The Double McGuffin (1979)

          After scoring a major success with the independently produced canine caper Benji (1974), writer-director Joe Camp made two attempts at expanding his film career beyond Benji sequels and spinoffs. First came Hawmps! (1976), a silly lark about cavalrymen using camels instead of horses, and next came this youth-oriented Hitchcock homage. As any good student of the Master of Suspense knows, a “McGuffin” is a plot device that triggers action, such as the key in Notorious (1946) or the microfilm in North by Northwest (1959). Therefore the gimmick behind this movie, as Orson Welles explains during brief narration toward the beginning, is that the plot involves two separate McGuffins. Specifically, a mischievous boy discovers a suitcase filled with money near a sewer pipe, then brings his friends back to the area, where they discover the suitcase has been replaced with a dead body. Thereafter, the lads embark on a mystery-solving adventure that becomes a race against time once clues reveal a plan to murder someone at their school’s homecoming game. Echoing the classic Hitch tradition, the scenario grows more convoluted with each new development, so the kids discover international intrigue as well as hitmen and payoffs. Dogging the youthful investigators is a kindhearted local cop.

          On the plus side, The Double McGuffin is slickly produced, with peppy work by the young leading actors and proficient supporting turns by Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, and Elke Sommer. On the minus side, Camp’s writing is not as strong as his filmmaking. Too often, he slips into mawkishness and triviality, and several long scenes of interplay among the schoolchildren are boring. Worse, the film’s pacing is so unhurried and the narrative events are so inconsequential that the film nearly evaporates at regular intervals. One gets the sense of Camp being way too nice behind the camera, since much focus is given to the performance of newcomer Dion Pride, son of country singer Charley Pride. Papa Pride, of course, crooned the theme song for Benji, and Pride the Younger does the honors here. Doing a solid for a pal is lovely, but it doesn’t make for engrossing cinema. And let’s be honest: There’s only so high a juvenile Hitchcock riff can rise when the leading lady is Lisa Whelchel, later to achieve fame as “Blair” on The Facts of Life. One of the great screen sirens she is not.

The Double McGuffin: FUNKY

Mean Dog Blues (1978)

         Mean Dog Blues gets off to a decent start. After the AIP logo (always a promising sign), Fred Karlin’s smooth lounge-rock score accompanies credits that include these heartening words: “Scatman Crothers as Mudcat.” Shortly afterward, shaggy-haired protagonist Paul (Gregg Henry) abandons his useless car on the side of a desert road near a stand of Joshua trees by saying, “Goodbye, Old Paint,” then wanders off to his next adventure carrying only his guitar and a suitcase. By this point, viewers have learned that the cast includes George Kennedy, Kay Lenz, Tina Louise, and William Windom. As the saying goes, you had me at hello. Although it’s not exactly downhill from there, Mean Dog Blues never builds the desired head of steam. Nonetheless, it’s enjoyable in a disposable sort of a way. (Sadly, it's also homophobic, par for the course in B-movies of this vintage.)

          After dumping his car, Paul hitches a ride with Victor (Windom) and his wife, Donna (Louise). Things get tricky a few hours later, when Donna hits on Paul while Victor gets drunk at a roadside diner. Imprudently, Paul remains in their car afterward, so he’s a witness when Victor hits a 10-year-old kid. Politically connected and wealthy, Victor claims Paul was behind the wheel at the time of the accident, so Paul gets slapped with a one-to-five stretch at a prison work farm. Predictably, the commandant, Captain Omar Kinsman (Kennedy), is a sadistic redneck who cares more about the welfare of his favorite bloodthirsty Doberman, Rattler, than he does about the health of the convicts under his supervision. Paul decides the best way to survive his prison term is to take a dangerous job as a “dog nigger” (seriously, that’s the phrase used through the movie), so his work involves running through wilderness while guard dogs chase him for training exercises. Meanwhile, Paul’s wife, Linda (Lenz), agitates for his release.

          So much of the picture comprises scenes of Paul getting chased by the dogs that everything else gets pushed to the sidelines. Lenz, for instance, is barely in the movie except for a sequence during which a creepy guard bedevils her during a prison visit. The great Crothers has even less screen time. Of the film’s many underused supporting players, Louise probably comes off best because one doesn’t usually expect an adequate performance from the Artist Forever Known as Ginger. Kennedy is Kennedy, growling and stomping his way through scenes, while Henry, later a strong character actor, makes an ineffectual lead. 

Mean Dog Blues: FUNKY

Lost Horizon (1973)

          Despite the commercial failure of its 1937 adaptation, which was directed by Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures took another shot at bringing James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon to the screen. The bloated 1973 version, featuring twee songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, fared just as poorly at the box office as its predecessor. Key among the 1973 movie’s problems is the way the songs clash with everything else onscreen. For instance, the first properly sung-through number doesn’t appear until nearly an hour has elapsed, which has the effect of suddenly changing the picture from a straightforward drama to a ridiculous musical spectacle. The remaining 90 minutes of Lost Horizon boast such attributes as an inherently compelling storyline and some vivid performances, but it’s impossible to take the movie seriously.

          Lost Horizon begins with diplomat Richard Conway (Peter Finch) fleeing a war-torn country in the Far East, accompanied by several other refugees. The group’s getaway plane is hijacked by a mysterious stranger, who crashes the vessel in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Soon afterward, Richard’s party is rescued by the enigmatic Chang (John Gielgud), and then escorted to the glorious realm of Shangri-La. Despite its storm-tossed surroundings, Shangri-La is a tropical utopia where people live in seemingly perfect harmony. Friction divides Richard’s party. Some, including Richard’s swaggering brother, George (Michael York), want to leave Shangri-La in order to resume their old lives. Others, including troubled reporter Sally (Sally Kellerman), embrace the chance to start anew. Meanwhile, Richard is introduced to Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, The High Lama (Charles Boyer), who explains that Richard has the opportunity to fulfill a special role in Shangri-La.

          Narratively and thematically, this is fascinating stuff, even though pundits have spent years parsing political (and even racist) messages from the source material. Ironically, the strength of the storyline is what makes the intrusion of songs so absurd. Had the songs added anything, the result would have been different. Alas, the tunes merely express infantile notions, as when Kellerman and costar Olivia Hussey warble the line “different people look at things from different points of view” during the spirited duet “The Things I Will Not Miss.” As for the movie’s performances, they’re all over the place, an issue compounded by the use of professional singers to lip-sync vocals for many of the actors. Finch is expressive and regal; leading lady Liv Ullmann is luminous, within the constraints of an underwritten role; York is impassioned; and dignified costar James Shigeta is as welcome a presence as ever. Boyer and Gielgud acquit themselves well despite outrageous miscasting. Hussey, Kellerman, and costar George Kennedy, however, play their roles so melodramatically that the actors come across as cartoonish.

          On a technical level, director Charles Jarriot and cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot the movie quite well, providing scope and splendor even if their presentation of singing-and-dancing nonsense feels indifferent. In the end, Lost Horizon is a bizarre mess, though patient viewers can conceivably power through the musical sequences and latch onto the dramatic scenes, which are vastly superior. FYI, the screenplay for Los Horizon is a minor credit for the important writer Larry Kramer, whose activism and creativity coalesced in his iconic play The Normal Heart (1985), which was endured through celebrated revivals and an Emmy-winning 2014 television adaptation.

Lost Horizon: FUNKY

Deliver Us from Evil (1973)

          A taut little adventure saga/morality tale that takes its inspiration from the notorious real-life hijacking committed by D.B. Cooper, this excellent telefilm is something of a Northwestern riff on John Huston’s immortal drama The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Like that film, Deliver Us from Evil depicts the corrosive power of greed and uses a battle against nature as a metaphor representing the extremes to which men will go once the promise of wealth overcomes morality and reason.

          Set in the beautiful but unforgiving mountains of Wyoming, Deliver Us from Evil begins quietly, with five friends hiking through the woods, lead by professional guide Dixie (Jim Davis). The men are Al (Jack Weston), an overweight whiner; Arnold (Charles Aidman), a quiet blue-collar worker in late middle age; Steven (Bradford Dillman), a twitchy CPA; Nick (Jan-Michael Vincent), Arnold’s twentysomething son, reeling from a recent divorce; and Walter (George Kennedy), a macho blowhard who fancies himself an outdoorsman and wears a pistol on his belt. While setting up camp one afternoon, Walter spots a parachutist dropping behind a treeline not far from the group’s location. Soon afterward, the men hear a radio broadcast indicating that a D.B. Cooper-like skyjacker escaped by parachute in the same part of Wyoming where the men are camping. Walter persuades the others to join him in chasing the alleged criminal. Once they find their quarry, a trigger-happy Walter kills the parachutist.

          After a stomach-churning interlude during which the men fear that Walter killed an innocent man, they discover the hijacker’s stolen loot—$600,000 in cash. At first, the group reacts to the discovery with good citizenship, securing the money for a hike back to civilization so they can return the cash to its rightful owners. Yet it’s not long before the lust for wealth invades the hearts of even the noblest members of this crew, so, as the men make their way across cliffs, mountains, and finally a glacier, they turn on each other.

          The incisive script by Jack B. Sowards sketches each character distinctly and then generates believable conflicts through a steady process of escalation. For instance, immediately after the shooting of the hijacker, highly principled Dixie pushes the men to travel as fast as they can, since he knows it’s only a matter of time before someone hatches the idea to keep the cash. Similarly, the dynamic between kindhearted Arnold and his tormented son shifts from nurturing to tragic in a way that makes perfect sense. The script also captures a highly credible sense of the bone-deep weariness that comes from punching a clock year after a year—rather than seeming like opportunistic crooks, these characters seem like average joes who lose their minds after winning the lottery. Powered by crisp dialogue, panoramic images of wide-open scenery, and strong performances from an eclectic cast, Deliver Us from Evil unfolds like a harrowing fable.

Deliver Us from Evil: GROOVY

Death on the Nile (1978)

          The all-star period mystery film Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was such a commercial and critical success that another big-budget Agatha Christie adaptation was sure to follow. And while Death on the Nile is far less posh than its predecessor, it’s still quite enjoyable—more so, perhaps, than the stolid Orient Express. Clever and intricate though they may be, Christine’s books are not high art, and the makers of Death on the Nile treat the source material as pulp, whereas director Sidney Lumet and his Orient Express collaborators took the dubious path of treating Christie as literature. In any event, Death on the Nile plays out like a quasi-sequel to the earlier film, since both pictures feature Christie’s beloved Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Albert Finney played Poirot in Orient Express, but Peter Ustinov assumes the role in Death on the Nile, marking the first of six films in which he essayed the character.

          As per the usual Christie formula, the narrative follows a large number of interconnected characters, all of whom eventually land in the same place—a steamer churning down the Nile River in Egypt—for a long voyage filled with intrigue and murder. The picture begins in England, where penniless Jacqueline (Mia Farrow) begs her rich friend, Linnet (Lois Chiles), to provide employment for Jacqueline’s fiancée, Simon (Simon MacCorkindale). Linnet steals Simon from her friend, marries him, and embarks on a honeymoon trip through Egypt. Yet Jacqueline chases after them, taunting the newlyweds with threats of revenge. Eventually, Linnet and Simon encounter the vacationing Poirot, requesting his assistance in dispatching the nettlesome Jacqueline. Various other characters enter the mix, and before long it becomes clear that everyone except Simon and the neutral Poirit has a grudge against Linnet.

          It’s giving nothing away to say that she dies about an hour into the 140-minute film—after all, the story can’t be called Death on the Nile without a corpse—so the fun stems from Poirot’s ensuing investigation. The pithy detective performs a thorough review of all the possible suspects, even as more people are killed, finally unraveling the true killer’s identity during a Christie staple—the final scene of Poirot gathering all the suspects in a room and then explaining, with the help of elaborate flashbacks, how he connected clues. It’s all quite far-fetched and formulaic, but there’s a good reason why Christie is considered the queen of the whodunit genre. It also helps that Anthony Shaffer, the playwright/screenwriter behind the intricate mystery film Sleuth (1972), did the script, and that director John Guillermin provides a brisk pace and a sleek look.

          As for the performances from the huge cast, they’re erratic. On the plus side, Ustinov is droll as Poirot, David Niven is urbane as his sidekick, and the best supporting players (Jane Birkin, Jon Finch, Olivia Hussey, I.S. Johar, Maggie Smith) provide the varied textures asked of them. However, some players are badly miscast (Jack Warden as a German?), and some deliver performances that are too clumsy for this sort of material (Chiles, Farrow, George Kennedy). That leaves Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury, both of whom treat their parts like high camp; neither tethers her characterization to human reality, but both fill the screen with palpable energy.

          By the end of the picture, one does feel the absence of Lumet’s sure hand, since he did a smoother job of unifying his Orient Express cast members than Guillermin does here. Nonetheless, in the most important respects, Death on the Nile delivers Christie as pure silly escapism, which seems about right.

Death on the Nile: GROOVY

Fools’ Parade (1971)

          A weird adventure story depicting the exploits of three ex-cons traveling through Depression-era West Virginia, Fools’ Parade features such a delicate combination of eccentric characterizations and literary contrivances that it would have taken a director of tremendous artistry to pull the pieces together into a coherent whole. Alas, Andrew V. McLaglen is not such a director. Because he presents the story with the same brisk, unvarnished style with which he made several entertaining action films, the peculiar nuances of Fools’ Parade end up feeling completely false. So while the movie is watchable thanks to the novelty of familiar actors playing offbeat scenes, Fools’ Parade isn’t satisfying—the execution is too straight for fans of idiosyncratic cinema, and the storyline is unlikely to thrill people who prefer conventional narratives.

          Jimmy Stewart stars as Mattie Appleyard, a recently paroled inmate who accrued $25,000 in back pay through 40 years of hard labor behind bars. Mattie has gathered a surrogate family of fellow ex-cons, including Lee Cottrill (Strother Martin), a nervous would-be storekeeper, and Johnny Jesus (Kurt Russell), a naïve youth. The trio’s goal of starting a business together hits a roadblock when they realize their former jailor, a psycho named “Doc” Council (George Kennedy), has conspired to prevent Mattie from safely cashing his $25,000 check. This circumstance precipitates a battle of wills between the ex-cons and their once and future oppressor, who chases after them with gun-toting henchmen. There’s also a subplot involving a blowsy madam (Anne Baxter) and a reluctant prostitute (Kathy Cannon), plus another subplot involving a corrupt banker (David Huddleston) who’s in cahoots with Council.

          Fools’ Parade was based on a book by Davis Grubb, who also wrote the source material for the 1955 cult classic The Night of the Hunter. This is arch material, but McLaglen plays the story straight, missing opportunities for irony, satire, and whimsy. Only the action scenes really work, at least in the conventional sense. Another issue is the clunky dialogue by screenwriter James Lee Barrett, much of which the normally excellent Huddleston is forced to deliver; Huddleston is little more than an exposition machine here.

          Despite these fatal flaws, Fools’ Parade is mildly arresting. Watching Stewart play a stately crook who does things like yank his glass eye from his skull in order to tell fortunes is bracing. Martin squirms through one of his signature performances as a Southern-fried oddball. And Russell plays every moment with the same gee-whiz sincerity he brought to myriad Disney flicks in the early ’70s. Yet Kennedy delivers the movie’s most extravagant performance. Wearing grime over his teeth and wire-rimmed glasses over his face, the bulky actor hunches over like a troglodyte and drags out utterances in the vocal style a tweaked country preacher. His acting is spectacularly bad. (Baxter almost matches him for over-the-top stagecraft, especially since she wears garish whore makeup.) It’s hard to imagine how or why Fools’ Parade got made, since it must have been nearly as strange on paper as it is on screen. After all, the climax features a sight gag involving a lovable dog fetching a stick of lit dynamite. However, these bizarre flourishes make Fools’ Parade a curio—one can only marvel that the movie exists.

Fools’ Parade: FREAKY

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

          Clint Eastwood’s tough-guy screen persona had solidified by the mid-’70s, as had his stringent control over projects—even when he wasn’t also directing, Eastwood ensured that his films were brand-consistent and supremely efficient. Given this closely held authority, it’s interesting to look at the handful of ’70s pictures for which Eastwood gave other filmmakers more latitude than usual. A good case in point is Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, the directorial debut of Michael Cimino, whose subsequent films—notably The Deer Hunter (1978) and Heaven’s Gate (1980)—are known for their epic scale. Obviously, “epic” wasn’t going to fly with Eastwood, so Cimino, who also write Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, confined his ambitions to a tight storyline, although Cimino’s taste for big-canvas cinema is evident in the John Ford-style panoramic shots of various Montana locations.

          A straightforward crime picture with an undercurrent of fatalism, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot begins when exuberant young car thief Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) encounters a country preacher (Eastwood) who is inexplicably running from a maniac with a machine pistol. After helping the preacher escape, Lightfoot learns his new pal is actually the infamous bank robber known as “Thunderbolt” because he once used a cannon to bust into a vault. The man trying to kill Thunderbolt is a former accomplice, Leary (George Kennedy), who mistakenly believes Thunderbolt stole the haul from a heist they committed together. Eventually, Leary catches up with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and accepts Thunderbolt’s story that the money was lost, so the three men—together with Leary’s nervous wingman, Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), conspire to rob another bank and replace the missing cash. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot isn’t precisely a buddy movie or a heist picture, nor is it merely a car-chase flick or a thriller. Rather, it’s an ingenious amalgam of all of those genres, a sampler plate of manly-man tropes.

          Individualization is generally kept to a minimum so characters can function as archetypes, although Brudges’ buoyant performance distinguishes Lightfoot from everyone else—he’s brash and irresponsible, yet so full of life he makes even the worst situations feel like exciting adventures. Cimino avoids romanticizing the lifestyles of his characters, accentuating the collateral damage criminals inflict and illustrating the cost criminals pay for making dangerous choices. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is so offbeat and so well made, from the atmospheric production values to the painterly cinematography, that it’s tempting to read deeper meanings into the material, especially when Bridges’ vibrant acting raises Eastwood’s game in their shared scenes. Alas, this is really just an elevated brand of escapism, which means its virtues are, on close inspection, quite modest. That said, the picture is highly rewarding for viewers with appropriately calibrated expectations.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: GROOVY

Steel (1979)

          While it’s mildly enjoyable as a manly-man action movie, Steel is actually more amusing when viewed for its unintentional subtext—endeavoring for macho swagger led the filmmakers weirdly close to the realm of gay erotica. The story begins when contractor “Big” Lew Cassidy (George Kennedy) heads to work on a new high-rise he’s building in Texas, explaining that the sight of a tall building “still gives me a hard-on.” When Lew dies in a workplace accident, his pretty daughter Cass (Jennifer O’Neill) pledges to finish the building, thus saving her family’s company from bankruptcy. To do so, she needs a “ramrod”—no, really, that’s the phallic job title of the movie’s real leading character, Mike Catton, played by the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors.

          Mike is a construction foreman who quit working at high altitudes after suddenly developing a fear of heights. Now working as a trucker (picture Majors behind the wheel of a big rig in a cowboy hat and a wife-beater), Mike accepts the job on the condition that he can supervise work from a completed floor instead of climbing onto beams. As Cass’ second-in-command, “Pignose” Morgan (Art Carney), says to Mike: “You’re here because this building will give you a chance to get it up again.” Scout’s honor, that’s the line!

          The first half of the movie comprises Mike building his team of world-class steel workers, Dirty Dozen-style. These roughnecks include such walking clichés as a horny Italian named Valentino (Terry Kiser); a jive-talking African-American named Lionel (Roger E. Mosley); a stoic Indian named Cherokee (Robert Tessier); and a taunting bruiser named Dancer (Richard Lynch). Meanwhile, Lew’s estranged brother, Eddie (Harris Yulin), conspires to derail the project because he wants to seize control of Lew’s company. As the movie progresses, Mike tries to overcome his fear of heights while coaching his fellow dudes through long days of hard work and hard drinking.

          Steel is such a he-man enterprise that even though Majors engages in close physical contact and soft talk with most of his male costars, he can barely muster furtive glances for his nominal love interest, O’Neill. All of this is pleasantly diverting, in a Saturday-matinee kind of way—director Steve Carver’s cartoony style didn’t peak until his 1983 Chuck Norris/David Carradine epic Lone Wolf McQuade, but he moves things along—so it doesn’t really matter that the script is ridiculous, or that Majors is ineffectual as a leading man. Plus, to Carver’s credit, the plentiful scenes taking place on girders high above city streets are enough to give any viewer vertigo. And as for those lingering shots of sweaty men working hard, their biceps glistening in the hot Texas sun . . .

Steel: FUNKY

Brass Target (1978)

          Crammed with big-name actors, colorful locations, and complex schemes, Brass Target should be a rousing thriller. Unfortunately, the team behind the picture tried to do too many things, and the starring role was unwisely given to John Cassavettes—who by this point in his career preferred directing low-budget films to acting in Hollywood flicks—so the combination of a confusing script and a phoned-in leading performance makes it difficult to appreciate the picture’s many admirable qualities. Set in 1945 Europe, just after the defeat of the Nazis, Brass Target begins with an exciting robbery: Mysterious criminals attack an Allied train and steal a fortune in Nazi gold. The theft divides Allied powers, because Russians blame Americans for the loss, so belligerent U.S. General George S. Patton (George Kennedy) vows to recover the gold and prove his country’s innocence. And then the movie veers off-course.

          Instead of focusing on Patton and the conspirators who want to impede his investigation, the picture shifts to an Army detective, Major Joe De Lucca (Cassavettes), who digs into the robbery while dealing with myriad personal melodramas. Among other things, he’s got a fractious friendship with Col. Mike McCauley (Patrick McGoohan), a schemer who trades in stolen war loot, and both men love Mara (Sophia Loren), a European who survived the war by sleeping her way to safety. The movie’s plot gets even more complicated when the conspirators—primarily Col. Donald Rogers (Robert Vaughn) and Col. Walter Gilchrist (Edward Herrmann)—hire an enigmatic European assassin (Max Von Sydow) to kill Patton lest the general discover their crime.

          Any one of these storylines would have been enough for a satisfying movie, so Brass Target ends up giving each of its component elements short shrift. More damningly, the best scenes, which depict the assassin’s meticulous planning of an attempt on Patton’s life, feel like repeats of similar scenes in the acclaimed thriller The Day of the Jackal (1973). Nonetheless, Von Sydow gives the picture’s best performance, especially since the other acting in the movie is highly erratic.

          Cassavettes preens and scowls like some sort of irritable peacock; Loren looks lost, which is understandable seeing as how her character is anemically underdeveloped; Kennedy plays Patton as a foul-mouthed bully, his acting inevitably suffering by comparison to George C. Scott’s Oscar-winning turn in Patton (1970); and McGoohan is terrible, his accent shifting inexplicably from one line to the next. Still, Brass Target has tremendous production values, and the milieu of the story—postwar Europe as a lawless frontier—is fascinating. Plus, the central gimmick of the narrative, a conspiracy-theory explanation for the real Patton’s death in 1945, is imaginative. One suspects, however, that the premise was explored to stronger effect in the Frederick Nolan novel from which this film was adapted. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Brass Target: FUNKY

Earthquake (1974)

          Pure junk that nonetheless provides abundant guilty pleasure, Earthquake was a pinnacle of sorts for the disaster-movie genre. Executive producer Jennings Lang was recruited by Universal Pictures to copy the formula that Poseidon Adventure mastermind Irwin Allen had perfected at rival studio 20th-Century Fox, so Lang commissioned a thrill-a-minute script (co-written by Mario Puzo) and hired a large ensemble of mid-level actors. The resulting movie, as produced and directed by fading studio-era helmer Mark Robson, is a cheesefest replete with bad acting, horrible clothes, and ridiculous storylines. However, since those are exactly the kitschy qualities that fans of the disaster genre dig, Earthquake became a major hit, earning nearly $80 million despite costing only $7 million. Therefore, Earthquake represents the disaster genre in full bloom.

          While there’s not much point in discussing the actual plot—there’s a giant earthquake in L.A., in case you haven’t guessed—listing a few of the characters should give the flavor of the piece. Leading man Charlton Heston plays Stewart Graff, a businessman whose rich father-in-law, Sam Royce (Lorne Greene), offers him a company presidency in exchange for staying married to shrewish Remy Royce-Graff (Ava Gardner); meanwhile, Stewart is screwing around with a younger woman, Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold). Bullish police offer Lou Slade (George Kennedy, of course) spends most of the movie watching out for Rosa (Victoria Principal), a busty young woman who wears her hair in some sort of Latina Afro, because she’s mixed up with a motorcycle-riding daredevil (Richard Roundtree) and a psychotic stalker (Marjoe Gortner). Oh, and Walter Matthau plays a bizarre cameo as a drunk dressed in head-to-toe polyester, complete with a flaming-red pimp hat.

          Virtually every melodramatic cliché from ’70s cinema is represented somewhere in Earthquake, which treats seismic activity as a cosmic metaphor for the uncertainty of life. And by “metaphor,” I really mean “narrative contrivance,” because the script for Earthquake exists far below the level of literary aspiration; this movie’s idea of storytelling is stirring up trite conflict before adding tremors that kill people in exciting ways. However, some of the big-budget effects scenes are enjoyable in a tacky sort of way, and the histrionic nature of Heston’s and Kennedy’s acting keeps their scenes jacked up to an appropriately goofy level of intensity. Plus, during its most outrageous scenes—picture Roundtree performing Evel Knievel-style motorcycle stunts as Principal cheers him while wearing an undersized T-shirt that displays his logo across her ample bosom—Earthquake embraces its low nature by providing shameless distraction.

Earthquake: FUNKY

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)

Grating and unfunny, this spoof of movie Westerns pales beside the inspired lunacy of Blazing Saddles (1974) and even the lighthearted silliness of Cat Ballou (1965). Worse, the movie overcompensates for its shortcomings by smothering nearly every scene in cloying music straight out of a Disney cartoon, and by relying on vulgar stereotypes like ignorant Native Americans, moronic Cavalry soldiers, and sex-crazed frontier women. In other words, rather than actually satirizing the clichés of the Western genre, Dirty Dingus Magee merely recites the clichés and adds the cinematic equivalent of lounge-comic rim shots. A bored-looking Frank Sinatra stars as small-time outlaw Dingus Magee. After robbing a bankroll from his dim-bulb pal Hoke (George Kennedy), Dingus retreats into the wilderness, where he becomes lovers with a horny squaw, Anna Hot Water (Michele Carey). Hoke seeks assistance from the mayor of a frontier town, who is also the local madam, Belle (Anne Jackson). She appoints Hoke sheriff so he can chase Dingus. However, the U.S. Army is threatening to close a nearby military base, so Belle asks Hoke to stir up an Indian uprising as a means of persuading the Army to stay. Using these plot elements, plus a few other stupid contrivances, producer-director Burt Kennedy constructs an hour and a half of noisy farce. Typical high jinks include a running gag of Hoke getting bopped on the head to the accompaniment of cartoonish sound effects, and Anna Hot Water repeatedly asking whether it’s time for her and “Din-goose” to “make bim-bam.” Sinatra wears a floppy black wig that makes him look like a middle-aged reject from Beatlemania, and Kennedy pulls so many bug-eyed faces that it’s surprising he got through production without an aneurysm. Both should have been embarrassed by their participation in this misfire. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Dirty Dingus Magee: LAME

Zig Zag (1970)

          This twisty thriller kicks off with a terrific premise before faltering due to sloppy execution. George Kennedy stars as Paul Cameron, a claims investigator at an insurance company who learns he’s got only a few months to live. Desperate to provide for his wife and daughter, Paul digs through his company’s records and discovers that a $250,000 reward is still outstanding for the capture of an unknown criminal who kidnapped and murdered a millionaire. (Paul’s company paid a substantial death benefit to the victim’s family.) Using his wife’s maiden name as an alias, Paul sends a letter to the millionaire’s company claiming that he, Paul Cameron, was the murderer. Paul’s complex scheme is to get himself indicted and jailed for the crime so his wife, her identity hidden behind a web of bank accounts and P.O. boxes, can claim the reward. As this description indicates, the plot of Zig Zag ties itself in knots, stacking implausible developments until the storyline is impossibly muddled. Furthermore, the filmmakers present the story in a jagged style that justifies the title, jumping back and forth between the “present” (which begins with Paul’s arrest) and the “past” (which depicts his methodical planning).

          That said, a number of interesting things happen, like the casual revelation that Paul used to be a jazz drummer and therefore has connections in the hepcat underworld of drug dealers and musicians. Additionally, the relationship between Paul and his exasperated lawyer (Eli Wallach) is entertaining. On a stylistic level, director Richard A. Colla, a TV veteran who directed a handful of middling features, executes Zig Zag with visual panache, building many scenes around trick shots that open by peering deep into some partially obstructed background, then pull back to reveal previously hidden details. In fact, the gimmicky camerawork makes some sequences feel more interesting than they actually are, though the sleight of hand loses efficacy once the shortcomings of the script become impossible to ignore. Kennedy barrels through scenes with watchable intensity, employing vigor in place of nuance, while Anne Jackson (costar Wallach’s real-life spouse) delivers credible anguish as Paul’s worried wife, and Blacula star William Marshall lends his sonorous voice to key role as a nightclub owner who helps Paul out of a jam. These appealing performers and Colla’s kicky visuals make Zig Zag a pleasant distraction—until the confusing mess of a finale, that is. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Zig Zag: FUNKY

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

          The mountain-climbing flick The Eiger Sanction is one of the silliest action movies Clint Eastwood ever made. Working outside his comfort zones of cowboy melodramas and urban crime thrillers, Eastwood plays a college professor (!) who moonlights as a hit man (!!) and must employ his mountain-climbing skills (!!!) to smoke out the identity of an elusive murderer (@#*#!!!!). Based on a novel by one-named ’70s escapist-fiction phenom Trevanian, The Eiger Sanction features a plot so contrived it would give Alistair MacLean pause. Every single element of the film, from the ridiculous lengths government agents take to whack one inconsequential killer to the presence of an albino control freak running a vicious black-ops organization, stretches credibility way beyond the breaking point.

          The Eiger Sanction is also one of those movies in which so much time is spent preparing for the big event (in this case, a treacherous climb up a sheer mountain face) that the purpose of the mission gets hopelessly obscured. If several mountain climbers are suspects, for instance, why not simply capture and interrogate all of them instead of wasting so much time? Furthermore, the idea that reluctant hired gun Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood) is the only man for the job is laughable: He’s expensive, famous (and therefore ill-suited to undercover work), insubordinate, and unpredictable, yet somehow hiring him is deemed pragmatic. Still, movies like The Eiger Sanction ask viewers to turn off their brains in order to groove on visceral thrills, and with Eastwood pulling double-duty as director and star, thrills are never in short supply.

          Eastwood stages exciting chase scenes in European cities, enjoyable training montages in which his character is coaxed and teased by a shapely coach (Brenda Venus), and, of course, death-defying climbing scenes set on the rocky surfaces of snowy mountains. Eastwood’s efforts to conjure crowd-pleasing nonsense are aided by the work of composer John Williams, who contributes rousing adventure music, and by the enthusiastic performances of supporting players Jack Cassidy (as a queeny international operative), Thayer David (as the aforementioned albino), George Kennedy (as Eastwood’s friend/trainer), and Vonetta McGee (as Eastwood’s duplicitous love interest). So, even though The Eiger Sanction is preposterously overlong at 123 minutes, and for that matter simply preposterous, at least it’s energetic and good-looking.

The Eiger Sanction: FUNKY

Cahill: United States Marshal (1973)

An entertaining but forgettable entry in John Wayne’s latter-day filmography, Cahill: United States Marshal lacks the tragic poetry of The Cowboys (1972) and The Shootist (1976), the elegiac Westerns that comprise the Duke’s farewell to his beloved cowboy genre. Instead, Cahill: United States Marshal briskly presents a by-the-numbers story punctuated with solid action. There’s nothing here that fans haven’t seen a gazillion times before—Wayne struts through hordes of enemy gunmen like a superhero with a six-gun, barely flinching whenever he’s shot—but then again, novelty and surprise aren’t what people expected (or wanted) when they bought tickets to cowboy movies starring John Wayne. In this flick, the Duke plays J.D. Cahill, a tough-as-nails U.S. Marshal whose young sons fall in with a bad element while he’s away on business. Fraser (George Kennedy), a two-dimensional villain with a tendency to snarl while standing outside in lightning storms, pressures Cahill’s boys Danny (Gary Grimes) and Billy Joe (Clay O’Brien) to help with a bank robbery. When the robbery leads to the murder of a local sheriff, the lads realize they’ve gotten involved with the wrong varmints and try to wrangle themselves free of their predicament without getting killed or letting Dad know what’s happening. Much of the picture comprises Cahill stalking the robbers with the aide of his cranky Indian guide, Lightfoot (Neville Brand), so the drama of the piece, such as it is, stems from the question of how long the Cahill boys can manage to deceive their father. Quite predictably, it all comes to a head when Cahill figures out the truth in time to dole out equal measures of hot lead and life lessons. Efficiently directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and adequately written by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink (who also penned the Duke’s 1971 Western Big Jake), Cahill: United States Marshal is pleasant entertainment and nothing more, a well-made but uninspired run through the usual tropes of last-minute rescues, ornery put-downs, tense shootouts, and tough talk about how a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Cahill: United States Marshal: FUNKY

Airport (1970) & Airport 1975 (1974) & Airport ’77 (1977) & The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979)

          It’s appropriate that the last movie bearing the Airport brand name begins with a balloon getting inflated, because this series is filled with nothing so much as hot air. Melodramatic, overlong, and trite, each of the four Airport flicks is a midair soap opera, with characterization and dialogue that would barely pass muster in the worst episodic television. If not for the innate allure of disaster stories and the presence of motley casts comprising former A-listers and permanent C-listers, these pictures would have vanished into obscurity immediately after they were made. However, one should never underestimate the public’s appetite for vapid escapism: The first picture was the biggest moneymaker of 1970 (out-earning M*A*S*H and Patton), and it somehow snared 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. As the people filling that balloon at the beginning of The Concorde: Airport ’79 know, hot air always rises.

          The first flick, simply titled Airport and adapted from Arthur Hailey’s bestselling novel of the same name, is lumbering and dull. An airport manager (Burt Lancaster) and a pilot (Dean Martin) face a crisis when a disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) sneaks a bomb onto a passenger jet. Contrived romantic subplots abound, as do goofy elements like a storyline about an elderly woman (Helen Hayes) who keeps sneaking onto flights as a stowaway. Shot in a flat, ugly style that reveals every location as part of a garishly lit soundstage, the talky movie grinds through so much nonsense that Martin’s plane doesn’t even take off until after the one-hour mark.

          Only about 30 minutes of the movie contain actual disaster-oriented action, so it’s notable that even though Airport was the first hit for the genre, the familiar victim-every-10-minutes formula wasn’t perfected until producer Irwin Allen (who had nothing to do with the Airport movies) made The Poseidon Adventure in 1972. About the only lively element of Airport is George Kennedy’s lusty supporting performance as airport engineer Joe Patroni, who spouts macho lines like, “I’ll have this mother outta here by midnight!” There’s also some mild interest in spotting moments that were later spoofed in Airplane! (1980), like the vignette of a stewardess slapping a hysterical passenger.

          For the imaginatively titled sequel Airport 1975, producer Jenning Lang took the franchise reins and shamelessly copied Irwin Allen’s style; Lang also hired square-jawed leading man Charlton Heston, who previously led the cast of Lang’s Allen-esque disaster flick Earthquake (1974). Although it’s just as insipid as the original film, Airport 1975 is more enjoyable, simply because it doesn’t take itself seriously; the movie is all about cheap thrills and over-the-top storytelling. In this one, a 747 is struck in mid-air by a tiny private plane, blowing out the cockpit and killing the flight crew. After the accident, a stewardess (Karen Black) has to keep the plane steady until her boyfriend (Heston) can reach the plane via helicopter, climb into the cockpit by rope ladder, and steer the jet to a safe landing. About the only thing more absurd than the plot is the cast, which also includes Linda Blair, Sid Caesar, Erik Estrada, Helen Reddy, and Gloria Swanson (as herself!). Kennedy reprises his Patroni role to mostly inconsequential effect.

          After this crescendo of craptastic cinema, the series fell to earth with Airport ’77, a boring thriller about a plane that gets hijacked over the Bermuda Triangle, and then plummets into the ocean. Instead of mid-air suspense, most of the picture delivers dull tight-quarters bickering set in the underwater jet, and everyone in the mixed-bag cast looks bored: Joseph Cotten, Lee Grant, Christopher Lee, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, and so on. (Kennedy’s back as Patroni, not that it makes much difference.) Airport ’77 is the nadir of a series whose quality level was never high.

          The final entry in the franchise is arguably the most enjoyable, at least from a bad-cinema perspective, because The Concorde: Airport ’79 is preposterous right from the first frames. Cinematic cheese is spread evenly across a ludicrous story, cringe-inducing dialogue, and a parade of laughable performances. In other words, Airport ’79 marks the moment the franchise officially became The Love Boat with explosions. Kennedy finally gets promoted to a leading role, co-piloting the famously sleek French jet of the title with a smooth Gallic flyer (Alain Delon). Meanwhile, an evil industrialist (Robert Wagner) wants to blow up the plane because one of the passengers is carrying evidence that incriminates him for dastardly deeds. Wagner tries to take out the Concorde with a robot drone, a manned fighter jet, and, finally, a bomb smuggled on board when the Concorde conveniently hits the tarmac long enough for sabotage. Several actors who should have known better got roped into acting in this drivel (Eddie Albert, Cicely Tyson, David Warner), but most of the screen time goes to ’70s also-rans like John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, and Jimmie J.J. Walker. Cementing the Love Boat parallel, Charo even shows up for a cameo.

Airport: LAME

Airport 1975: FUNKY

Airport ’77: SQUARE

The Concorde: Airport ’79: FUNKY

The Human Factor (1975)

          Watching the meat-and-potatoes terrorism thriller The Human Factor, one can’t help but wonder which actor the producers originally envisioned in the lead role, because George Kennedy just doesn’t have the stuff this movie needs. Playing a civilian computer specialist working on a top-secret military project in Italy, he’s fine as a lumbering bear of an American out of step with continental types—but the minute the story kicks into gear, Kennedy is asked to summon degrees of anguish and intensity he just can’t muster, undercutting key scenes so badly they inch toward self-parody.

          This is a shame, because the story is solid: A group of terrorists begins killing randomly selected American families who are living in Europe, and Kennedy’s wife and child are the first victims. Using the technology at his disposal, an espionage database designed to predict enemy activity, Kennedy goes the vigilante route, determined to get revenge and upset the killers’ plans. Predictably, his intrusion makes the situation worse. There are several exciting run-ins with terrorists, plus a useful subplot about a European cop trying to stop Kennedy from waging his one-man war. So, with a stronger actor in the lead, this material could have connected quite nicely. Though tough guy Charles Bronson comes to mind as an obvious casting alternative, a version of The Human Factor starring, say, everyman Jack Lemmon could have been quite powerful, since a skilled actor would have grounded the concept in believable emotion.

          Unfortunately, with Kennedy in place, the rest of The Human Factor unfolds in as workmanlike a manner as the lead performance. Studio-era director Edward Dmytryk, helming the last feature of his epic career, puts the story together capably, showing mild flair during action scenes, but he’s not able to muster sufficient on-camera energy. Englishman John Mills, cast somewhat randomly as Kennedy’s co-worker/friend, exacerbates problems with an amateurish performance, though Italian star Raf Vallone is impassioned as the cop pursuing Kennedy, and stalwart American Barry Sullivan provides effective work as an overwrought diplomat driven to drink by the terrorism crisis.

The Human Factor: FUNKY

. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . (1970)

Gotta love a Southern racial-tension flick that begins on a day hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement—as shown by an egg actually frying on the pavement. That opening scene perfectly captures the pulpy entertainment value of this drama starring Jim Brown, George Kennedy, and Fredric March. Brown plays Jimmy Price, the first black man elected sheriff of a small Deep South community, and Kennedy plays John Little, the white predecessor who angrily surrenders his badge. Camping it up with amusing details like taped-together cigars and a Colonel Sanders string tie, Hollywood veteran March is along for the ride as the mayor who tries to keep his town from exploding after Price’s polarizing election. The plotting is arch (Price alienates half the town by arresting a white man, and the other half by arresting a black man), but the pacing is swift and the performances seethe with sweaty intensity. Brown’s low-key persona and Kennedy’s combustive style make for a fun combination, and they’re surrounded by vibrant personalities: Clifton James plays a strutting redneck who grows a conscience, Bernie Casey plays a hot-headed townie resentful of Price, and veteran varmints Anthony James and Dub Taylor lurk around the periphery of scenes, adding Southern-fried flavor. The movie’s wildly inappropriate music adds to the overripe appeal, like the random use of “Gentle on My Mind” during a scene of Price chasing down a drunk who killed a six-year-old girl in a traffic accident. Oddly pitched ’70s cinema doesn’t get much better than that, except perhaps when Brown forces a straight face for lines like, “I’m the sheriff. Not the white sheriff, not the black sheriff, not the soul sheriff, but the sheriff.” (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

. . . tick . . . tick  . . . tick . . . : FUNKY