3 Million Page Views!

Once again, thank you to the intrepid readership of Every ’70s Movie for pushing the blog past another significant milestone. As of this weekend, the blog has been viewed over 3 million times, and the monthly readership numbers continue to humble me. Now that the blog is into its final year of daily publishing, it’s a thrill to see that so many people remain passionate about a subject that I find endlessly fascinating. What happens once I complete watching and reviewing all the ’70s movies I can find is a discussion for another day, so for now I’ll simply encourage loyal readers to consider donating via the PayPal button on the home page. Tracking down the most obscure titles from the ’70s incurs expenses, and I want to get as close at I can to achieving the mission statement baked into this unique project’s title. Readers are also encouraged to scan posts from recent weeks asking for information about the availability of hard-to-find titles, as any and all help finding such films is greatly appreciated. Meantime, enjoy the daily reviews, months of which are still on deck, and as always, keep on keepin’ on!

Tail Gunner Joe (1977)

          While not an outstanding biopic, the made-for-TV Joseph McCarthy saga Tail Gunner Joe has many virtues, not least of which is a fundamental lesson the American people still haven’t learned. After all, McCarthy was a blustery fearmonger who destroyed people’s lives based on nothing but hearsay and innuendo—if not outright falsehoods—and he built his political career not on his own ideals and accomplishments, but by promising to rid America of enemies that, conveniently, only he had the power to identify. Sound familiar? Trade Congressional hearings for televised campaign rallies and Twitter rants, and the parallels between McCarthy and Donald Trump become apparent. They’re very different men following very different trajectories, but they align in the areas of hubris, recklessness, and strategy. Moreover, both McCarthy and Trump fall well below the average in terms of conscience and shame. As McCarthy did, Trump succeeds by aggrandizing himself and victimizing those with less power. All of which is a way of saying that even though Tail Gunner Joe is completely respectable in every important regard, from acting to scripting to technical execution, it’s ordinary except as a cautionary tale with echoes that continue to resound well into the 21st century.

          The movie opens with the Army-McCarthy Hearings of the mid-1950s, which culminated in lawyer Joseph Nye Welch’s famous condemnation, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Between the introduction of the hearings and the delivery of that condemnation, the movie uses the contemporary framing device of a reporter investigating the McCarthy era, thereby connecting flashbacks tracking McCarthy’s rise and fall. The reporter is Logan (Heather Menzies), assigned to the story by an unnamed veteran editor (Charles Cioffi) who covered McCarthy back in the day. Her angle is determining how and why McCarthy aggregated so much power with a witch hunt ostensibly designed to discover communists hiding in American government and private-industry jobs. Peter Boyle plays McCarthy in the flashbacks, which comprise most of the picture’s running time. The portrayal is all bluster and smoke, conveying the idea that McCarthy struck his early supporters as a charming scamp, only to lose favor as he devolved into a hate-spewing demagogue. The implication is that McCarthy got lost in his own rhetoric, gravitating toward his witch hunt because it was the platform that got him the most attention, then dooming himself to political oblivion by pressing the issue past the point of reason. The filmmakers also stress that, like Richard Nixon, McCarthy had a long history of smearing political opponents with bogus accusations.

          The title stems from a colorful sequence depicting McCarthy’s WWII service in the Pacific theater. Frustrated at being grounded, “Tail Gunner Joe” climbed into a plane on the tarmac and wasted nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition blasting coconut trees. His antics won him widespread news coverage, so McCarthy began his first Senate campaign while still in uniform—even though it was illegal to do so.

          Writer Lane Slate and director Jud Taylor do a workmanlike job of presenting their interpretation of McCarthy’s psychological makeup, though the film almost inevitably slips into mechanical rhythms once the endless cycle of scenes depicting legal proceedings begins. Not helping matters is a cast largely comprising B-list actors—Andrew Duggan, John Forsythe, Henry Jones—because the film sparks whenever someone powerful appears, such as Ned Beatty or Burgess Meredith, then lags when they disappear. Boyle’s deliberately repellant performance needs more counterpoint than it gets until the climax, when Meredith, portraying Welch, beautifully delivers the “decency” monologue. In a clumsier moment of speechifying, Logan—the reporter—laments that her peers in the Fourth Estate gave McCarthy his agency by providing free press every time he said something outrageous. “McCarthy calls Truman a traitor,” she says. “That's not news, that’s madness.” Again, in the era of Donald Trump launching one baseless accusation after another at Barack Obama and countless other targets of his unhinged invective, all of this sounds depressingly familiar.

Tail Gunner Joe: GROOVY

Medicine Ball Caravan (1971)

          Watching the hippie-era documentary Medicine Ball Caravan, it’s plain that Warner Bros. threw a bunch of money at the project, elaborately filming a counterculture group’s colorful trek from San Francisco to the heartland, then enlisting Martin Scorsese, credited as the film’s executive producer and post-production supervisor, to jazz up the footage with creative editing and ironic musical counterpoints. Yet all the bells and whistles in the world aren’t enough to make this film anything more than a tacky attempt at exploiting the popularity of Ken Kesey’s “magic trip” escapades of the ’60s, which were documented in Tom Wolfe’s 1968 nonfiction book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Since no feature-length film emerged from Kesey’s exploits, the plan at Warner Bros. must have been to point cameras at the next group of drugged-out adventurers departing from the Bay Area for parts unknown. Unfortunately, hoping that documentarians will capture something important is not the same as actually capturing something important. Notwithstanding some decent musical performances, by random acts including Alice Cooper and B.B. King, Medicine Ball Caravan is a forgettable slice of Woodstock-era life.

          Comprising about 150 people in more than a dozen vehicles, the titular caravan traveled to various cities over the course of 21 days, ostensibly to spread the peace-and-love ethos. Concerts were staged in various cities to draw locals, and the hope, one assumes, was to create educational encounters between hippies and straights. A few such interactions happen, as when the film’s French-born director, François Reichenbach, chats up an old cowboy who says he digs the hippies’ rebel spirit. Showing a flair for the overdramatic, Reichenbach then gushes, “You’re the most wonderful man I ever met!” Pleasant as it is to see a cosmopolitan artist leave his bubble, moments like this one don’t resonate, especially since Reichenbach (and/or Scorsese) devotes so much screen time to nonsense. In one scene, a guy whacked out on dope spews motor-mouthed gibberish, and in another, longhaired dudes—as well as Reichenbach’s camera—ogle hippie chicks while they take a group shower. Editing gimmicks including split-screen imagery do little to enliven the material.

          Still, it’s not as if Medicine Ball Caravan—sometimes known as We Have Come for Your Daughters—is a total waste. As one of the caravan participants says, “Half of this is groovy and half of it is rotten—we’ll groove on the groovy part of it and try to make the rotten part better.” Fair enough.

Medicine Ball Caravan: FUNKY

King, Queen, Knave (1972)

          Ten years after Stanley Kubrick released his problematic version of Lolita (1962), another iffy adaptation of a sexy Vladimir Nabokov novel reached the screen, albeit with a much less impressive pedigree. In King, Queen, Knave, David Niven costars with fading sexpot Gina Lollobrigida and minor British actor John Moulder-Brown, while Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski calls the shots. These folks tell an unappealing story about adultery, deceit, greed, lust, and murder. There are even allusions to incest and patricide. The kicker is that King, Queen, Knave is a comedy—or at least it tries to be one. Although Niven lends his signature pithiness, the storytelling never finds the right balance between dark and light elements. At its least surefooted, the picture feels more like a thriller than a comedy, especially during a climactic scene that recalls Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), which, not coincidentally, was cowritten by Skolimowski.

          Charles Dryer (Niven) is a super-wealthy European businessman married to icy beauty Martha (Lollobrigida). They agree to look after Frank (Moulder-Brown), the only son of Charles’ recently deceased brother. The college-aged Frank is a nervous, stuttering klutz who can’t see without his glasses, and the minute he gets an eyeful of Martha, he’s overcome with lust. (To ensure we understand this, Skolimowski includes a tacky scene of Frank masturbating to a picture of Martha.) Sensing an opportunity, Martha seduces Frank, then tries to persuade him to kill Charles so they can share his fortune. Complications of the least interesting sort ensue, not least of which is a bizarre running gag involving Professor Ritter (Mario Adorf), whose pet project involves fabricating artificial skin that feels like real human flesh.

          None of the three main characters is remotely sympathetic, because Charles cheats on his wife with random bimbos, Frank betrays his uncle’s trust, and Martha is a would-be murderess. Whatever satirical edge the material may have possessed in its original form did not make it to the screen. Skolimowski renders some imaginative camerawork, such as crane shots tracking characters’ progress up flights of stairs, though just as often, his overzealous angles feel amateurish; the less said about the undercranked fisheye-lens shots during sex scenes, the better. While still quite alluring (she was in her mid-forties at the time of filming), Lollobridgida gives a trite performance, all petulance and teasing, and Moulder-Brown is annoying, his blithering-idiot routine growing tired within seconds of his entrance. So it falls to Niven, ever the smooth professional, to put this thing over. Whenever he’s onscreen, the picture is bearable.

King, Queen, Knave: FUNKY

Three on a Meathook (1973)

The beginning and ending of this salaciously titled grindhouse flick deliver exactly what you'd expect, clumsily filmed scenes of attractive women getting chased and slaughtered by a rural psychopath. In between, writer-director William Girdler attempts something that might generously be termed a character study, thanks to slow-moving scenes of a young man tormented by guilt over murders he doesn't remember committing. The juxtaposition of narrative elements is ridiculous, since scuzz-cinema fans are likely to get bored watching the protagonist fret, while those who engage with the picture's reflective elements will find the aimless scripting and lumpy performances disappointing. Girdler deserves credit for trying to inject humanity into a lurid drive-in flick, but the movie is way too sleazy to take seriously. And what's with all the musical interludes featuring characters walking through the countryside while hippy-dippy tunes play on the soundtrack? Anyway, country bumpkin Billy (James Pickett) encounters a group of young women after their car has broken down in the boonies. He offers lodging, but upon bringing the girls home, Billy's father (Charles Kissinger) warns that Billy is prone to violence around women. Sure enough, the girls are murdered that night by axe, knife, and shotgun, so the next day, the father cleans up the mess and tells Billy to head into town and get his head straight. The distraught young man strikes up a relationship with a friendly barmaid, eventually inviting her to visit the farm. This goes poorly. Girdler's "twist" in the final act is predictable, and the movie's logic problems are catastrophic. For instance, why doesn't anyone look for the women who go missing? Later in his career, Girdler made several enjoyably silly genre pictures (e.g., the 1976 creature feature Grizzly). Based on the dismaying evidence of this movie, he was wise to leave meatier subject matter (no pun intended) to others.

Three on a Meathook: LAME

Molly and Lawless John (1972)

          A decade before he became a moustachioed fixture in small-screen westerns, a clean-shaven Sam Elliott starred in this quiet but respectable oater, a frontier love story exploring the complicated relationship between an outlaw and a sheriff’s wife. Featuring long stretches of silence and very little music, Molly and Lawless John is all about the energy that transfers between people thrown into close proximity at vulnerable moments. While Ellott’s performance is a bit obvious, blustery one moment and weepy the next, costar Vera Miles works a more nuanced groove, sketching various shadings of loneliness and naïveté before her character grows armor thanks to challenging circumstances. The tension between their different performance styles helps compensate for the generic quality of the film’s direction and writing. In many important ways, Molly and Lawless John fails to show viewers anything new, because the same sensitive-gunslinger dynamics permeate countless previous movies and TV shows. Yet the picture realizes its humble goals adequately, and the intimate narrative—most scenes feature just the title characters—helps conjure a degree of depth and warmth. Moreover, the storyline provides just enough complications to keep things interesting all the way to the grim but satisfying ending.

          Captured following his participation in a violent bank robbery, Johnny Lawler (Elliott) gets thrown in jail by foul-tempered Sheriff Marvin Parker (John Anderson). Parker’s put-upon wife, Molly (Miles), is tasked with providing the inmate’s meals while Parker is away on business, and she finds herself fascinated by the handsome prisoner. Sharing his fears about being executed, he touches her heart, so she reveals painful truths about her loveless marriage. Convinced they’ve bonded, she helps John escape, and their next adventure begins. Revealing more would diminish what little surprise the film offers. Suffice to say that life on the run isn’t what either of them expected, especially when they happen upon a stranger in trouble and become unlikely caretakers for an innocent. Despite being a fairly gentle movie, Molly and Lawless John plays rough on occasion, as when John appraises Molly’s looks: “You ain’t much, but you’re a hell of a lot better than nothin’.” Moments like that one get to the core of what makes the picture (mildly) rewarding—Molly and Lawless John explores the limited choices available to both criminals and women in the Wild West, thereby telling a story with aspects of class and gender, rather than the typical Western themes of male identity and personal honor.

Molly and Lawless John: FUNKY

The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker (1970)

          How close does this flick get to navel-gazing? It’s a matter of inches. In one scene, excruciatingly self-absorbed protagonist Jonathan (Jordan Christopher) lays in bed with his girlfriend, toying with his chest hairs and lamenting how difficult it is to style them. Upset that his girlfriend doesn’t appreciate the importance of this problem, he suggests she take male hormones. “That way,” he says, “you could share my experience.” Surely both Jonathan and the filmmakers are being playful here, but the presence of such a trivial scene indicates the picture’s myopic perspective. This is yet another hip youth-culture story tracking the misadventures of an entitled dude who resents that life demands he consider other people’s feelings. Like the same year’s The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, this is a character study of a capricious jerk, so the drama stems from situations in which the “hero” discovers that others don’t value his feelings as highly as he does. In modern parlance, these supposedly with-it guys are snowflakes, delicate and prone to melting.

          Jonathan makes his living as a cab driver, and he spends his evenings at cool New York parties, bouncing from one sex partner to the next while finding amusement by helping his nebbish pal, Winslow (Robert Walden), meet women. Alas, self-interest always wins. During a party scene, Jonathan introduces Winslow to a nymphet, but when Winslow botches casual conversation, Jonathan accepts the nymphet’s offer of a tryst. At least until her prattling bores him. Then he abandons her. Nice guy. Eventually, Jonathan begins a proper relationship with a nice girl, only to betray her the first time a more attractive woman offers sex. You get the idea. Complications ensue, but they all run along the same line—how many people will Jonathan injure with his thoughtlessness, and how hypocritical will he become when demanding forgiveness and loyalty despite his transgressions?

          The grotesquerie of male ego notwithstanding, The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker has some appealing aspects. Though unexceptional, the acting and filmmaking are competent. Some scenes are quirky in that special oh-so-’70s way, as when Jonathan demands that his girlfriend prove her altruism by handing out salt-shakers to strangers. A weird motif depicts Jonathan’s ongoing battle with the ants infesting a cabinet beneath his kitchen sink; at various times he declares open combat and temporary amnesty while addressing the insects. Better still, glimmers of truth emerge through the muck of the storyline, which is alternately arch, pretentious, and vapid, though sometimes interesting. The best moment features Jonathan’s declaration of independence, culminating in a sad revelation: “I’m not rebelling,” he says. “That takes strength, initiative, courage, foresight, determination. I’m just earning an easy living. I drive a taxi because I’m basically very lazy. . . . I found myself already, and I was very disappointed.”

The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker: FUNKY

Massage Parlor Murders (1973)

Massage Parlor Murders is actually fairly restrained, given what sort of images its moniker calls to mind, but that’s not to say the picture is made with any skill. The combination of bad acting, skuzzy locations, and ugly photography gives the vibe of a cheap porno movie, and the plot is a tiresome loop—nude scene, murder, boring interlude featuring police detectives, another nude scene, another murder, and so on. Yet the movie provides a minor cinema-history footnote because it features the screen debut of the fine character actor George Dzunda, who is also credited as the project’s assistant director. It should also be noted that some might find Massage Parlor Murders interesting as a time capsule, thanks to ample location photography throughout the grungier parts of New York. What’s more, the movie is edited so badly as to generate a certain traffic-accident allure, especially when the story devolves into chaos during the finale. The highlight of the picture, at least from a so-bad-it’s-good perspective, is the moment when the cop investigating the murders goes undercover in a massage parlor, then races out of the parlor to chase a suspect—while still wearing only a powder-blue modesty towel roughly the size of a dinner napkin. One can’t help but wonder if some TV writer encountered this scene and later channeled the image into the infamous Starsky & Hutch sequence featuring the studly detectives wearing just towels and shoulder holsters. (The scene was reprised in Ben Stiller’s 2004 Starsky & Hutch movie.) Anyway, you get the idea—talking about a silly scene that Massage Parlor Murders might have inspired is infinitely more interesting than talking about Massage Parlor Murders itself.

Massage Parlor Murders: SQUARE

The Disappearance of Aimee (1976)

          The controversial life of 1920s evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson has been fictionalized many times, but, to date, no one has attempted a proper biopic. By default, that means the made-for-TV mystery The Disappearance of Aimee is the most significant movie about one of the Jazz Age’s most fascinating characters. Focusing on a scandalous trial during which McPherson was accused of faking her own kidnapping, the movie boasts two impressive stars: Big-screen actress Faye Dunaway plays McPherson, and Hollywood legend Bette Davis plays her mother. It’s not hard to guess what lured Dunaway to the role, because it’s a showy part full of contradictions, and the centerpiece of the film is an epic-length monologue. Dunaway’s beauty, charisma, and intensity serve the picture well, giving the screen version of McPherson magnetism akin to the messianic power the real McPherson held over her millions of followers. However, John McGreevey’s script lacks a strong point of view. Although the picture subtly implies that public skepticism about McPherson’s kidnapping story was justified, The Disappearance of Aimee never makes an argument for one reading of history versus another. Accordingly, the movie feels unsatisfying despite having been made with a fair degree of intelligence and skill.

          The real facts underpinning the story are as follows—in 1926, McPherson disappeared while swimming in the Pacific near Venice, California. Her mother proclaimed McPherson dead to the evangelist’s megachurch throng and to McPherson’s myriad radio listeners, but some refused to accept the loss. Reports of sightings poured in, and two people drowned while searching for her remains. Then McPherson’s mother received a ransom demand from kidnappers, followed, some time later, by a surprise call from McPherson herself. The evangelist claimed she escaped from her kidnappers, wandered alone in the desert, and found her way to a hospital. Los Angeles authorities later sued McPherson, alleging she violated public morals by fabricating the kidnapping story to cover up an affair with a married man. The combination of a lack of evidence and McPherson’s impassioned direct address to the jury complicated the court proceedings.

          While The Disappearance of Aimee deals with all of this material, too many interesting scenes are played off-camera. (Presumably the filmmakers thought that showing McPherson’s kidnapping would legitimize her version of events.) From sermon scenes to trial scenes, The Disappearance of Aimee is all talk, talk, talk, culminating in the aforementioned monologue—a 10-minute speech during which McPherson lays out the particulars of her abduction. Alas, there’s a world of difference between Dunaway’s monologues here and her long speeches in the same year’s theatrical feature Network. (McGreevey is no Paddy Chayefsky.) Still, The Disappearance of Aimee is interesting, and some elements—including James Woods’ performance as a snarky investigator—add sharp edges.

The Disappearance of Aimee: FUNKY

Charley and the Angel (1973)

          Ostensibly adapted from a 1971 novel by Will Stanton but in most respects a shameless clone of the Frank Capra-directed classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1945), this harmless live-action comedy from Walt Disney Productions takes place in a generic Midwestern city during the Depression. Uptight hardware-store proprietor Charley (Fred MacMurray) focuses so much on work that he’s become alienated from his three kids. Meanwhile, his long-suffering wife, Nettie (Cloris Leachman), longs for the adventure of visiting the World’s Fair in Chicago. One day, Charley escapes a series of near-fatal accidents and then encounters an angel (Harry Morgan), who explains that he’s been tasked with collecting Charley’s soul. Charley begs for time in which to settle his affairs, and you can guess what happens next—the brush with morality makes Charley realize how much he has to live for, so he becomes a better father, husband, and person, thereby improving his chances of earning a celestial reprieve. Whereas It’s a Wonderful Life goes dark and deep with themes of self-doubt and suicide, Charley and the Angel goes shallow and soothing by suggesting that any individual who makes a sincere effort can dramatically improve the circumstances of his or her life. If only that were so.

          In some ways, Charley and the Angel is quite palatable. The storyline is coherent and linear, even with the goofy subplot about Charley’s sons inadvertently becoming bootleggers. Production values are excellent, despite the rickety process shots during car scenes; there’s even a certain hokey charm to the old-school FX used during scenes of the angel floating through the air and moving objects while invisible. As helmed by the reliable Vincent McEveety, the picture moves along briskly, lingering on important emotional moments just long enough for skilled actors to imbue their characters with humanity. Unsurprisingly, Morgan is the standout because he gets most of the jokes, and his cranky/sweet vibe is appealing. Leachman does respectable work in a thankless role, while Kurt Russell, playing a boy who courts Charley’s daughter, provides bland earnestness. As for MacMurray, he lends a somewhat bewildering energy—or rather a somewhat bewildering lack of energy. He’s so calm, even when insane things are happening, that he nearly becomes a caricature of the unflappable Disney dad archetype.

Charley and the Angel: FUNKY

Brother, Cry for Me (1970)

Ostensibly telling a story about three brothers battling each other for control of an inheritance, Brother, Cry for Me is an incoherent mess. The first 15 minutes of the picture comprise a pointless scene of brawling and debauchery at a pool party. Things don’t improve from there. Michael (Richard Davatos) and his conniving wife, Jenny (Leslie Parrish), travel to Boca Raton after Michael receives a letter stating he’s the sole heir of—well, depending on which scene, it’s either a coffee plantation or a fortune in Aztec treasure. Upon arriving in Florida, Michael encounters his estranged brother, Geoffrey (Steve Drexel). Their other sibling, Jim (Larry Pennell), isn’t far behind. On land and in various rinky-dink boats, the brothers try to kill each other, with Geoffrey and Jim pursuing the additional motive of wooing Jenny away from Michael. Tracking the movie in any greater detail would require exhaustive rewinding, because the storytelling is disastrous. Bad actors share the screen with performers who are merely mediocre, but horrible filmmaking levels the playing field—with scripting and direction this bad, everyone comes off poorly. Worse, the film’s Floridian locations make every frame look cheap and oversaturated and ugly. The amateurism infusing the picture even taints simple transitional bits; in a particularly galling touch, the same hissing sound effect is used to accompany separate cutaway shots of an alligator and a snake. Really? Every reptile in the Everglades makes the exact same sound? By the time subplots about a larcenous youth and a police inspector enter the mix, Brother, Cry for Me has become hopelessly confused, and nothing prior to that point makes the trouble of figuring out what’s happening seem worthwhile.

Brother, Cry for Me: SQUARE

A Touch of Zen (1971)

          Featuring a steady flow of exquisite images, A Touch of Zen takes the martial-arts genre to places it rarely goes, prioritizing characterization, pictorial wonderment, and spirituality as highly as action and dramatic tension. Produced and set in Taiwan, the picture takes place in the medieval past, with a simple painter drawn into complex intrigue, so even though the narrative inevitably involves martial-arts masters, A Touch of Zen doesn’t follow the usual frenetic template of bridging violent scenes with as little transitional material as possible. Written and directed by King Hu, the epic story sprawls across three hours, and the pacing is leisurely, so some viewers will find their patience tested waiting for the action to begin. Prior to that juncture, Hu creates an intoxicating mood while also building mysteries and illuminating characters. He’s not equally successful in each of these endeavors, and if there’s a major criticism here, it’s that A Touch of Zen is more of an aesthetic and intellectual exercise than an emotional experience. That said, it’s to Hu’s great credit that the picture commands attention as well as it does. The premise is interesting enough to carry things along, the payoff is unusual, and the style is intoxicating.

          Gu Sheng-tsai (Shih Chun) is an impoverished daydreamer who makes a meager living doing calligraphy and portraits from a storefront inside a ramshackle fort that several poor families have transformed into a makeshift village. He lives with his hectoring mother, who complains that Gu is over 30 but directionless and unmarried. When a beautiful young woman named Yang hui-zhen (Hsu Feng) moves into a nearby residence, Gu’s mother tries to arrange a marriage, but Yang refuses. Then another stranger arrives in town, and it emerges that the stranger is an agent from the tyrannical East Chamber, sent to find and capture Yang, a fugitive wanted by the despotic regime. Once the stranger discovers Yang’s whereabouts, he attacks her, but she defends herself with a spectacular display of martial-arts prowess, even defying gravity by leaping onto rooftops. Gu is beguiled by her mastery, and, upon learning about her past, he aligns with her cause, so he becomes a companion during  her subsequent adventures.

          Toward the third hour of A Touch of Zen, the story expands to include wandering monks who use their superlative martial-arts skills to aid Yang, hence the religious connotations of the title. Yet the involvement of the monks isn’t the picture’s only supernatural element, because during the mesmerizing combat sequence that comprises the movie’s centerpiece, Gu cleverly exploits widespread beliefs that the fort is haunted. A Touch of Zen is so long, moving through so many distinct phases, that the plot splinters into abstraction. The movie also gifts certain characters with abilities far beyond those of normal humans, as during the breathtaking fight that takes place in a misty bamboo forest. (The acrobatics of A Touch of Zen were among the influences on Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)

          In some ways, A Touch of Zen is a flight of fancy, seeing as how a goodhearted everyman becomes the consort to a supernatural warrior against a backdrop of demigods waging a titanic battle of good versus evil. And yet in other ways, A Touch of Zen is a meditation on existentialism, as demonstrated by the provocative ambiguities of the final scene and the implication of mortals and immortals communing to deliver a messiah. Therefore, perhaps the most fascinating thing about A Touch of Zen that it offers so much fodder for interpretation amid its visceral and visual delights.

A Touch of Zen: GROOVY

Angels Brigade (1979)

So here’s a bad idea for a movie—make a sexy action thriller about curvy babes who team up to battle drug dealers, cast it with beauties who can’t act, reconfigure the piece as a comedy even though nobody involved with the project knows how to construct or deliver a joke, and produce the movie as a PG-rated release, thereby eliminating possibilities for lurid content. Such is the sad state of affairs in Angel’s Brigade, a stunningly awful escapist romp from schlock-cinema stalwart Greydon Clark, who produced, co-wrote, and directed this shameless riff on Charlie’s Angels. Presented very much like a cartoon, with comical supporting characters, goofy optical transitions, and stylized uniforms for the heroines, the movie feels wrong from its first frames. To the accompaniment of a messy score that includes everything from disco to orchestral music, teenager Bobby Wilson (Mike Gugliotta) rips off small-time dealer Sticks (Darby Hinton), provoking the ire of Sticks’ boss, Mike Farrell (Jack Palance). Bobby gets his ass kicked, and word of the beating reaches his older sister, Michelle Wilson (Susan Kiger), an up-and-coming pop singer. Hold on tight, because here’s where it gets weird. Bobby’s schoolteacher, April Thomas (Jacqueline Cole), approaches Michelle with a plan to attack and destroy a drug-processing plant, which should be no problem because—yes, this is really the reason she gives—Michelle has a song on the pop charts. The duo then recruits five more ladies, including a karate expert and a stunt driver, for their commando mission. Michelle’s income—again, from one pop song—pays for the whole enterprise. Overnight, the ladies become highly skilled soldiers in matching skintight jumpsuits. Clark tries for a light touch throughout most of the picture (watch for appearances by Gilligan’s Island costars Jim Backus and Alan Hale), then inexplicably ditches the jokes for “serious” scenes featuring villains played by Palance and Peter Lawford. The tone is all over the place, and the acting by the leading ladies is ghastly. Plus, it’s not as if Clark meant to deter the male gaze, because he frequently puts the curvaceous women into lingerie and low-cut gowns and swimsuits. There’s virtually nothing so disheartening as sleaze without the courage of its convictions, because what’s the point? Also known as Angels Revenge and Seven from Heaven, this dud is to be avoided by everyone except those who thrive on schadefreude.

Angels Brigade: LAME

Boardwalk (1979)

          A grim story about the everyday humiliations of getting old, cowriter-director Stephen Verona’s Boardwalk leavens its darker aspects by celebrating the love that keeps two people connected after 50 years of marriage. Very much a showcase for the celebrated acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who enjoyed a burst of fame following his memorable appearance in The Godfather: Part II (1974), Boardwalk offers a peculiar mixture of caricature and understatement. The film’s broadest element is its depiction of a street gang as a group of one-dimensional maniacs wreaking pointless havoc on a once-peaceful neighborhood surrounding the Coney Island boardwalk. Nearly every other aspect of the picture is executed with soft-spoken intimacy, so the tension between the gang scenes and the rest of the film can be jarring at times. Yet to Verona’s credit, he integrates the gang element early and keeps it humming throughout the storyline until it becomes crucial to the climax, so one never gets the sense that the narrative has spun out of control. Somewhat like the messy lives it depicts, the narrative of Boardwalk goes where it goes, even if the trajectory sometimes seems capricious and cruel.

          David Rosen (Strasberg) operates a cafeteria near the boardwalk, and his middle-aged kids, three sons and a daughter, all work there. David’s wife, Becky (Ruth Gordon), teaches piano lessons out of the home they’ve shared for half a century. But Coney is changing, mostly for the worse. Muggings and robberies are commonplace, graffiti is everywhere, and seniors are moving out in droves because they don’t feel safe anymore. David stubbornly resists the temptation to flee, partially because he remembers leaving his European homeland as a young man and doesn’t want to get pushed off his turf a second time. His resolve is tested as criminal activity edges closer and closer to his front door, and another complication arises when Becky develops health problems.

          At its core, Boardwalk is about one man looking for dignity in a world that seems determined to strip him of everything he loves, so there’s a powerful individual-vs.-society statement in here somewhere. Other threads, which add tonal variety but not much weight, involve the romantic travails of David’s daughter, Florence (Janet Leigh), and the career woes of her adult son, an up-and-coming musician named Peter (Michael Ayr). Like the gang scenes, these subplots are awkward, but they eventually yield important moments.

          It’s evident that Verona knows his locations well, so whether he’s going wide to use street art as a painterly backdrop or going close to focus on the well-loved tchotchkes inside Jewish homes, he employs the camera artfully. Verona also does a fine job balancing different types of performance energy, juxtaposing, for instance, Strasberg’s quiet resilience with Gordon’s singular mixture of fragility and raunchiness. Withholding background music from many scenes represents another strong creative choice, pulling viewers into the worlds of the movie’s characters. So while Boardwalk is far from masterful, it’s idiosyncratic and impassioned, all the way through to the startling final scene.

Boardwalk: GROOVY

One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975)

The hiring of Caucasian actors to play Asian roles was still commonplace in the Hollywood of the mid-’70s, so it would be wrong to single out Walt Disney Productions for special enmity while discussing the race problem plaguing the company’s kiddie comedy One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing. Still, watching Peter Ustinov mug his way through a stereotypical performance as a Chinese master criminal is painful, and his portrayal reflects the overall stupidity of the picture. Even though One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing benefits from Disney’s usual lavish production values, to say nothing of Helen Hayes’ appealing star turn as an intrepid nanny, the picture plucks so much low-hanging fruit, comedically speaking, that it’s hard to imagine anyone but very young children enjoying the experience. Much of the film comprises an absurd chase during which a truck bearing a dinosaur skeleton roams the streets of 1920s London, with every imaginable sight gag used to attenuate the sequence. Other would-be highlights include a scene of multiple nannies crawling and leaping around the skeleton while looking for a hidden object, the same set of nannies hiding inside the mouth of a life-sized whale sculpture, and a bizarre throwaway scene in which a King Kong-sized yeti helpfully carries a man across a snowy Tibetan field. As for the plot, it’s idiocy about Hnup Wan (Ustinov) seeking the formula for something called “Lotus X,” which British explorer Lord Southmere (Derek Nimmo) has stolen from China. Through convoluted circumstances, Lord Southmere tasks his childhood nanny, Hettie (Hayes), with protecting the formula. She recruits fellow caregivers to foil Hnup Wan’s scheme. Basically a cartoon rendered in live-action, this is pathetic stuff, too silly for adult viewers to enjoy, and too racially insensitive for modern parents to share with their kids.

One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing: LAME

The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973)

          Significant as the first appearance of Telly Savalas’ popular TV crimefighter Lt. Theo Kojack, whose last name was altered slightly once the character earned his own series a few months later, The Marcus-Nelson Murders works well as a stand-alone story about the complexities of police work. Extrapolated from a real-life case that informed the Supreme Court’s famous Miranda ruling, The Marcus-Nelson Murders depicts the callousness with which the NYPD railroads an innocent man who makes an easy patsy for a high-profile crime. The Miranda ruling stipulated that suspects must be informed of their rights at the time of arrest, but the young man at the center of The Marcus-Nelson Murders gets arraigned on murder charges before he even realizes what’s happening. As written by the highly capable dramatist Abby Mann (an Oscar winner for 1961’s theatrical feature Judgment at Nuremberg), this adaptation of Selwyn Rabb’s book Justice in the Back Room has the flavor and toughness of Sidney Lumet’s myriad New York crime films, right down to the varied shadings of morality.

          The story begins with a mysterious attacker invading a Manhattan apartment. Two of the women who live there are brutally murdered during the home invasion. Public attention compels the police to throw enormous manpower onto the case. Among the investigators is Kojack. He mostly lingers on the sidelines for the first half of this long film, though director Joseph Sargent periodically features domestic interludes between Kojack and his on-again/off-again lover, Ruthie (Lorraine Gary). After cops in Brooklyn arrest a simple young black man, Lewis Humes (Gene Woodbury), on an unrelated charge, they become convinced Humes was responsible for the murders. The Brooklyn cops coerce a confession with a toxic combination of charm and violence. Kojack moves to the foreground after Humes is indicted, and the detective senses something isn’t right about the evidence incriminating Humes. What follows is the meticulous process by which Kojack and crusading lawyer Jake Weinhaus (José Ferrer) pursue the truth. Along the way, thorny issues (institutionalized racism, police procedure, unreliable eyewitness testimony) make it difficult for the heroes to see daylight, even as Humes rots in a cell.

          The Marcus-Nelson Murders covers a lot of ground, so at times it feels more like a miniseries than a movie. Some supporting characters resonate, including aggressive Brooklyn prosecutor Mario Portello (Allen Garfield), while others get lost in the shuffle. The picture also has false notes, such as casting B-movie stalwart Marjoe Gortner as a Puerto Rican. Nonetheless, the overarching theme—how the pursuit of justice intersects with the rights of the accused—comes through powerfully. Excepting the jaded narration he provides, Kojack is not the film’s most interesting element, so it’s no surprise producers overhauled the character for his weekly series, transforming the rechristened “Theo Kojak” from a principled observer to a wisecracking rulebreaker.

The Marcus-Nelson Murders: GROOVY

Summer School Teachers (1974)

          Summer School Teachers is yet another ensemble piece from New World about three young women whose sex lives are intertwined because they work at the same place. Specifically, twentysomething Midwesterners Conklin (Candice Rialson), Denise (Rhonda Leigh Hopkins), and Sally (Pat Anderson) accept temporary jobs teaching in the summer program at a high school in California. Each character has a separate subplot, and each subplot has a different tonality, so while the overall vibe of the picture is gentle drama, some scenes veer into comedy while others venture into thriller terrain. Featuring an unusually strong distaff presence behind the camera (producer Julie Corman, writer-director Barbara Peters), the picture integrates feminist ideals into many scenes, though that doesn’t stop Summer School Teachers from delivering a showcase topless scene for each of its leading ladies. Thanks to a coherent script and some passable acting, this is somewhat more respectable than the usual drive-in sleaze, but it’s still intended primarily to titillate. De facto leading lady Rialson is as charming and feisty here as she is in the outrageous sex comedy Chatterbox! (1977), and B-movie icon Dick Miller lends his cantankerous presence as her character’s sexist nemesis. Their scenes are the best parts of the picture.
          Conklin teaches physical education, so she clashes with the school’s football coach (Miler) upon accepting the challenge to form a girls’ football squad. Concurrently, she breaks one of her own rules by dating a fellow teacher. Meanwhile, Denise teaches chemistry, imprudently becoming involved with a juvenile-delinquent student, and Sally courts controversy by allowing erotic work in her photography class. Outside school hours, she dates a number of men including a former rock star now working as a grocery-store clerk. The Conklin story is fairly enjoyable and also the most effective delivery system for the picture’s equal-rights sloganeering. However, the Denise storyline is blandly melodramatic, and the Sally storyline is silly. In the movie’s goofiest scene, two old biddies listen through a wall while the rock star prepares a meal for Sally with such bizarre techniques as throwing a head of lettuce through the strings of a harp to shred the leaves. The biddies get aroused by misinterpreting what they overhear (“The only thing better than my meat is my sauce,” etc.). Although the scene doesn’t work, at least it represents an attempt at ribald wit.

Summer School Teachers: FUNKY