Mahogany (1975)

          Among the more subversive aspects of 1970s cinema is a string of melodramas so campy, so overzealously feminized, and so preoccupied with glamour that they feel like paeans to gay nightclub culture, even if the filmmakers involved originally had something more butch in mind. Like the equally absurd 1977 potboiler The Other Side of Midnight, this flamboyant Diana Ross star vehicle concerns a woman who drives remarkable men wild with desire even as she fascinates women with her beguiling mystique. And while the notion of the lovely Miss Ross as a supermodel isn’t hard to accept—she’s certainly bone-thin enough—other aspects of the movie occupy the realm of the ridiculous.

          Conceived and written in the mode of a 1930s “women’s picture,” Mahogany depicts the adventures of Tracy (Ross), a wannabe fashion designer struggling to make ends meet in Chicago by working in the display department of a high-fashion store. Right from the beginning, Tracy is portrayed as a self-confident superwoman—in one especially ludicrous scene, Tracy intimidates a would-be mugger into leaving her alone simply by mouthing off to him. Therefore, when Tracy meets bleeding-heart politician Brian (Billy Dee Williams), she makes it clear that her career is a bigger priority than romance. He accepts her terms, more or less, and they become a couple. Meanwhile, Tracy attempts to peddle her designs to potential buyers, and she inadvertently catches the eye of bitchy fashion photographer Sean (Anthony Perkins). Taken by her look, Sean encourages Tracy to become a model, eventually inviting her to Rome, where he believes she’ll become an international celebrity. Predictably, this juncture leads to a falling-out with Brian, so Tracy leaves Chicago for a jet-set lifestyle in Europe. The story then entangles Tracy in a romantic quadrangle comprising Tracy, Brian, Sean, and European millionaire Christian (Jean-Pierre Aumont).

          Although shot quite attractively by cinematographer David Watkin, Mahogany goes over the top so many times it nearly becomes a comedy. At one point, for instance, a delirious Tracy entertains guests by dripping hot wax all over her face and chest. Those crazy European parties! Other highlights: Brian and Sean literally wrestle with a gun in between them; Christian tries to buy Tracy’s sexual favors for 20 million lira; Tracy debuts an entire line of kabuki-inspired clothing; and so on. Tying all of this together is the pretty tune “Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To),” which plays, either instrumentally or with Ross’ memorable vocal performance, about five zillion times. FYI, Mahogany was the first and last movie directed by Motown founder—and perennial Ross champion—Berry Gordy, who reportedly took over the film after firing original helmer Tony Richardson. The world is not poorer for Berry’s decision to leave directing to others.

Mahogany: FUNKY

Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

          Slick and tough—or at least tough enough to avoid accusations of whitewashing history—this biopic of legendary singer Billie Holiday benefits from casting kismet. By the early ’70s, Motown star Diana Ross was emerging as a major solo artist after having led the quintessential “girl group,” the Supremes, through a string a pop hits in the ’60s. Public fascination with Ross was at a peak when Motown kingpin Berry Gordy decided to introduce her as an actress, and Gordy took a big risk by presenting Ross in a complex role as an iconic historical figure. Ross rewarded his confidence with a star-making performance that earned Ross not only a second career as a film star but also an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Comparisons to the multimedia career of Barbra Streisand, another ’60s singer who scored on the big screen, are inevitable, but the differences are telling—Streisand emerged from musical theater, so she transitioned easily to a multifaceted screen career.

          Ross, conversely, seemed to have just one memorable acting performance inside of her, perhaps because she found some special insight into Holiday’s troubled soul. Plus, of course, the fact that Ross sings much of her role—effectively delivering such angst-ridden Holiday compositions as “Don’t Explain” and “Strange Fruit”—means that the diva known as “Miss Ross” played to her strengths.

          Presented in the standard biopic style of episodic flashbacks connected by a wrap-around vignette depicting Holiday’s worst moment of crisis, Lady Sings the Blues is ordinary in conception and execution. Lavish production values are used to convey historical periods, and every juncture of the protagonist’s emotional life is articulated so clearly it’s impossible to see Holiday as anything but a troubled heroine. Whether she’s subverting the dehumanizing treatment of singers in a Harlem nightclub by refusing to sexualize her performances, or losing her soul to the heroin addiction she picks up during a rigorous touring schedule, Holiday is idealized as a once-in-a-lifetime talent whose songs emanated from deep emotional scars. Thanks to this oversimplification, Holiday the person gets subverted into Holiday the role. The name of the game is giving Ross dramatic things to do, and she does them well enough to make an impression.

          Director Sidney J. Furie, a competent storyteller but never a great artist, keeps things moving quickly, though the blandness of his approach is particularly visible in the film’s supporting performances. Billy Dee Williams is saddled with a one-dimensional part as Holiday’s long-suffering boyfriend, so the actor relies on charm and swagger to carve a niche for himself. Despite similar limitations, comedian Richard Pryor—who plays Holiday’s sidekick and fellow addict, known simply as “Piano Man”—nearly steals the movie with his tragic final scene. As for “Miss Ross,” she mostly squandered the opportunity created by Lady Sings the Blues. After starring in the widely panned melodrama Mahogany (1975) and the equally derided musical flop The Wiz (1979), she withdrew from acting until appearing in two minor movies during the 1990s.

Lady Sings the Blues: GROOVY

Un Flic (1972)

          The final film of French director Jean-Pierre Melville, a specialist in postmodern hard-boiled cinema, Un Flic has enough style for a dozen movies, even though the plot leaves something to be desired. Starring suave Alain Delon as a Parisian police superintendent, the picture is a methodical, sleek examination of the title character’s investigation of an armed robbery that turns out to have larger implications. The picture soars when presenting a twilight world filled with amoral people and wicked schemes; Melville treats actors and objects as colors in his deliberately minimal palette. Yet the picture falls short in characterization, since Melville is obviously more interested in mood than in psychology. Still, with Paris as the primary backdrop and the beautiful faces of Delon and leading lady Catherine Denueve at his disposal, it’s hard to blame the director for getting preoccupied with surfaces.

          The movie begins with a brief introduction to Edouard (Delon), an unflappable detective who spends his evening prowling the Parisian underworld to resolve cases that flummox other policemen. Then the movie shifts to a bank robbery overseen by Simon (Richard Crenna). The robbery ends with one bystander murdered and one accomplice wounded. While the injured crook is hospitalized, Edouard cleverly connects the man to the crime; then the policeman works informants and discovers that the robbery was merely the prelude to an elaborate train heist. Concurrently, Edouard spends time with his glamorous mistress, Cathy (Deneuve), who is also Simon’s lover—although Edouard initially has no idea that Simon is involved with criminal enterprises.

          While the procedural aspects of the story come together well, culminating in an deliciously ambiguous finale, the romantic-triangle thread fizzles after too many excessively cryptic scenes. Plus, the nature of the principal Gallic performances creates an inherent storytelling obstacle—Delon and Deneuve transfix with their looks, but neither actor communicates much emotional heat. Meanwhile, the valiant Crenna’s work is hampered by dubbed dialogue, for although the Hollywood star spoke his French lines on set, a performer with better diction was hired to loop the role during post-production.

          These shortcomings aside, Un Flic has an utterly unique look that communicates Melville’s themes beautifully. In addition to employing such playfully artificial tools as miniatures for train scenes and process shots for driving scenes, Melville presents the whole film in a cool shade of blue—it seems likely he shot daylight film without adjusting for artificial light, and vice versa, so even the whites in Melville’s images (with a few exceptions) feel slightly azure. This offbeat visual device makes Un Flic seem as if it exists within a universe all its own. Better still, the most effective sequences do more than merely cast a spell with visuals. The centerpiece of the picture, for instance, is a real-time staging of the audacious train heist, an impressive 20-minute sequence almost entirely bereft of dialogue. Similarly, the opening robbery sequence and Edouard’s final scramble to capture fleeing criminals are studies in economy.

Un Flic: GROOVY

Van Nuys Blvd. (1979)

Occupying some queasy transitional space between the nostalgic cars-and-kids milieu of 1973’s American Graffiti and the sleazy style of ’80s teen-sex comedies, Van Nuys Blvd. offers an uninteresting ensemble story about young adults hooking up for sexual misadventures in and around the San Fernando Valley during the disco era. The film’s fleeting documentary-style shots of real Van Nuys Blvd. cruisers offer some interest—simply because viewers can eyeball vintage cars and fashions—but nearly everything else onscreen is beyond trite. The story begins when Bobby (Bill Adler) leaves his life in a rural trailer park and heads for Van Nuys Blvd. in his tricked-out van. Immediately after arriving in the Valley, he gets laid with a carhop named Wanda (Tara Stroheimer). Then he becomes friends with fellow small-town escapee Greg (Dennis Bowen). Eventually, Bobby dates perky blonde Moon (Cynthia Moon), and Greg hooks up with wholesome brunette Camille (Melissa Prophet). Meanwhile, the clique expands to include “Chooch” (David Hayward), an older guy whose characterization represents the dangers of arrested development. Rounding out the film’s principal characters is Officer Zass (Dana Gladstone), a putz of a cop who hassles kids until he gets his comeuppance. Writer-director William Sachs executes Van Nuys Blvd. with technical competence and zero artistry. His characters are clichéd and one-dimensional, his jokes aren’t funny, and his sex scenes are tacky. Sachs relies on such tired devices as close-ups of would-be lovers licking their lips in anticipation, and the closest thing Van Nuys Blvd. has to a unique erotic moment is the scene in which Bobby and Wanda slather each other with condiments while screwing. Worse, Van Nuys Blvd. is padded with lengthy scenes of repetitive action (e.g., disco dancing, go-cart racing, etc.), and Sachs’ idea of humor involves misunderstandings like Camille’s father mistakenly molesting Greg because he thinks he’s actually molesting one of Camille’s female friends. The performers in Van Nuys Blvd. strive mightily to generate sincerity, which suggests Sachs ran a nurturing set, but after a while, watching these folks struggle to enliven lifeless material becomes exhausting. So, even though Sachs’ movie is a bit less exploitive than most ’70s movies preoccupied with teen sex, Van Nuys Blvd. is a dead end.

Van Nuys Blvd.: LAME

Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? (1977)

          An Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, this gentle and touching piece depicts the extraordinary lifestyle of a California couple whose household includes a mixture of healthy biological children and physically challenged adopted children, with many of the adoptees hailing from other countries, notably Vietnam. Structured around the arrival of the family’s 19th child, a blind boy named J.R. who is paralyzed below the waist, the documentary illustrates the everyday hardships the adopted kids face, while also identifying aspects of the DeBolts’ parenting technique that make their unique situation not only functional but also harmonic. As matriarch Dorothy DeBolt remarks at one point, the fact that some of her kids have to worry about things like climbing stairs without functional legs keeps the normal irritants of life in perspective. Throughout Who Are the DeBolts?, Dorothy and her husband, Bob, are shown creating a nurturing household in which simple victories are celebrated—and in which self-pity is not tolerated.

          The filmmakers put special focus on adopted daughter Karen, a happy grade-schooler who giggles constantly, despite having been born without arms or legs. Arguably the most powerful scene in the movie is a simple vignette of Karen preparing for her day without assistance, first using leverage and her teeth to slip on the apparatus containing her prosthetic arms and hooks, and then using the hooks to strap on the elaborate prosthetic comprising most of her lower half. In the DeBolts’ world, teaching a child like Karen to become proud and self-sufficient is the goal—which means that, as the filmmakers state explicitly in narration, the example of the DeBolts provides lessons about dignity and understanding from which all can learn.

          Laughter, especially Karen’s, is a huge part of what makes Who Are the DeBolts? so affecting. Whereas most people might consider the prospect of more than a dozen challenged children to be depressing or intimidating, the DeBolt household is filled with companionship, joy, and music. To paraphrase another of Dorothy’s wise remarks, she considers it a happy day whenever one of the adopted children leaves—because that means the child has been given the tools to build a fulfilling life as an adult. Director John Korty, writer Janet Peoples, and editor David Webb Peoples (who later became the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of films including the 1992 Clint Eastwood Western Unforgiven) shape their material carefully. While certain tough issues are addressed, including the traumatic backgrounds of some of the adopted children, others are glossed over, such as the financial necessity of the DeBolts receiving state aid to help pay medical bills for their children. As such, Who Are the DeBolts? falls somewhere between a celebration of its subject and a genuine investigation; the filmmakers are less interested in complicated answers to the title question than in conveying the empowering spirit of the DeBolt household.

          Nonetheless, Who Are the DeBolts? has many potent scenes, such as a climactic moment depicting the excruciatingly long process of J.R. walking from the DeBolt house to the curb so he can catch a school bus. Implied in this scene, however, is the beautiful notion at the center of Who Are the DeBolts?—no matter how rough things are for J.R., he’s got a house filled with loving people who are cheering him toward success. FYI, since Who Are the DeBolts? is very short (72 minutes), it’s worth watching the film in tandem with a 1980 made-for-TV sequel, the 45-minute program Steppin’ Out: The DeBolts Grow Up. Together, these films tell a sweet story of adversity, compassion, and triumph.

Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?: GROOVY

You Light Up My Life (1977)

          Wholesome singer Debby Boone’s rendition of the syrupy ballad “You Light Up My Life” was such a monster radio hit in 1977—and has remained such a staple of adult-contemporary radio—that Boone’s recording long ago eclipsed the original source of the song. Composed by Joe Brooks and sung by Kasey Cisyk, the tune first reached audiences as part of You Light Up My Life, a gentle romantic drama that Brooks wrote, produced, and directed. In the movie, Cisyk provides the singing voice for leading lady Didi Conn. (Boone re-recorded the song, for an LP of her own, after the film was completed.) Manipulative and mawkish, Brooks’ movie wants desperately to be the touching story of an underdog heroine surmounting incredible odds in her search for self-realization. But thanks to Brooks’ incompetence as a storyteller, and to Conn’s lack of star power, You Light Up My Life feels like a second-rate afterschool special.

          Set in Los Angeles, the story tracks the adventures of Laurie Robinson (Conn), a background singer and occasional TV actress. Growing up as the daughter of grade-Z comic Sy Robinson (Joe Silver), Laurie was groomed to be a comedienne, though music is her first love. For this particular story to work, circumstances must keep Laurie separate from music. Instead, Brooks depicts her as working professionally on music every single day. In fact, the filmmaker contrives a big scene during which Laurie happens into a recording session, prompting the producer of the session to record Laurie singing her song, “You Light Up My Life,” with a full orchestra. This is an underdog? Brooks also fails in depicting Laurie as a girl who’s unlucky in love. Early in the movie, she gets picked up in a bar and taken home by a handsome man; the next morning, she admits to her new lover that she’s engaged to someone else. This is Miss Lonelyhearts? One wonders whether Brooks wrote himself into such ridiculous corners because he was retrofitting a story to accompany his big song, or because he simply kept every one of his ideas without questioning whether those ideas meshed.

          In any event, the film’s vibe is strange—since the heroine is shown to have a caring father, enormous talent, a hot love life, a relatively successful career, and supportive friends, she doesn’t need anyone to light up her life. In screenwriting terms, therefore, Brooks’ project is a notion that never evolves into an actual story. Conn, so endearing a year later in the megahit musical Grease (1978), wears out her welcome quickly, because she’s so bland and mousy that her performance becomes monotonous. (Costars Silver and Melanie Mayron add humanity to their roles, but they’re hamstrung by the vapidity of Brooks’ script.) You Light Up My Life is too kind-hearted and slick to actively hate, but in many ways, the picture is a case study of what not to do when constructing cinematic narratives.

You Light Up My Life: FUNKY

The New Centurions (1972)

          This erratic but nervy film was released at a time when popular portrayals of policemen were mostly limited to extremes—the sanitized, such as the 1968-1975 TV series Adam-12, and the scandalous, such as the 1971 feature Dirty Harry. Based on the first novel by real-life former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh, The New Centurions occupies an unsettling place between these approaches. Characterizing policemen as victims of physical and psychological violence who are lucky to reach retirement alive—and sane—the movie is melodramatic and occasionally overwrought. Yet, when viewed as either an intense character drama or as a historical corrective to one-sided narratives about law enforcement, The New Centurions gains a certain degree of validity. It’s also quite well made, with excellent long-lens photography by Ralph Woolsey capturing the soulless textures of Los Angeles in a way that accentuates the desensitizing grind of police patrols.

          Furthermore, the movie contains a handful of vivid performances, from the showy leading turns by Stacy Keach and George C. Scott to colorful bit parts played by an eclectic roster of actors including William Atherton, Erik Estrada, Clifton James, Ed Lauter, Roger E. Mosley, Pepe Serna, James B. Sikking, and Dolph Sweet. And then there are the actors whose significant supporting turns complement the rhythms of Keach’s and Scott’s work—Jane Alexander, Rosalind Cash, and Scott Wilson, all three of whom deliver performances filled with palpable emotion. So even if screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and director Richard Fleischer let the story run amok at times, The New Centurions contains dozens of moments that connect.

          Although it’s essentially an ensemble piece, the movie focuses on Roy Fehler (Keach), a rookie cop who hits the streets right after the opening credits and is partnered with veteran Sergeant Kilvinski (Scott). At first, Fehler is a soft-spoken married man working his way through law school. As the movie progresses, he becomes a cynical adrenaline junkie who tanks his marriage with a combination of alcoholism and recklessness. Meanwhile, Kilvinski ages out of the force and confronts the depressing truth that he’s lost without a badge. This psychoanalytic approach to police drama is commonplace today, but it was innovative in 1972, which is why it’s easy forgive the filmmakers—and Wambaugh—for the excesses of the story, all of which serve useful metaphorical purposes. Every death in The New Centurions adds to the overall theme of the price that brave, crazy, and/or naïve men pay for doing a dangerous job.

          After all, who could be expected to keep their wits when faced with an endless cycle of new crooks and recidivists? “There’s always another asshole on the street,” Kilvinski says at one point. “You can’t stop ’em all.” And, as Fehler remarks in another scene, it’s not as if the public’s support for cops is overwhelming, because the film is set in a time when street justice was complicated by the rise of the suspect-rights movement: “Last year, everybody was screaming about the lack of freedom—this year, everybody’s screaming about the lack of control.” In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The New Centurions: GROOVY

Trog (1970)

One of the stranger factoids about ’70s cinema is that Hollywood legend Joan Crawford made her final big-screen appearance in a terrible UK-made monster movie. Yes, the iconic actress who won an Oscar for Mildred Pierce (1945) concluded her storied career by costarring with a stuntman wearing one of the silliest creature costumes ever committed to celluloid, and she was denied the option of milking her scenes for camp humor. Trog, which concerns a prehistoric troglodyte who runs amok in modern England after being freed from centuries of imprisonment in underground ice, is played straight—even though the title character’s ensemble consists of furry boots, a loincloth, and an absurd monkey mask that looks less like artistic movie makeup and more like the battered treads of a worn-out tire. Watching Crawford interact with this embarrassing excuse for a monster is stupefying, especially when Crawford plays such ridiculous moments as teaching “Trog” to play fetch. Had this picture been made by some grade-Z American company with insufficient funds, one could have excused the inanity of the content as a casualty of compromised circumstances. Alas, Trog was made by a proper British film company, with decent production values and professional lighting. Therefore, the mind reels trying to imagine how the crew of Trog made it through each day of shooting burdened with the sure knowledge they were manufacturing crap. The film’s story is hackneyed in the extreme—after spelunkers discover Trog in his cave, an anthropologist (Crawford) sedates Trog and takes him to her lab, where she studies the creature whom she believes to be the missing link. Meanwhile, an angry local official (Michael Gough) campaigns to get Trog destroyed. (Because, of course, the world’s scientific community would tolerate the murder of a one-of-a-kind beast easily restrained behind bars.) The rest of the story unfolds by rote, at least for anyone who’s ever seen a monster movie—Trog reveals sensitivity, escapes under dubious circumstances, lashes out in fear, and becomes the target of a manhunt. Through it all, Crawford delivers her stilted lines with earnest severity, sporting an unnatural color of blonde hair and a series of monochromatic pantsuits and schmatas. Her look is only slightly more flattering than that sported by the title character.

Trog: LAME

The Angel Levine (1970)

          Released at a time when American films were making bold strides in the portrayal of race relations, The Angel Levine is odd insomuch as race relations only appear to be an important narrative element. Rather than being a probing study of the prejudices that tinge an elderly Jewish tailor’s unlikely friendship with a younger black man, The Angel Levine is an examination of religious faith. And yet it’s also about the dissipation of a marriage, about mortality, about a fractious romance between a ne’er-do-well and his grounded girlfriend, and about the line separating delusion from reality. The Angel Levine is concerned with all of these things—and less. Presented in a peculiar fashion that’s alternately cryptic, melodramatic, and pretentious, the film begins with a premise requiring considerable suspension of disbelief, then undercuts the premise at every turn, either by deviating into peripheral narrative concerns or by wobbling tonally between satire and seriousness. In the end, The Angel Levine is a mess, but it’s executed with such care and intelligence that one roots for the piece to come together. Moreover, the experience of watching the movie is frequently engaging, simply because the story involves so many provocative ideas.

          Adapted from a short story by Bernard Malamud, whose work provided the basis for the fine drama The Fixer (1968) and the romantic baseball yarn The Natural (1984), The Angel Levine is set in a Jewish tenement in modern-day New York. Chubby tailor Morris Mishkin (Zero Mostel) can’t work because of health problems, and his wife, Fanny (Ida Kaminska), is bedridden with illness that might be terminal. One night, Morris enters his kitchen to discover a black man sitting there. The man introduces himself as Alexander Levine (Harry Belafonte), then explains he’s an angel sent from heaven to help Morris deal with his problems. An inordinate amount of time is then spent on conversations in which Morris and Alexander debate the veracity of Alexander’s divinity. Later, Alexander’s girlfriend, Sally (Gloria Foster), enters the scene for more debates about Alexander’s virtues. Eventually, the whole thing becomes a referendum on Morris’ and Alexander’s respective identities, with the female companions of both men finding them wanting.

          Downbeat from start to finish, The Angel Levine was the first American movie directed by Hungarian filmmaker Ján Kadár. Hampered by a claustrophobic script that feels more like a one-act play than a proper movie, Kadár lets his leading actors slip into familiar rhythms—Mostel alternates between annoying brashness and mawkish pathos while Belafonte delivers most of his lines with all-purpose intensity. This has the effect of rendering both main characters monotonous and unlikeable. Even more problematically, the story’s quasi-supernatural element feels contrived and odd, although it’s likely much was lost in translation from Malamud’s story. Compounding all of these flaws, Zdenek Liska’s original score is more suitable for a horror movie than for a human drama, since Linska employs eerie chants and other disorienting noises. Yet unlike other very strange movies of the same vintage, The Angel Levine never ventures fully into the realm of the surreal; quite to the contrary, it feels like a sober attempt at existential inquiry gone wrong.

The Angel Levine: FUNKY

Hammer (1972)

          After making a tentative transition from his pro football career to acting, via small parts in M*A*S*H and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (both 1970), Fred Williamson played his first starring role in this clichéd boxing/crime saga, which had the good fortune of being released during the first wave of blaxploitation flicks. Williamson seized on the genre’s popularity and used the middling success of this picture as the launching pad for a prolific career in B-movies, eventually morphing into a writer-producer-director as well as an actor. And if Williamson’s screen persona was almost always more interesting than his actual movies, there’s a reason he earned the nickname “The Hammer” as a gridiron hero before he repurposed the moniker for his first star vehicle. Williamson cuts a hell of a figure—cool and handsome and muscular—while his cheerful narcissism reads on camera as a special kind of charisma. One gets the sense no one loves Fred Williamson quite as much as Fred Williamson, and superhuman confidence is an effective tool for playing cocksure protagonists.

          In this picture, Williamson plays B.J. Hammer, a faded boxer who gets another chance at pugilistic glory when gangsters agree to promote his comeback. Unfortunately, the gangsters expect Hammer to throw an important fight, which he refuses to do, thus endangering both Hammer and his sexy girlfriend (Vonetta McGee). Meanwhile, a hard-driving police detective (Bernie Hamilton) leans on Hammer to help gather incriminating evidence on the gangsters. There’s not a single original thought in Hammer, which is so meager from a narrative perspective that much of the movie feels dull and pointless; even the chases and fight scenes are enervated. Per the norm for blaxploitation pictures, a revered soul musician provides the soundtrack, but Solomon Burke’s grooves for Hammer lack the vitality of, say, Curtis Mayfield’s wicked tunes for Super Fly (1972). Still, Hammer is watchable thanks to decent production values, a forceful star, and vivid supporting performances. Hamilton has a great put-upon quality as the cop, McGee lends elegance and poise to her underwritten role, and industrial-strength B-movie stalwart William Smith injects his small part as a henchman with gleeful malice.

Hammer: FUNKY

Malibu High (1979)

This stultifying would-be drama represents drive-in cinema at its most shameless and witless. Telling the story of a high-school girl who descends from bad habits to self-destructive ones after a romantic breakup and the suicide of her father, Malibu High somehow manages to transform its protagonist from a petulant wiseass to an insatiable prostitute and then to a professional killer. While it might seem at first blush that a story this outlandish would be amusing to watch as an example of narrative excess, nothing in Malibu High sustains interest. The story concerns Kim (Jill Lansing), a morose teenager who begins her downfall by sleeping with teachers for better grades. Then she decides to make money by turning tricks for crass pimp Tony (Alex Mann), thereby catching the eye of gangster Lance (Garth Howard). He becomes Kim’s new pimp, but when she kills an abusive client in self-defense, Garth capitalizes on Kim’s bloodlust by hiring her to murder enemies. All of this is quite gruesome and ridiculous, so Malibu High is as unpleasant as it is dull. The acting is dreadful, the pace would make a snail impatient, and the scripting is comically stupid. Furthermore, Malibu High is scored with a bizarre assortment of musical cues and stings that sound like they were lifted from grade-Z cartoons and/or porno movies, while the sex scenes—of which there are many—merely comprise repetitive shots of leading lady Lansing grinding unconvincingly against the bodies of various unsavory men. Plus, at the risk of being indelicate, discovering that the somewhat plain-looking Lansing is the star of the picture will disappoint viewers eager to see more of the model featured on the movie’s outrageously misleading poster. In addition to the bait-and-switch maneuver with the model, the poster reflects a spurious attempt to market Malibu High as a comedy, when in fact it’s a rather dour—and completely unbelievable—cautionary tale.

Malibu High: LAME

Fellini’s Casanova (1976)

          Among the iconic directors occupying the highest strata of the world-cinema pantheon, Italian madman Federico Fellini is almost certainly the one whose work I find the least interesting. And while one must divide Fellini’s work into at least two categories, cerebral art pieces and over-the-top freakouts, it’s fair to say that Fellini’s style is so extreme in all circumstances that for non-fans, watching Fellini films is like listening to a lunatic rant at top volume. The campy costuming, the grotesque characters, the voluptuous production design, the weird dream sequences—it’s all just too much, especially in the director’s later years, when he often slipped into self-parody.

          As a case in point, Fellini’s Casanova is an absurdly overlong adaptation of the legendary 18th-century lothario’s autobiography. Sprawling over 155 interminable minutes—that’s two and a half hours of noisy nonsense—Fellini’s Casanova contains attempts at many worthwhile things, such as questioning whether Casanova actually made emotional connections with his conquests and, on a deeper level, questioning what sort of existential malaise might drive a man to live by his libido. The movie also tries to capture the melancholy notion of an intelligent and sophisticated man who eventually became something of a circus animal, demonstrating his storied virility when the aristocracy of Europe expressed indifference to whatever else he might offer.

          Alas, co-writer/director Fellini surrounds these thoughtful elements with endless scenes of cartoonish stupidity. The filmmaker’s usual gimmicks are present and accounted for (extremely ugly supporting actors, women painted with whorish makeup), and he also includes such bizarre characters as a giant woman who wrestles men in a cage before taking sexy baths with her dwarf companions. (It wouldn’t be a Fellini movie without dwarves.) Even the sex scenes are not bereft of Fellini’s excessive stylization. The first carnal vignette, for instance, features Casanova holding onto the hips of a woman with whom he’s copulating and then bouncing around a room like some kind of erotic acrobat.

          Exacerbating the strangeness of the scene—and, for that matter, of the whole movie—is the manner in which Fellini presents his unlikely leading man, lanky and sardonic Canadian Donald Sutherland. The actor shaved the front of his scalp for this role, and then applied makeup prosthetics to his nose and chin before topping off the clownish effect with exaggerated eye shadow. He looks like a psychotic drag queen, especially when Fellini frames various point-of-view shots—from the perspective of Casanova’s sex partners—in which Sutherland pumps away at women with the aggression and snarling facial expressions of an athlete doing reps. (Rest assured, not a single frame of Fellini’s Casanova is sexy, despite the presence of lovely starlet Tina Aumont in the supporting cast.)

          Since Fellini’s Casanova employs a meandering, dreamlike story structure that wafts back and forth between time periods, the overall desired effect becomes hopelessly obscured. Is the movie supposed to be a criticism of Casanova’s libertine ways, hence the animalistic portrayal? Is the movie supposed to indict the audience for being fascinated by Casanova’s sex life? Or is the movie just another in a long series of intellectually masturbatory indulgences by a director who never seemed to recognize when enough was enough? Maybe you’re a Fellini fan who cares enough to find answers to these questions, but simply raising the questions represents as much effort as I’m willing to invest. As a last thought, however, I’m willing to acknowledge that Fellini’s Casanova is filled with eye candy for those who subscribe to the more-is-more aesthetic, notably during the impressive but bewildering opening scene of an nighttime outdoor carnival in Venice.

Fellini’s Casanova: FREAKY

Sweet Sugar (1972)

          The catfight scene is a staple of women-in-prison pictures, but Sweet Sugar takes this trope to a whole new level. The movie is set in a jungle plantation/prison where psychotic overlord Dr. John (Angus Duncan) performs weird experiments on inmates, most of whom are sexy young women. At one point, Dr. John gathers several incarcerated babes in a giant cage, then reveals a gaggle of housecats that he’s injected with a serum designed to reduce animals to violent primitivism. As the housecats claw and screech, ready for blood, Dr. John’s underlings toss the housecats over the wall of the cage so they land on the women and start scratching. Not only is the image of cats flying through the air beyond silly, the scene is so literal that it’s surreal—it’s a catfight scene with actual cats fighting. And so it goes throughout Sweet Sugar, which falls squarely within the so-bad-it’s-good category. The picture is confusing, disjointed, erratic, repetitive, stupid, and tacky, which means that every scene is worth a laugh at the expense of the incompetent filmmakers and unfortunate actors.

          Leading lady Phyllis Davis, who has an appealing world-weary quality (and an outrageously sexy body), plays Sugar, a swinger who gets busted on a dope charge. Once in jail, she bonds with fellow put-upon prisoners Dolores (Pamela Collins), the requisite virgin whom all the male guards want to deflower, and Simone (Ella Edwards), the requisite badass African-American who’s eager for armed insurrection. Per the standard women-in-prison formula, the ladies endure backbreaking work (cutting sugar cane in the humid jungle) and monstrous torture, mostly at the hands of Dr. John and head guard Burgos (Cliff Osmond). The ladies also find allies in such characters as male prisoner Mojo (Timothy Brown), who moonlights as a voodoo priest (!).

          Tonally, Sweet Sugar is all over the place—the filmmakers attempt everything from light comedy to playful titillation to vile horror. Running through the whole picture, of course, is the sure knowledge that every 10 minutes or so, one of the buxom starlets will lose her shirt. The acting in Sweet Sugar is generally quite weak, with main bad guy Duncan giving an especially goofy performance, but Collins and Davis both evince toughness despite spending large amounts of their time naked or screaming (if not naked and screaming). Plus, thanks to scenes like the catfight, Sweet Sugar occasionally drifts into the realm of full-on camp. And since women-in-prison pictures are so distasteful, generally speaking, it’s probably wiser to watch Sweet Sugar as an (unintentional) send-up of the genre, rather than simply another iteration.

Sweet Sugar: FUNKY

One More Time (1970)

The easygoing entertainers comprising the Rat Pack appeared in lighthearted movies throughout the ’60s, whether separately or together—with the most notable Rat Pack flick being the original Ocean’s Eleven (1960), which features the whole gang. Among the lesser examples of Rat Pack cinema is a pair of frothy comedies costarring energetic showman Sammy Davis Jr. and suave British actor Peter Lawford. The first of these pictures, Salt and Pepper (1968), introduced fun-loving London nightclub operators Charles Salt (Sammy Davis Jr.) and Christopher Pepper (Lawford). Directed by future superstar Richard Donner, Salt and Pepper did well enough to warrant a sequel, One More Time, which probably should’ve been titled One Time Too Many. Whatever charm was present in the original film is absent from the sequel, which compensates for the absence of a real story by bludgeoning viewers with outlandish situations and unfunny jokes. Davis works hard to sell physical-comedy shtick and Lawford delivers urbane charm, but the whole enterprise is so drab, pointless, and silly that star power isn’t reason enough to watch. Plus, because One More Time was directed by comedy legend Jerry Lewis as a particularly fallow point in his creative life, the movie’s gags feel tired even before Lewis milks the gags with irritating embellishments and repetition. For instance, Salt dresses up in a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume and fills his nostrils with snuff—then goes through what seems like an eternity of facial contortions before sneezing so powerfully he knocks over everyone in a crowded ballroom. This is Lewis’ comedy at its worst, simultaneously infantile and overwrought. As for the movie’s narrative, One More Time is nominally about Pepper investigating the murder of his twin brother, but it also concerns diamond smuggling, mistaken identity, and other random nonsense. (How random? At one point, Salt enters a hidden chamber in a castle, only to discover a mad-scientist laboratory occupied by Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein, played in cameos by Hammer Films stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.) Lewis periodically stops the movie cold so Davis can perform musical numbers, and the director goes for cheap laughs with a fourth-wall-breaking gag at the end. In sum, One More Time isn’t worth your time—unless you’re a hardcore fan of the leading players.

One More Time: LAME

King of the Gypsies (1978)

          Clearly imagined as a Godfather-style epic set in the colorful subculture of modern-day gypsies, this Dino De Laurentiis production features an impressive cast, splashy production values, and a vivid storyline filled with betrayal and violence. Yet as with many of De Laurentiis’ pulpier offerings, a general atmosphere of tackiness pervades King of the Gypsies—instead of treating its characters with respect, as Francis Ford Coppola did with the Corleone family in the Godfather movies, writer-director Frank Pierson presents gypsies as one-dimensional primitives. King of the Gypsies is filled with arranged marriages, incessant shouting, quasi-Biblical domestic strife, physical abuse, and willful ignorance. Very much like Pierson’s directorial debut, the much-maligned A Star Is Born (1976), King of the Gypsies occupies a queasy middle ground between legitimate cinema and outright exploitation—both movies are too campy to take seriously, and yet both are made with meticulous craftsmanship. (Oddly, most other highlights in Pierson’s career feature greater nuance, from 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon, for which he wrote the Oscar-winning script, to various telefilms Pierson directed, including 1992’s Citizen Cohn.)

          Adapted from a book by Peter Maas, King of the Gypsies tells the life story of Dave Stepanowicz, a young man who inherits a position of power in the gypsy community but rebels against inhumane gypsy traditions. The narrative begins with an elaborate prologue that explains how Dave’s parents became involved with each other. Dave’s grandfather, Zharko (Sterling Hayden), is the king of an East Coast gypsy empire circa the 1950s. He arranges to buy a gypsy teenager, Rose, as a bride for his ne’er-do-well son, Groffo. When Rose’s family tries to back out of the deal, Zharko abducts Rose at gunpoint. Years later, Rose (played as an adult by Susan Sarandon) and Groffo (played as an adult by Judd Hirsch), give birth to children including Dave (played as an adult by Eric Roberts, in his cinematic debut). During episodes that depict Dave’s childhood and adolescence, friction grows between Dave and his abusive father, so once he’s in his 20s, Dave leaves home—thereby shunning his role as a prince in Zharko’s monarchy. Dave tries to make it on his own, even dating a non-gypsy (Annette O’Toole), but when Zharko’s health declines, Zharko summons Dave back into the family fold. A struggle for control then emerges between Dave, Zharko’s choice as the next king, and Groffo, who resents being pushed aside.

          Because the story covers so much tawdry narrative terrain, King of the Gypsies is never boring. The movie also looks great, with crisp images by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and the soundtrack features vibrant acoustic music by David Grisman. In fact, much of the movie works. Roberts is strong, delivering a James Dean-style performance as an angry young man, while Hirsch and Sarandon complement him well (despite playing underwritten characters). Hayden is a joy to watch, as always, even though he’s hilariously miscast, and Pierson wisely keeps the screen time of scenery-chewing Shelley Winters (playing Zharko’s wife) to a minimum. (Rounding out the flashy cast, Annie Potts plays a gypsy woman who gets a crush on Dave, and Brooke Shields plays Dave’s little sister—a poignant role that far exceeds her dramatic powers.) The intensity of King of the Gypsies rises steadily from start to finish, especially since the story concludes with a suite of violent scenes. Furthermore, the research Maas did for his book provides Pierson with abundant colorful details, such as the rituals of gypsy life. King of the Gypsies is overwrought and silly, but within its lowbrow limitations, the movie is also an entertaining ride.

King of the Gypsies: FUNKY