’s virtues is a go-for-broke leading performance by Jack Lemmon, who plays a heel to the hilt.

          Set in New York, the film revolves around Peter Wilson (Lemmon), a sardonic cartoonist who writes illustrated books and also contributes to posh magazines. Suffering from poor eyesight, he visits his ophthalmologist one day and receives a grim diagnosis before experiencing a meet-cute with fellow patient Terri Kozlenko (Barbara Harris). For Peter, it’s dislike at first sight, but Terri finds him interesting. Later, the two meet again at a party and, improbably, begin dating. Terri’s lighthearted nature wears down Peter’s misanthropy, so they marry, which makes Peter a stepfather to Terri’s three children. Enter the ex-husband, Stephen Kozelenko (Jason Robards), an easygoing photojournalist. Funny and heroic and kind, he’s the opposite of wimpy whiner Peter, so his return causes friction—as does Peter’s discovery that Terri knew all along he’s verging on total blindness. As per the rom-com formula, complications ensue.

          Based upon the writings of humorist James Thurber and cowritten and directed by Melville Shavelson, The War Between Men and Women is an odd sort of picture. About 60 percent of the screen time comprises comic interplay, one-liners, and sight gags, including scenes of Lemmon directly addressing the camera. About 20 percent of the picture comprises animation or mixtures of animation with live action, with the lead character’s cartoons coming to life. And about 20 percent of the picture comprises maudlin melodrama. At its most rudderless, the movie swerves into a long scene of Peter counseling his teenaged stepdaughter about the realities of marriage and sex. The film’s tonal jumps are awkward, especially since the movie hums along fairly nicely whenever Shavelson and cowriter Danny Arnold—who previously collaborated on a TV series extrapolated from Thurber’s work—simply lock into a sitcom-patter groove. Still, Lemmon is terrific here, and one could do a lot worse for comic foils than Harris, Robards, and costar Herb Edelman.

The War Between Men and Women: FUNKY

Ruby (1977)

Hard as this might be to imagine, Ruby combines elements from The Exorcist (1973) and Sunset Blvd. (1950) with a seedy Floridian milieu to create a bizarre horror/melodrama hybrid. Oh, and tuxedo-clad 1930s gangsters find their way into the mix, as well. The end result is a mess. The movie is too silly to be scary, too strange to have emotional resonance, and too overstuffed to cohere. Much of what happens onscreen is nonsensical, and not in an enjoyably disorienting sort of way. Ruby begins with an overwrought prologue. In 1935 Florida, a gangster and his redheaded moll, Ruby (Piper Laurie), visit a remote lake at night. Then other gangsters show up and murder the boyfriend—at which point Ruby, whom the audience didn’t realize was pregnant, suddenly goes into labor. Sixteen years later, Ruby is a woman stuck in time, reliving her glory days as a radio singer and wannabe movie star while operating a drive-in theater. Her daughter, Leslie (Janit Baldwin), is a deaf-mute with emotional problems. For no apparent reason, weird supernatural shit starts happening at the drive-in, leading to several bloody deaths. Then Leslie starts speaking—in the voice of her long-dead father, Ruby’s gangster boyfriend. Apparitions appear, paranormal investigators are summoned, and director Curtis Harrington shamelessly steals from The Exorcist with shots of Leslie doing acrobatic contortions on her bed while spewing obscenities and vomit. Yet somehow the focus of the film is Ruby, a Norma Desmond type who can’t accept that the past is the past. Laurie, looking quite glamorous in all-red costumes, gives a loopy performance that’s a long way from the believable but creepy dementia of her work in Carrie (1976), and the movie around her is just as undisciplined as Laurie’s acting.

Ruby: LAME