Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

          Writer James Goldman, the older brother of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scribe William Goldman, made his name with the play and screenplay The Lion in Winter (released as a film in 1968), which dramatized the life of England’s King Henry II. He then spent much of his career exploring similarly lofty historical subjects, and Goldman’s ability to blend the personal and political is on full display in the downbeat epic Nicholas and Alexandra, which depicts the doomed reign of Russia’s last tsar. Nicholas Romanoff (Michael Jayston) is the product of a 300-year dynasty, an insulated royal so oblivious to his people’s suffering that he blithely extends military conflicts out of personal pride. He’s also preoccupied with his loving marriage to Alexandra (Janet Suzman), a foreign-born aristocrat who engenders only enmity from the Russian populace, so when the couple’s son, Alexis, is diagnosed with hemophilia, they lose virtually all connection with life outside the palace. Meanwhile, ambitious politicians including Vladimir Lenin (Michael Bryant) carefully transform public rage into the seeds of revolution.

          Even at a length well over three hours, Nicholas and Alexandra, based on the book of the same name by Robert K. Massie, tackles an enormous amount of history; some viewers will get lost amidst the huge cast of characters and the shifting backdrops of social change. Also problematic is director Franklin J. Schaffner’s regal style. Taking a step away from his usual robust camerawork, Schaffner shoots Nicholas and Alexandra somewhat like a play, with lengthy dialogue passages unfolding in an unhurried fashion, ornate costumes and sets allowed to overwhelm actors, and stiff blocking. The movie’s dramatic power is further muted by Jayston’s intense but quiet lead performance; although perfectly cast as an ineffectual monarch, Jayston displays a soft-spoken style that’s more soothing than invigorating.

          Nonetheless, Nicholas and Alexandra is such an ambitious and handsome production, offering so many insights into a tumultuous period, that it overcomes its weaknesses. The dialogue is consistently intelligent and probing, the intercutting between subplots is careful and logical, and the physical reality of the production is awesome—whether the setting is a barren Siberian encampment or a glorious St. Petersburg palace. Plus, the acting is uniformly good, even though most of the players are as understated as Jayston. Suzman is especially strong, playing a lioness of a mother, and future Doctor Who star Tom Baker is creepy as Alexandra’s notoriously debauched advisor, “mad monk” Rasputin. Familiar faces including Ian Holm, Laurence Olivier, and John Wood appear in the cast, though everyone takes a backseat to the leading players. While probably not exciting or lurid enough to entice viewers who are not predisposed toward historical subjects, Nicholas and Alexandra is an elegant treatment of an unusual subject: the reign of a man who didn’t understand the obligations that accompanied his crown until it was far too late.

Nicholas and Alexandra: GROOVY

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (1972) & The Strongest Man in the World (1975)

          These follow-ups to the 1969 Disney hit The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes continue the adventures of Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell), a science major at fictional Medfield College who keeps stumbling upon formulas that give him amazing abilities. Unlike most live-action Disney offerings, the Medfield movies lack cutesy kids and syrupy sentimentality; instead, they’re brisk slapstick diversions featuring enthusiastic performances by teenagers and slickly professional turns by veteran comedy pros. Since all three pictures in the series recycle the same reliable storyline—Medfield is in financial trouble, and only Dexter and his pals can save the day—they don’t demand much of viewers, but they’re entertaining nonetheless. In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, an accident gives Dexter a computer brain that gets exploited by local crime boss A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero), who uses Dexter’s skills to win big at the track. By far the best of the three pictures (admittedly, not the highest hurdle to vault), Computer sets up the world of the series, especially the comic relief of Medfield’s amusingly inept leader, Dean Higgins (Joe Flynn).

          In the second picture, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, Dexter and his buddy Schuyler (Michael McGreevey) stumble upon a formula for invisibility. When bad old A.J. Arno (Romero again) buys up the lease on Medfield, the boys make themselves invisible and snoop on him, only to discover he plans to foreclose on the school and turn it into a casino. Investigative high jinks ensue, with a climax involving Arno and his hoodlum accomplice Cookie (Richard Bakalyan) becoming invisible and evading police in an invisible car. It’s all very cartoonish, of course, but the sight gags mostly work and the tone is consistently light and amiable. Now You See Him features a lot more Dean Higgins (still played by Flynn) than the first picture, and he delivers enjoyable buffoonery during two long sequences of playing golf, first spectacularly with help from an invisible Dexter and then abysmally without.

          Predictably, the series runs out of gas in the third picture, The Strongest Man in the World, the sci-fi hook of which is, as the title bluntly states, Dexter becoming super-strong. Russell, who is exuberant and likeable in all three pictures, is sidelined in Strongest Man, with Schuyler (still McGreevey) getting substantially more screen time. That’s not a good thing, nor is the too-prominent presence of old-school comics like Eve Arden and Phil Silvers. With grownups taking center stage, including returning players Flynn and Romero, there’s way too much bug-eyed overacting, and not enough of those gosh-darn crazy kids. Strongest Man is the first Medfield picture to feel padded, and it’s just as well Disney gave up on the series after such a lackluster third entry. Trivia buffs may enjoy noting that a young Ed Begley Jr. shows up briefly in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes as a student at rival State University, then returns in Now You See Him, Now You Don’t as a star pupil at Medfield; this says a lot about the continuity, or lack thereof, between the pictures.

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t: FUNKY

The Strongest Man in the World: LAME

The One and Only (1978)

          Steve Gordon was just beginning an impressive career when he died; after several years of writing for sitcoms, he made an auspicious directorial debut with the beloved comedy Arthur (1981), based on his own script, then suffered a fatal heart attack in 1982 at the age of 43. The only other feature on his too-brief filmography is The One and Only, which he wrote and produced, and which has similarities to Arthur. The story of a self-possessed man-child whose dreams of stardom lead him to a career in professional wrestling, The One and Only shares with Arthur the conceit that a person who lives only for laughter can find a soulmate who sees substance beneath the silliness.

          Henry Winkler stars as Andy Schmidt, a college student who’s convinced that he’s destined for greatness, despite having shown no particular skill for his chosen vocation of acting. Quite to the contrary, Andy’s such an irrepressible ham that during a school production of a classical play, he uses his one line as an excuse for interrupting the show with cheap comedy shtick. Nonetheless, his single-minded determination wins the heart of amiable coed Mary Crawford (Kim Darby).

          Much to the consternation of Mary’s uptight parents (William Daniels and Polly Holliday), the young lovers get hitched and move from the Midwest to New York, where Andy tries and fails to get an acting career going. Crossing paths with a little person who works on the wrestling circuit, Milton (Hervé Villechaize), Andy accidentally discovers his true destiny as a shameless crowd-pleaser who assumes various identities in the wrestling ring, from a psychic who hypnotizes opponents to a Nazi who bops his enemies with a war helmet.

           As directed by old-school comedy pro Carl Reiner, The One and Only goes down smoothly, mixing amiable I-gotta-be-me speechifying with terrific one-liners (some of the short jokes made at Villechaize’s expense are laugh-out-loud funny, though they definitely precede political correctness). Gordon’s script is pure fluff, and the story stops just when it’s picking up steam, but funny is funny, so it’s hard to argue with results. It helps that Winkler is terrific, all charm and comic timing, although Gene Saks (best known as a director of many Neil Simon films and plays) nearly steals the movie with his caustic performance as Andy’s hilariously crude agent.

The One and Only: FUNKY

The Deep (1977)

          Few ’70s blockbusters had the far-reaching impact of Jaws (1975), which spawned not only countless substandard imitators but also a boom period for nearly everyone involved in the original picture. Both phenomena manifested in The Deep, a glossy thriller about oceanic peril based on a novel by the author of Jaws, Peter Benchley. With the additional exception of actor Robert Shaw’s participation, however, the similarities pretty much end there. Whereas Jaws is a robust adventure film with underwater horror, The Deep is a comparatively limp crime picture with underwater boredom. The movie has many noteworthy elements, all of which cheerfully pander to the public’s appetite for lurid sensation, but it’s also a 123-minute slog filled with meandering scenes that go on seemingly forever.

          The story begins when two young Americans who are vacationing in Bermuda discover a shipwreck during a scuba dive in the waters off the island. An artifact they recover catches the attention of a crusty deep-sea salvage expert (Robert Shaw) and a vicious drug dealer (Louis Gossett Jr.), because it turns out the shipwreck is filled with vials containing enough morphine to produce a huge amount of heroin. Accordingly, most of the picture comprises repeated dives to gather booty from the wreck, plus on-shore confrontations like the bit in which the Americans drive scooters while being chased by a truckload of bad guys. The thrills in The Deep are shameless, right down to the tepid running gag about a gigantic killer eel who lurks somewhere inside the shipwreck, and in fact the movie’s best-known element is its tackiest: Voluptuous costar Jacqueline Bisset’s long dive at the beginning of the movie certified her sex-symbol status because she spends the whole sequence in a nearly transparent white T-shirt.

         For good or ill, that sequence is indicative of The Deep’s ample lowbrow appeal. In the same vein, leading man Nick Nolte was at the apex of his handsomeness and youthful intensity, so he’s enjoyable even when he’s chewing the scenery. Shaw, basically delivering a toned-down version of his Jaws performance, is thoroughly entertaining even though he’s saddled with trite material. Gossett is effective as a crook hiding a killer’s heart behind a winning smile, and Eli Wallach adds campy flavor as the old sea dog who helps the heroes on their dives. The Deep falls apart toward the end, resorting to all sorts of tacky fake-outs to ensure a highly improbable happy ending, and fans expecting sea-critter action on the order of Jaws will be disappointed. Still, with its whatever-works mishmash of brazen titillation and luxurious underwater photography, The Deep is enjoyably shallow.

The Deep: FUNKY

The Blue Bird (1976)

          Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlink’s fantasy about peasant children drifting through a magical dreamworld, originally titled L’Oiseau blue, provided the source material for two silent films and an Oscar-nominated Shirley Temple movie in 1940, all bearing the English-language title The Blue Bird, before venerable director George Cukor helmed this full-color musical version in 1976. Whatever charms the piece has in its previous incarnations are absent from Cukor’s picture, however, which is awkward, dull, and vapid. The whimsical story has two kids whisked away to a trippy fantasyland by a fairy named Light (Elizabeth Taylor) in order to recover the Blue Bird of Happiness, which will enrich the life of a sick child living near the peasants.

          Accompanying the children on their adventure are personified versions of household items like bread and sugar and water, plus walking-and-talking incarnations of their pet cat (Cicely Tyson) and dog (George Cole). During their journey, the kids meet an obnoxious oak tree (Harry Andrews), a demonic creature called Night (Jane Fonda), a seductive woman representing all things luxurious (Ava Gardner), and even cranky old Father Time (Robert Morley). The sheer amount of hokum crammed into one story is numbing, as are the muddled aesthetics of Cukor’s version.

          The costumes are self-consciously artificial (Tyson wears a leotard, a scarf, and half-hearted cat makeup), the settings fluctuate indiscriminately between tacky sets and lush European forests (the picture was shot in Russia), and the songs are so cloying and insubstantial that they barely register as anything more than background noise. The young actors playing the leads (including Patsy Kensit, who years later costarred in Lethal Weapon 2) are weak, and the adults fail to impress—Cukor, who seems to think he’s making a glossy MGM musical in the ’30s, steers his cast toward florid line readings instead of performances, with only Cole offering a glimmer of characterization as a loyal puppy who digs being able to chat with his master.

The Blue Bird: LAME

Lucky Lady (1975)

          Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were hot after American Graffiti, scoring a huge purchase price for their screenplay Lucky Lady, which gene-spliced the music-driven ribaldry of Cabaret (1972) with the twisty plotting of The Sting (1973). An impressive roster of A-list talents converged on the project, including director Stanley Donen and the three stars billed above the title: Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and Cabaret Oscar-winner Liza Minnelli. Cabaret vets working behind the camera include cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth and songwriters Fred Ebb and John Kander. But even with all of this cinematic firepower, and a hefty budget of $13 million, Lucky Lady is little more than a well-made train wreck.

          The main problem is that expensive script, which puts three despicable characters into an icky housekeeping arrangement. After an unnecessarily convoluted set-up, Prohibition-era schemers Kibby (Hackman), Claire (Minnelli), and Walker (Reynolds) become rum-runners sailing their ship, the Lucky Lady, back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., chased by a homicidal Coast Guard captain (Geoffrey Lewis) and a ruthless fellow bootlegger (John Hillerman). Half of the picture is devoted to criminal intrigue, including several high-seas shootouts, so the movie’s frothy tone disappears whenever the story turns dark and violent, which is often. The other half of the picture is devoted to the farce of Kibby and Walker competing for Claire; she moves back and forth between their beds until all three finally sleep together. Why these two men are so excited by the abrasive Claire is as mystifying as why viewers are expected to care about any of them, since all three are deceitful, shallow, and tiresome. (Supporting player Robby Benson, as a Lucky Lady shipmate, adds the film’s only glimmer of sweetness.)

          With its painfully episodic structure, the movie feels much longer than its 118-minute running time, and Unsworth goes berserk with his signature haze filters, making some images almost indecipherable. The stars try valiantly to make the material work, with Reynolds thriving in his light-comedy métier and Minnelli belting out a few numbers, but aside from the production values and star power, there’s little to recommend in Lucky Lady.

Lucky Lady: LAME

One on One (1977)

          A charming underdog drama starring Robby Benson, the ’70s teen heartthrob with boyish features and impossibly blue eyes, One on One depicts the journey of Henry Steele, a small-town hoops star who discovers the complexities of the wider world when he’s recruited to play ball at a Los Angeles college. The story tracks Henry’s conflict with hard-driving Coach Moreland Smith (G.D. Spradlin), who becomes convinced Henry can’t make it in the big time, and Henry’s romance with sexy graduate student Janet Hayes (Annette O’Toole), who slowly realizes Henry is more than just another dumb jock.

          Co-written by Benson and his father, Jerry Segal, One on One is a perfect vehicle for its young leading man, because the story is as unassuming and warm as Benson’s onscreen persona. A brisk prologue establishes that Henry’s been groomed since childhood for basketball greatness, and the minute he pulls into LA, it’s painfully evident that he’s a corn-fed rube because he gets hustled by the first pretty girl he meets, a chipper hitchhiker (Melanie Griffith) who rips off all his cash.

          Once Henry arrives at school, he’s overwhelmed by the scale of everything—the size of the sports arena, even the size of the other players—and then, when he becomes infatuated with his tutor, Janet, he’s totally flummoxed. Henry’s resulting shaky performance on the basketball court alienates Coach Smith, who tries to intimidate Henry into quitting. Enter, as the saying goes, the love of a good woman, and soon Henry’s got the motivation to fight.

          Although there’s nothing groundbreaking in One on One, it’s a thoroughly watchable movie. The script balances Henry’s journey from wide-eyed innocent to toughened-up competitor with sweet romantic interludes and easygoing comic vignettes, like Henry’s close encounters with Coach Smith’s sex-crazed secretary, B.J. Rudolph (Gail Strickland). As directed by reliable journeyman Lamont Johnson, the movie is paced comfortably, and the sports scenes have effective documentary-style realism.

          The cast is filled with several vivid actors who make an impact thanks to well thought-out characterizations; for instance, Hector Morales plays a cranky campus groundskeeper in one amusing scene. The main focus is, of course, the love story, and that works well: O’Toole’s tough-cookie vibe makes a strong counterpoint to Benson’s puppy-dog routine. And while it’s true that Benson’s character makes a couple of abrupt leaps, Henry’s overall arc feels credible, and Benson is, as O’Toole describes him the picture, adorable. Spradlin, probably best known for his small roles in important movies like Apocalypse Now (1979), meshes domineering cruelty and obsessive focus, bringing a militaristic, weakness-will-not-be-tolerated quality to his role.

          The fruity songs by soft-rock duo Seals & Crofts that punctuate the soundtrack might be too precious for some viewers (particularly since the lyrics comment on the action a bit too specifically), but the music adds to the picture’s evocative snapshot of a particular moment in time. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

One on One: GROOVY

Mad Max (1979)

          Australian director George Miller announced himself to the international marketplace as a formidable storyteller with Mad Max, a violent story set in a bleak near future where brutal gangs clash with trigger-happy cops on the battlefields of open highways; Miller’s camera swirls and swoops around the action in a kinetic way, accentuating the excitement generated by the confrontations between leather-clad road warriors. Mad Max was also the first opportunity for many viewers to see the young Mel Gibson, who tapped into his well-documented reservoir of personal rage to play an already tough cop transformed into a grim avenger by unfortunate circumstance. Having said all that, is Mad Max a particularly good movie? Not really.

          The story is a tricked-up rehash of standard vigilante tropes, Straw Dogs with car fetishism thrown in for good measure. The narrative is also relentlessly histrionic, with every scene punctuated by capital letters in terms of blunt foreshadowing and heavy-handed visual metaphors. Yet even though there’s not a whit of subtlety to be found in these 88 minutes, the acting is generally quite strong. It’s interesting to watch Gibson’s first attempt at the man-on-the-edge routine he later perfected in countless Hollywood movies; leading lady Joanne Samuel is earthy and warm; and villain Hugh Keays-Byrne does an effective job of portraying a punk-rock version of your friendly neighborhood sadist (his one shaved eyebrow is a nice touch). So while the story is thoroughly clichéd and the violence is cartoonishly excessive (let’s run that guy over twice, because once is never enough), Mad Max seethes with the energy unique to ambitious young artists who are desperate to show off their skills.

          After Mad Max made a splash, Warner Bros. hired Miller to shoot The Road Warrior (1981), a hybrid remake/sequel that features Gibson in a star-marking reprise of his Mad Max role. In addition to a bigger budget, The Road Warrior has more imagination and style than its predecessor, though it shares the same numbing sledgehammer approach. A third film in the series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, appeared in 1985, and a fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road, is reportedly in the works, albeit without Gibson in the lead role.

Mad Max: FUNKY

Showdown (1973)

By the time Showdown was released, the traditional Western had been all but replaced on American movie screens by revisionist Westerns filled with dark characterizations and grimy location photography. So it’s jarring to watch this utterly traditional film featuring two utterly traditional stars (Rock Hudson and Dean Martin), because the picture feels as if it could have been made in the ’60s or even the ’50s. Accepting as a given that the movie is hopelessly out of step for its era, Showdown is harmless enough—an earnest story about two lifelong friends who end up on opposite sides of the law. Hudson plays an Old West sheriff who makes a small but honest living with his spitfire wife (Susan Clark), and Martin plays his long-lost pal, a ne’er-do-well who has fallen in with a gang of thieves. When Martin’s crew robs a train in Hudson’s territory, Hudson has to hunt his old friend. Martin is torn between his desire for freedom and his reluctance to shoot a pal, and the situation gets complicated when Martin’s ex-partner (Donald Moffat) decides he wants revenge, meaning Martin now has two gunslingers after him. Notwithstanding a series of illuminating flashbacks showing the main characters bonding prior to current events (an admirable attempt at deepening characterization), there’s nothing in Showdown that Western fans haven’t seen a hundred times before. The dialogue is decent and the various open-desert shootouts and high-desert chases are okay, though it’s distracting that the film employs antiquated rear-projection techniques. Hudson is a solid presence, especially since the stoicism of cowboy characters suits his limited range, and Martin is charming even if he’s a bit long in the tooth for this sort of thing. Showdown is too innocuous to dislike, but it’s not a cause for much excitement.

Showdown: FUNKY

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

          A year before The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped on movie screens in the first step of its journey toward becoming a cult classic, another rock-and-roll musical did the exact same thing, albeit on a much smaller scale. Written and directed by Brian De Palma, whose work on the picture bridges his early efforts at counterculture-themed satire with his future identity as a suspense maven, Phantom of the Paradise is an intentionally funny but still deeply weird morality tale about the inevitable problems that arise when art gets into bed with big business.

          William Finley, a gangly and bug-eyed college chum of De Palma’s whose film career mostly consists of strange characterizations in his friend’s movies, stars as Winslow, a sensitive composer finishing his masterpiece, a rock cantata adapted from Goerthe’s Faust. Winslow’s music catches the ear of megalomaniacal producer/executive Swan (Paul Williams), who steals Winslow’s magnum opus. Winslow seeks revenge, which triggers an insane series of events that leave Winslow disfigured and presumed dead.

          Thus, Winslow becomes a masked maniac called the Phantom, wreaking bloody havoc on Swan’s lavish new theater, the Paradise. Undaunted, Swan strikes a deal with his nemesis, because it turns out Swan’s in league with supernatural forces—and not above manipulating poor Winslow by threatening the life of the pretty young singer Winslow loves, Phoenix (Jessica Harper). To say that all of this comes to a bad end isn’t giving anything away, since violent climaxes are in the nature of these things, but the devil, pun intended, is in the details.

          De Palma fills the screen with bizarre costumes, sets, and props that blend everything from futurism to leather fetishism to pop art to transvestitism, so Phantom’s visuals are a crazy quilt of flamboyant signifiers. The Phantom’s guise, for instance, includes a strange biker helmet with some sort of bird-beak protrusion over the face and a gigantic eyehole that accentuates one of Finley’s abnormally large orbs. And then there’s the offbeat look of the movie’s real villain, Swan.

          Diminutive singer-songwriter Williams, of “Evergreen” fame, was often cast in ’70s films and TV shows as freaky characters because his tiny body and long blonde hair lent him a childlike look that he undercut by portraying creeps. In Phantom, Williams’ appearance is exploited in an especially playful fashion: His character is sexual catnip to every woman in sight. Yes, Phantom really does include (chaste) orgy scenes in which beautiful women writhe in ecstasy at the thought of bedding Paul Williams.

          The picture gets more outré when priceless B-movie actor Gerrit Graham shows up as Beef, a muscular glam-rock singer who’s a macho monster onstage and a prissy queen offstage; Graham is hysterical, the movie’s energy flags the minute he leaves the story, especially since his exit is such an outrageous high point.

          Despite being a quasi-horror picture, Phantom of the Paradise isn’t scary. It’s so over-the-top ironic that it’s impossible to take anything seriously, and in fact the picture’s incessant wink-wink strangeness makes the whole thing feel like a did-I-really-just-see-that dream. However, thanks to a breathless pace, nonstop cartoonish imagery, and the peculiar potency of Williams’ music (he composed the tunes himself, and shared an Oscar nomination for the background score with George Aliceson Tipton), Phantom of the Paradise is never boring.

 

Phantom of the Paradise: FREAKY

Pretty Maids all in a Row (1971)

          A quick description of Pretty Maids all in a Row explains not only why the movie’s disparate elements couldn’t possibly have merged into a coherent whole, but also why the picture is a genuine cinematic oddity. Gene Roddenberry, the idealistic ex-cop who created Star Trek, wrote and produced the story, from a novel by Francis Pollini, about a high-school guidance counselor/football coach (Rock Hudson) who’s sleeping with half the girls in his school. Demonstrating a shocking lack of creative vision, Roddenberry’s script is an all-over-the-map mélange of murder mystery, psychodrama, romantic comedy, and sex farce. Directing this enterprise is Roger Vadim, the leering Frenchman best known for the exploitative ’60s movies he made starring two of his wives, Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. With these men pulling the story in a hundred directions at once, Pretty Maids seems like a different film in each scene.

          When it begins, it’s the tacky story of horny teenager Ponce (John David Carson), who’s flummoxed by his constant erections, though it should be noted that in Vadim’s lurid fantasy world, Ponce’s high school is populated by gorgeous college-age women who walk around in body-hugging sweaters and micro-miniskirts; it’s difficult to imagine any straight boy keeping his wits about him in this sexualized environment. Ponce loses his mind when he literally gets an eyeful of his hot substitute teacher, Miss Smith (Angie Dickinson), because she leans over and presses her breasts into his face. He excuses himself to the restroom (presumably to take matters in hand), and discovers a seemingly unconscious girl in the next stall. When he reaches over to cop a feel, however, he discovers she’s actually dead. Classy!

          Once it becomes clear the girl was murdered, the school’s prissy principal (Roddy McDowall) and the local-yokel sheriff (Keenan Wynn) prove useless, so suave state cop Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) takes the case. Then, when the bodies of young women keep piling up around the school, Ponce’s mentor, Michael “Tiger” McDrew (Hudson), emerges as a suspect. Somewhere in this mess of a story, Tiger finds time to push Ponce and Miss Smith together, apparently eager to get his young apprentice laid; this leads to cringe-worthy seduction scenes between Carson and Dickinson. Adding to the almost surreal quality of the storyline, most of the characters in the movie seem more concerned with whether Tiger’s team will win the big upcoming game than with finding the serial killer in their midst.

          One fears that satire might have been the intention.

          Pretty Maids all in a Row is a narrative disaster from any rational viewpoint, but the movie delivers a lot of vivid texture. Vadim fills the screen with beautiful women, often in some state of undress, and the leading players are entertaining even if they don’t have real roles to play. Hudson’s mildly creepy as a power-hungry nut who transitions from sexual conquests to getting away with murder; Dickinson is cartoonishly sexy in a performance that borders on camp; and Savalas is so bitchy and urbane that he’s one evening gown away from coming across like a drag queen. Strange stuff. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Pretty Maids all in a Row: FUNKY

The Muppet Movie (1979)

          True story: When The Muppet Movie came out in 1979, I fell so completely in love with the film that I went to see it every day for a week. Admittedly, I was 10 and therefore just about the perfect age for the picture, but still, there’s a reason the first cinematic outing of Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and the rest of Jim Henson’s Muppets got under my skin. Sweet but tart enough to avoid being cloying, the story unfolds like a classic Hollywood fable in the Frank Capra tradition—at the beginning of the picture, Kermit is just another frog playing a banjo in a swamp until a vacationing talent agent (Dom DeLuise) informs Kermit he could entertain millions of people if he went to Tinseltown.

          And that, right there, is what kills me about The Muppet Movie: It’s a story about the one noble reason for making films, which is using the cinematic medium to enrich the lives of others. As someone who has spent his entire professional life involved with movies, I lose sight of that beautiful idea every day, and I would never pretend that all of my reasons for embracing a cinematic existence are admirable. Nonetheless, somewhere inside me is the 10-year-old kid who connected with Kermit’s dream, and we could all do worse than remembering who we wanted to be before life made us who we actually are, with all of our petty flaws.

          If all of this sounds awfully high-minded since the subject at hand is a family comedy starring a bunch of felt puppets, it’s useful to explain that the surfaces of The Muppet Movie delighted my younger self as much as the heart of the film touched me. Brightly colored, fast-moving, sly, and tuneful, The Muppet Movie is a musical comedy alternating between charming dramatic vignettes (oh, Miss Piggy, the obstacles you place in your own path), silly comedy sketches (Gonzo taking a ride on a handful of balloons), and toe-tapping songs written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher. (As if penning the gorgeous main theme “Rainbow Connection” wasn’t enough, the duo also contribute fun numbers like the jaunty road anthem “Movin’ Right Along” and the Electric Mayhem’s funky jam, “Can You Picture That?”)

          The story about Kermit slowly gathering a surrogate family during his trip to Hollywood is fun (why wouldn’t Fozzie Bear drive a Studebaker?), and the stop-and-start romance between Kermit and Miss Piggy offers an amusing satire of overwrought romantic melodrama. The bad-guy business with evil restauranter Doc Hopper (Charles During) is genius, because what better nemesis for Kermit than a fast-food titan who operates a chain selling frog’s legs? (During is wonderfully flamboyant, and Austin Pendleton is a hoot as his morally conflicted sidekick.) The movie regularly drifts into loopy territory, like the climax in which Keith Moon-inspired muppet Animal plays a bigger role than usual, and on top of everything, the movie is stuffed with amazing cameos by comedy stars and other celebrities. Of special note are Mel Brooks as a nutjob German scientist, Steve Martin as an obnoxious waiter (“Oh, may I?”), and Orson Welles as a Hollywood mogul.

          Decades after my weeklong immersion in The Muppet Movie, I still find it as clever, entertaining, and heartfelt as ever—if not more so, since the intervening years have revealed how rare it is to find a genuine celebration of decency anywhere in the cinema. I doubt I’ll ever tire of listening to Henson’s deeply felt statement.

The Muppet Movie: RIGHT ON

Monte Walsh (1970)

          A lovingly photographed ode to an aging cowboy trying to make sense of his life in the waning days of the Old West era, Monte Walsh is evocative and humane despite glacial pacing and murky storytelling. One of the few films directed by the venerable cinematographer William A. Fraker, the picture looks fantastic from start to finish, with dusty scenes of hard men battling nature plus glamorously lit romantic vignettes; furthermore, the production design makes every costume and prop feel like a real object that’s been used for tough work. The authenticity continues through to the dialogue, which is effective in an unpretentious sort of way (“I ain’t gonna spit on my whole life,” the title character says when faced with the prospect of becoming a performer in a Wild West sideshow). The big problem with Monte Walsh is that for all of its insight and texture, the picture doesn’t have a particularly strong story.

          Based on a novel by Jack Schaefer, the tale concerns graying cowboys Monte (Lee Marvin) and Chet (Jack Palance), who struggle to find work as employers including straight-shooting rancher Cal (Jim Davis) lose market share to omnivorous conglomerates. Meanwhile, the boys fall into a violent ongoing rivalry with Shorty (Mitch Ryan), a younger man with a bad temper and a buffoonish tendency to show off his riding skills. Monte also has an ongoing quasi-romance with a French prostitute, Martine (Jeanne Moreau), and even though they talk about settling down, she knows Monte will be out riding horses until he dies.

          There’s a somber quality to the whole picture, as if every character knows a gloomy future awaits, and the film uses irony for effective counterpoint (Mama Cass sings a wistful theme song, “The Good Times Are Coming,” which is appears as a sad refrain throughout the movie). Unfortunately, even though many moments are touching, there’s a fundamental lack of psychological clarity, so heavy scenes of characters facing their demons are perplexing. For instance, what is Monte trying to prove during the movie’s biggest action scene, when he breaks a bronco over the course of a wild ride that destroys half a town?

         Despite the handicap of a muddy script, Marvin and Palance give plaintive performances, and the supporting cast is strong. Though Moreau is badly underused in one of her few English-language pictures (Monte Walsh isn’t terribly concerned with the lives of women), Davis, Ryan, Billy “Green” Bush, Matt Clark, and Bo Hopkins all essay vivid frontier types. FYI, Hollywood took another crack at Schafer’s novel when Monte Walsh was remade for television in 2003, this time with Tom Selleck in the title role.

Monte Walsh: FUNKY

Yanks (1979)

Although it boasts crisp performances, interesting subject matter, lavish production values, and sensitive direction by John Schlesinger, the World War II ensemble romance Yanks is a chore to watch, because the characterizations and storyline aren’t compelling enough to sustain the movie’s bloated running time—two hours and 18 minutes is a bit windy for a piffle, no matter how handsomely made. Exploring relationships between American soldiers and the residents of the ravaged England the GIs occupied during the early 1940s, the picture focuses on Matt (Richard Gere), an enlisted man who falls in love with a British store clerk (Lisa Eichhorn), and John (William Devane), an officer who carries on an extramarital affair with an aristocratic volunteer nurse (Vanessa Redgrave). If you think that sounds like the set-up for a maudlin soap opera, then you’ve lit upon the problem: With its anguished goodbye scenes, tender romantic encounters, and violin-drenched soundtrack, Yanks is an intelligent but syrupy melodrama. There’s not a whit of battlefield action in the movie, so it’s all about the unexpected unions lovers form during wartime. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with a WWII chick flick, shouldn’t this sort of thing evoke some sort of emotional reaction, instead of just unspooling in glossy monotony? Everything in the movie looks great, from the meticulous period details to the shining faces of young beauties (male and female alike), but it’s all so trite. As for the actors, Devane and Redgrave perform with chilly professionalism, while Gere and Eichhorn generate a bit more heat. Gere tries too hard, however, forcing intensity when it doesn’t come naturally, so he’s somewhat awkward, and although Eichhorn is at the height of her youthful beauty, she simply doesn’t have the magnetism required for a movie of this scale. Yanks means well enough, and it’s quite watchable on a scene-by-scene basis, but the gulf between its slight narrative and its epic production values results in a lot of fuss over nothing.

Yanks: FUNKY

Penitentiary (1979)

Penitentiary is a poorly made prison picture rife with some of the most demeaning African-American stereotypes ever put on film. Writer-producer-director Jamaa Fanaka tells the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy), a drifter who gets into a brawl protecting a prostitute (Hazel Spears) from a pair of crazed bikers. Gordone’s infraction lands him in a nearly all-black prison, where the opportunistic white warden (Chuck Mitchell) arranges boxing matches so his brother, a fight promoter, can find new talent. Inexplicably, nearly an hour of the 99-minute movie elapses before Gordone steps into the ring for the first time; the picture lingers on interminable scenes of attempted prison rape, illicit sex with visiting inmates from the neighboring female prison, and general prison debauchery. Instead of character development, explorations of big-house psychology, or even just plain old action or suspense, the picture is an amateurish fetish film, with endless shots of sweaty black men, vignettes of fevered carnality, and ultraviolent fistfights, all of which perpetuate ugly clichés about African-Americans as animals; if there was some higher purpose being pursued, it’s not perceptible. Weirdly, given the picture’s rote approach, Fanaka avoids the usual blaxploitation contrivance of establishing whites as an oppressive force, because Gordone’s imprisonment is justified and the warden treats him fairly. As a result, the movie inadvertently comes across as an indictment of brother-on-brother debasement. Just about the only redeeming quality of the picture is the presence of a character naned Hezzikia “Seldom Seen” Jackson (Floyd Chatman), an aging inmate who delivers a provocative speech about what it’s like to be “institutionalized” after spending most of his life behind bars. Grotesque, lurid, and sloppy, Penitentiary nonetheless did enough business to spawn two ’80s sequels and to elongate former radio DJ Kennedy’s brief and unremarkable screen career.

Penitentiary: LAME

Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)

          Although nominally a blaxploitation flick because of its racial themes and predominately African-American cast, Thomasine & Bushrod is primarily one of the many Bonnie & Clyde rip-offs that appeared in the early ’70s—an old-timey love story about doomed souls on the wrong side of the law. The fact that it’s also a Western is what makes Thomasine & Bushrod somewhat unique, because the varied influences add up to an offbeat vibe, even though the movie isn’t particularly impressive.

          At the beginning of the story, sexy bounty hunter Thomasine (Vonetta McGee) uses her wiles to trap a white criminal. Delivering the crook to odious U.S. Marshal Bogardie (George Murdock), Thomasine announces her plan to capture the notorious black outlaw J.P. Bushrod (Max Julien)—and when she tracks him down, viewers realize that Thomasine and Bushrod are actually a couple reuniting after a long separation. Together, they embark on a crime spree so brazen that Bogardie makes capturing them his personal mission. Before the final confrontation, however, the robbers hook up with their impulsive Jamaican friend, Jomo (Glynn Turman), forming a surrogate family in a series of campsites and abandoned homes.

          Written by Julien, who starred in the gritty pimp saga The Mack (1973), Thomasine & Bushrod misses nearly every opportunity to add meaning and significance to its story. There are a few lip-service speeches about the difficulties of being black in the Old West, and Bushrod’s Robin Hood-style habit of giving his stolen loot to poor people approaches a weak kind of social commentary, but for the most part, the lead characters are simply crooks biding time until they pay for their misdeeds. Perhaps the idea was to say something about how African-Americans can only be free in an oppressive society by flouting that society’s rules; if so, this potentially interesting theme never rises to the surface. Nonetheless, Julien’s humane screenwriting delivers a few memorable moments, like the throwaway interaction between Bushrod and an aging black man who is touched when Bushrod actually asks his name, a courtesy the man hasn’t been shown in years.

          Julien and McGee make an interesting screen couple, since Julien is so mellow he barely seems like he’s acting and McGee is as fiery as she is photogenic. Turman, so great a year later in Cooley High (1975), is borderline campy with his flamboyant accent and costume, though still quite likeable, and Murdock delivers the requisite one-note villainous performance. Thomasine & Bushrod was directed by Gordon Parks Jr., best known for the drug-dealer flick Super Fly (1972), and he employs his usual haphazard style, punctuating Thomasine & Bushrod with the same type of groovy still-photo montages he employed for Super Fly. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

Thomasine & Bushrod: FUNKY

Voices (1979)

          Had it received the benefits of a careful script rewrite and a more germane selection of musical elements, Voices might have worked, because its simple premise could have been the seed for a sweet romance. Instead, Voices is a well-intentioned but forgettable misfire that, in its worst moments, becomes nearly laughable. Michael Ontkean stars as Drew Rothman, a struggling singer who makes ends meet running deliveries for his grandfather’s dry-cleaning business. While out and about one day, he spots a pretty girl, Rosemarie (Amy Irving), then longs for the day he’ll run into her again. Meanwhile, he wrestles with family dramas—Drew’s dad, Frank (Alex Rocco), is a compulsive gambler, and Drew’s little brother, Raymond (Barry Miller), is getting hassled by school bullies. Then, when Drew finally finds Rosemarie again, he discovers that the dreamgirl he’s been admiring from afar is actually deaf. To the picture’s credit, writer John Herzfeld and director Robert Markowitz aren’t out to make the cheap tearjerker implied by the set-up of a musician falling for a woman who can’t hear. Instead, they’re more interested in the heartening love-conquers-all story of Drew leaving the safety of the hearing world in order to understand Rosemarie’s challenges.

          In the picture’s best scenes, the filmmakers address those challenges through sharp exchanges between Rosemarie and her concerned mother (Viveca Lindfors), who advises Rosemarie to embrace a marginalized lifestyle rather than risk emotional pain in the big, bad outside world. Unfortunately, this sort of interesting material is smothered by promising subplots that aren’t resolved in a satisfying manner; it’s as if the filmmakers can’t decide which path to follow. Furthermore, the arc involving Rosemarie’s dream of becoming a dancer pirouettes too far into the realm of contrived irony. And, much as it pains me to say this since I’m a fan of both men, the music composed by Jimmy Webb (the songwriter of “MacArthur Park”) and sung by Burton Cummings (of the Guess Who) doesn’t work. These two collectively give Ontkean’s character his voice, and their colorations are far too precious to spring forth from a Hoboken street kid trying to make it in grimy nightclubs. So while Voices isn’t a total wash by a long shot—it’s brisk and filled with sincere performances—the movie comes off like a sloppy rough draft. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Voices: FUNKY

The Black Hole (1979)

          By the late ’70s, a decade after Walt Disney’s death, the movie company bearing his name had lost the marketplace dominance it enjoyed during Walt’s heyday. Although the animation division remained adrift until 1989, Disney’s live-action unit began a brief but daring creative renaissance in 1979. That’s when the studio jumped onto the Star Wars bandwagon with The Black Hole, a dark sci-fi adventure story boasting opulent special effects and a memorably brooding music score by the great John Barry. The story involves a wonderfully absurd contrivance: In the year 2130, a deep-space exploration ship encounters a black hole and discovers that a long-lost spaceship, the Cygnus, is somehow locked in a permanent orbit over the mouth of the black hole. Our intrepid heroes enter the Cygnus and discover that megalomaniacal scientist Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) controls the ship with an army of robots. When Reinhardt tries to shanghai the heroes into participating in a mad scheme, they rebel and trigger a chain of events that sends all of the movie’s main characters plunging into the black hole.

          The story is goofy and turgid, and the clumsiest fingerprint of the Disney brand is the presence of cutesy robots including the wide-eyed V.I.N.CENT (voiced by Roddy McDowall). Furthermore, the acting and dialogue are laughably wooden, with unfortunate leading players Joseph Bottoms, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, and Anthony Perkins effortlessly upstaged by Schell, who works a florid Bond-villain groove. (Flattening the overwrought performance styles of both Borgnine and Perkins is a dubious sort of accomplishment.) As a piece of dramatic art, The Black Hole is, well, a black hole. As a compendium of vivid sensations, however, the picture is memorable. Barry’s music is grandiose and malevolent, expressing the vastness of space in such a powerful way that many scenes are genuinely unnerving. Some of the old-school optical effects are breathtaking, with exquisitely detailed spaceship models faring better than inconsistent greenscreen work.
          The Black Hole also boasts one of the weirdest climaxes in mainstream sci-fi cinema—a grim, phantasmagorical sequence illustrating the trippy horrors hidden inside the titular phenomenon. To say there’s disharmony between cutesy robots and a 2001-style head trip is an understatement, but if you’re an imaginative viewer willing to pick and choose which parts of this movie to enjoy, you’ll discover many superficial pleasures, as well as a few surreal ones.

The Black Hole: FUNKY

Boulevard Nights (1979)

          An early exploration of Latino gang life in East LA, made before images of that particular subculture became familiar to mainstream audiences, the straightforward morality tale Boulevard Nights is not particularly audacious in content or execution, but the plain-faced style helps ease viewers into a rich world. Richard Yniguez, who deservedly caught some notice for the suspenseful telefilm The Deadly Tower (1976), is strong as Raymond Avila, an auto mechanic who escaped the gang lifestyle that infests his East LA neighborhood. He earns a decent living, enjoys the respect of his peers, and entertains dreams of opening his own shop some day. He’s also involved in longtime relationship with Shady (Marta DuBois), who has gone further than Raymond in escaping the barrio; she works in an office downtown even though she still lives in the ’hood.

          The only big impediment to their relationship is Raymond’s prolonged adolescence, because he loves to spend his weekends cruising the neighborhood boulevard, showing off the hydraulics in his souped-up lowrider—the only big impediment, that is, except for Raymond’s little brother, Chuco (Danny De La Paz), who’s so deep into the gang life that tragedy seems inevitable. As the story unfolds, Raymond tries to balance the joys of building a life with Shady and the trials of keeping Chuco out of trouble, a challenge exacerbated by Chuco’s drug problems and emotional issues; the younger Avila is so wired that he lets a scuffle with a rival gang snowball into a blood feud.

          Directed by journeyman Michael Pressman, written by Desmond Nakano, and produced by Tony Bill (who later made an equally sensitive story about life on the streets, 1980’s My Bodyguard), Boulevard Nights has the by-the-numbers professionalism of a good TV movie, and except for a healthy smattering of F-bombs, there’s little here that screams “major theatrical feature.” Nonetheless, the sincerity of the effort put forth by those behind and in front of the camera carry the day, making Boulevard Nights into an anguished statement that steers clear of bleeding-heart histrionics; instead of speeches about the terrors of gang life, the story presents everyday realities about life in a minority enclave that’s almost hermetically sealed from the outside world, with codes and values defined by factors including drugs, poverty, and racism.

          What makes the picture distinctive, aside from across-the-board good performances, is the lack of a white character functioning as an observer (or, shudder “voice of reason”). With very little fuss, the picture immerses viewers in a world that feels credible, though undoubtedly jacked up for dramatic purposes, thereby earning the emotional hit at the end of the story. Boulevard Nights isn’t a great film, but as one of the first mainstream productions to explore its subject matter, it’s admirably groundbreaking. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Boulevard Nights: GROOVY

Doc (1971)

Yet another in the string of revisionist Westerns designed to upend romantic myths about legendary gunfighters, this soft-spoken drama takes a fresh look at tubercular outlaw “Doc” Holliday and his fateful friendship with lawman Wyatt Earp. Stacy Keach, seething with the quiet intensity that made him one of the most interesting leading men of the ’70s, stars as Doc, and Harris Yulin, better known for the character parts he’s played in countless movies and TV shows, costars as Earp. (A miscast and ineffectual Faye Dunaway appears as Katie Elder, Doc’s lover.) Although Doc covers the same events as most Earp stories—he ruthlessly wields his power as the lawman of Tombstone, Arizona, until a showdown with the violent Clanton clan becomes inevitable—the picture examines the events surrounding the notorious “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” from a new perspective. Yulin plays Earp as a cold-blooded opportunist using his badge to build a petty empire, and Doc is the thoughtful but troubled friend drawn into Earp’s grudge match. Written by celebrated newspaper columnist and novelist Pete Hamill, the script for Doc is probably too probing and sensitive for its own good—it’s one thing to strip archetypal heroes of their mythic power in order to reveal the flesh-and-blood people behind the legends, but it’s another thing to make them so blandly ordinary that they’re not interesting enough to sustain a feature-length narrative. Matters are not helped by the fact that director Frank Perry is calling the shots. At his best orchestrating pretentious oddities like The Swimmer (1968) and Play It As It Lays (1972), Perry offers no special flair for straight drama or, for that matter, the unique demands of the Western genre. So while admirable for its intentions, Doc isn’t exciting to watch or even particularly memorable, even though the richly textured performances by Keach and Yulin hint at what the movie could have been.

Doc: FUNKY

Heroes (1977)

          Sincere and well-intentioned but not particularly good, Heroes takes a seriocomic look at the traumas plaguing Vietnam-era combat vets trying to assimilate back into normal life. The picture is most noteworthy as a star vehicle for Henry Winkler, who was well into his phenomenally popular run as ’50s greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on the sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984). Leaving the leather jacket and pomade behind, Winkler plays a delusional vet named Jack Dunne, who flees a New York City mental hospital to pursue his bizarre dream of opening a worm farm with several combat buddies. He lands on a cross-country bus, seated next to conflicted city girl Carol Bell (Sally Field), who has also fled Manhattan; she’s ditching her impending nuptials for reasons that are never particularly clear. What ensues is an odd sort of romantic comedy, with these mismatched souls getting closer to each other as they experience colorful adventures.

          One of these exploits is a long visit with Jack’s Army pal Ken Boyd (Harrison Ford), a simple-minded Midwesterner with a self-destructive streak; he spends his time entering (and losing) stock-car races when he’s not getting hammered and shooting off his M16 in the fields of his family farm. Jack and Carol also run afoul of an ornery bus driver (Val Avery) and the slimy denizens of a redneck bar. Excepting the visit with Ken, the movie’s episodes feel contrived and random, a problem exacerbated by screenwriter James Carabatsos’ vague characterizations and, especially, by the casting of Field and Winkler. Carabatsos can’t figure out how to balance between the film’s comedic and dramatic elements, so the movie’s tonal shifts induce audience whiplash.

          As for Field and Winkler, they’re so inherently likeable that it’s hard to buy them as edgy characters, and the script constantly undercuts their work by going for cutesy jokes at the expense of emotional reality. Nonetheless, Heroes isn’t bad so much as sloppy. Many stretches of the film are charming, and Field and Winkler conjure flashes of sweet intimacy whenever the storytelling calms down enough to let them do serious work. It’s also interesting to see Ford playing a character role instead of a lead, since Heroes was made before his ascension to superstardom in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). He clearly relishes the hard work of inhabiting a troubled individual, and he has many strong moments.

Heroes: FUNKY

Foxy Brown (1974)

After scoring at the box office with Coffy (1973), writer-director Jack Hill and blaxploitation queen Pam Grier delivered more sexed-up crime drama with Foxy Brown, a nasty flick about a woman taking on the mob. Yet while Coffy has force and momentum, Foxy Brown gets mired in a murky storyline. It’s also much more unpleasant than the previous film, thanks to a gruesome sequence in which the heroine is bound, drugged, and repeatedly raped. The storyline gets off to a bad start, because it’s never clear what Foxy does for a living or how she came to know Michael (Terry Carter), her lawman boyfriend. Plus, how does Foxy balance her relationship with a cop and her tight bond with a drug-dealing sibling (Antonio Fargas)? For that matter, when the hell did she learn how to fly a plane? To cut Hill some slack, Foxy Brown apparently began life as a Coffy sequel, and the director was instructed to transform Foxy Brown into a stand-alone film so late in the game that he wasn’t able to properly reconfigure key elements. Notwithstanding these issues, Foxy Brown has built a huge cult audience over the years. Much of the appeal, of course, stems from Grier’s formidable physical presence. She looks fantastic, whether she’s glammed up in a silky wig and evening dress or down-and-dirty in a giant Afro and head-to-toe leather, and she’s a relentless killing machine. The moment when she coils a wire hanger into a claw and gouges out a scumbag’s eye is memorable, as is the bit when she introduces a thug to the business end of a plane’s propeller. Fargas is almost as entertaining as Grier, jive-talking through a campy performance, and Coffy costar Sid Haig shows up briefly to infuse the picture with a welcome burst of nutjob energy. Yet while some elements are watchable, the movie as a whole is distasteful, and the main villain is awful: Every scene featuring the startlingly amateurish Kathryn Loder, as conniving madam Miss Katherine, is excruciating.

Foxy Brown: FUNKY

Sisters (1973)

          After cutting his teeth with a series of irreverent comedies that received marginal releases, director Brian De Palma found his calling as a fearmaker—and his first significant box-office success—by merging his lurid fixations with a cinematic style borrowed from Hollywood’s master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. An unnerving thriller about a reporter who believes she’s discovered that her docile neighbor has a homicidal twin sister, Sisters owes a huge debt to Hitch (right down to the use of composer Bernard Hermann), but it’s also an impressive demonstration of De Palma’s storytelling gifts. As the author of the film’s original story and the co-writer of its script, De Palma has his fingerprints all over this movie, and Sisters sets the template for his many subsequent sexually charged suspense flicks.

          The story is simple: Staten Island-based investigative reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) happens to look across the street during a frenzied murder in the apartment of French-Canadian model Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder). Collier calls the police, but after a skeptical cop (Dolph Sweet) fails to discover any evidence, Collier enlists a private detective (Charles Durning) to continue the investigation. The deeper Collier goes down the rabbit hole of her neighbor’s strange world, however, the more danger Collier invites. As in all of De Palma’s suspense flicks, the story is less important than mood and theme. With Hermann’s effectively bombastic score creating uncomfortable degrees of tension, De Palma sketches a world of biological abnormalities, dysfunctional sexuality, and rampant conspiracies; he also carefully sets the stage so Collier exists in a milieu of logic and rationality until circumstances quite literally land her in an insane asylum.

          Produced for drive-in suppliers American International, Sisters is brisk and sensationalistic, with plenty of gore and a smattering of nudity, yet it’s also finely crafted inasmuch as De Palma designs each frame with an architect’s precision. Despite dodgy cinematography and set decoration (De Palma later benefited from larger budgets and longer shooting schedules), editor Paul Hirsch’s wonderfully methodical pacing makes the most of the footage. So even though De Palma’s later suspense pictures are more visually impressive, few of them can match the no-nonsense economy of Sisters.

Sisters: GROOVY

The Only Game in Town (1970)

Nineteen-seventy was an interesting transitional year for American movies, because the gulf between traditional pictures rooted in Establishment mores and New Hollywood freakouts created in Easy Rider’s wake was gigantic. Accordingly, it’s amazing that interminable studio pabulum like The Only Game in Town was still being manufactured at the same historical moment as counterculture classics like M*A*S*H, but the fact that both movies were released in early 1970 demonstrates why the New Hollywood made the old Hollywood obsolete. The final film directed by studio-era great George Stevens (Giant, A Place in the Sun, Shane), The Only Game in Town is an unbearably talky adaptation of a play by Frank D. Gilroy (who also wrote the script) about the stormy romance between a Vegas showgirl (Elizabeth Taylor) and an inveterate gambler (Warren Beaty). Gilroy fills the movie with one endless scene after another taking place in the showgirl’s drab apartment, so the picture is a lethargic procession of pretentious conversations in a visually uninteresting setting. The writing is so trite that nearly every character adopts some measure of affected world-weariness; for instance, when the gambler makes a romantic declaration and doesn’t get a response, he quips, “I’m sorry, folks, there seems to be a breakdown in the audio portion of our program.” Dooming the entire endeavor is the catastrophic miscasting of the lead role. Though still very beautiful, Taylor is too old and, with all due respect, too heavy to play a showgirl; the filmmakers try to obscure her zaftig figure with glamour-photography tricks and shapeless dresses, which only exacerbates the problem. She’s also terrible in the movie, screeching during arguments and staring vacantly through the innumerable scenes in which her character struggles with indecision. Beatty’s signature mixture of cockiness and dithering makes sense for the gambler role, but even though he and Taylor are fairly close in age, he comes off seeming far too young as her onscreen paramour. Worst of all, Stevens lets this slight story ramble on for 113 excruciating minutes, making The Only Game in Town an ignominious finale to his important career.

The Only Game in Town: SQUARE