Victory at Entebbe (1976) & Raid on Entebbe (1977)

          One of the Me Decade’s most startling real-life events occurred on July 4, 1976, when Israeli commandos raided an airport in Uganda to rescue more than a hundred hostages from Palestinians who hijacked a passenger plane. Filled with larger-than-life individuals, notably crazed Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, the story of “Operation Thunderbolt” helped define the era during which international terrorism first took root. Almost inevitably, Hollywood pounced on this material, with the first screen dramatization reaching American airwaves six months after the rescue, and a second version airing a month later. Both telefilms feature big-name casts.

          First to air was Victory at Entebbe, a rushed and schlocky melodrama that mostly focuses on dynamics among hostages during their tense incarceration in Uganda. Filmed by director Marvin J. Chomsky with garish lighting and unimpressive production values, Victory at Entebbe suffers badly for the choice to shove the biggest names possible into various roles, no matter the results. Good luck figuring out the genetic math by which parents Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Taylor produce daughter Linda Blair—and have fun scratching your head while Anthony Hopkins plays Israeli Prime Minister Ytzhak Rabin opposite Burt Lancaster as his Minister of Defense. Helmut Berger does forgettable work as lead terrorist Wilfried Böse, and those playing the other hijackers stop just short of twirling moustaches.

          Portraying key passengers, Theodore Bikel, Severn Darden, Helen Hayes, Allan Miller, Jessica Walter, and others do what they can with florid dialogue and overwrought dramaturgy. Way too much screen time is devoted to Blair’s alternately cutesy and whiny performance as a young hostage, the Douglas/Taylor scenes feel like clips from a bad soap opera, and Julius Harris looks cartoonish playing Amin thanks to an ill-advised fat suit. Scenes set in Israel are better, though it’s hard to buy doughy Richard Dreyfuss as fierce commando Yoni Netanyahu. Worse, the Israeli scenes focus on procedural matters, mostly sidelining political ramifications. A final strike against Victory at Entebbe is the use of stock footage for airplane scenes, which greatly diminishes verisimilitude.

          Although the star power of Raid on Entebbe is not quite as impressive as that of the preceding film, the performances are much better. Martin Balsam, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz, Peter Finch, John Saxon, Sylvia Sidney, Jack Warden, and others deliver restrained work, letting the story speak for itself. Only a few players—including Tige Andrews and Stephen Macht—succumb to melodramatic excess. More importantly, Raid on Entebbe has Yaphet Kotto. He’s  dazzling as Amin, conveying the madman’s grandiosity, moodiness, and narcissism. Directed by the versatile Irvin Kershner with docudrama simplicity and the occasional subtle flourish—a sleek camera move here, a dramatic lighting pattern there—Raid on Entebbe unfolds methodically. The opening scene depicts the hijacking without sensationalizing events, and thereafter the movie cuts back and forth between Israel, where officials plan their response, and scenes involving hostages and their captors.

          Eventually, the film resolves into three parallel narratives. The first involves Rabin (Finch) rallying support for military intervention, despite his government’s propensity for endless debate. The second involves the hostages, of whom Daniel Cooper (Balsam) is the unofficial spokesman, watching their fates transfer from the hands of religious zealots to those of an unpredictable tyrant. The third involves units of the Israeli military—under the command of Generals Gur (Warden), Peled (Saxon), and Shomron (Bronson)—figuring how to achieve the impossible. The level of detail in Barry Beckerman’s teleplay is extraordinary, so despite its lengthy running time (two and a half hours), Raid on Entebbe is interesting and thoughtful from start to finish. Better still, the presence of marquee-name actors never eclipses the solemnity of the narrative. (Special note should be made of Finch’s fine performance as Rabin, because this was his last project. He died a week after Raid on Entebbe aired.)

          Yet another dramatization of these historic events emerged soon after the dual telefilms, this time from Israel. Directed by Menaham Golan, Operation Thunderbolt features a mostly Israeli cast, although the intense German actor Klaus Kinski plays Böse and the voluptuous Austrian starlet Sybil Danning costars. Operation Thunderbolt received an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film.

Victory at Entebbe: FUNKY

Raid on Entebbe: GROOVY

Red Sky at Morning (1971)

          An earnest coming-of-age story that wears its literary origins proudly, Red Sky at Morning offers an interesting mixture of artifice and authenticity. Produced by Hollywood veteran Hal Wallis, the picture has a gentle and old-fashioned style, even though explorations of race and sex reflect somewhat contemporary attitudes. In other words, the picture surrounds modern thought with a thick shell of Capra-esque hokum. Yet the script, adapted by Margeurite Roberts from Richard Bradford’s novel, is methodical and sensitive in its portrayal of a young man forced by circumstances to embrace a larger world than the one he’s known. That the film contains Richard Thomas’ first leading performance is significant, because for all his limitations as a young actor, Thomas demonstrated a tremendous gift for expressing the confusion of adolescence.

          The picture begins in Alabama, where Frank Arnold (Richard Crenna) prepares for Naval service in World War II. A middle-aged businessman, he enlisted because of patriotism. Before shipping out, Frank escorts his fragile Southern-belle wife, Ann (Claire Bloom), and their teenaged son, Joshua (Thomas), to the family’s second residence in New Mexico, planning for them to live quietly in the Southwest until his return from the war. After Frank leaves, Joshua goes through the predictable difficulties of forming social connections at a new school. He bonds with a misfit intellectual named Marcia (Catherine Davidson) and an extroverted Greek nicknamed “Steenie” (Desi Arnaz Jr.). The trio’s extracurricular adventures include a gross-out test of nerves involving a dead cow. Concurrently, Joshua gets into a hassle with local thugs and watches with alarm as his mother’s sleazy cousin, Jimbob (John Colicos), arrives with designs on taking the absent Frank’s place.

           The plot is dense and rich, sometimes to a fault, but the end result is that Red Sky at Morning takes viewers on a tonally varied journey. Although some supporting characters get such short shrift that removing them entirely would have been advisable, even the peripheral people in Red Sky at Morning generate interesting moments. Ultimately, the story is about Joshua’s growth. His experiences constitute a greatest-hits collection of adolescent milestones, from confronting a parent to losing his virginity, so Thomas gets to play an incredible spectrum of emotions. He mostly serves the material well, as do Bloom, Burns, and Crenna. Arnaz, despite earning a Golden Globe nomination for his work, is forgettable, easily overshadowed by a miscast Harry Guardino and an even-more-miscast Nehemiah Persoff. (Born in Jerusalem, he plays a Latino.) Also strong is Gregory Sierra’s lived-in performance as a local cop.

          Red Sky at Morning gets lost in the wilds of its own storyline at regular intervals, so it’s an unruly piece of work. Nonetheless, the same intricate layers of backstory and characterization that contribute to murkiness give Red Sky at Morning its appealing immersiveness. The film has a strong sense of time and place, and the centrality of Thomas’ character provides a clear point of view.

Red Sky at Morning: GROOVY

Prelude to Happiness (1975)

A generous appraisal of this romantic melodrama would celebrate the movie as a noble effort at inclusion, because the story revolves around a woman missing one of her legs, and the leading lady is a real-life amputee. Yet this generous appraisal would require overlooking the actual content of the film, which includes a hackneyed storyline, shallow characterizations, and terrible performances. There’s also a cloud of exploitation hovering over the enterprise, because several scenes feature star Susan Mulhollan in bikinis and/or lingerie. One gets a sense of producers deliberately catering to viewers with amputation fetishes. Anyway, Mulhollan stars as Susan, a young nurse engaged to a handsome fellow. After a car accident costs Susan her leg, she rebounds because at least she still has her fiancé—but then he shocks her by saying he can’t envision a future with a one-legged wife. Helping Susan rise from her doldrums is dashing young Dr. Steve Hartman (Gary Lee Davis), who urges Susan to take physical therapy seriously. He also performs additional services, such as helping Susan find a new apartment. Naturally, the attention Steve lavishes on his favorite patient bothers Steve’s girlfriend, rich bitch Tiffany (Carol Sowa). Wrongly assuming that Steve is sleeping with Susan, Tiffany makes clear that she’s okay with being two-timed, so long as Steve is discreet. What ensues is wholly predictable, right down to the pointless vignette of Susan hobbling in terror while being pursued by would-be rapists. Naturally,  the movie’s dialogue is stiff and unconvincing (Susan: “I wrapped myself in a blanket of self-sacrifice!”). One could argue that Prelude to Happiness is harmless, inasmuch as most low-budget stories about people with physical challenges overcoming adversity are just this perfunctory. Yet “harmless” does not necessarily imply “worthwhile.”

Prelude to Happiness: LAME

The Adulteress (1973)

The Adulteress is basically a Harlequin romance viewed through the fashionably downbeat prism of early-’70s cinema. The setup is a compendium of erotic-fiction clichés, and the payoff represents a laughable attempt at tragic heaviosity. What’s more, the acting is wildly uneven, no small problem seeing as how The Adulteress is an intimate character piece with only three major roles. One evening, middle-aged Carl Steiner (Gregory Morton) drunkenly stumbles out of a bar, so studly young drifter Hank Baron (Eric Braeden) drives Carl home. Carl’s decades-younger wife, Inez (Tyne Daly), insists that Hank crash on the couch as repayment. The next day, sobered-up Carl offers Hank a handyman job, and Hank learns that Carl and Inez lost a young son a while back in a car accident, hence Carl’s self-destructive drinking. Seeing shirtless Hank working hard gets Inez hot and bothered, so Carl, who is impotent, asks Hank to impregnate his wife. Predictably, lovemaking leads to feelings, and the resulting three-way relationship gets dangerously messy. Everything about The Adulteress is contrived and false. Braeden’s far too wooden an actor to portray a hip Vietnam vet, and Daly is too grounded and tough to play a woman who lets her life spin out of control. There’s also zero heat between the actors, no matter how many signifiers for virility co-writer/director Norbert Meisel throws onscreen. (At various times, Braden rides a horse and a motorcycle, because, you now, power between his legs and all that.) The film moves at a deadly pace, with innumerable scenes of pointless conversation, and the wannabe passionate high point—Daly straddling Braeden while he’s astride a horse—is like one of those Fabio book-cover paintings come to life.

The Adulteress: LAME

Jessi’s Girls (1975)

          Discovering a watchable Al Adamson movie is a joyous moment for the ’70s-cinema explorer, so even though Jessi’s Girls is contrived and exploitive, it improves upon most of Adamson’s directorial adventures simply because the plot makes sense and the production values are relatively professional. For surprisingly long stretches of screen time, this low-budget Western is compelling thanks to a simple vengeance-mission narrative and the novelty, given the context, of a distaff protagonist. Redheaded beauty Sondra Currie stars as Jessica Hartwell, a Mormon woman traveling with her husband through the American frontier. A gang of thugs led by odious Frank Brock (Ben Frank) attacks the Hartwells, raping Jessica and killing her husband. Left for dead with a gunshot wound, Jessica finds her way to an isolated homestead, where grizzled loner Rufe (Rod Cameron) provides shelter and teaches Jessica how to use guns. Meanwhile, the film introduces several outlaw women, all of whom get captured by a marshal. In the story’s dopiest coincidence, Jessica stumbles upon the marshal’s wagon, kills him, and frees the outlaw women. That’s how they become participants in her vengeance mission.

          This movie’s obvious negatives are plentiful. Characterizations are trite, the plot shamelessly cops elements from the Raquel Welch movie Hannie Caulder (1971), and Adamson goes overboard with topless shots. This is hardly the sleaziest drive-in picture of the ’70s, but it was unquestionably designed to satisfy low appetites. Having said all that, the movie’s positives include qualities that are rare in the Adamson oeuvre. The story moves along at a good clip with virtually no glaring logic problems. The central character is interesting and sympathetic, with a fairly consistent behavior pattern. Supporting characters enter and exit the story when they should, so the picture isn’t bogged down with or derailed by pointless discursions. And the style is appropriate, from the dusty locations to the guitar-and-harmonica soundtrack. So even though Jessi’s Girls is ultimately nothing but a boobs-and-bullets cheapie, it’s palatable. For an Adamson movie, that’s saying a lot. You may now begin the Rick Springfield jokes you’ve been desperate to make since you first read the movie’s title.

Jessi’s Girls: FUNKY

The Glove (1979)

          Starring the inimitable John Saxon, who offers one of his most appealing performances, The Glove is a tonic for schlock-cinema addicts who are tired of mean-spirited exploitation flicks. The Glove is not gentle, per se, but it avoids the familiar traps of objectifying women and sanctifying pointless violence. Additionally, the picture overflows with lively character development and whimsical dialogue, sometimes to the detriment of the storyline, and the use of hard-boiled voiceover gives the piece a pleasing flow. So while The Glove is mostly a dud as an action picture, it’s pleasant to watch as a character piece involving an amiable bounty hunter and an even more amiable escaped convict. You may find yourself perplexed as to whom this picture was meant to satisfy, since the poster suggests a brutal urban thriller, but if you’ve spent too much time aiming your retinas at ugly stories about ugly people doing ugly things, the goofy humanism of The Glove offers a refreshing alternative.

          Saxon stars as Sam Kellogg, a Los Angeles-based bounty hunter with money problems. His ex-wife is after him for overdue alimony payments, so his treasured visitations with his young daughter are in danger of being revoked. The filmmakers present layer after layer of detail about Sam, so we learn that he gambles recklessly, gives bribes to former police-force colleagues for help tracking down hoodlums, and sometimes cuts breaks for hard-luck cases. Motivated by the promise of a $20,000 bounty, Sam spends most of the movie chasing Victor Hale (Rosey Grier), who seems terrifying the first time we encounter him. Having acquired a full suit of police riot gear, including a five-pound, lead-lined monstrosity known as a riot glove, Victor demolishes a car before pummeling one of the vehicle’s occupants nearly to death. However, subsequent scenes portray Victor as a gentle giant, entertaining local children by playing blues songs on guitar while hanging out in a tenement apartment. When Victor learns that Sam is after him, he calls the bounty hunter and says to back off, instead of, say, ambushing Sam with the glove.

          Although the filmmakers never reconcile the dark and light aspects of Victor’s portrayal, it’s enjoyable to watch a picture of this type that strives to make characters dimensional. The Glove also benefits from a cast stocked with familiar professionals: Joanna Cassidy, Joan Blondell, Michael Pataki, Aldo Ray, Keenan Wynn. In the end, is The Glove a jumble of contradictory intentions? Sure. But it’s hard not to appreciate elements including the pithy voiceover (“I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach and left their shoe there”) and the stunningly overwrought theme song, which must be heard to be believed.

The Glove: FUNKY

The Specialist (1975)

Featuring the sort of dippy plot one might expect to encounter in a bad TV crime show, The Specialist concerns a woman who hires herself out as a seductress for clients with legal problems. Specifically, she agrees to sit on a jury and beguile the married defense counsel, because his enemy hopes a scandal will lead to the man’s disbarment. The inherent logic problem, of course, is that courts take pains to prevent jurors from interacting with lawyers, so by the time the seductress has her first conversation with the lawyer—addressing him from the jury box while he’s trying the case—the stupidity level of the film is already off the charts. The Specialist also suffers from sleepy pacing, so even though it’s only about 90 minutes, it feels much longer. That said, The Specialist has some compensatory values. Leading lady Ahna Capri has a knockout figure, so her brief nude scenes are impressive. The same cannot be said of her performance, because she conveys too much sweetness for her role as a cynical manipulator. In terms of this flick’s campy pleasures, one need merely invoke the name Adam West. The former Caped Crusader plays the lawyer whom Capri’s character is tasked with seducing. West flounders his way through a murky performance, sometimes trying for babe-in-the-woods innocence and sometimes trying for studly swagger. His work is enjoyably terrible. Worth mentioning is the movie’s sleazy theme song, a lounge-lizard R&B number crooned by the inimitable Lou Rawls. Listening to the song, which is played at full length twice during the film, is almost as cringe-inducing as watching West grope Capri’s enormous breasts.

The Specialist: LAME

Four Rode Out (1970)

          Distinguished only by its incessant cruelty, the American/European coproduction Four Rode Out is one of those bleak low-budget Westerns portraying the American frontier as a wasteland of morally bankrupt opportunists laying siege to innocents. Distinctly different from higher-minded projects with similar themes (e.g., Sam Peckinpah’s thematically complex Westerns), these cheap flicks embrace nihilism as a means of justifying lurid content. That said, there’s a crude sort of magnetism to films of this stripe, especially when actors lean in to the darkness infusing the storylines. Some of that happens in Four Rode Out, with grumpy Pernell Roberts and wicked Leslie Nielsen playing monstrous gunslingers while Sue Lyon, a world away from the sophisticated provocations of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962), gets caught in between. While it’s necessary to indicate that nothing unique happens in Four Rode Out, and that the visual style of the picture is quite bland—all interchangeable desert locations and rickety-looking frontier towns—it’s also true that the picture boasts a certain morbidly appealing ugliness. There’s even some beauty in the mix, because the great folksinger Janis Ian contributes a song score and appears onscreen to warble a tune near the beginning.

          The plot begins with gruesome events. Mexican crook Fernando (Julián Mateos) slips into the bedroom of his gringo girlfriend, Myra (Lyon), and makes out with her until her father bursts into the room. Disgusted by their interracial and out-of-wedlock coupling, he commits suicide in Myra’s presence. Fernando flees. Soon U.S. Marshall Ross (Roberts) shows up to track Fernando down, as does an acerbic Pinkerton known only as Mr. Brown (Nielsen). By way of several overly convenient plot twists, Brown and Ross end up not only working together but also traveling with Myra, who hopes to cajole Fernando into surrendering without violence. Close proximity leads to crises including a rape, so by the time the pursuers find their quarry, emotions have reached a state of feverish intensity. In stronger hands, this basic material might have been more interesting, but director John Peyser fails to impose a distinctive point of view. Furthermore, the script often devolves into rambling nothingness, and the acting is inconsistent, with Lyon’s serviceable turn blocking the audience’s emotional pathway into the narrative. However, if frontier nastiness is enough to hold your interest, Four Rode Out has plenty.

Four Rode Out: FUNKY

Miss Melody Jones (1972)

By definition, the purpose of criticism involves identifying strengths and weaknesses in creative endeavors. Often that leads to positive results, with appraisers lavishing artists with compliments. Sometimes it goes the other way. And every so often, a critic lands in the unfortunate position of having to remark on something like Philomena Nowlin’s performance in the blaxploitation-themed showbiz saga Miss Melody Jones, also known as Ebony Dreams. Before we travel down that path, let’s set the scene. Shot on a meager budget and made with an equally meager amount of imagination, Miss Melody Jones tells the story of an upbeat young woman who makes a living as a stripper in a Los Angeles nightclub while trudging through one humiliating audition after another in search of stardom. She gets comfort and support from her gay roommate and, eventually, a warmhearted paramour with his own cinematic ambitions, but life is unkind to Miss Melody Jones. At her lowest, she takes an acting role as a gang-rape victim in a nudie flick. There’s nothing here viewers haven’t seen a zillion times before, except for the inimitable Philomena Nowlin. A shockingly inept actress, Nowlin screams nearly every line, and she does so in one of the most dissonant voices you will ever encounter. Imagine the sound of a cat that just inhaled helium. Even Fran Drescher would cringe. Yet for some reason, Nowlin was given one long monologue after another, so a good 15 percent of the movie comprises nothing but a bug-eyed, hand-flailing Nowlin screeching at top volume. Overall, Miss Melody Jones is innocuous, if a bit threadbare from a narrative perspective. But with regard to the film’s singular leading performance, spare yourself if you value your eardrums and your sanity.

Miss Melody Jones: LAME

My Friends Need Killing (1976)

          Yet another story about a crazed Vietnam vet on a crime spree, My Friends Need Killing nearly works. The premise is intriguing and tragic, leading man Greg Mullavey’s performance is fairly credible, and writer-director Paul Leder came up with an offbeat ticking-clock device because the vet’s girlfriend shares her fears with a psychiatrist who determines that action must be taken to prevent bloodshed. Unfortunately, Leder’s direction is hopelessly inept, and the film’s production values are distractingly shoddy. What should have been a crackerjack thriller with a humanistic core—something on the order of a good Larry Cohen movie—instead becomes a dreary slog with too much gore and too little momentum. Worse, Leder slides into the exploitation-movie gutter with an unnecessary subplot during which the vet becomes a rapist. Since My Friends Need Killing probably isn’t exciting enough to stimulate the lizard-brain crowd, it’s unfortunate that Leder’s sleazy extremes alienate the thinking audience.

          After returning from Vietnam, Gene (Mullavey) suffers night terrors, alarming his wife, Laura (Meredith McRae). Turns out Gene believes that he and his comrades committed such heinous war crimes that all of them must die. He writes letters to his war buddies saying he’s going to visit them, and during each visit, Gene savagely murders one of his friends. Back home, Laura pieces together clues and talks to Gene’s shrink, so they eventually try to stop Gene’s bloody vengeance mission. Sometimes, Leder reveals what this movie might have been, as when Gene becomes conflicted about murdering a sensitive (read: gay) veteran. Other times, Leder follows the mindless thrill-kill path, devolving My Friends Need Killing into typical grindhouse junk. Still, the film has just enough compassion that it’s unwise to completely dismiss the endeavor. If nothing else, examining the way various filmmakers dealt with PTSD provides insights regarding attitudes toward veterans during a fraught time in American history.

My Friends Need Killing: FUNKY

Newman’s Law (1974)

          Featuring George Peppard in the sort of maverick-cop role one normally associates with Clint Eastwood, Newman’s Law delivers an adequate dosage of mid-’70s crime-and-punishment melodrama, hitting all the usual notes of corruption, double-crosses, and rugged individualism. Working with a director and writer culled from the creative ranks of his short-lived TV show Banacek, Peppard renders typically bland work, though he’s quite believable when conveying the nastier aspects of his character. (Few actors channel icy cruelty quite as smoothly as Peppard did.) Newman’s Law benefits from extensive location photography and slick production values, so even though the picture comes across very much like an extended episode of a cop show, it’s a got a pleasing feature-film sheen. What it doesn’t have is a fresh or interesting story. Instead, writer Anthony Wilson churns through a familiar cycle in which our tough-guy hero, Detective Sergeant Vince Newman (Peppard), gets caught in a conspiracy wrought by crooked cops and nefarious drug dealers. Vince also wrestles with troubles in his private life, such as the rising costs of keeping his deteriorating father in a nursing home.

          Nonetheless, fans of ’70s cop cinema will have an easy time digesting this flick, which has just enough in the way of chases and fights and shootouts to satisfy undiscerning palates. What’s more, a couple of scenes are relatively vivid. In one, Peppard climbs atop a water tower and points a sniper rifle at a criminal’s hilltop mansion—themes of police driven to “righteous” illegality by the restrictions of the legal system are always inherently interesting. Another choice bit features Peppard questioning a stripper (played by nubile B-movie stalwart Pat Anderson) while she gives a private performance. Although forgettable and lurid on its own merits, the scene parallels a sexy vignette in the 1986 John Frankenheimer thriller 52 Pick-Up, which was penned by the great Elmore Leonard. Did Leonard see Newman’s Law and later mimic one of its scenes? In any event, Newman’s Law generates a sufficient degree of low-ebb excitement, in fits and starts, to get the no-nonsense job done. Plus, it’s got Abe Vigoda as a courtly gangster, so there’s that.

Newman’s Law: FUNKY

You and Me (1974)

          Logic might suggest that any marquee-name actor who desires to direct a movie can aggregate the necessary resources for a slick production, but projects on the order of You and Me prove that’s not always true. Despite being at the apex of his Kung Fu fame, David Carradine scraped together only a meager budget for this gentle road movie about a biker bonding with a little boy. Presumably Carradine prioritized creative autonomy over production values, because You and Me nearly has the feel of a home movie. For instance, the picture features cameos by the director’s brothers, Keith and Robert Carradine, as well as an appearance by his then-girlfriend, Barbara Hershey (billed as “Barbara Seagull”). It also sounds as if she and Carradine sing the folksy theme song together. Yet while David Carradine may have had an enjoyable experience working with family and friends, the pleasure doesn’t fully transfer to the audience. You and Me is harmless, and the simple story radiates enough warmth to make the experience of watching the movie palatable, but the characters are one-dimensional at best, and nothing of consequence happens.

          In the opening scenes, Zeto (David Carradine) and two biker buddies harass the customers of a small roadside bar, leading to the death of a random dude. Zeto splits from his buddies, the better to evade capture, and happens upon young Jimmy (Chipper Chadbourne), the son of an irresponsible welfare mom. Jimmy talks his way into Zeto’s company, tagging along while Zeto hides at a small farm operated by Wynona (Bobbi Shaw). She hires Zeto as a handyman, but she also has eyes on a permanent romantic situation. Eventually, authorities investigating the murder at the bar discover clues pointing to Zeto’s whereabouts, so a small measure of dramatic tension enters the mix.

          Always an interesting actor, Carradine works his most appealing groove here, the philosophical wanderer. Yet the storytelling in You and Me is cryptic to a fault, so Carradine’s character seems more opaque than intriguing. Similarly, the relationship between the biker and the boy is hard to believe. Nonetheless, there are worse ways to idle away 90-ish minutes. Every so often, a familiar face comes along (beyond the aforementioned, Gary Busey appears in one scene), and a generalized sense of humanism and sincerity pervades the piece, even if the storytelling mechanics are clumsy.

You and Me: FUNKY

Pony Express Rider (1976)

          Some genres have such satisfying textures that even mediocre examples of those genres can make for pleasant viewing. So it is with Westerns produced on respectable budgets. Like consuming a disposable episode of a cowboy-themed TV show, watching Pony Express Rider is an agreeably pointless exercise. Many of the familiar themes are here, such as honor and vengeance. The costumes, locations, and sets evoke the comfort-food milieu one associates with Hollywood oaters. And some the usual suspects populate the supporting cast: Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor. So even though the story is trite and unfocused, it’s possible to mindlessly groove on the polished look and somber mood of the piece. However, it should be said that the title is something of a misnomer, as the protagonist doesn’t actually join the Pony Express until halfway through the picture, and afterwards his involvement with the famous courier service is relatively inconsequential to the plot. If there’s a great story to be told about the bold men who carried mail through the dangerous frontiers of America’s Wild West, this is not that story. Instead, Pony Express Rider is a standard-issue revenge saga.

          At the beginning of the picture, Johnnie (Stewart Petersen) flirts with his best gal, Rose (Maureen McCormick), until her animalistic brother, Bovey (Buck Taylor), intervenes. He beats Johnnie, deeming him an unworthy suitor for his kin. Tensions rise further when Bovey’s father, Trevor (Henry Wilcoxon), accepts a post as governor of the Nevada Territory, leaving Bovey in charge of the family spread. Power-mad Bovey clashes with Johnnie’s father, Jed (Ken Curtis), leading to Jed’s death. Murkiness ensues. Jonnie sets out to avenge his dad by killing Bovey, though it’s never clear why that involves anything more than marching to Bovey’s house with a gun. Plus, once Johnnie hits the road for nebulous reasons, Bovey commences stalking Johnnie. Huh? At some point, Johnnie stumbles across a dead Pony Express Rider and takes responsibility for that man’s route, since he’s going in the same direction anyway. Again, huh? If you’re able to overlook the nonsensical plotting, it’s possible to enjoy the sleek camerawork, dusty riding scenes, and rote citations of Western-movie signifiers. Expecting anything more will lead to frustration.

Pony Express Rider: FUNKY

Another Son of Sam (1977)

Like most unspeakably bad exploitation movies with elements of sex and violence, Another Son of Sam has its defenders among the psychotronic set, some of whom wax poetic about the movie’s spellbinding incompetence. If that’s your cinematic intoxicant of choice, imbibe freely and Another Son of Sam will likely take you where you want to go. However, if you hope for something more closely resembling a coherent and purposeful viewing experience, this one’s not for you. The sole directorial effort by one Dave A. Adams—who also served as the picture’s writer, producer, casting director, stunt coordinator, and editor—this grungy, zero-budget regional production tells the dull story of an escaped lunatic and the policeman who is determined to recapture him. In referencing David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer, the title of this flick is a shameless come-on suggesting that innocents will get slaughtered in capricious ways. That more or less happens, but because Another Son of Sam is rated PG, it’s not as if the shock value hits high levels. The closest Adams gets to real tension is when he lingers on grimy POV shots, but even that device is underserved because Adams’ cutting is so bewilderingly choppy. Scenes start and stop with no discernible reason, post-production audio emerges from mysterious sources in discombobulating ways, and trainwreck performances by nearly the entire cast add to a generalized air of people stumbling around aimlessly while the camera rolls for arbitrarily chosen periods of time.

Another Son of Sam: SQUARE

The Nashville Sound (1970)

          Filmed in 1969 to capture an all-star anniversary concert at the Grand Ole Opry, the storied “mother church” of country music, this serviceable documentary balances behind-the-scenes insights about the careers of wannabe stars with polished vignettes featuring established artists. Most of the picture comprises blandly shot footage of performances on the Opry stage, and there’s value in seeing vintage clips of Johnny Cash, Bill Monroe, and Dolly Parton, among many others. Yet one is challenged to identify much difference between this content and, say, appearances by these folks on TV shows from the same era. About the only thing elevating the Opry scenes is the interstitial material, with performers including Bill Anderson crowding around microphones to read crass commercials. A general sense emerges of an Opry broadcast not as a pristine showcase for musical excellence but rather a commodity like any other type of mainstream entertainment. Therefore, the most interesting elements of The Nashville Sound are the moments showing B-listers trudging through humiliating spotlight gigs (as when Jeannie C. Reilly performs a new tune for a handful of listeners at a party thrown by a label executive), plus the recurring trope illustrating the arrival on the Nashville scene of new singer-songwriter Herbie Howell. 

          Among the star performers, Charley Pride stands out with his keening sustained notes during “Kaw-Liga,” Parton charms with her unvarnished performance of “Blue Ridge Mountain Home,” and Cash renders a typically rousing version of “Folsom Prison Blues.” An in-studio jam session featuring a young Charlie Daniels, among other slick players, generates the most heat, musically speaking, whereas blander performances (such as Reilly’s turn on the Opry stage with “Harper Valley P.T.A.”) quickly fade from memory. Some of the sequences of pure reportage, such as a golf tournament featuring Glen Campbell, come and go so quickly as to be meaningless—and, to be frank, the material that gets the most attention, Howell’s story, is merely okay. Although earnest, Howell is not particularly interesting as a musician or as a presence, so it’s hard to get excited about his quest for stardom. Nonetheless, the project as a whole provides an interesting snapshot of a particular industry at a particular time, in some ways very different from and in other ways very similar to the modern country-music scene.

The Nashville Sound: FUNKY

Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974)

The notion of a mother training her daughters in the arts of seduction and thievery is enjoyably kinky, so the low-budget thriller Mama’s Dirty Girls should have a scandalous quality. Unfortunately, because the storyline is so one-dimensional and predictable, the filmmakers never fully exploit the potential of their seedy premise. Moreover, because so much screen time gets chewed up on ogling nude scenes, Mama’s Dirty Girls devolves from its very first scenes into yet another drive-in flick pandering to low appetites. While this isn’t a completely brainless picture, it’s nowhere near smart enough to merit serious consideration. Gloria Grahame, a long way from her best work, stars as Mama Love—yep, that’s her character name—the mother of three sexy young-adult daughters. Mama’s favorite scheme involves roping a wealthy man into marriage, then tasking one of her kids, usually Becky (Candice Rialson), with teasing the man into such a sexual frenzy that he attempts rape. This gives Mama the pretext to kill the man and seize his property. Never mind how records of this sort of thing tend to follow a person from one municipality to another, and never mind that the first time we see Mama off a husband, she and two of her daughters slash the guy to death with straight razors. Hard to tell the cops a three-on-one slaughter was self-defense. Anyway, the filmmakers miss the obvious plot opportunity of having one of Mama’s daughters rebel against family tradition, so the plot is quite dull, with Mama beguiling a new man while daughters attempt separate gold-digging enterprises. As you might expect, the characterizations are weak and the dialogue is stiff, though some of the acting is okay. Seasoned pro Grahame and promising ingénue Rialson nearly make the movie palatable. Nearly.

Mama’s Dirty Girls: LAME

Scandalous John (1971)

          Man, it’s hard to get a bead on this one. A modernized (unofficial) adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century novel Don Quixote, this comedy-drama hybrid ostensibly tells the story of a proud old rancher succumbing to dementia, which prompts him to rail against imagined enemies and shoot guns at strangers. In his mind, he’s a Wild West hero fending off varmints, but in reality, he’s a deranged coot getting by on handouts from his granddaughter, a professor at a small college. Notwithstanding the granddaughter’s occasional visits, the protagonist’s only companion is a Mexican laborer who crossed the U.S. border illegally to seek employment. A local developer wants to push the rancher off his dilapidated spread, so the protagonist battles forces he cannot possibly defeat. Were the comedic elements extracted, the storyline would seem frightening or sad. Indeed, the vibe of Scandalous John wobbles between melancholy and whimsical, with some scenes played for laughs while others strive for pathos as the picture drags its way through a bloated 113-minute running time.

          Yet the strangest thing about Scandalous John is that it’s a G-rated family film from Walt Disney Productions. Prior to the company’s experiments with grown-up fare in the late ’70s and early ’80s, this might well have been the bleakest live-action feature the company had ever released. Brian Keith, his features buried beneath bushy facial hair and one eye perpetually squinted shut, stars as John McCanless, who fancies himself a gunslinger protecting his land from Apaches and thieves. He lumbers about his dusty house, hollering and ranting and singing, even as his granddaughter, Amanda (Michele Carey), tries to keep John from injuring himself. She hires Paco (Alfonso Arau) as a caretaker, and John soon embraces the fantasy that Paco is a bold comrade-in-arms. Facing various past-due notices, John endeavors to drive his herd to town for a cattle sale, though his herd comprises only one ragged-looking steer. Meanwhile, Jimmy Whitaker (Rick Lenz), son of the developer who wants John’s land, tries to help John as a means of wooing Amanda.

          Scandalous John includes several colorful episodes, such as a silly bit of John and Paco riding their mounts into a store and an action-filled climax, but much of the picture comprises leisurely scenes of Keith delivering florid monologues in garbled frontier-speak. (More than a few lines are indecipherable.) Keith is such a charismatic and forceful actor that watching him hold forth should be fascinating, but Scandalous John becomes tedious thanks to redundancy. Instead of one or two choice moments to set the tone, the movie offers perhaps a dozen long-winded soliloquies. Wistful scoring by Rod McKeun adds to the general sense of preciousness. It’s tempting to give Disney points for trying something this dark, but because the studio undercut the artistic qualities of this piece with dodgy elements including the stereotypical characterization of Paco, Scandalous John is, at best, an offbeat misfire.

Scandalous John: FUNKY