1980 Week: Breaker Morant

          Beautifully filmed, expertly acted, meticulously directed, and thoughtfully written, Breaker Morant is not only one of the best Australian films ever made, but also one of the finest dramas of its era. Presenting a complex story about courage, cowardice, politics, violence, and war, the picture dramatizes an infamous real-life incident that took place during the early 20th century in what later became South Africa. Amid the storms of the Second Boer War, fought between forces of the British Empire and those resisting British rule, three officers in an Australian regiment serving the UK were accused of killing unarmed combatants, including a German priest, as reprisal for the murder of their commanding officer. Partisans of the accused characterized the legal action that was brought against the Australians as craven political expediency, a maneuver designed by the British to appease German interests and facilitate a peace settlement. Despite strong evidence proving that the Australians were following orders, the officers were executed, and many people perceived the event as a classic miscarriage of justice.

          Cowritten and directed by Bruce Beresford, using Kenneth J. Ross’ play Breaker Morant as a foundation, this elegantly constructed film follows the trial of the Australians and includes flashbacks to key events on the battlefield. A picture emerges of a conflict in which the rules of engagement were murky at best. The leader of the Australians is the sophisticated Harry “Breaker” Morant (Edward Woodward), a horseman and poet who was born in England and therefore understands the duplicities of the British aristocracy better than his Australian-born comrades. In fact, Morant realizes his fate is sealed the minute he meets the attorney assigned to represent the Australians, an inexperienced Aussie named Major J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson). The lawyer is given only a day to prepare, and all of his motions to buy time are overruled. Yet as the absurdly one-sided military trial commences, Thomas proves more formidable than either the defendants or the jurists expected, sparking hope among the Australians that truth may out. In sad and tragic ways, it does—with little effect on the foregone conclusion.

           Through evidence and testimony, Thomas demonstrates that a no-prisoners policy was in place before the death of the Australians’ commanding officer, thereby demolishing the prosecution’s argument that Morant and the others acted savagely. “The tragedy of war,” Thomas opines, “is that these horrors are committed by normal men, in abnormal circumstances.”

          Beresford shows exquisite restraint in every aspect of filmmaking. The performances are almost perfectly modulated, with anger breaking through decorum at just the right moments, and the camera angles and lighting that Beresford contrives with cinematographer Donald McAlpine heighten tension while also infusing scenes with the immersive texture of remote locales. Woodward is extraordinary in the title role, blending cynicism and romanticism to incarnate a unique individual. Bryan Brown, in his breakout performance, lends roguish charm while playing one of Morant’s co-defendants. And Australian-cinema stalwart Thompson does some of the best work of his career. Best of all, the movie can be watched in close detail by viewers curious about the internecine historical details, and it can also be absorbed viscerally as the story of ordinary men thrown into battle against forces beyond their ken.

          Either way, it’s a masterpiece of dramatic storytelling.

Breaker Morant: RIGHT ON

1980 Week: Flash Gordon

          For many geeks of a certain age, Flash Gordon conjures warm memories of seeing the film in theaters, listening endlessly to the soundtrack LP featuring original songs by Queen, and revisiting the picture during its regular airings on cable. Over the years, the movie has generated not only a large cult following but also plentiful ancillary material—action figures, DVD reissues, a loving tribute nestled inside the comedy blockbuster Ted (2012), directed by Flash Gordon superfan Seth McFarlane. That’s quite an afterlife for a flick that producer Dino Di Laurentiis extrapolated from on old Saturday-matinee serial in order to capitalize on the success of Star Wars (1977). Even though Di Laurentiis spent lavishly on costumes, sets, and special effects, Flash Gordon originally seemed destined for oblivion after its lukewarm box-office reception. Many critics and fans embraced the picture as a kitschy delight, but others merely rolled their eyes at the silliness of the enterprise.

          After all, it’s hard to take a movie seriously when it includes corny dialogue, one-dimensional characterizations, and a terrible leading performance by former Playgirl model Sam J. Jones. But then again, that’s the weird fun of Flash Gordon—the movie embraces its own goofiness, in essence presenting an outer-space adventure while simultaneously satirizing outer-space adventures.

          Flash Gordon’s plot recycles narrative elements from the original serials, so the story begins when outer-space tyrant Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) rains catastrophic ruin onto Earth for sport. Through convoluted circumstances, eccentric scientist Hans Zarkov (Topol) kidnaps New York Jets quarterback Flash Gordon (Jones) and stewardess Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) for a trip to space, because Hans plans to confront Earth’s tormentor. Upon reaching the planet Mongo, which comprises several distinct realms (each with its own climate), Flash pisses off Ming but wins the favor of Ming’s slutty daughter, Princess Aura (Ornella Muti). She frees Flash from Ming’s prison even as Ming prepares to marry Dale, with whom he’s become smitten. After several death-defying adventures, Flash rallies several “princes of Mongo,” including the Robin Hood-like Barin (Timothy Dalton), for a revolution against Ming’s oppressive rule.

          The filmmakers’ tongue-in-cheek approach doesn’t always work, but Flash Gordon has a vibe uniquely its own. The juxtaposition of ’30s-style production design with ’70s-style arena rock is bizarre, the clash between bombastic supporting performance by classical actors and inept work by Anderson and Jones is jarring, and the presence of the great Von Sydow lends something like credibility to certain scenes. Plus, to give credit where it’s due, some of the movie’s ridiculous action scenes are genuinely exciting, such as a mano-a-mano duel that takes place on a giant revolving disk filled with spikes and an epic air battle involving flying “bird men,” souped-up “rocket cycles,” and phallic-looking spaceships. Best of all, perhaps, is the movie’s opulent color scheme, since Di Laurentiis went to the same pop-art well from which he drew the look of Barbarella (1968).

          Ace screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who earned nerd-culture immortality by writing the pilot for the 1966 Batman TV series and thus creating she show’s campy style, brings a playful sensibility to his script for Flash Gordon. The plotting is deliberately adolescent, with heavy play given to the boy-friendly themes of heroism and lust. Semple also jams the script full of jokes, some cringe-worthy and some sly. Meanwhile, director Mike Hodges—a hell of a long way from the gritty noir of Get Carter (1971)—mostly tries to mimic the way George Lucas mimicked serials while shooting Star Wars.

Flash Gordon: FUNKY

The Revengers (1972)

          A passable Western with a few meritorious elements, including a lively supporting performance by Ernest Borgnine and a zippy musical score by Pino Colvi that borrows textures from the work of Elmer Bernstein and Ennio Morricone, The Revengers represents a milquetoast response to the cinema of Sam Peckinpah. Whereas Peckinpah’s Westerns upended the genre by accentuating gritty realism and moral ambiguity, The Revengers has the feel and look of an old-school cowboy movie, even though the broad strokes of the story are quite grim. Had the filmmakers taken their endeavor to its logical conclusion by emulating Peckinpah’s gutsy style instead of simply copping a few of his narrative tropes, The Revengers could have been something special. As is, the movie provides about 90 minutes of so-so entertainment during the course of a bloated 106-minute running time.

          William Holden, giving a phoned-in but still authoritative performance, plays John Benedict, a former Union solider now living quietly on a Colorado ranch with his family. A band of rogue Indians led by a white man raids the ranch one day while John is away hunting, so he returns to find his family slaughtered and his livestock stolen. John ventures into he wilderness in order to find and kill the guilty parties, eventually tracking them across the border to a hideout in Mexico. Realizing he needs extra guns, John manipulates the warden of a Mexican prison into loaning the services of several convicts, among them Americans Job (Woody Strode), a runaway slave, and Hoop (Borgnine), a fast-talking varmint. Adventures and betrayals ensue.

          The Revengers moves along at a good clip, except for a dreary interlude during which John spends time with frontier woman Elizabeth (Susan Hayward), and even though there aren’t many full-out action scenes, the bits of John and his outlaw gang living on the trail have color. Borgnine easily steals the picture by playing a two-faced creep prone to vulgar aphorisms (“That one-eyed rooster got away cleaner than a fart in a high wind!”). And while Holden’s gritted-teeth intensity suits the material well, his boredom during much of the picture is evident. Worse, director Daniel Mann’s periodic attempts at comic relief are punctuated with cringe-inducing musical stings, a sure sign the filmmakers lacked confidence in their own work. Fans of south-of-the-border Westerns should find The Revengers sufficiently distracting, though anyone expecting a proper follow-up to the previous Borgnine/Holden oater will be disappointed—instead of The Wild Bunch (1969), this is more like The Mild Bunch.

The Revengers: FUNKY

Schlock (1973)

          Filmmaker John Landis’ twin preoccupations of campy horror tropes and rebellious juvenile humor permeate his first feature, Schlock, which he made when he was only 21. A one-joke spoof that sputters well before its brief 80-minute running time has elapsed, Schlock is nonetheless endearing—it’s a love letter to the movies from a lifelong fan, and it never takes itself seriously. Although the story is really just a makeshift framework on which Landis hangs innumerable one-liners and sight gags, Schlock tells the “story” of the Schlockthropus, a missing-link monster that emerges from centuries of hibernation and goes on a rampage until falling in love with a teenage girl. Landis, who wrote and directed the picture in addition to playing the title role from inside an ape suit created by future movie-makeup legend Rick Baker, borrows from Frankenstein (1931), King Kong (1933), and about a zillion other shock-cinema favorites, even including footage from The Blob (1958) at one point. Parts of the movie are presented mockumentary-style, with reporter Joe Putzman (Eric Allison) speaking directly to the camera and/or interviewing experts and victims. Other sequences are presented as straightforward narrative, though Landis (in his capacity as an actor) occasionally breaks the illusion by mugging for the camera.

          Schlock is completely silly, but Landis’ deadpan approach to sophomoric humor was already fully formed at this early stage of his career. Clues at murder sites are banana peels. Looney Tunes-style gags occur regularly, such as the bit during which a cigarette lighter that won’t ignite for the longest time suddenly produces a huge jet of flame. Stock characters lampoon stock lines—for instance, a professor proclaims, “I believe we’re on the brink of the greatest scientific breakthrough in the last eight or nine weeks.” Sometimes, this stuff works in a groan-inducing sort of way, and sometimes it doesn’t. The scene of the Schlockthropus participating in a Bronx-cheer contest with a little kid goes on too long, but the bit when the Schlcoktropus uses a throw pillow as a weapon is casually amusing. Throughout the picture, Landis’ camerawork is clean and confident. Editor George Folsey Jr., who subsequently cut most of Landis’ hit comedies, energizes the director’s footage with his customary zippy pacing, thereby ensuring that Schlock has momentum even when it isn’t going anywhere.

Schlock: FUNKY

Punishment Park (1971)

          Offering an outsiders’ view on the sociopolitical problems causing friction in America during the counterculture era, this film by British experimentalist Peter Watkins mashes together references to the antiwar movement, the trial of the Chicago 7, and widespread paranoia about the growth of a police state, among other hot topics. Holding everything together is a pair of bold contrivances. On a narrative level, writer-director Watkins invents the notion of American concentration camps for rebellious youth. And on a stylistic level, as he did in many other films, Watkins uses a documentary aesthetic even though the events depicted onscreen are wholly fictional. Punishment Park is ultimately a bit too obvious and scruffy to generate much excitement—this is sledgehammer satire delivered by way of undisciplined improvisation from nonactors. Nonetheless, Punishment Park is very much a product of its time, meaning that it possesses more historical interest than it does dramatic interest.

          Set in the California desert, the movie imagines a place where members of the Establishment put “seditious” young people on trial for political activism. Those found guilty are given a choice between long prison terms and entrance to something called Punishment Park. The park comprises 50 miles of brutal desert terrain, and the participants are told that if they can successfully traverse the distance without being given food or water, they will be released. Throughout the movie, Watkins intercuts the trial of a new set of antiwar protestors with the ordeal of the previous set, now struggling for survival in Punishment Park. Borrowing a trope from the nihilistic sci-fi movies of the same era, Watkins soon reveals the dark secret of Punishment Park: National Guardsmen patrol the terrain, contriving excuses to murder the participants. In other words, Punishment Park is a death sentence. Had Watkins made the movie in a straightforward dramatic fashion, with proper characterizations and real actors, Punishment Park could have become one of the definitive pieces in the youth-culture canon. As is, the movie suffers from the awkwardness and stridency of a student film. It also recalls the shambolic agitprop of Medium Cool (1969), only without that seminal film’s close tethers to reality.

          At its worst, Punishment Park simply mimics important historical moments—when a black activist in Punishment Park gets bound and gagged in a courtroom, it’s a tacky nod to a real-life incident involving black-power activist Bobby Seale. At its best, the movie allows the spirited young people playing activists to speak their truth through the prism of the movie’s story. For example, the “goal” of participants in Punishment Park is to reach an American flag at the end of the terrain, symbolizing their return to proper U.S. society. But, as one participant crows, “I wouldn’t walk around the goddamned fucking corner for the American flag, let alone the desert.” Watkins captured something here, though he didn’t capture it with quite enough artistry.

Punishment Park: FUNKY

The Naked Ape (1973)

          Based on a nonfiction book about the development of human behavior as compared to that of other primates, this wildly uneven pastiche uses animated vignettes, dream sequences, narrative scenes, and supposedly comedic sketches to illustrate the absurdity and beauty of the human experience. In particular, the movie is preoccupied with sexuality, which should come as no surprise seeing as how Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Films produced the picture. Yet the promise of naughty content is slightly misleading. Although both of the leading actors display their bodies and participate in sex scenes, the movie also gets heavily into war. Additionally, much of the sex stuff is conveyed via cartoons or dialogue, so The Naked Ape is a relatively serious-minded endeavor that simply contains a few discreetly filmed physical encounters. Alas, the picture’s half-hearted approach to sex is indicative of other problems. One gets the sense that writer-director Donald Driver wanted The Naked Ape to be about something important and meaningful. Because he failed to shape a distinctive aesthetic, however, he simply made a freeform mess reflecting hip counterculture attitudes—with nothing of substance behind the posturing.

          The movie opens in a silly way. Wearing a business suit, Lee (Johnny Crawford) walks through a museum exhibit looking at cases that contain life-sized figures representing the different stages of man’s evolution. Upon reaching the last case, which is empty, Lee strips off his closes and enters the case, thereby representing modern man. The camera then studies his body in detail while credits are superimposed over the images. This scene has a certain perversity to it because leading man Crawford initially found fame as a child actor on the 1958-1963 TV series The Rifleman. Publicity for The Naked Ape made a big fuss over the fact that this young man showed his rifle, as it were. Similarly, leading lady Victoria Principal, who plays Lee’s girlfriend, did a nude layout in Playboy to promote the movie—another indicator of the low intentions dragging the piece down.

          Even though it’s only 85 minutes, The Naked Ape feels much longer, since it’s episodic and uneven. One animated sequence about the evolution of clothes has Gilliam-esque style and wit, but most of the ’toons are tepid, and the live-action scenes aren’t much better. Occasionally, Driver simply runs out of gas, as when he burns several minutes on pointless footage of gymnasts giving an exhibition. While Crawford and Principal are both attractive specimens, neither contributes anything memorable in terms of performance. And although the behind-the-scenes participation of the great songwriter Jimmy Webb is noteworthy, since he’s only composed scores for a handful of films, he doesn’t excel here, either, though the music he contributes to a war montage is powerful.

The Naked Ape: LAME

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

          “Why is everything so hard for me?” That simple question epitomizes the poignant impact of The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, a drama from German writer-director Werner Herzog that’s also known as Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Based on the true story of a mysterious youth who appeared in a Bavarian village during the 19th century claiming to have spent his entire life locked in a basement—hence his inability to speak or even to perform basic life skills—the picture unfolds like a sad fairy tale. Shot in a minimalistic style but energized with artful compositions and lighting, the movie opens in a grim dungeon, where Kaspar (Bruno S.) is chained to the floor. Capable only of eating and playing with simple toys, Kaspar is perplexed when his guardian frees him, carries him outside for quick lessons in how to walk and how to speak an introductory sentence, and then delivers him to a small village.

          The residents of the village discover Kaspar soon afterward, standing in a courtyard with a bewildered expression on his face and a bizarre handwritten letter from his guardian held in his hand. According to the letter, Kaspar was given to the guardian when Ksapar was an infant, but the guardian was too poor and too preoccupied with his own children to raise the boy properly. The villagers accept Kaspar as a ward of the state, teaching him hygiene and manners. The most melancholy and provocative scenes in the film depict Kaspar’s reactions when people try to explain religion. Beyond his inability to grasp abstract concepts, Kaspar cannot fathom the notion of almighty being who could tolerate the kind of loneliness and suffering that characterizes Kaspar’s life. Equally maddening is a scene of a university professor “testing” Kaspar’s ability to exercise logic: Kaspar proves clever and thoughtful, but because he cannot articulate his notions via the accepted vernacular of the intelligentsia, he’s deemed an idiot by default. As Kaspar says in a moment of existential despair, “I am so far away from everything.”

          Throughout his career, Herzog has displayed a special ability for discovering obscure true-life stories that are suitable for conveying his singular worldview. Like the grim fictional feature Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and the harrowing documentary Grizzly Man (2005), among many others, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is filled with questions about the meaning of life. In Herzog’s best films, existence is portrayed a grind of hardship and suffering redeemed only by fleeting moments of compassion and transcendence. That’s why Herzog’s casting of Bruno S. in the lead role works so well, even though on many levels the casting is bonkers. In addition to being a nonactor, Bruno S. was in his 40s when he made Kaspar Hauser; the real Kaspar was a teenager when he first appeared. A former mental patient who worked as a laborer and a street musician, Bruno S. seems just as detached from the normal world as the real Kaspar must have been.

          Since Herzog maintains a tight focus on the principal storyline, instead of venturing off into the tangents that dilute many of his films, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is one of the director’s strongest efforts. Like David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a profound examination of society’s unwillingness to embrace those who are truly different. As seen through the unusual prism of Herzog’s directorial perspective, Kaspar comes across as a being so closely connected to the basic rhythms of the universe that his otherness is a living condemnation of the walls society builds to protect itself from natural forces.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: RIGHT ON

O Lucky Man! (1973)

          Throughout film history, noteworthy actor/director collaborations have produced fascinating results. Ford and Wayne. Fellini and Mastroianni. Scorsese and De Niro. Then there are collaborations on the order of a three-film cycle that British director Lindsay Anderson made with Malcolm McDowell. In if . . . (1968), O Lucky Man!, and Brittania Hospital (1982), McDowell plays a character named Mick Travis, although the films are not linked by narrative continuity. The character is more of a concept representing something about the identity of the average UK citizen, and Anderson drops the concept into whatever scenario each movie explores. Whereas the first and last films in the cycle are relatively straightforward allegories about specific institutions (namely boarding schools and hospitals), O Lucky Man is the cinematic equivalent of a sprawling absurdist novel. By turns, the picture is a comedy, a drama, a fantasy, a musical, a satire, and an impossible-to-classify experiment.

          The movie doesn’t work in any conventional sense, and it’s laughably overlong at nearly three hours. Yet O Lucky Man! is skillfully made on a scene-to-scene basis, and the gonzo extremes of the storytelling produce a few memorable moments. Trying to parse what it all means, however, seems a sure path to madness.

          The movie opens with a black-and-white prologue presented like a short silent film—wearing heavy makeup and a cartoonish moustache, McDowell plays a South American laborer who gets caught stealing beans from a coffee farm and has his hands amputated. Next, Anderson cuts to a recording studio, where real-life British musician Alan Price (formerly of blues-rock band the Animals) leads his group through an on-camera performance of the film’s ironic theme song. And then the story proper begins, with Mick Travis graduating from a training program to become a coffee salesman. By this point, the basic mode of the film is set. Anderson uses vignettes of Price singing tunes in order to bridge episodes of Mick experiencing peculiar adventures, and the tone of the movie shifts, often quite shockingly, from episode to episode.

          Running throughout the piece is a generalized quality of social satire, since people in the movie don’t act like normal human beings. Adding yet another layer to the overall artificiality is Anderson’s trope of cutting to black not only between scenes but also during scenes. In many ways, O Lucky Man! feels like the sort of thing a first-year student at film school might make before realizing that resonant content usually delivers stronger results than insouciant affectations. That said, there’s something admirable about the youthful zest in Anderson’s experimentation, though his camerawork and dramaturgy are conventional. At times, the movie seems at war with itself from a stylistic perspective, but it’s just as possible that Anderson envisioned chaos as his guiding aesthetic. For instance, several actors—including the great Sir Ralph Richardson—appear throughout the movie playing multiple roles, even though McDowell only interacts with them as Mick Travis.

          Listing some of the random images in the picture should give a sense of its bizarre sprawl. On one of his sales stops, Mick attends a stag party where cheerful attendees demand to see the “chocolate sandwich,” an onstage sexual encounter between a black man and two white ladies. Mick volunteers for a medical experiment, only to flee when he discovers that the head of a fellow volunteer has been grafted onto the body of a sheep. Mick stumbles onto a military installation, where he’s violently interrogated while a vendor casually sells tea to his torturers. Mick romances a young woman (Helen Mirren) whose father (Richardson) is a super-wealthy businessman, and a job opening emerges at the father’s company when an executive jumps through an office window to his death dozens of stories below. Other items in O Lucky Man! include a blackface sequence, a conspiracy to obliterate African rebels with nerve gas, a judge who enjoys S&M, and a bit during which the lyrics to one of Price’s songs appear onscreen in multiple languages.

          O Lucky Man! is a colossally weird film, but at the same time it’s so deliberate and formal that it lacks the abandon of, say, a proper Ken Russell phantasmagoria. It’s simultaneously insane and tame. FYI, McDowell receives onscreen credit for coming up with the idea for O Lucky Man! One can only imagine how such an idea might have been articulated.

O Lucky Man!: FREAKY

Private Duty Nurses (1971)

          The second in a loose series of sexy-nurse flicks made by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, this pointless but nearly respectable drama was the directorial debut of George Armitage, who later found his niche with such gonzo projects as Vigilante Force (1975) and Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Throughout Private Duty Nurses, one can feel Armitage struggling to integrate substantial topics, and to his credit the exploitive bits of the movie pass quickly. However, Private Duty Nurses ends up failing on two levels—it’s neither the eroticized romp promised by lurid marketing materials nor a serious drama with sociopolitical heft. In trying to serve two masters, Armitage ended up making something formless and forgettable.

          As per the norm of the sexy-nurse cycle, Private Duty Nurses follows the personal and professional lives of a group of attractive young RNs. Lola (Pegi Boucher) is an African-American woman who dates a black doctor campaigning against racist hiring practices at their hospital. Lynn (Pegi Boucher) romances an ecological activist who investigates connections between mysterious deaths and oceanic pollution. And bleeding-heart blonde Spring (Kathy Cannon) tries to coax a tormented Vietnam vet into health with sex and TLC. There’s also a meandering subplot about the girls’ landlord, Dewey (Paul Hampton), a creepy would-be stud who seduces one of the ladies back to his bachelor pad, only to prove virtually impotent. And, naturally, one of the girls gets raped, because apparently no ’70s exploitation movie was considered complete without sexual assault.

          Within individual scenes, Armitage generates fleeting moments of credible drama. He’s at his best depicting the weird dissonance between Dewey’s come-on routines and the man’s shoddy bedroom performance. Armitage does weird well—but weird is not the coin of this particular realm, and Armitage (who also wrote and produced the picture) displays zero interest in delivering a straight-up skin show. Although he manages to get each of his leading actresses topless at some point, the director’s boredom with such B-movie bits as extended scenes of dirt-bike racing is evident. It doesn’t help that the cast lacks any standouts. (Minor exception: Hampton’s oily turn as Dewey.) The leading actresses are attractive and some of them are more competent performers than others. Meanwhile, jobbing actors including Paul Gleason, Herbert Jefferson Jr., and Robert F. Simon deliver work that’s merely adequate.

          Nonetheless, proving that one should never underestimate the power of salacious marketing, Private Duty Nurses did well enough to justify a continuation of the sexy-nurse cycle. Three more movies followed.

Private Duty Nurses: FUNKY

1.5 Million Page Views!

Once again, it’s time to thank the readers of Every ’70s Movie for their continued support—as of yesterday, the blog has received over 1.5 million page views. In fact, hitting the 2-million mark before the blog runs its course seems almost certain to happen at the current rate, which is an incredible validation for this endeavor. Thank you! For those of you who visit the blog once in a while, and especially for those of of you who read regularly, please consider making a donation to help support the project. Based on a master list of all titles that meet the blog’s criteria, the three-quarter mark is visible on the horizon, which means that tangible costs will soon be incurred in the process of tracking down the most obscure ’70s movies. No donation amount is too big or too small to make a difference. The more everyone helps, the greater the possibility this blog’s title will become a complete reality. Meantime, keep chiming in via the comments section, and hopefully you will continue to learn about interesting new (or should that be old?) movies every day. Thanks again!

Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975)

          Along with the conspiracy thriller and the downbeat character study, the road movie is among the genres that are most crucial to the story of American cinema during the ’70s. The concept of rootless nobodies forming surrogate families while traveling through the heartland says volumes about disaffected national identity in the era of Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate. That’s why it’s tempting to cut a lot of slack for a picture along the lines of Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, even though the most objective critical assessment reveals Rafferty to be a travelogue of uninteresting people doing uninteresting things. The dignity and novelty of Rafferty and pieces of the same ilk can be found in the humdrum foibles of the unsophisticated characters. After all, some of the best New Hollywood movies broke new ground by giving voices to the voiceless. In other words, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins contains many small pleasures for fans of a certain type of scruffy ’70s movie—while those seeking big laughs, heroic characters, and a memorable storyline should look elsewhere.

          Alan Arkin, working at the apex of his chilly oddness, stars as Rafferty, a former USMC gunnery sergeant now working a pointless job at a DMV office in Hollywood. Drinking heavily, living in squalor, treating his job contemptuously, and wallowing in regret after years of being a passenger in his own life, Rafferty is ready for a change. While on a lunch break one afternoon, he’s kidnapped at gunpoint by two drifters—grown-up Mac (Sally Kellerman) and teenaged Frisbee (Mackenzie Phillips). The ladies demand that Rafferty drive them to New Orleans. Rafferty manages to escape, but he soon realizes that he doesn’t want to resume his old life, so he rejoins the women as a willing traveling companion. Escapades ensue. Most of what happens in Rafferty is contrived in the extreme, even though some moments of gentle character work reflect sensitivity and thoughtfulness on the part of the filmmakers. A long sequence set in Mac’s hometown, for instance, feels credible thanks to the parade of rural dreamers and schemers who interact with the protagonists.

          Unfortunately, Arkin’s character never quite clicks as a believable human being, while Kellerman’s drifts in and out of realistic behavior. Grotesques played by Alex Rocco, Charles Martin Smith, and Harry Dean Stanton (who is especially wonderful here) resonate more strongly, perhaps because the filmmakers simply parachute into the lives of these low-rent fools for quick, purposeful vignettes. As for Phillips’ character, picture a second-rate version of the many precocious girls Jodie Foster played in ’70s movies, and you’re almost there—Phillips plays a one-note role well. From start to finish, writer John Kaye and director Dick Richards struggle to fill the movie’s slight 91-minute running time with a sufficient number of events, occasionally resorting to such filler as a chase scene and a musical number. Like the precious powder in its title, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins is so wispy that it’s forever at risk of blowing away.

Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins: FUNKY

Cannibal Girls (1973)

Seeing as how Ivan Reitman has spent most of his career directing family-friendly comedies, it’s odd to realize that the Canadian filmmaker was heavy into horror during his early years. In fact, his first project to gain a stateside release was his sophomore directorial effort, the shabby gorefest Cannibal Girls. Generously described in some quarters as a spoof of horror flicks, the movie plays straight simply because neither the characterizations nor the storyline has sufficient wit to produce reactions other than boredom. The only reason Cannibal Girls isn’t a total snooze is that Reitman periodically displays blood or breasts (if not both simultaneously). There’s also some novelty value stemming from Reitman’s involvement and the presence of future comedy stars Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, whose roles are only quasi-comedic in nature. However, Cannibal Girls is perhaps best characterized as an embarrassing rite of passage that each of the participants had to endure on the way to better things. Set in rural Ontario, the picture follows young lovers Clifford (Levy) and Gloria (Martin), who stumble into a small town where three young women are reputed to be cannibals. Meanwhile, Reitman depicts the adventures of the young women, who woo men back to their remote home, kill the men, and eat their flesh. The women are under the thrall of Reverend Alex St. John (Ronald Ulrich), a loon who spews nonsense about extending life by consuming people. Eventually, Clifford and Gloria end up in the killers’ lair, with nasty results. Cheap-looking, clumsily edited, and filled with forgettable performances, Cannibal Girls probably spends too much time on dialogue scenes to keep gore mavens interested, and it offers nothing to beguile general viewers. In sum, Cannibal Girls offers scant evidence that just one decade later, Reitman would masterfully blend comedy and horror in Ghostbusters (1984).

Cannibal Girls: LAME

Fata Morgana (1971)

          Challenging, enigmatic, and strange, the quasi-documentary Fata Morgana was among the iconoclastic German director Werner Herzog’s earliest feature-length projects. Working with a tiny crew, Herzog filmed weird images in the Sahara Desert, most of which illustrate the titular optical phenomenon of hazy sights playing against a flat horizon. Additionally, Herzog filmed such random things as decaying animal carcasses, impoverished laborers doing miserable work in punishing heat, and the wreckage from a plane crash. Fusing all of this material together in the editing room, Herzog married the footage with gloomy music (including several songs by Mr. Sunshine himself, Canadian tunesmith Leonard Cohen) and then layered ponderous narration atop the singular mix. In the first section of the movie, titled “The Creation,” Herzog engages questions about the beginning of the world. “Invisible was the face of the Earth,” the narrator drones. “There was only nothingness.” Some of this material is interesting in an abstract sort of way, but the fact that the picture begins with about a dozen repetitious shots of planes landing indicates Herzog’s utter disinterest in creating anything that could be characterized as entertainment. This is Art with a capital “A,” complete with all the positive and negative connotations that statement suggests.

          Eventually, the movie segues into its second section, “The Paradise,” which seems to convey Herzog’s signature philosophy that man is a toxic influence on the planet, and that the planet is inherently destructive and hostile, anyway. Herzog shares a few truly compelling images, then empowers them in his distinctive way by lingering on the images until they become hypnotic—as with a menacingly beautiful shot of flame (presumably from a burning oil deposit) rumbling against a perfect blue sky. Occasionally, Herzog’s fancy leads him toward images that seem trivial by comparison, such as a long vignette of a young boy proudly displaying his pet cat while flies buzz around the boy and the cat. By the time the picture reaches its brief final segment, “The Golden Age,” the viewer’s patience has been mightily tested. During this last segment, Herzog fixates on the kitschy sight of a singing drummer belting out tunes through an awful PA system while a stocky woman accompanies him on piano. “In the Golden Age, man and wife live in harmony,” the narrator says as the musicians play. “Now, for example, they appear before the lens of the camera, death in their eyes, a smile on their faces, a finger in the pie.” In his strongest films, Herzog presents existential mysteries that demand deeper investigation. In Fata Morgana, he merely presents things that are, at best, puzzling.

Fata Morgana: FUNKY

Desperate Characters (1971)

          Juxtaposing the countless slights that unhappily married people inflict upon each other with a sociopolitical backdrop comprising petty crime and vandalism, the relentlessly downbeat character study Desperate Characters strives for a very specific mood of oppressive malaise. More often than not, producer-writer-director Frank D. Gilroy, who adapted the movie from a novel by Paula Fox, hits his target. From start to finish, Desperate Characters is intelligent, mature, and severe. The film also benefits from strong performances—something of a must since the cast includes only five major characters—and leading lady Shirley MacLaine demonstrates admirable restraint while portraying a woman at sea in her own life. That said, Gilroy’s dialogue borders on pretentiousness in nearly every scene, and the lack of tonal variety makes the picture a bit of a drag.

          The rarified vibe of Desperate Characters is epitomized by an early scene, during which someone innocently asks MacLaine’s character how she feels. “Fatigue, anemia,” she responds. “All the symptoms of irreversible loss.” It’s true that the people in Desperate Characters are all affluent, hyper-educated intellectuals. Still, one wishes that Gliroy—who earned fame as the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Subject Was Roses—had dug deeper into his bag of tricks, since the times when he relies on visual metaphors instead of simply articulating everything through dialogue add tremendously to the film.

          MacLaine and Kenneth Mars play Sophie and Otto Brentwood. She’s a book translator between projects who has too much time on her hands, and he’s a lawyer in the midst of a separation from his business partner. Over the course of the film, the couple deals with emotional distance, the lingering effects of an affair, startling encounters with gutter-level crime, and the heavily metaphorical presence of a bite from a stray cat that may or may not be rabid. Gilroy presents the film somewhat like a stage play, with extended dialogue scenes in tight settings. As a result, much of the picture is quite arch. When Otto declares, without any evidence to support his statement, that the aforementioned cat is not rabid, Sophie retorts: “The American form of wisdom—no room for doubt.” Otto: “Do you hate cats?” Sophie: “No, I hate you.” A very long vignette involving Sophie’s older friend and the friend’s love/hate dynamic with an ex-husband makes for even slower going.

          All in all, however, Desperate Characters basically works. At its best, the picture captures what happens when people fall out of sync with each other, and the visual motif of New York City in decline parallels the ennui pervading the story. It’s also interesting to see a solid dramatic performance from Mars, whom most moviegoers know for his comic work in Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1968) and Young Frankenstein (1974).

Desperate Characters: GROOVY

McQ (1974)

          Although not generally one to chase cinematic trends, the iconic John Wayne clearly made McQ with a eye toward emulating the winning formula that Clint Eastwood perfected with his Dirty Harry movies. It was an odd choice, not only because Wayne was doing just fine in his regular milieu of cowboy cinema, but also because his advanced age (to say nothing of his expanding waistline) didn't exactly identify the Duke as an ideal candidate for playing street-smart detectives. In any event, the actor/producer—who made McQ under his Batjac Productions banner—essentially contrived a western disguised as a policier. Wayne plays a swaggering tough guy who quits the force in order to avenge a friend's murder, and then breaks every law imaginable while pursuing his personal brand of justice. Beyond the modern costuming and locations, the biggest difference between McQ and the average Wayne oater is the gun in the star's hand—instead of a Colt six-shooter, Wayne packs an Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun.

          Capably directed by action-movie veteran John Sturges, McQ takes place in Seattle. Following a zippy prologue during which a plainclothes detective assassinates two uniformed cops before receiving the business end of a bullet, wiewers are introduced to the late detective's partner, McQ (Wayne). An iconoclast who lives on a houseboat and drives a fast sports car, McQ argues with his commanding officer, Lieutenant Kosterman (Eddie Albert), because McQ demands the right to investigate his partner's death. When his request is denied, McQ surrenders his badge and persuades a private detective (David Huddleston) to let McQ operate under the PI's license. One peculiar aspect of the movie is that McQ makes a lot of noise about working within legal boundaries, and yet he also acquires replacement guns every time authorities seize one of his firearms. He also has a penchant for high-speed car chases that result in widespread property destruction, although he somehow manages to avoid badly injuring any innocent bystanders. In other words, McQ takes place in the same parallel universe as the rest of Wayne’s movies, where the normal rules of citizenship and safety don’t apply to Our Valiant Hero.
          The story's central mystery is relatively interesting, having to do with the brazen theft of hard drugs from a police impound, but the characterizations are paper-thin, since every person in the movie exists primarily to describe or demonstrate the courage, integrity, stubbornness, and/or toughness of Wayne's character. Allies appear so McQ can earn their respect, villains appear so McQ can knock them down, and women appear so McQ can fascinate them. Particularly since Wayne shuffles through the movie at an unhurried pace, the blunt functionality of supporting characters helps to create narrative monotony. That said, McQ is watchable. Extensive location photography and lengthy action scenes create visual interest at regular intervals, and the cast is loaded with familiar faces: Beyond those previously mentioned, McQ players include Colleen Dewhurst, Clu Gulager, Al Lettieri, Roger E. Mosley, Diana Muldaur, and, offering a blast from the past, Creature from the Black Lagoon beauty Julie Adams, who plays the very small role of McQ's ex-wife. Alas, the MAC-10 gets more character development than most of the people whom these actors portray.

McQ: FUNKY