Sudden Death (1977)

          On some levels, Sudden Death is almost a parody of the tough-guy genre. Swaggering Robert Conrad stars as Duke Smith—yes, really—a former covert-ops guy now living out a casual retirement in the Philippines with his daughter and his girlfriend. When he gets roped into a case involving political intrigue, he steadily escalates from pummeling opponents to killing them, eventually leaving a huge trail of bodies in his wake. Through it all, he preens like a bodybuilder, showing off his taut physique in what can only be described as topless scenes, and he spews macho dialogue that might seem more at home in a blaxploitation flick. (Beyond unpersuasively barking the epithet “motherfucker,” he threatens a dude by saying, “Talk or I’m gonna spit in your face and kick you in the balls.”) Like some Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone movie from the ’80s, Sudden Death isn’t so much a narrative as an exercise in brand management, selling the idea that Conrad’s the baddest son of a bitch on the planet. With all due respect to his incredible athleticism (back in the day, Conrad was known for doing many of his own stunts), Conrad is a relatively small man, measuring just five feet and eight inches, so watching him strut around this way has the unavoidable air of overcompensation. The spectacle is weirdly fascinating to watch. So, too, is Sudden Death.

          Although the picture was made by the same folks responsible for many sketchy Filipino coproductions of the era, notably director Eddie Romero and costar/producer John Ashley, Sudden Death is markedly slicker than other flicks with similar origins. The camerawork is austere and confident, the dialogue is terse and periodically amusing (think Walter Hill Lite), and the methodical escalation of brutality provides a brisk pace. That said, Sudden Death suffers from a hopelessly trivial storyline about the machinations of an opportunistic corporation. The picture gets an energy boost during its second half, with the introduction of hired gun Dominic Aldo (Don Stroud). Since he’s a former acquaintance of Duke’s, Aldo is basically the same character without a conscience, so the film builds toward their duel at the end. The showdown a brief but vicious battle, concluding with a horrific demise. Sudden Death then goes even further down the nihilistic rabbit hole with one of the most pointlessly grim final scenes you’ll ever encounter in an action movie. So in a trash-cinema sort of way, Sudden Death hits hard and leaves a mark.

Sudden Death: FUNKY

Murph the Surf (1975)

          Better known by its rerelease title Live a Little, Steal a Lot, this somewhat entertaining crime picture tells the real-life story of two surfers who made their living as jewel thieves in Miami, Florida, until getting caught following a brazen robbery they committed at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Competently directed by Marvin J. Chomsky and featuring strong location photography, the picture suffers from a muddled and shallow script. Jumps back and forth in time during the first hour of the story are confusing and unhelpful, while attempts to delve into characters during the remaining 40 minutes never quite bear fruit. Typical of the movie’s narrative problems is the ambivalence about which character occupies the center of the story. Although roguish and tempestuous Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy (Don Stroud) is the title character and the engine driving most of what happens, the real protagonist, if only by dint of having the most screen time, is his best friend and partner, Allan Kuhn (Robert Conrad). Yet neither character is put across with sufficient insight or nuance to grab the viewer’s imagination. Although they’re both amusing and handsome and mischievous, it’s hard to care when they start quarrelling with each other, and even harder to care whether they get caught.

          The first hour intercuts moments from the big New York job with vignettes of the days and weeks leading up to the crime. Jack and Allan live carefree lives in Miami, committing crimes and surfing and wooing pretty girls, all while managing to avoid capture by police. Some of this material is exciting, such as a boat chase through canals, and some of it is mundane. Complicating the criminals’ idyllic lifestyle is the arrival of lovely Ginny Eaton (Donna Mills), who becomes Jack’s girlfriend but catches Allan’s fancy. She’s a stewardess who eventually helps the boys smuggle loot out of New York City, and Allan’s desire to be with Ginny drives a wedge in his friendship with Jack.

          Beyond mediocre storytelling, the main problem plaguing this picture stems from the leading performances. Conrad does his usual routine of preening and scowling, while Stroud occasionally sacrifices his appealing naturalism on the altar of bug-eyed overacting. One man does too little and the other does too much. Mills is merely adequate, and there’s not enough time devoted to Burt Young’s cranky performance as an investigator. Murph the Surf basically works as a compendium of beefcake shots, daring escapades, and macho standoffs, with playful moments including the bit where the robbers play marbles with priceless gems. Nonetheless, the movie fades from memory almost immediately. Conrad and Stroud reteamed, albeit with much less shared screen time, for the nasty action thriller Sudden Death (1977).

Murph the Surf: FUNKY

Rolling Man (1972)

          At first glance, the made-for-TV drama Rolling Man might seem like little more than an offbeat mediocrity with an interesting-ish cast. Prolific TV-movie guy Dennis Weaver plays a tow-truck driver who loses custody of his kids while serving a prison term for assault, then struggles to find them upon gaining his release. Supporting him are Donna Mills, Agnes Moorehead, Sheree North, Slim Pickens, Don Stroud, and country singer Jimmy Dean. The story is a bit of a mess, because the leading character tends to stumble in and out of episodes, lingering in places when he should be looking for his kids, so there’s not much in the way of forward momentum until the last 20 minutes or so. Yet the exemplary work of a behind-the-scenes player elevates Rolling Man. By dint of airing about two weeks before another 1972 telefilm, Goodnight, My Love, this picture represents the directorial debut of Peter Hyams, who later became a successful feature-film helmer known for action pictures, conspiracy thrillers, and sci-fi sagas. He does terrific work here, not only by imbuing Rolling Man with a naturalistic pictorial style but also by guiding his actors to render lived-in performances. What’s more, the picture has strong rural atmosphere, from the believable dialects of the characters to the gritty look of low-rent locations including racetracks and trailer parks.

          The movie’s unlucky protagonist is Lonnie (Weaver), a simple guy who enjoys working for mechanic Chuck (Pickens) because the lifestyle allows him to avoid heavy responsibilities. But when Lonnie discovers that his wife is two-timing him with racecar driver Harold (Stroud), Lonnie freaks out, chasing the lovers and running them off the road. After the wife dies in the crash, Lonnie beats the tar out of Harold, blaming him for the tragedy. Years later, after leaving jail, Lonnie discovers that his mother (Moorehead) sent his kids to live with a foster family, so Lonnie embarks on a quest to find the two boys, though he’s periodically derailed by dalliances with pretty women. Eventually, circumstances lead to a showdown between Lonnie and his old nemesis Harold. The script never quite clicks, partially because the bond connecting Lonnie to his sons isn’t established well at the beginning. However, nearly every scene in Rolling Man works as a stand-alone piece. Hyams knew what he was doing, as evidenced by the fact that he graduated to big-screen directing after the near-simultaneous release of his first two made-for-TV efforts.

Rolling Man: FUNKY

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

          One of several deeply flawed ’70s films containing an Oscar-worthy performance by Stacy Keach, The Killer Inside Me is the first of two movies, thus far, adapted from the Jim Thompson novel of the same name. (A 2010 version starring Casey Affleck received a more favorable critical response.) The material is strange, tracking the adventures of a small-town cop who secretly harbors homicidal tendencies, so the storyline asks viewers to take an unusual ride from wholesome Americana to deviant ultraviolence. Getting the tone of this one right would have challenged even the subtlest of filmmakers, a group to which rough-and-tumble action guy Burt Kennedy most certainly does not belong. Accordingly, the 1976 version of The Killer Inside Me is a mess from a tonal perspective, because it’s unclear whether the movie is a straight drama, a thriller disguised as a lighthearted character piece, a satire of American values, or some combination of all of those things.

          Keach finds a peculiar sort of true north, both in his onscreen performance and in his wry narration track, so his characterization tells a fatalistic but darkly funny story about a guy trying to make murder a part of his everyday life. Alas, the movie around Keach isn’t nearly as surefooted, even though some of the supporting performances are tasty and even though cinematographer William A. Fraker shrouds the film in evocative shadows. Those excited about exploring weird pockets of Hollywood cinema will be more inclined to cut The Killer Inside Me slack than those looking for straightforward escapism.

          Set in a small Montana town, the story follows Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Keach) through a colorful period in his life. To the casual eye, he seems like Mr. Nice Guy, because he romances a local schoolteacher, evinces great skill at de-escalating conflicts, and gets along with people on every rung of the social ladder. Secretly, however, Lou begins an affair with a local floozy, thereby entering into a triangle with his buddy Elmer (Don Stroud), son of rich landowner Chester (Kennan Wynn). All the while, viewers glimpse Lou’s demons thanks to flashes from childhood trauma, so when Lou freaks out and kills two people, we have an inkling why.

          The first half of the picture is all setup, and the second half is all repercussions. Throughout, the filmmakers provide colorful details and grim humor. In one entertaining scene, Lou welcomes a con artist (John Carradine) into his home and proceeds to scare the bejesus out of the guy, seemingly just for sport. In another vivid bit, Lou’s boss, Sheriff Bob Maples (John Dehner), employs unique vernacular to lament his poor marksmanship: “I can’t hit a bull in the ass with a banjo.” Although the movie never coheres, The Killer Inside Me is interesting and odd from moment to moment. Beyond Keach’s beautifully deranged performance, the picture boasts strong work from Carradine, Stroud, Wynn, Tisha Steriling (as the schoolteacher), and—reuniting Keach with a costar from John Huston’s Fat City (1972)—Susan Tyrrell (as the floozy).

The Killer Inside Me: FUNKY

Angel Unchained (1970)

          Despite going slack for a while during the middle, Angel Unchained is a fair compendium of late ’60s/early ’70s signifiers thanks a plot that combines a biker gang, hippies living on a desert commune, and nasty rednecks who don’t like either of the preceding social groups. There’s not much in the way of thematic material, beyond the protagonist’s angst when he finds himself torn between the biker and hippie lifestyles, so it’s not as if director Lee Madden and his collaborators tried to reinvent the cycle-flick formula. That said, Angel Unchained has clearly defined characters, a paucity of seedy exploitation elements, and unhurried pacing, so it’s perhaps best described as a biker picture that people who don’t normally like the genre might find palatable. By the same measure, those who groove on wild scenes of scooter freaks unleashing mayhem would do well to get their kicks elsewhere, since Angel Unchained is tame by the genre’s normal standards. There’s a fair amount of brawling and drinking and riding, but the leading character is a thoughtful dude who takes a principled stand, rather than an outlaw who stirs up trouble by antagonizing authorities.

          The picture starts stylishly with a rumble at an amusement park, and then Angel (Don Stroud) says he’s ready to quit the biker-gang scene. He relinquishes leadership of his gang to Pilot (Larry Bishop), then hits the road until he encounters hippie chick Merilee (Tyne Daly). After Angel helps her out during a hassle with rednecks who dislike having a commune near their town, Merilee invites Angel to groove on their back-to-nature trip a while. Later, when the rednecks make serious trouble, Angel recruits his old biker pals for help, leading to an interesting strange-bedfellows passage during which the bikers and the hippies attempt coexistence. Nothing surprising happens in Angel Unchained, but the picture is shot fairly well, and the performances generally hit the right notes, although it’s peculiar to see Luke Askew—who usually played scumbags and thugs in the ’70s—portraying the leader of the hippie commune. That said, the scumbag quotient is more than amply filled by character actor Bill McKinney, who plays a violent biker named Shotgun with his usual gleeful menace.

Angel Unchained: FUNKY

Scalawag (1973)

Choppy, episodic, and saccharine, the family-friendly adventure Scalawag represented an ignominious directorial debut for actor Kirk Douglas. The movie features such maudlin devices as crying children, cutesy musical numbers, sentimental monologues, a talking parrot (voiced by Mel Blanc!), and a weak subplot about a bad man finding redemption by serving as surrogate father to a child. Yet even these offenses would be tolerable if Scalawag was a rip-roaring action picture. It is not. Filmed on an insufficient budget in a singularly unattractive mountain region of Serbia, the movie looks cheap and ugly, a problem exacerbated by Douglas’ dodgy camerawork. Some scenes don’t cut properly, others have such profound screen-direction problems that it’s difficult to parse spatial relationships, and some scenes just look drab. The tone of the piece is just as chaotic. Set around the middle of the 19th century, Scalawag takes place in the deserts of California. Peg (Douglas), a one-legged pirate, leads a rough gang including twins Brimstone and Mudhook (both played by Neville Brand), Fly Speck (Danny DeVito), and Velvet (Don Stroud). Through convoluted circumstances, the pirates join forces with Latin stud Don Aragon (George Eastman), as well as the beautiful Lucy-Ann (Lesley-Anne Down) and her preteen brother, Jamie (Mark Lester). Together, the characters search for gold. Each character is either anonymous or trite, the plotting is amateurish, and the double-crosses and lies that are supposed to generate dramatic conflict instead produce confusion. Douglas is a terrible ham throughout, Stroud is wasted in a nothing role, DeVito plays a cartoonish imbecile, Down is ornamental, and Lester comes across like a lab-generated child-star robot. Plus, why bother to make a pirate picture if nearly all the action takes place on dry land? Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of dumb.

Scalawag: LAME

Bloody Mama (1970)

          Among the better films in the seemingly endless cycle of Depression-era crime flicks that Roger Corman produced while capitalizing on the success of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), this ramshackle drama is a grim piece of work with occasional flashes of real insight and sensitivity. As a whole, the movie is quite rickety, thanks to erratic storytelling and the unsuccessful use of montages that blend newsreel footage with voiceover to place the activities of the main characters into a historical context. Yet for periodic stretches of screen time, the picture feels substantial.
          Directed as well as produced by Corman, Bloody Mama purports to tell the story of real-life 1930s criminal “Ma” Kate Barker, who led a gang comprising her adult sons and various hangers-on during a violent string of armed robberies. Right from the beginning of the film, Corman tries to present a psychological reading of the title character—viewers meet Kate as a young girl, when her brothers hold her down on the ground while her father rapes her. Once the picture introduces Shelley Winters as the middle-aged Kate, mother to four redneck kids, the idea is that viewers should understand what made Kate so tough. As with similar imagery appearing throughout the film (e.g., Kate holding one of her sons in his arms while he cries himself to sleep after murdering a young woman), the psychological stuff only goes so far. Beyond the dissonance of juxtaposing high-minded material with such tacky signifiers as gory murders and gratuitous nudity, the movie simply isn’t deep or literate enough. The script, credited to Don Peters and Robert Thorn, rushes through episodes covering several years, which has the effect of reducing characterizations to snapshots, and the slavish devotion to generating commercial elements means the narrative periodically stops dead while something lurid happens.

          Nonetheless, some of the characters and performances resonate. Don Stroud is menacing as the psychotic Herman Barker, while a young Robert De Niro gives an alternately frightening and goofy turn as the drug-addled Lloyd Barker. Playing the other two brothers, Clint Kimbrough and Robert Walden don’t have much to do, and in fact they’re overshadowed by the sterling work of costar Bruce Dern, who plays latter-day gang member Kevin Dirkman with his signature idiosyncratic edge. Pat Hingle’s vulnerable performance as a kidnapping victim and Diane Varsi’s bitter portrayal of a cynical prostitute-turned-moll make distinct impressions, as well. Alas, leading lady Winters is the movie’s weak link, since her cartoonish and shrill performance exists in an unpleasant dimension all its own. Oddly enough, Winters played a comical (and pseudonymous) version of the same role a few years earlier, portraying “Ma Parker” in two 1966 episodes of the camp-classic TV series Batman. Her work suited that milieu more closely.

Bloody Mama: FUNKY

Hollywood Man (1976)

          The basic narrative gimmick underlying Hollywood Man is terrific—a desperate filmmaker turns to the Mob for financing, only to have mobsters deliberately undermine his production because they want him to default so they own his entire life instead of just one movie. In fact, a similar concept appeared, probably by sheer coincidence, in Elmore Leonard’s 1990 novel Get Shorty, which became the delightful 1995 comedy film of the same name. Anyway, Hollywood Man loses its way very quickly because the filmmakers get sidetracked with a boring subplot about friction between the enforcers hired by the mob to bedevil the indebted director. Moreover, characterization is not a strong suit in Hollywood Man, so even with charismatic B-movie titan William Smith playing the main role, it’s hard to get engrossed in what should be the story’s primary emotional journey. That said, the movie has some mildly entertaining high points, it moves along fairly well, and costar Don Stroud has a blast playing an arrogant stuntman.

          The picture starts in Hollywood, naturally, where actor/director Rafe Stoker (Smith) has invested $125,000 of his own money into a new biker movie, even though the genre—which made him a star—has mostly gone out of fashion. (There’s an element of autobiography here, since Smith, who cowrote and produced Hollywood Man, came up through biker movies.) The mogul who financed most of Rafe’s previous flicks refuses to give the director end money, instead referring Rafe to a mobster with deep pockets. Fully aware of the attendant dangers but desperate to complete his opus, Rafe offers his profit participation in other movies as collateral, thus motivating his benefactor to sabotage principal photography.

          Unfortunately, the makers of Hollywood Man, including veteran B-movie director Jack Starrett, lose focus once they introduce Harvey (Ray Giardin), an unhinged thug leading a team of brutal killers. In fact, the picture’s most dynamic scene—an epic slow-motion scene of Harvey slaughtering people on a beach with a machine gun—has very little impact on the main story. More relevant are fun behind-the-scenes bits, such as the vignette of Rafe debating with a stuntman over whether a shot of a bike jump is useable since the stuntman’s fake moustache came off partway through the gag. Hollywood Man isn’t a total loss, but it represents yet another missed opportunity to channel Smith’s animalistic intensity into a storyline as muscular as the actor himself.

Hollywood Man: FUNKY

Von Richtofen and Brown (1971)

          The World War I aerial-combat drama Von Richtofen and Brown was supposed to elevate cult-favorite director Roger Corman from the exploitation-flick ghetto into the mainstream, since it was centered around respectable subject matter and made for a major studio. Instead, the film completely derailed his directing career, because Corman walked away from the wreckage of Von Richtofen and Brown to focus on producing. (In the intervening years, he has helmed only one more movie, the 1990 dud Frankenstein Unboand.) The parsimonious Corman has admitted he found the corporate decision-making and economic wastefulness of studio filmmaking distasteful, but it’s also plain watching Von Richtofen and Brown that Corman was a filmmaker who thrived on limitations. His best directorial efforts—the funky black-and-white horror/comedy hybrids of the ’50s, the stylish Edgar Allen Poe adaptations of the ’60s—excel because small budgets forced Corman to substitute ingenuity and wit for spectacle.

          Throughout Von Richtofen and Brown, Corman showcases impressive aerial footage of biplanes engaging in dogfights, but the material doesn’t cut together particularly well. Breaking his own cardinal rule of collecting only as much footage as is necessary, Corman accumulated reels upon reels of similar-looking shots that, when assembled, comprise repetitive and hard-to-follow combat scenes. Worse, sequences set on terra firma are no better. The movie’s exceedingly weak script tries to explain how legendary German pilot Baron Manfred von Richtofen (John Philip Law), better known as “The Red Baron,” rose to prominence and eventually clashed, fatally, with Canadian pilot Roy Brown (Don Stroud).

          Excepting terrific production values, nearly everything in the movie works against the efficacy of the narrative. Characters are underdeveloped. Key milestones, such as the awarding of medals, are repeated ad nauseam. Subplots are abandoned capriciously. And the attempt at contrasting the two main characters (Brown the crude humanist, von Richtofen the aristocratic hunter) never gels. Compounding these problems are threadbare performances. Law, the tall stud from Barbarella (1968) flattens lines and renders stoic facial expressions. Stroud, a salty character actor, seems adrift in every scene, as if he received no guidance whatsoever about the nature of his role.

          So, while the movie’s not a disaster by any stretch—it’s one of Corman’s best-looking films, and every so often a moment connects the way it should—one can easily see why Von Richtofen and Brown failed to generate any excitement for a new phase of Corman’s career. Still, it’s hard to call this turn of events a shame, since Corman had already accomplished so much, and since he spent the ’70s and ’80s training important new directors who made their first movies for Corman’s New World Pictures. Like von Richtofen, Corman was brought down from the stratosphere to the earth with his legacy intact.

Von Richtofen and Brown: FUNKY

The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

          Decades before he became known as a reality-TV madman, Gary Busey was a promising young talent with irrepressible energy, thriving in a broad variety of projects and even scoring an Oscar nomination for his best performance, playing an ill-fated ’50s rock star in The Buddy Holly Story. Directed by first-timer Steve Rash, The Buddy Holly Story is a thoroughly ordinary piece of work that depicts key events during Holly’s ascent from obscurity as a Texas roller-rink performer to international fame as a chart-topping tunesmith. This is awfully clean-cut stuff by rock-movie standards, since Holly’s biggest professional obstacles were ambition and perfectionism, rather than the standard rock-god foibles of substance abuse and womanizing, so the level of drama in the picture never rises particularly high. Still, The Buddy Holly Story is rewarding, largely because of Busey’s impassioned performance.

          Stripping his gigantic frame down to slimmer proportions, burying his blonde locks in brown dye, and hiding his eyes behind Holly’s signature Coke-bottle eyeglasses, Busey slips into his character’s skin while still retaining the vivaciousness that makes Busey so interesting. Whether the actor actually captures the real Holly is a question better left to experts, but there’s no question that Busey’s work in this picture is consistently dynamic and naturalistic. Better still, Busey absolutely kills during the musical scenes, since he not only did all of his own singing but also performed the movie’s myriad tunes live during filming—there’s a good reason why most of The Buddy Holly Story’s 113 minutes comprise full performances of classics like “It’s So Easy,” “Peggy Sue,” “That’ll Be the Day,” and “True Love Ways.” Whenever Busey is on stage, with hard-working supporting players Charles Martin Smith and Don Stroud playing, respectively, Holly’s bass player and drummer, the movie sizzles.

          And if some of the surrounding narrative bits fall flat by comparison—for instance, Maria Richwine’s performance as Holly’s wife is amiable but forgettable—the problem is surmountable, since a theme of The Buddy Holly Story is that Holly was a workaholic who felt most alive while creating music. Plus, the movie can’t really do much with the circumstances of Holly’s sudden death in a plane crash at the height of his fame, since it’s hard to make capricious fate seem organic. Nonetheless, Rash’s loving evocation of the ’50s is appealing—all tidy surfaces and simmering youth-culture tension—and the best parts of the movie work just fine. As the kids on American Bandstand used to say, it’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.

The Buddy Holly Story: GROOVY

Joe Kidd (1972)

          Possibly Clint Eastwood’s least interesting Western, this threadbare action flick has an impressive pedigree—celebrated novelist Elmore Leonard wrote the screenplay, and macho-cinema veteran John Sturges, of The Magnificent Seven fame, directed. Despite the participation of these boldfaced names plus that of Robert Duvall, who plays the heavy, Joe Kidd tells a forgettable story unimaginatively, so it’s only watchable because of production values, star power, Lalo Schifrin’s assertive score, and Bruce Surtees’s robust cinematography. Also working in the movie’s favor is brevity, since Joe Kidd runs just 88 minutes. After a lugubrious first act, the story gets going when rapacious developer Frank Harlan (Duvall) hires former bounty hunter Joe Kidd (Eastwood) to track Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama (John Saxon), whose rabble-rousing has interfered with Harlan’s schemes. Beyond some minor drama involving Joe’s shifting allegiances, there’s not much more to the plot, so lots of screen time gets consumed by macho posturing and lengthy sequences of characters stalking each other. A probing exploration of frontier morality this is not. One can find glimmers of Leonard’s signature pulpy style in Kidd’s bitchy dialogue, but while the best Leonard-derived Westerns have rock-solid conceits (see both versions of 3:10 to Yuma), the storyline of Joe Kidd is leisurely and unfocused, with characterizations—usually a Leonard strength—given depressingly short shrift.

          The movie looks good enough with Surtees behind the lens, though it seems he was asked to light sets more brightly than he usually does and he’s hampered by Sturges’s stodgy compositions. As for the actors, Eastwood conjures a few mildly amusing tough-guy moments, for instance when his character casually sips beer while watching a shootout. Duvall does what he can with a role so trite and underwritten it would stifle any actor, though his trope of mispronuncing the name of Saxon’s character conveys an appropriate level of arrogance. The wildly miscast Saxon snarls lines through a silly Spanish accent, and he also fails to demonstrate the charisma one might expect from a grassroots leader—one imagines that Leonard envisioned a more nuanced portrayal. Adding minor colors to the movie’s canvas are Paul Koslo, Don Stroud, and James Wainwright, who play nasty hired guns. Anyway, while some of the shootouts in Joe Kidd are moderately entertaining, the fact that such incidental details as the use of unusual firearms and an appearance by Dick Van Patten as a hotel clerk stick in the memory more than the main narrative underscore why the watchword here is unremarkable.

Joe Kidd: FUNKY

The Choirboys (1977)

          The weirdness of this comedy-drama adapted from a Joseph Wambaugh novel about debauched L.A. police officers is epitomized by one particular scene. Hot-tempered redneck cop Roscoe Rules (Tim McIntire) wakes up by a pond in L.A.’s MacArthur Park after passing out from heavy drinking (the characters call their drunken revels “choir practice”). Roscoe looks down and discovers that a duck is, well, enjoying Roscoe’s private parts with its beak. All around Roscoe, his fellow officers bust out laughing. Turns out that practical-joke-loving cop Francis Tanaguchi (Clyde Kusatsu) found Roscoe drunk, opened Roscoe’s zipper, and laid a trail of breadcrumbs from the pond to Roscoe, thereby luring the frisky foul. Unspooling across 119 deranged minutes, The Choirboys zigzags wildly between sub-Animal House humor like the duck scene and horrific moments like the opening sequence, in which Roscoe taunts a potential suicide by shouting, “Go ahead and jump, bitch!” until she does exactly that.
          The theme of this wildly overstuffed ensemble picture seems to be that anything goes if you’re wearing a badge, so one storyline involves a sensitive cop (Perry King) who gets his kicks through S&M, while another follows a Vietnam vet (Don Stroud) perpetually on the edge of a complete meltdown. And then there’s the nerdy beat cop (James Woods) enlisted to entrap hookers because he looks like an accountant, and the fat slob named “Spermwhale” (Charles Durning), whose grudge match with his overbearing superior officer gets serious when the lieutenant threatens Spermwhale’s pension. Most of the storylines include some sort of raunchiness, like the cringe-inducing scene of a slow-witted cop sliding under a glass table to “kiss” the nether regions of a female officer sitting on the table, and the picture also has more than its share of physical and psychological violence. At one point, a mischievous vice cop (Vic Tayback) taunts Roscoe with put-on homosexual advances, triggering a gay-panic freakout in which Roscoe mercilessly pummels the vice cop until other officers intervene.
          What makes all of this so odd is that venerable director Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen) exerts absolutely zero control over the movie’s tone. Pathetically sad moments are played for laughs, idiotically silly scenes are played straight, and the film’s sympathies seem to lie with its most depraved characters. The indescribably inappropriate music by Frank DeVol only accentuates the strangeness; DeVol’s sunny tunes punctuate sequences the way rimshots accompany a nightclub comic’s routine, though often with no apparent connection to the actual content of the sequences. Eventually, a plot of sorts emerges from the chaos, but even that is so distasteful as to seem utterly perplexing: The “heroes” scheme to cover up the accidental killing of the most sympathetic character in the movie. The Choirboys is loaded with colorful events and interesting actors, but it’s a sure sign of trouble when the never-subtle Burt Young, playing a disgusting vice cop named “Scuzzi,” gives the most disciplined performance in the movie.

The Choirboys: FREAKY