Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

          Sometimes fate does cruel things to artists’ legacies, as demonstrated by the fact that a strange horror movie about cannibalism was the last project from Laurence Harvey, who both starred in and directed Welcome to Arrow Beach, but died at the age of 45 while the film was in postproduction. That Harvey seems wildly miscast in the film’s leading role only adds to the overall strangeness of watching Welcome to Arrow Beach. Born in Lithuania, raised in South Africa, and educated in England, Harvey was most definitely not an American. So why does he play a traumatized Korean War vet living on a California beach? And why is the sister of Harvey’s character played by English-Canadian actress Joanna Pettet, who looks nothing like Harvey and employs a convincing American accent that accentuates how foreign Harvey’s speaking style sounds given the nature of his role?

          The story begins with hippie hitchhiker Robbin (Meg Foster) accepting a ride from a hot-rod driver, who crashes soon afterward with Robbin in his car. Cops including Sheriff Bingham (John Ireland) and Deputy Rakes (Stuart Whitman) respond to the accident and discover cocaine that Robbin insists belongs to the driver, who is badly hurt. Weirdly, the cops release Robbin and do nothing while she strolls onto a private beach. Then, while Robbin skinny-dips, Jason Henry (Harvey) ogles her through a telescope from his house above the sand. Later, Jason offers hospitality, which Robbin accepts only when she learns that Jason lives with his sister, Grace (Pettet). Yet Grace isn’t happy to meet Jason’s new houseguest, reminding Jason that he’d promised not to get in trouble with girls anymore. And so it goes from there—Robbin ignores obvious warning signs until a frightening encounter occurs, but once she escapes the chamber of horrors hidden inside Jason’s house, her past encounter with the cops makes them doubt her sensational claims about an upstanding citizen.

          Although the movie takes quite a while to get to the creepy stuff, there’s never any doubt where the story is going, since the first scene includes an epigraph about cannibalism. Therefore the picture lacks real suspense, and the overly mannered quality of Harvey’s acting further impedes the movie’s efficacy as a horror show. In fact, many stretches of Welcome to Arrow Beach edge into camp, as when Harvey cuts repeatedly from closeups of his own eyes to closeups of Foster’s character eating the world’s bloodiest steak. Just as unsubtle is the film’s suggestion of incest: At one point, Harvey and Pettet kiss passionately. Since it’s impossible to take Welcome to Arrow Beach seriously, perhaps  it’s best to regard the picture as drive-in junk with a posh leading actor. After all, the stylistic high point is a scene in which Harvey’s character lures a woman into a photo studio, then switches from holding a camera to holding a meat cleaver.

Welcome to Arrow Beach: FUNKY

The Evil (1978)

          Schlocky but entertaining, The Evil takes the haunted-house genre to its logical extreme, resulting in a climax that’s embarrassingly obvious and stupid. Before it totally goes off the rails, however, the movie offers a number of gruesome deaths and touches on nearly every cliché associated with the haunted-house genre—apparitions, inexplicable noises, objects moved about by unseen forces, people possessed by dastardly spirits, and so on. None of what happens is particularly scary, so The Evil plays out like one of those old ’50s horror comics—it’s all about the fun of playing with concepts that might actually be scary if they were executed with greater care and sophistication. Because, rest assured, care and sophistication are not among the elements that cowriter-director Gus Trikonis brings to the party. Trikonis and his collaborators generate a few decent effects, particularly during scenes of people getting thrown around by supernatural powers, but The Evil is bargain-basement pulp through and through.

          Richard Crenna, all beardy and serious, plays Dr. C.J. Arnold, a shrink who rents an old mansion for a summer of psychiatric research. Several colleagues gravitate to the mansion in order to help with the project. While the scientists prep the house in anticipation of receiving patients, C.J.’s wife, Dr. Caroline Arnold (Joanna Pettet), sees ghostly visions and strange phenomena, including a fireplace roaring to life without being ignited. Concurrently, director Trikonis shows the house flexing its maniacal muscle, because the live-in caretaker gets burned alive when a magical jet of flame bursts from a furnace. Demonstrating why it is unwise to parse the logic of The Evil, C.J. doesn’t perform the de rigueur act of foolishly unleashing the malevolent entity that resides in the house until about 30 minutes into the story, when he removes a crucifix that’s holding a secret compartment in the basement closed. (Because, of course, that’s what any sensible person would do upon encountering a secret compartment locked with a crucifix.)

          The problem, from a story perspective, is that the house has already racked up a body count before C.J. uncorks the hidey-hole, so the story that subsequently unfolds—in which the heroes must reseal the compartment in order to save themselves—doesn’t reconcile with onscreen events. Nonetheless, one doesn’t watch a flick like The Evil for masterful storytelling, and Triknois provides enough mayhem to keep casual viewers engaged. A couple of folks get electrocuted, a dude gets swallowed by the earth, and an unfortunate lady gets most of her clothes ripped off by demonic winds. You get the idea. The acting in The Evil is nothing special, although everyone delivers basically competent work, and it’s a hoot to see corpulent bon vivant Victor Buono show up for a ridiculous cameo at the end.

The Evil: FUNKY

Footsteps (1972)

          Nominated for a Golden Globe as the best TV movie of its year, Footsteps is a hard-driving character drama set in the competitive world of college football. Yet instead of focusing on the tribulations of athletes, as is the norm for the genre, Footsteps explores the psychology of a ruthless coach whose belligerence, drinking, and shady ethics have made him a pariah among top schools. Richard Crenna, putting his customary intensity to great use, stars as Paddy O’Connor, a cocky ex-player with a good record of guiding teams toward victory, but a bad record of holding onto jobs.
          When the movie begins, he arrives in a small Southwestern town to start work as a defensive coordinator at a regional college. Since the school’s head coach, Jonas Kane (Clu Gulager), once played for O’Connor, O’Connor bristles at taking orders from a former subordinate. O’Connor also angles for Kane’s job, sleeps with Kane’s secretary to get inside information, cozies up to a deep-pocketed sponsor (Forrest Tucker) in order to have a star player moved to defense, and makes passes at Kane’s girlfriend, beautiful drama teacher Sarah Allison (Joanna Pettet). For a while, O’Connor gets away with his behavior by delivering a winning season, but things come to a head when moral crises reveal how conscience sometimes inhibits ambition.

          Although it suffers from brevity, running the standard 74 minutes for a ’70s TV movie, Footsteps is quite solid. Featuring a script co-written by future Oscar winner Alvin Sargent, the movie has several compelling confrontations. Moreover, the O’Connor character is such a force of nature that it’s fascinating to parse how much of his act is bluster and how much is justifiable confidence. Though generally not the deepest actor, Crenna slips into this role comfortably and delivers a virile performance. The supporting cast is fine as well, with Bill Overton doing strong work as O’Connor’s star player. (Ned Beatty is wasted in a tiny role.) Veteran TV director Paul Wendkos accentuates the story’s inherent tension with tight compositions placing actors in close proximity, and the filmmakers employ trippy effects like solarization and split-screens to enliven big-game montages that were obviously cobbled together from stock footage.

Footsteps: GROOVY