1980 Week: The American Success Company

          Writer-director William Richert displayed tremendous promise with his first fiction feature, Winter Kills (1979), a strange conspiracy thriller boasting an incredible cast and a lush look. Although the movie has as many problems as it does virtues, the style and verve of the piece seemed to bode well for Richert’s subsequent efforts. Alas, the filmmaker’s sophomore picture repeated nearly everything that was wrong with his debut while replicating virtually nothing that was right. Originally released in 1980 as The American Success Company but now primarily available in a director-approved recut version from 1983 more succinctly titled Success, the picture follows the misadventures of Harry (Jeff Bridges), a dorky young man who secures a comfortable life by marrying beautiful but cold Sarah (Belinda Bauer), the daughter of Mr. Elliott (Ned Beatty). Mr. Elliot runs the American Success Company, a doppelganger for American Express, so even though Mr. Elliot despises Harry, he ensures that Harry gets cushy executive jobs. Tired of being a doormat for his abusive father-in-law and his withholding wife, Harry assumes a new secondary identity as “Mack,” a flashy mobster who dresses in garish clothes, speaks in the Bogart/Cagney/Robinson mode, and walks with a cane. While pretending to be “Mack,” Harry purchases regular appointments with a sophisticated hooker, Corinne (Bianca Jagger), in order to improve his lovemaking. Concurrently, he contrives a scheme to embezzle money from his employer.

          As written by Richert and B-movie icon Larry Cohen, the script never explains Harry’s methods or motives in a satisfactory fashion, and the tone of the piece is awkward. Sometimes Richert goes for broad comedy and fails—the most effective running joke involves premature ejaculation—and sometimes Richert goes for high-minded satire, even though he misses that mark, as well. (In one scene, Harry, posing as “Mack,” proposes selling credit cards to an expanding market—little kids.) Beatty, Jagger, and John Glover give solid turns, benefiting from consistently written characterizations, but the leading performances by Bridges and Bauer are disastrous. Bridges clearly didn’t know whether he was playing a boob or a rake, and Bauer wobbles between incarnating a dolt and a shrew. Almost nothing works in The American Success Company, even with the wall-to-wall exposition of the 1983 version’s voiceover. Unsurprisingly, it took Richert years to score his next feature-directing gig, the middling teen-sex comedy A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988). A decade after that, he helmed his last feature to date, an obscure 1998 version of The Man in the Iron Mask.

The American Success Company: LAME

God Told Me To (1976)

          Quite possibly the strangest movie that Larry Cohen ever made—which is saying a lot, seeing as how Cohen’s filmography includes the 1974 killer-baby epic It’s Alive—this offbeat horror/sci-fi hybrid starts out like a lurid crime story, then evolves into something very different. Set in New York City, the picture begins when a crazed shooter named Harold (Sammy Williams) takes a perch on a water tower and then shoots more than a dozen strangers walking on the streets far below. Among police officers responding to the incident is Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco), who climbs onto the water tower and tries to reason with the killer. When Peter asks why Harold started shooting, Harold says, “God told me to,” then jumps to his death. Peter is traumatized by the incident, partially because he’s a devout Catholic, and his aguish deepens when several other people go on killing sprees, all claiming that “God told me to.” (One of the murderers is played by future Taxi star Andy Kaufman.)

          Eventually, Peter’s investigation broadens to include inquiries into his own past, because Peter is an orphan who knows nothing about his biological parents. Concurrently, Peter angers higher-ups in the NYPD by going public with the “God told me to” angle; this revelation leads to riots among warring religious forces. Even after Peter gets suspended, he continues his investigation in an unofficial capacity, and he learns that “God,” in this particular case, might be a single messianic individual who compels followers to kill. Yet just when it seems writer-producer-director Cohen is headed down the road of exposing a Manson-type cult leader, God Told Me To takes a left turn into trippy territory. Peter meets “God,” an asexual vagrant who glows so brightly that his features can’t be discerned the first time he’s shown.

          This meeting leads Peter to find Elizabeth Mullin (Silva Sidney), who may or may not be “God’s” mother. Now living in a senior home, she recalls a horrific incident from the past, when she was taken aboard an alien spaceship and artificially inseminated. She gave up the resulting child, who grew up to be “God,” otherwise known as super-powered alien/human hermaphrodite Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch). Yes, hermaphrodite. To hammer this particular point home, Cohen provides a loving closeup of Bernard’s matched sex organs, which protrude from the side of his torso.

          None of this makes much sense, but it’s a fun ride, after a fashion, because it’s wild to see how far Cohen goes down the rabbit hole of his own imagination. What other film includes an alien abduction, a crazed sniper, an immaculate conception, an obsessed Catholic, a religious controversy, and a sex mutant? Plus, even if the deranged God Told Me To doesn’t “work” in any conventional fashion, the bizarre movie has vibe to spare thanks to a fantastically ominous musical score by Frank Cordell. Legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann scored Cohen’s previous film (the aforementioned It’s Alive), but Hermann died before working on Gold Told Me To. Cohen clearly guided Cordell toward mimicry, and, in fact, Cohen dedicated the picture to Herrmann. Emulating Herrmann’s propulsive musical style was a genius move, because Cordell’s dark and dense score lends Cohen’s phantasmagorical narrative a degree of macabre grandeur.

God Told Me To: FREAKY

Bone (1972)

          One of the reasons B-movie auteur Larry Cohen’s career is so unique is that he often invested his work with more social significance than was necessary. After all, the easy path when making exploitation flicks is simply to concentrate on girls, gore, and guns—all of which were elements of Cohen’s movies. Yet Cohen regularly delivered something extra, namely satirical commentary about culture, politics, and race. Therefore, even if Cohen’s handling of lightning-rod material is occasionally clumsy or even crude, he deserves lots of credit for endeavoring to imbue his drive-in pictures with meaning. Cohen’s 1972 movie Bone, for instance, fuses comedic and dramatic aspects in an offbeat manner. Originally subtitled A Bad Day in Beverly Hills, the movie begins with a bizarre sequence of a car dealer named Bill (Andrew Duggan) hallucinating about auto wrecks while acting in a cheesy TV ad. This sets the tone for Cohen’s exploration of how fantasy and reality collide when the fairy-tale existence of rich Beverly Hills whites is disrupted by the intrusion of a black criminal scarred by racism.

          Specifically, Bill and his unhappy wife, Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten), lounge around the pool one afternoon until Bill discovers a rat stuck in the pool’s drain. Then Bone (Yaphet Kotto), a towering African-American dressed in ragged clothes, appears from nowhere. Mistaking him for an exterminator, Bill asks Bone to remove the rat—which he does, by hand. Turns out the invader was casing the joint for a robbery, so Bill is sent away from the house to collect cash while Bone holds Bernadette hostage under threat of rape and murder. After this intense setup, Cohen takes the story in unexpected directions, presenting not only Bernadette’s Stockholm Syndrome-style fascination with her tormentor but also Bill’s craven attempts at maneuvering the situation for maximum advantage. Cohen’s goal, of course, is to skewer myths: the black man as savage; the suburban white man as heartless opportunist; the unsatisfied white woman as easy prey for a virile African-American; and so on.

          None of this quite works, simply because Cohen’s attempts at dark humor result in arch characterizations that are hard to believe, but Bone boldly engages a number of controversial issues. (Cohen even riffs on horny hippies by way of an odd sexual interlude between Bill and an eccentric girl played by Jeannie Berlin, known for her role in the 1972 comedy The Heartbreak Kid.) And even though Bone eventually loses narrative focus, it hangs together on a performance level. Duggan and Van Patten capably incarnate different shades of self-loathing, and Kotto plays a huge range of qualities—at various times, his character is cunning, funny, philosophical, and sadistic. FYI, Cohen fans should pay close attention to the scenes set in Bill’s mansion, since Cohen used his own palatial Beverly Hills home as a location.

Bone: FUNKY

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)

          The most startling thing about The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is that it’s not particularly startling. Presented as an exposé of the legendary lawman who led the FBI from 1935 to 1972, writer-producer-director Larry Cohen’s docudrama compiles a portrait that’s equal parts gossip and history, but never quite commits to a viewpoint. For instance, the movie dramatizes the rumors that Hoover was gay—an explosive revelation if true, given the G-Man’s willingness to blackmail political figures with evidence of their sexual habits—but Cohen never takes a firm position on whether Hoover and his longtime assistant, Clyde Tolson, were lovers, as many suspected. Similarly, Cohen shows that Hoover was merciless in his crusade against communists, to the point of obsessive paranoia, but Cohen also presents giants including Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. as being equally devious. This makes Hoover seem less unique and therefore less worthy of examination. Furthermore, Cohen’s biggest narrative leap—depicting Hoover’s alleged use of material in his “secret files” for blackmail purposes—merely rehashes familiar facts such as the Kennedy family’s association with mobster Sam Giancana. Sure, it took balls for Cohen to make this movie just five years after Hoover’s death, but the lack of a strong perspective makes The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover muddled, even though it’s brisk and entertaining.
          While Cohen’s filmmaking is as sloppy as ever, that’s all to the good in this context; shaky cinematography and ugly lighting create a sense of footage captured on the fly, suiting the spy-game milieu. However, iffy performances dull the intended impact. Star Broderick Crawford, a 1949 Oscar winner for All the King’s Men, was far from his prime when he made this picture. Large and unhealthy-looking, he sometimes seems like he’s being filmed during a rehearsal, because his acting is weirdly disconnected. (That said, he springs to life during a tense scene with fellow veteran Celeste Holm, whose character attempts to seduce Hoover.) Thanks to the film’s choppy editing, tracking the arcs of supporting characters is challenging—people are introduced poorly and then disappear for long stretches—but a couple of actors figure prominently. Dan Dailey is somewhat bland as Tolson, but Michael Parks delivers a colorful turn as Bobby Kennedy, and Rip Torn lends cynical edge as a G-Man who tangles with Hoover. (Others in the large cast include Howard Da Silva, José Ferrer, John Marley, and Lloyd Nolan.) Ultimately, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is middling, but it’s noteworthy as the most serious-minded entry in Cohen’s filmography, which is dominated by cheerfully trashy drive-in fare. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover: FUNKY

Black Caesar (1973) & Hell Up in Harlem (1973)

          Some of the most entertaining blaxploitation flicks inserted predominantly African-American casts into classic Hollywood genres, resulting in exciting cross-cultural friction. Black Caesar is one such picture, because pulp auteur Larry Cohen’s quickie crime drama offers a downtown spin on the classic Warner Bros. gangster flick. Fred Williamson, the cocky ex-football player who became one of blaxploitation’s most charismatic stars, plays Tommy Gibbs, a Harlem kid with good reasons for questioning authority: When he was young, Tommy was beaten half to death by a corrupt cop, McKinney (Art Lund). So after completing a long stretch in juvie, Tommy gets right to work building his underworld résumé.

          He whacks a mobster who’s been targeted for assassination, then uses that credential to muscle his way into the closed shop of the New York mafia. The movie’s stereotypical greasy Italian types are wary of getting in business with a black man, and sure enough Tommy ruthlessly squeezes out his local godfather in order to become a big boss. Then Tommy nabs incriminating ledgers detailing years of bribes to city officials, thus ensuring police won’t touch his burgeoning operation. In the classic gangster-movie tradition, everything Tommy does to improve his stature puts him in greater danger, and he also runs into domestic trouble when his wife, Helen (Gloria Hendry), starts fooling around with his best friend, Joe (Philip Roye).

          Though everything that happens in Black Caesar is clichéd and predictable, the movie works because it’s so energetic. Cohen’s run-and-gun style creates gritty excitement, since it’s clear he “stole” most of his shots while onlookers tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Furthermore, Williamson has so much swagger that it’s easy to buy him climbing the gangland ladder, and the score by R&B legend James Brown is fantastic, featuring standout cuts like “The Boss” and “Down and Out in New York City.” The filmmaking isn’t pretty, but the style suits the material.

          The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the rushed sequel, Hell Up in Harlem, which hit screens just 11 months after Black Caesar was released. Though Hell Up in Harlem has an interesting central idea—after Tommy’s estranged father helps his son out of the jam Tommy was in at the end of the first picture, Papa Gibbs gets delusions of grandeur and tries to squeeze Tommy out of his own operation—the storytelling is disjointed and repetitive. Filled with endless montages of people getting whacked in gory detail, the movie feels incomplete, as if huge swaths of important footage are missing, and sloppily dubbed off-screen dialogue is used (ineffectively) to bridge narrative gaps. Some of the murders are entertaining from a camp perspective, like the scene of Tommy impaling a gangster with a beach umbrella, but a lengthy subplot about Tommy’s children being taken away from their mother is confusing and grim. Kudos to Cohen for striking while the iron was hot, but in rushing to meet marketplace demand, he killed any appetite for future Tommy Gibbs adventures.

Black Caesar: FUNKY

Hell Up in Harlem: LAME

It’s Alive (1974) & It Lives Again (1978)

          Arguably the most enduring creation of B-movie auteur Larry Cohen’s colorful career, the It’s Alive franchise depicts the bloody rampages of killer mutant babies born with claws, teeth, and bad attitudes. Surprisingly, the first picture is as much of a melancholy tragedy as it is an out-and-out horror show. Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) is a successful Los Angeles PR man expecting a second child with his easygoing wife, Lenore (Sharon Farrell). Yet as he stands outside the delivery room waiting for news, Frank hears screams and then sees a doctor stagger out, bloodied and dying. Frank runs into the operating room and discovers an abattoir, because his “child” came out of the womb and killed the whole surgical staff before escaping. This outrageous scene sets the tone for the whole picture, and indeed the whole franchise, by turning a universal experience into a nightmare. The scene also initiates a disquieting odyssey during which Frank becomes a social pariah, Lenore loses her mind, and the escaped “infant” racks up a horrific body count.

          Cohen’s filmmaking style is unpretentious to a fault, with many sequences marred by dodgy cinematography, but he’s aided immeasurably by the participation of legendary composer Bernard Hermann (Psycho). Hermann layers the film with one darkly insinuating theme after another, creating uncomfortable levels of menace and suspense that accentuate Cohen’s scheme of juxtaposing normalcy and the supernatural. This effect is aided by Ryan’s tightly wound performance; the actor does a great job of conveying angst beneath a veneer of stoicism. So while Rick Baker’s creature FX are a bit on the goofy side, and while some viewers may quibble about the lack of any scientific explanation for the killer-baby phenomena, It’s Alive has an undeniable mood all its own.

          Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the first sequel, It Lives Again. Once again written and directed by Cohen, the picture meanders through a contrived storyline that lacks the insistent momentum of the first picture. Ryan returns as Frank Davis, only this time he’s part of an underground group helping couples pregnant with killer mutant babies like the one Davis’ wife delivered. In trying to aid one particular young couple (Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd), Davis runs afoul of a government operative (John Marley) assigned to annihilate the killer mutant babies as they’re born. Intrigue and mayhem ensue, but the excitement level is never particularly high, and by the time two killer mutant babies escape for a rampage, the picture has settled into a dreary rut of people waiting around for haphazardly staged attacks.

          Cohen resurrected his infantile monsters one more time for the 1987 threequel It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, and the original picture was remade in 2008.

It’s Alive: FUNKY

It Lives Again: LAME

El Condor (1970)

          South-of-the-border Western El Condor offers plenty of nasty violence, a splash of bickering-buddies humor, and a show-stopping nude scene, but the characters and storyline are so threadbare it’s impossible to feel more than lizard-brain reactions. If the preceding is enough to pique your interest, or if you dig watching former NFL star Jim Brown swagger his way through dangerous situations, then El Condor will provide an undemanding (and unrewarding) distraction. Otherwise, expect a bit of a slog. Brown plays Luke, an escaped convict who happens upon dimwitted prospector Jaroo (Lee Van Cleef). Together they contrive a plan to lead Apaches in a siege on a fortress containing a huge trove of gold bars. This puts Luke and Jaroo into conflict with the fortress’s sadistic commandant, Chavez (Patrick O’Neal). Further complications arise when Luke becomes attracted to Chavez’s comely companion, Claudine (Marianna Hill).

          Alas, everything before the spectacular climax is just foreplay. Scenes establishing the dynamic between Luke and Jaroo include such queasy vignettes as a “comedy” bit of the dudes getting tarred and feathered. And while Brown’s role basically makes sense—an outlaw with a moral code—Van Cleef’s characterization shifts from scene to scene. Sometimes he’s a master criminal, sometimes he’s a bumbling idiot, and in one eye-roll-inducing sequence, he’s a tender father figure. Yet Van Cleef has it easy compared to O’Neal and Hill. Calling O’Neal’s character one-dimensional would require exaggeration, and Hill’s character is zero-dimensional because her only consequential action defies comprehension. (Spoiler alert!) In the lead-up to the siege, Claudine inexplicably decides to distract the fortress’ soldiers by stripping naked in public view. Why? Apparently she’s intoxicated by the idea of getting intimate with Luke, which tracks with the movie’s retrograde portrayals of Apaches and Mexicans as mindless savages.

          On the plus side, the other memorable component of the siege is the imagery of Brown, Van Cleef, and the Apaches climbing fortress walls with metal claws. Moreover, Brown’s supercool vibe is always watchable, and Van Cleef is effectively squirmy and sweaty. As for behind-the-camera talent, B-movie icon Larry Cohen wrote the shooting script, so his unique style of cheerful sensationalism permeates the picture. (Actual line spoken by O’Neal to Hill: “You’re a crazy, annoying child, bitch—and I love you.”) Additionally, director John Guillermin contributes his usual elegant camerawork, giving this lurid enterprise much more gloss than it deserves.

El Condor: FUNKY