The California Kid (1974)

          Never mind that the “kid” of the title is played by a 34-year-old Martin Sheen, because if that kind of logical disconnect ruins your viewing experiences, then you probably don’t have much of an appetite for dopey TV movies from the ’70s, and The California Kid will strike you as a non-starter. Flip side, if you’re willing to lower your standards in order to enjoy 74 minutes of formulaic escapism, then prepare yourself for an enjoyable fast-food snack brimming with empty calories. Hot-rod driver Michael McCord (Sheen) blows into the small town of Clarksberg, where Sheriff Roy Childress (Vic Morrow) is so mad for speed-limit enforcement that he occasionally pushes reckless drivers’ cars over a cliff in treacherous canyon terrain. One of Sheriff Roy’s victims was Michael’s kid brother, so Michael has come to Clarksberg in search of truth and, if necessary, frontier justice. That’s the entire plot, notwithstanding an anemic love story pairing Michael with seen-it-all waitress Maggie (played by lissome singer-turned-actress Michelle Phillips).

          Written and directed, respectively, by longtime TV professionals Richard Compton and Richard T. Heffron, The California Kid is competent but graceless, and the movie’s lack of character development is laughable, especially when the filmmakers try for angsty gravitas in the final act. Had the project not landed so many interesting actors (Stuart Margolin and Nick Nolte show up in supporting roles), it’s safe to assume that The California Kid would have been unbearably vapid. As is, the thing moves along at a more sluggish pace than you might imagine, given the high-octane subject matter, but Sheen is consistently watchable. He’s particularly compelling in moments when he glares at Morrow, the heat of his character’s rage smoldering from beneath a menacingly scrunched brow. And just when it seems that Morrow has phoned in a one-dimensional portrayal, the revelation of his character’s backstory—combined with a single scene in a dusty backyard—adds something like nuance. So even though one can’t help but wish this thing grew up to become the Roger Corman-esque thrill ride it so clearly wants to, The California Kid has its simplistic charms.

The California Kid: FUNKY

The Legend of Earl Durand (1974)

          This low-budget rural adventure is based upon a real-life 1930s fugitive named Earl Durand, a mountain man who was arrested for poaching, made a brazen escape from jail, and led authorities on a manhunt lasting nearly two weeks. Before committing suicide, Durand killed four law-enforcement officers. The Legend of Earl Durand portrays the title character as a backwoods Robin Hood who kills government elk to help feed local poor people, so his reason for evading capture is, theoretically, continuing his good deeds. Since the filmmakers never quite figure how to express that concept, The Legend of Earl Durand churns and spins through a painfully overlong 110-minute running time. One wishes for the brisk fable this could and should have been. Still, even with its considerable flaws, not least of which is an ugly visual style—flat lighting and haphazard angles—The Legend of Earl Durand is watchable more often than it isn’t. The presence of Slim Pickens, Albert Salmi, Martin Sheen, and Keenan Wynn in supporting roles helps a lot. As for fair-haired leading man Peter Haskell, he comes across as a shabby substitute for Robert Redford, clearly the sort of image the filmmakers were after.

          Awkwardly framed with cutesy spoken/sung narration, the movie gives Durand a sympathetic origin story by way of a prologue depicting his youth, then cuts to the protagonist in full robbing-from-the-rich mode. His main adversary, manhunter Jack McQueen (Salmi), is portrayed as a sadist with political ambitions, so the thematic deck is unfairly stacked. In early scenes, Durand romances a pretty librarian and occasionally brings her little brother along during adventures; throughout the first half of the picture, Durand is as menacing as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Things get a bit tougher once the manhunt begins—for instance, Wynn plays a retired Army officer who zooms over the Grand Tetons in a biplane, then commands a posse armed with primitive rocket launchers. Wynn blusters well, Pickens reliably essays a likeable idiot, and Sheen supercharges the scenes in which he plays a simple-minded Durand accomplice. So while there’s a lot to dislike here, there’s also a fair amount to appreciate.

The Legend of Earl Durand: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Final Countdown

        Happy New Year, and welcome to the final 1980 Week of Every ’70s Movie. (Not to fear, we’re back to regular reviews of movies from the 1970s after this special 1980 Week runs its course.) Here's wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous 2018. Enjoy!

          Basically a second-rate Twilight Zone episode stretched out to feature length, sci-fi thriller The Final Countdown unleashes a hell of a lot of firepower to sustain the viewer’s interest, especially considering how little energy was devoted to the storyline. Beyond a kicky premise, The Final Countdown has nothing to offer on a narrative or thematic level, and the movie’s approach to characterization is a joke. Having said all that, the picture has three solid attributes. First is the basic time-travel notion, second is a cast front-loaded with name-brand actors, and third is an eye-popping array of production values and special effects. The movie looks fantastic, and it contains so many stars working in roles suited to their skills that it seems as if it should eventually gel. It doesn’t. By the time that becomes clear, the movie’s over, so The Final Countdown is entertaining by default. It feels, looks, and sounds like a crackerjack popcorn picture despite a hollow center.

          The flick begins in Pearl Harbor as the modern-day crew of the U.S. Navy supercarrier U.S.S. Nimitz prepares for a routine mission. Much to the consternation of skipper Captain Yelland (Kirk Douglas), the ship’s launch was delayed to await the arrival of civilian Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen), an efficiency expert working for the industrialist who designed technology onboard the Nimitz. Once at sea, Warren clashes with the ship’s top pilot, Commander Dick Owens (James Farantino), a part-time history buff working on a book about the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Nimitz encounters a bizarre electrical storm that blasts the ship with strange phenomena, and then the crew discovers they’ve been transported back in time to Dec. 6, 1941, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack. Proof of their circumstances arrives when the Nimitz crew rescues U.S. Senator Sam Chapman (Charles Durning) from his yacht after the boat gets strafed by Japanese Zeroes flying advance reconnaissance for the invasion fleet. What ensues is the usual what-if jazz stemming from the possibility of using modern weaponry to derail a historical tragedy.

          Unfortunately, the filmmakers never take the premise anywhere, so The Final Countdown is all buildup with very title payoff. Adding to the peculiar quality of the movie is the fact that most of the screen time comprises money shots of the Nimitz, because the filmmakers were given almost complete access to the ship. Long stretches of The Final Countdown feel like excerpts from a training film, with vignettes of planes taking off and landing, sailors running drills, and heavy machinery being operated at breakneck speed. The movie is a nautical gearhead’s wet dream. Douglas, Durning, Farantino, Sheen, and nominal leading lady Katharine Ross are left with little to do except convey wonderment and spout exposition. On the plus side, cinematographer Victor J. Kemper has a blast shooting action footage, the dogfight between jets and Zeroes is memorable, and the FX shots of the strange laser/cloud tunnel appearing during the electrical storm are cool.

The Final Countdown: FUNKY

When the Line Goes Through (1973)

          Soon after collaborating on the intimate Civil War drama No Drums, No Bugles (1972), actor Martin Sheen and writer-director Clyde Ware reteamed for this offbeat modern-day piece, which is primarily a drama but also has elements of whimsical comedy. In addition to sharing some of the same storytelling problems that plagued the previous Sheen/Ware collaboration, When the Line Goes Through suffers from bizarre narrative elements, a hideous musical score, and tonal dissonance. It’s far less satisfying as a viewing experience than No Drums, No Bugles—and the preceding film was not fantastic. Nonetheless, certain qualities slightly redeem When the Line Goes Through. First, West Virginia native Ware brings authenticity to his explorations of Southern identity, so the honesty of his writing ameliorates his lack of skill. Second, a recurring device of ironic cutaways, wherein visuals reveal the truth behind a character’s verbal lies, adds dimension. Third, Sheen is always a pleasure to watch, no matter the circumstances.

          The movie opens by establishing Bluff Jackson (Sheen) as a drifter making his way from the Southwest to the backwoods of West Virginia, where he stumbles onto a remote house occupied by three people. Twentysomething sisters Mayme (Davey Davison) and Rayme (Beverly Washburn) care for their aging great-grandfather (Jim Boles), whom they claim is a 130-year-old Civil War veteran who fought on both sides of that conflict. Bluff spends several days at the house, romancing both sisters while spinning tale tales about his past to impress the sheltered women, who have never explored the world beyond their property. (Never mind the question of where they get groceries.)

          Although Ware never seems quite sure what he’s after—beyond the basic notion of putting a worldly swindler together with impressionable rubes—watching the filmmaker struggle to find a storyline is not completely uninteresting. He comes up with a few effective devices, such as having the sisters wear identical dresses so Bluff has difficulty telling them apart, and the sexual heat between Bluff and the sisters adds tension. It helps that the movie is very short, running about 77 minutes. That said, When the Line Goes Through is not for everyone—in fact, most viewers are likely to find the movie confusing and dull and frustrating. (Again: that awful, awful music.) Yet if nothing else, When the Line Goes Through is that rare beast, a truly handmade cinematic relic, almost outsider art. Viewed unfavorably, it’s a botched attempt at something profound. Viewed generously, it’s a strange little exercise in personal expression.

When the Line Goes Through: FUNKY

That Certain Summer (1972)

          The significance of this intimate telefilm derives as much from historical context as from the events depicted onscreen, because That Certain Summer is considered the first made-for-TV movie to present homosexual characters as dignified protagonists. Seen today, the picture might strike some people as inconsequential, for while That Certain Summer tells the touching story of a man forced to tell his teenaged son about a profound lifestyle change, the picture lacks dramatic fireworks. Everyone treats everyone else with respect, more or less; no one goes for the jugular during moments of conflict; and the closest the story gets to addressing political issues are a few dialogue exchanges pertaining to the limited rights enjoyed by gay men in early-’70s America. Yet because the narrative takes place in the progressive enclave of San Francisco, That Certain Summer isn’t about the restrictions society places on people. Rather, it’s about the challenges people face when asking others to change their perceptions. Not coincidentally, that’s just what the film itself asked viewers to do by casting mainstream actors in leading roles.

          Hal Holbrook stars as Doug Salter, a contractor who divorced his wife three years ago. Eventually, we learn that he told his ex-wife, Janet (Hope Lange), about his bisexuality before they got married, and that she, like so many women of her generation, presumed she could ease Doug into a permanent heterosexual lifestyle by creating a loving and stable home. By the time their son, Nick (Scott Jacoby), reached adolescence, Doug realized that he needed to live his true identity as a gay man. In the years since the divorce, Doug built a new life with a younger lover, Gary McClain (Martin Sheen), and they moved in together. When the story begins, 14-year-old Nick arrives for an extended summer visit with his father, unaware of how deeply Doug’s life has changed. In fact, Nick—like so many children of divorce—holds onto the hope that his parents will reunite. This summer, however, Doug has resolved to integrate the two halves of his life by introducing Nick to Gary, even though Gary pretends to live elsewhere so Nick isn’t confronted by too many shocking revelations at once. Nonetheless, the sensitive youth puts the pieces together and runs away from his father’s house, riding a trolley through the city while Doug and Gary search for him. Inevitably, the story gravitates toward the moment when Doug must tell the whole truth, despite the painful changes it will bring to his relationship with Nick.

          Writers Richard Levinson and William Link, best known for their work on mystery shows (they created Columbo and co-created Murder, She Wrote), display the same humanistic subtlety here they brought to other made-for-TV movies, including The Execution of Private Slovik (1974) and My Sweet Charlie (1970). Both of those pictures were directed by versatile craftsman Lamont Johnson, as was That Certain Summer. Fine script and direction notwithstanding, this is primarily an actor’s piece. Sheen channels the suppressed tension of a man trying not to make a difficult situation worse until he briefly flashes anger during a confrontation with his brother-in-law (Joe Don Baker, great in a cameo role). Jacoby is good, too, investing the mostly one-note role of a confused kid with palpable anguish.

          Holbrook commands the film, playing gentle notes of ambivalence and pride and regret as a man who masks his identity in professional settings and desperately wants to be truthful in private settings. As seen through the eyes of his character’s son, who has yet to form prejudices but nonetheless receives demeaning signals from society, Doug is not a hero but an everyman. The sheer ordinariness of his situation is what makes That Certain Summer so meaningful.

That Certain Summer: RIGHT ON

Mongo’s Back in Town (1971)

          Telling the story of a hit man who returns to his old neighborhood for a contract job that’s imbued with family issues, the made-for-TV melodrama Mongo’s Back in Town is fairly thoughtful in terms of characterization and themes. Making the piece even more interesting is a noteworthy cast: Joe Don Baker, Charles Cioffi, Sally Field, Anne Francis, Telly Savalas, Martin Sheen. Excepting Baker and Field, none of these players has room to do much that’s out of the ordinary, but their collective efforts, in tandem with director Marvin J. Chomsky’s understated storytelling, ensure that Mongo’s Back in Town feels like something more than a typical small-screen crime picture. The murky script has something to do with Mongo Nash (Baker) answering a call from his brother, low-rent gangster Mike Nash (Cioffi), to off someone. Local cop Lt. Pete Tolstad (Savalas) sees Mongo arrive, so he knows what’s up and tries to prevent bloodshed. Meanwhile, Mongo happens across Vikki (Field), a young woman who recently left her home in rural West Virginia to start a new life in the big city. Compelled by a combination of lust and pity, Mongo gives Vikki a place to stay, putting her in the crossfire as the date of the big hit approaches. Also pulled into the drama are a moll (Francis) and Tolstad’s partner (Sheen).

          Although the plot of Mongo’s Back in Town is alternately convoluted and pedestrian, it’s possible to watch the movie just for the acting and character work. On that level, it’s fairly rewarding. Baker gets to carry most of the picture’s dramatic weight, and he does so gracefully. Playing a thug defined by his past choices and the patterns they created, Baker shows glimmers of sensitivity in his scenes with Field, because even though she’s not purely innocent—a wise choice on the filmmakers’ part—she’s redeemable, which may or may not be true of Baker’s character. This unpredictable relationship creates dramatic tension of an emotional sort, which offers an effective complement to the ticking-clock suspense stemming from the contract killing. Yet it’s not as if Baker’s character comes across as some gentle giant in a world of nefarious hoodlums; some of the crimes that Mongo commits are horrendous. Less dimensional are the cop scenes, with Sheen’s character offering by-the-book contrast to his partner’s instinctive style. And to call the material with Francis’ character threadbare would require overstatement.

          Still, the best elements of Mongo’s Back in Town work well enough to make the picture worthwhile. Polished and quiet, Mongo’s Back in Town favors gentle shadings of morality over flamboyant action scenes, so the film’s creative team deserves credit for trying something different within the parameters of a familiar genre. 

Mongo’s Back in Town: FUNKY

Catholics (1973)

          An intriguing look at the debate between progress and tradition within an organized-religion community, the made-for-TV drama Catholics benefits from a terrific leading performance by Trevor Howard, excellent supporting work from Martin Sheen, and immersive location photography that gives a strong sense of place for a story set on a remote island off the Irish coast. Adapted by Brian Moore from his own novel, the story concerns a centuries-old abbey where monks under the leadership of the Abbot (Howard) make waves by reverting to old ways. They perform masses in Latin and, more controversially, embrace classical teachings of Christ as purely divine. Progressive priest Father Kinsella (Sheen) arrives from Rome with orders to pull the monks into the 20th century by adopting English-language masses and integrating the notion of Christ’s dual nature, neither purely divine nor purely mortal. Kinsella makes analogies to a similar resurgence of traditionalism in Lourdes, France, circa 1858, when Catholics claimed to behold visions of the Virgin Mary. Giving the story scope and urgency is the popularization of the abbey’s old-school practices, because Catholics devoted to the old ways make pilgrimages to the island, thereby setting off alarm bells in the Vatican.

          Catholics is a simple story, and of course it will be of special interest to those who adhere to the faith named in the title. Even for secular viewers, however, the movie has dramatic heft and intellectual dynamism.

          Howard, whose Irish brogue wavers periodically, delivers a characterization encompassing authority, defiance, doubt, and self-loathing. (Explaining how some of these qualities emerge would reveal the story’s most important turn.) His performance neatly embodies the narrative’s overall tension by presenting an individual caught in a theological crisis. Some of the actors playing monks under his command sketch distinct characterizations, as well, though they are brushstrokes in the painting for which Howard’s role provides the dominant color. Sheen, whose real-life devotion to Catholicism became widely known in the years following the initial broadcast of Catholics, is perfectly cast in many ways. Handsome and young, he’s a stark visual contrast to the craggy old men of the monastery, and his gift for making every line feel fresh and sincere ensures that his character never comes across as an automaton sent from Rome to squash rebellion. Accordingly, Catholics has neither a clear hero nor a clear villain, so the battle driving the story is a fair fight between men of differing perspectives, with the fate of one troubled soul in the balance. Later broadcast in the UK, under the alternate title Conflict, this picture is small—a title card on the American version humbly identifies the project as Catholics: A Fable—but it casts a large thematic shadow.

Catholics: GROOVY

The Missiles of October (1974)

          The Cuban Missile Crisis has been dissected and explored to a level of granular detail by dramatists and historians and politicians ever since those harrowing events of October 1962 concluded, since it’s very likely that was the closest the world has ever come to thermonuclear war. Yet as this excellent made-for-TV drama underscores, the lasting lesson is not just how easily men of hostile intent nearly drove two nations into globally destructive conflict, but how skillfully men of conscience defused the situation. Historically, much of the credit for ending the crisis rightfully goes to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for a crucial strategy suggestion he made late in the game, but The Missiles of October conveys that the world was saved by the collective efforts of RFK, President John F. Kennedy, and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev, among many others. In today’s post-9/11 era of brinksmanship and escalation, the lessons in The Missiles of October are perhaps more important than ever.

          From an aesthetic perspective, The Missiles of October is highly unusual. Shot on videotape, it’s essentially a recording of a play, even though many cinematic flourishes are employed. (For instance, each act opens with a shot of a giant board bearing the show’s title and flags, with the camera zooming into the flag of the nation where the act’s first scene takes place.) Moreover, The Missiles of October is quite long, running two and a half hours even without commercials, so the storytelling is gradual, methodical, and specific. Viewers are taken all the way from the U.S. government’s first discovery that Russian missile bases are being assembled on the island nation of Cuba to the final resolution between the U.S., thrown into a defensive posture by the presence of missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and the U.S.S.R., desperate to save face even though surrender is the only sane option. A fantastic cast tells the story, with William Devane’s alternately contemplative and intense portrayal of JFK dominating. He’s matched almost perfectly with Martin Sheen, who plays RFK. Together, they sketch a believable family bond while also expressing the horrible stakes of the crisis in their pained faces.

          Whereas Devane and Sheen mimic the Kennedy brothers’ famous Boston accents, Howard Da Silva uses an unadorned American vocal style while playing Krushchev. In context, this choice works, because viewers aren’t distracted by dialect or subtitles while parsing the subtle moves that Krushchev made while maneuvering around Kremlin hawks to avoid disaster. Others familiar players in the cast are Ralph Bellamy, Dana Elcar, Michael Lerner, and Nehemiah Persoff, and character actor Thayer David provides occasional narration. Seen today, The Missiles of October might strike some viewers as aesthetically deficient, what with the grainy newsreel clips to illustrate military action and the use of minimalistic sets. Nonetheless, this film articulates the broad strokes of a key event in world history, as well as many of the most important nuances, with grace and power, eventually morphing from a docudrama to a taut thriller. The time one invests to watch The Missiles of October is rewarded handsomely.

The Missiles of October: GROOVY

No Drums, No Bugles (1972)

          Given his lifelong commitment to humane causes, it’s no surprise Martin Sheen agreed to star in this sincere melodrama about a conscientious objector during the Civil War. As a personal and political statement, the film is highly commendable. As an entertainment experience, not so much. The only actor onscreen for most of the 90-minute movie, Sheen spends most of his screen time foraging for food and shelter in the wilderness. Weirdly, the filmmakers elected not to create a narration track, which would have illuminated the protagonist’s inner life and utilized Sheen’s glorious speaking voice. Bereft of this obvious element, No Drums, No Bugles is a slog, though an argument could be made that the minimalistic storytelling suits the narrative, which was extrapolated from lore that has survived through generations in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. Written and directed without Clyde Ware, the movie starts awkwardly, because when we meet him, Ashby Gatrell (Sheen) is already on the run. One gets the vague impression that the opening scene is supposed to represent Asbhy’s first, horrifying experience of combat, with fellow Southerners laid to waste while cruel Northerners pick the bodies clean for loot, but Ware doesn’t sufficiently orient viewers.
          Thereafter, the movie transitions to repetitive scenes of Ashby making a primitive life for himself. He builds a torch to scare a bear out of the cave that Ashby claims for his home, he picks up scraps left behind by hunters, and he often hides by roadsides so he can parse people’s conversations for clues about the status of the war. In what should be the movie’s emotional high point, Ashby sneaks into his own home to visit his sleeping wife and children, not daring to wake them lest they share the dangerous secret of his whereabouts. No Drums, No Bugles is redeemed by its clear thematic focus, and Ware strives for lyricism by using twee folk songs to bridge sequences together. Yet No Drums, No Bugles is ultimately a better idea for a movie than it is an actual movie, because even though Sheen’s performance is infused with honesty and passion, Ware’s storytelling is dull and flat.

No Drums, No Bugles: FUNKY

Pickup on 101 (1972)

          Contrived and hokey, the cross-generational road movie Pickup on 101 depicts the odyssey of three unlikely traveling companions: an elderly hobo, a manipulative musician, and a sexy young woman experimenting with the hippie lifestyle. Beliefs are challenged, relationships are formed, and secrets are revealed as the young people learn about integrity and mortality from their aged friend, and characters spend lots of time accusing each other of wasting their lives. On some level, the picture is respectable inasmuch as it has elements of sociopolitical questioning, with a dash of existentialism. Yet the chaotic tone of the piece—which wobbles between comedy, drama, erotica, and tragedy—reveals that Pickup at 101 is as directionless as its characters. Were it not for the presence of interesting actors in the leading roles, Pickup on 101 would be entirely forgettable.

          Without describing the tiresome circumstances by which the characters converge, suffice to say that the main group comprises Jedediah (Jack Albertson), an old-school vagabond who travels by hitching illegal rides on freight trains; Lester (Martin Sheen), a self-important musician willing to do or say anything in order to get what he wants; and Nicky (Lesley Ann Warren), a beautiful young woman who ditches her uptight boyfriend, Chuck (Michael Ontkean), because he puts down her interest in living on a commune. Jedediah, Lester, and Nicky share misadventures involving an exploding car, hidden cash reserves, hitch-hiking, a night in jail, and plentiful tension emanating from who does and/or doesn’t want to sleep with Nicky. Eventually, the story coalesces into a bittersweet quest, but that doesn’t happen until the last 20 minutes of the picture.

          Despite the skill of the actors involved, a general feeling of artificiality permeates Pickup on 101. For instance, the Nicky character represents the openness and optimism of hippie culture, and yet Warren is largely presented as an ornamental sex object. Similarly, the Lester character seems to represent dilettantes who play the counterculture game for opportunistic reasons, and yet Sheen vents a fair amount of legitimate righteous indignation against The Man. The Jedediah character is the most convincing one in the batch, perhaps because Albertson’s grizzled-wise-man routine is so appealing. Every so often, Pickup on 101 approaches provocative subject matter, as when Nicky contemplates turning tricks in order to survive, but then the movie retracts into blandly schematic storytelling. By the time the film reaches its hard-to-believe sentimental conclusion, the bogus textures of Pickup at 101 have overwhelmed the precious few resonant nuances.

Pickup on 101: FUNKY

Pursuit (1972)

          By the time this made-for-TV thriller aired in late 1972, the project’s writer-director, Michael Crichton, was already on his way to becoming a pop-culture phenomenon. Three of the doctor-turned-novelist’s books had been adapted to theatrical features, and Pursuit began his side career as a filmmaker—which subsequently peaked with the hits Westworld (1973) and Coma (1978) before losing momentum. Later, Crichton found his niche as one of the world’s best-selling authors, and, in the hands of other directors, some of his books became massive hits, notably Jurassic Park (1993). He even found time to write original movie scripts and to create the blockbuster TV series ER (1994-2009). Considering the whole of Crichton’s Hollywood career, Pursuit represents a humble early effort. It’s an adequate little potboiler that comes together nicely at the end, despite bargain-basement production values, but it’s unlikely that Pursuit would be remembered today if not for Crichton’s involvement.
          Based on a novel called Binary, which Crichton wrote under one of his many pseudonyms, Pursuit follows a government agent’s surveillance of a potential domestic terrorist. During the first half of the picture, intrepid Steven Graves (Ben Gazzara) tracks the movements of right-wing nutjob James Wright (E.G. Marshall) without knowing exactly what Wright plans to do. During the second half of the picture, once Graves discovers that Wright has built a complex chemical weapon that he plans to detonate in downtown San Diego while the president is visiting the city, Graves and his colleagues use psychology, strategy, and tenacity to prevent Wright’s weapon from detonating.

          Throughout Crichton’s career, he was better at plotting than characterization, and his stories were often convoluted and far-fetched. All of those shortcomings manifest here. What carries the day, as per the norm, is the novelty and strength of Crichton’s concepts. In Pursuit, he dramatizes the ease with which a well-funded criminal seizes dangerous chemicals, and then meticulously illustrates the simple techniques by which those chemicals are transformed into a homemade WMD. So even if the people in the movie are familiar types—Graves is a brilliant hothead, Wright is a dignified psychotic—Crichton puts all the pieces in place for a fun ticking-clock finale. (Never one for subtlety, Crichton actually superimposes countdowns over many scenes.) And while the picture’s visuals are quite bland, the quality of acting is strong, with the leads abetted by supporting players including Martin Sheen, William Windom, and Joseph Wiseman. Just don’t probe the logic of the piece too closely.

Pursuit: FUNKY

Rage (1972)

          Inspired by a real-life incident during which the U.S. military accidentally released nerve gas onto a civilian sheep ranch, Rage offers an unusual spin on the ’70s vigilante picture. Instead of seeking revenge against criminals, the film’s lead character attacks anyone and everyone associated with an accident that claimed the life of his young son.

           George C. Scott, who also marked his feature directorial debut with this picture (having previously helmed the 1970 television play The Andersonville Trial), stars as Dan Logan, a Wyoming sheep rancher and widower. One evening, Dan camps on his ranch with his preteen son, Chris (Nicolas Beauvy); Chris sleeps outside while Dan slumbers in a tent. When Dan wakes the next morning, Chris is bleeding from the nostrils, convulsing, and unconscious. Meanwhile, many of Dan’s sheep are dead or dying. Dan rushes Chris to a nearby hospital and summons his family physician, Dr. Caldwell (Richard Basehart). Before Caldwell arrives, two other medical professionals—Dr. Holliford (Martin Sheen) and Dr. Spencer (Barnard Hughes)—assume control over the Logans, separating father and son while examining Dan for symptoms. Turns out the Logans were exposed to an experimental nerve agent, and Holliford and Spencer are government operatives tasked with keeping the incident quiet. When Chris dies, Holliford and Spender persuade Caldwell to hide the truth from Dan until an “appropriate” time. Sensing that he’s being manipulated, Dan escapes from his hospital room, slips into the morgue, and discovers Chris’ body. Then he snaps, unleashing death and destruction on his enemies.

          Although Scott’s direction is far from perfect, given the presence of bizarre slo-mo flourishes and a distasteful focus on cruelty to animals, the basic story is powerfully simple. Not only is the nerve-gas incident frightening, the ensuing government crackdown is wholly believable. And if Dan’s skill at gathering resources while evading capture sometimes seems a bit far-fetched, it’s useful to remember that a fugitive could hide from public view with greater ease in the days before cellphones and the Internet.

          Rage has its share of unintentionally funny moments, a hazard common to movies that try to sustain an unrelentingly grim tone, but Scott is 100 percent the right guy for the job, at least in front of the camera. Playing an unsophisticated everyman who needs medical jargon translated into plain English, Scott credibly personifies the murderous anger that would fill any parent’s heart under the circumstances. Similarly, Hughes and Sheen (who later played father and son in the 1988 drama Da) capture the chilly efficiency of men who place the needs of the state over the rights of individuals. Holding this taut little picture together is a fantastic score by Lalo Schifrin, who keeps the tension flowing from the deceptively peaceful opening scenes to the bitterly tragic finale.

Rage: GROOVY

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

          An unusual thriller that’s constantly on the edge of becoming a full-on horror movie, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane plays a clever game of making the audience wonder whether the title character is a victim or a villain. Jodie Foster, who wasn’t even 15 when she made the picture, gives a characteristically precocious performance as Rynn Jacobs, a teenager occupying a remote house in a coastal Maine town. Most of the picture comprises attempts by local residents to determine the whereabouts of Rynn’s father, whom she alternately claims is away on business or home but unavailable to receive callers. Some of the people poking around Rynn’s house have good intentions, including fellow teenager Mario (Scott Jacoby), and some have nefarious designs, such as pedophile Frank (Martin Sheen).

          Written by Laird Koenig (from his novel of the same name) and directed by Nicolas Gessner, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane does a lot with a little, concentrating most of the action in one location (Rynn’s house) and creating a great deal of Edgar Allen Poe-styled tension from the creepy premise of a young girl living alone with mysteries and shadows. The presence of Sheen’s character ups the anxiety level considerably, and Sheen creepily delivers many lines in a seductive whisper—watching such a good actor incarnate a predator is genuinely disturbing. Furthermore, the fact that young Foster is so formidable only makes the overall situation more believable. Some elements of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane are formulaic, such as the nosy neighbor who pays a price for searching inside the basement of Rynn’s house, but Koenig’s use of stock components helps answer logic questions before they become problematic; for instance, the presence of a diligent local cop (Mort Shuman) explains how Rynn’s resourcefulness has kept authorities from digging too deeply into her circumstances.

          The final revelation of how Rynn found herself alone is a stretch, and the payoff to Mario’s character arc is even more outlandish, but The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane ultimately pays off well with a climactic confrontation that’s satisfying and unnerving at the same time. Since the picture was made as a low-budget French-Canadian production, it’s easy to see how a bit more Hollywood polish could have smoothed off the rough edges, but it’s impossible to imagine anyone surpassing either Foster or Sheen in their roles. So, while The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane might not meet the criteria for anyone’s list of the best ’70s shockers, it’s at the very least an atmospheric diversion with memorably grim nuances.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane: GROOVY

Eagle’s Wing (1979)

          There’s a good reason you’ve likely never heard of a Western called Eagle’s Wing: It tells such a diffuse and underdeveloped story that even with dynamic actors Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston starring, the picture is painfully dull. On the plus side, the movie looks gorgeous—director Anthony Harvey and cinematographer Billy Williams arrange visuals with artful precision. Yet the only thing more dispiriting than Harvey’s lethargic pacing is the director’s inability to fuse his narrative’s various strands. Eagle’s Wing bounces around between vignettes involving Plains Indians, white fur traders, a displaced Irish priest and his sister, and the denizens of a Mexican hacienda. The various characters eventually converge, more or less, but it’s a long haul getting to the point where the story feels unified. Worse, since the heart of the piece is really just a simplistic macho duel between an Indian (Waterston) and a trader (Sheen), everything else feels like a distraction.
          Before moving onto anything else, by the way, it’s worth noting that Waterston’s casting as a Native American isn’t as ridiculous as it might seem. Yes, there were plenty of Native actors would could have played his role, and yes, Waterston is a Northeastern WASP, but with his lean physicality, massive eyebrows, prominent nose, thin eyes, and generally sober demeanor, the actor cuts a striking figure.

          The plot isn’t worth describing in detail except to say that the Indian and the trader begin their duel over possession of a horse, and then deepen their conflict once the Indian abducts the priest’s sister. (English actress Caroline Langrishe, playing the girl, lends grit and loveliness but has virtually nothing to do except suffer and watch while male characters advance the narrative.) The reason the plot isn’t worth describing is that it doesn’t seem to be of particular importance to the filmmakers—Eagle’s Wing is primarily a mood piece about desperation, obsession, and survival. However, these themes are not dramatized effectively. Many of Sheen’s sequences, for instance, comprise the actor soliloquizing in order to explain what his character is thinking. (It’s a rare movie that makes one wish Sheen would stop talking, given that he possesses one of Hollywood’s most mesmerizing voices.)

          Further, the film is littered with wordless scenes in which nothing of significance happens, or in which significant events are shown at excessive length—such as an interminable scene of Sheen’s character breaking a horse. Virtually the only stretch of the film that sustains interest is the long opening sequence featuring Harvey Keitel; he and Sheen play bickering partners until Keitel’s character meets the business end of an arrow. Nonetheless, if you’re able to groove on a movie simply for the beauty of its visuals, you might be able to do so with Eagle’s Wing, at least for a while, because the film offers an endless procession of elegantly minimalistic images sculpted from subtle textures of color and light.

Eagle’s Wing: FUNKY

The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

          A runaway train meets a viral outbreak in the overwrought disaster flick The Cassandra Crossing, which has just enough florid acting and gonzo energy to remain lively for all of its 129 absurd minutes. Things get started when terrorists attack the headquarters of the International Health Organization because they’ve learned U.S. officers at the IHO are holding a sample of a deadly plague. Most of the attackers are killed, but one of the terrorists gets exposed to the toxin and escapes, slipping onto a train heading from Geneva to Stockholm. Soon after, the terrorist’s infection spreads to other passengers.

          The official tasked with containing the situation, U.S. Army Col. Stephen Mackenzie (Burt Lancaster), reroutes the train to Poland, where it will pass over a decaying bridge known as the Cassandra Crossing. Mackenzie’s civilian counterpart, Dr. Elena Stradner (Ingrid Thulin), realizes the colonel plans to collapse the bridge beneath the train, killing everyone aboard as a means of preventing the plague from reaching any major population centers, so she reaches out to one of the train’s passengers, neurologist Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris), for help—because, of course, a super-genius scientist happens to be on board. With Stradner’s guidance, Chamberlain tries to quarantine victims so Mackenzie’s scheme can be halted.

          Director and co-writer George P. Cosmatos gooses this pulpy storyline with melodramatic subplots involving Chamberlain’s ex-wife (Sophia Loren), a larcenous May-December couple (played by Martin Sheen and Ava Gardner, if you can picture that peculiar combination), and other random characters. (Also populating the grab-bag cast are John Philip Law, Lee Strasberg, O.J. Simpson, and Lionel Stander.) Borrowing a page from Hollywood’s master of disaster, producer Irwin Allen, Cosmatos fills the screen with so much noise that viewers are constantly distracted by changes of scenery and tone. Thus, the movie capriciously flits between, say, torrid domestic squabbles involving a caustic Harris and a haze-filter-shrouded Loren, and grim command-center showdowns involving idealistic Thulin and merciless Lancaster. Interspersed with the dramatic scenes are handsomely mounted shots of the train zooming across the European countryside, and, of course, it all leads to a carnage-filled climax.

The Cassandra Crossing: FUNKY

Sweet Hostage (1975)

          A peculiar made-for-TV drama that mixes lofty dialogue and pulpy sensationalism, Sweet Hostage features the unlikely screen pairing of Martin Sheen, then 35 and at the height of his Badlands-era intensity, and Linda Blair, then 16 and caught in an awkward transition from adolescence to adulthood. To say there’s a disparity between what each actor brings to the table is an understatement, but the tension between their skill sets works in a queasy sort of way.

          Playing an escaped mental patient who kidnaps a young woman while hiding from authorities in a remote part of New Mexico, Sheen explodes with energy and talent, riffing through dozens of accents and showcasing fluid physicality—he’s such a live wire that his performance would seem excessive if he didn’t have the leeway provided by his character’s mental illness. Conversely, Blair plays a simple farm girl aching to learn more about the outside world, so her job is mostly to watch Sheen’s character with confused fascination. While Blair’s leaps back and forth between girlish innocence and womanly coquettishness aren’t executed all that smoothly, she more or less gets the job done, and she seems quite sincere by the end of the picture.

          Based on a novel by Nathaniel Benchley called Welcome to Xanadu, the picture is structured like a standard thriller, with frequent cutaways to police officers and worried parents trying to find the kidnapped girl, though the bulk of the movie comprises two-character scenes in which the erudite mental patient beguiles his “sweet hostage” with grammar instruction, poetry readings, and romantic compliments. It’s never totally clear what his intentions were in abducting the girl, although sexual attraction is implied from the earliest scenes, but then again, the same fact of mental illness that gives Sheen free rein for dramatic opulence cuts the storytellers some slack. And if Blair’s characterization is a bit dicey—it’s always hard to believe transformations from reluctant captivity to voluntary imprisonment—the point of the piece is a young woman opening herself to a larger world of ideas and language through the peculiar circumstance of meeting a troubled aesthete.

          That said, don’t get the idea that Sweet Hostage is some poetic little gem made with consummate taste; though the direction by TV veteran Lee Phillips is vibrant, the music score is ghastly, bursting with inappropriate arrangements and overripe cues. There’s even a wretched theme song, “Strangers on a Carousel,” which manages to be insipid and saccharine all at once. In other words, Sweet Hostage is very much trapped by its nature as a TV movie, lacking narrative sophistication and post-production polish. Plus, to be frank, it’s a Linda Blair vehicle. Within those limitations, however, Sweet Hostage is arresting and offbeat. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Sweet Hostage: FUNKY

Badlands (1973)

          Cinematic poetry is hard to achieve in narrative films, because the normal grinding work of developing plots inevitably requires the inclusion of perfunctory elements that make pure artistic expression difficult. As a result, even the best movies enter the poetic realm for only a few minutes at a time. One notable exception to this rule, however, is writer-director Terrence Malick. His scripts are so spare, and his visuals are so elegant, that poetry is the only word that really describes his style. This was never truer than with his directorial debut, Badlands, which has occupied a treasured place among my very favorite films since I first watched it at film school. In fact, Badlands is one of the few movies that I wish I made, not just because the end result is so quietly overwhelming, but because of the sense I get that making the picture was a rarified experience involving like-minded artists helping Malick express something unique. Even though Badlands is a violent crime story, it’s also a  sensitive statement about directionless youths in the American heartland; few films balance savagery and soulfulness with this much grace.
          Malick’s script is a fictionalized take on the real-life odyssey of Charles Starkweather, who murdered 11 people during a 1958 trek across Nebraska and Wyoming, accompanied by his 14-year-old girlfriend. Badlands changes the names and locations, so instead of a docudrama it’s a meditation on the intersection between American wanderlust and the unknowable darkness in the human soul. Martin Sheen plays Kit Caruthers, a handsome but unstable garbage collector living in late-’50s South Dakota. When he meets sheltered teenager Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek), his latent psychosis and fascination with James Dean’s live-fast-die-young mythology prompt Kit to embark upon a murderous odyssey with Holly as his hapless traveling companion. From the first scene, Malick creates an otherworldly mood, with airy musical compositions, Spacek’s plainspoken narration, and startling audiovisual juxtapositions communicating the idea that Badlands exists somewhere in the limbo between dreams and reality—when Kit and Holly camp out in a remote forest partway through the killing spree, it really does seem as if they’ve escaped the normal world for someplace else.
          Sheen is remarkable in a performance that sits comfortably alongside his acclaimed work in Apocalypse Now (1979); not only does he convincingly play a man far younger than Sheen was during production, but he believably personifies the idea of an twitchy loner who can’t find the right outlets for his angst, charisma, and curiosity. Spacek is unforgettable in a difficult role, because Holly is in some respects the blank slate upon which the audience projects its reactions—it’s to her great credit that we accept her wonderment at Kit’s force of personality, and her slow realization of the horror she’s witnessing. Invaluable ’70s character actors Ramon Bieri and Warren Oates appear in supporting roles, each contributing gritty texture and bringing out different colors in the leads’ performances.
          Although Malick’s subsequent career has produced some of the most beautiful images in American film, he has yet to recapture the focus he demonstrated with Badlands, and that’s part of why it’s the consummate example of his poetic approach: For an intoxicating hour and a half, Malick matches his filmmaking artistry with narrative economy in a gorgeous film without a single wasted frame.

Badlands: OUTTA SIGHT