Under Milk Wood (1972)

          Forgive a digression. Over the course of many years spent writing film criticism, I’ve held a number of different attitudes toward rating systems. Generally, I find them reductive and unhelpful except in aggregate, which is to say that only by combining multiple perspectives can one find useful short-take analysis. Then again, to say that the Metacritic/Rotten Tomatoes paradigm has shortcomings is to grossly understate things. So when it came time to apply a rubric to ’70s movies for this project, I was hesitant but ultimately decided some framework would be enjoyable for readers. If nothing else, looking at a spectrum of things I find disappointing or exemplary helps loyal readers compare their attitudes to my own, which in turn allows them to contextualize my appraisals of particular films. Yet any ratings system has special quirks, and mine is no exception. Take the “Funky” rating. In the broadest sense, this rating is given to a mediocre picture with more good elements than bad, hence the explanatory phrase accompanying the “Funky” rating: “You might dig it.”

          Under Milk Wood, a peculiar British film adapted from a 1950s radio play by Dylan Thomas, is a different kind of “Funky.” This time, it’s not so much that I found some things to enjoy—rather, it’s that I found some things to appreciate. For most of Under Milk Wood’s running time, I had no idea what was going on, couldn't figure out what X event had to do with Y event, and sometimes failed to penetrate the thick accents of the speakers. (Much of the piece comprises voiceover in tandem with evocative images, and all the participants employ or replicate Welsh accents.) Quite frequently, when I encounter a picture this befuddling, I label it “Freaky” because I believe others will find it just as bizarre. Not so here. Yes, casual viewers of Under Milk Wood are likely to have a reaction similar to mine—but attentive viewers, and certainly those conversant in British culture and Thomas’ literary oeuvre, will simply find the movie idiosyncratic. Flawed, perhaps, but more poetic than weird. Thus it would seem a disservice to label this film “Freaky,” as there’s nothing plainly disturbing or transgressive here, even though some scenes are kinky and provocative.

          If all of this seems like a laborious effort to avoid discussing the particulars of Under Milk Wood, fair enough. I could parrot interpretations that I gleaned from research, but the movie left me so cold I can’t offer much in the way of original insight. Presented in a dreamlike style, the story features disassociated vignettes of life in a Welsh fishing village. Themes of class and sex and madness and religion are explored. Famous actors including Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole, and Elizabeth Taylor appear, some for more screen time than others. There’s a fair bit of nudity, and even a threesome in a barn. In one scene, images of a man pumping his lover’s legs back and forth are intercut with images of the same man pumping draft-beer levers in a pub until fluid spews forth. Perhaps these images, and the accompanying lyrical voiceover, mean something. Perhaps they don’t. Similarly, maybe Under Milk Wood is pretentious nonsense. And maybe it isn’t. But, quite frankly, I can’t be bothered to think about the movie a moment longer. Depending on your tastes, please consider yourselves sufficiently intrigued—or warned.

Under Milk Wood: FUNKY

Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973)

          Broadcast on television over consecutive nights as a two-part movie, Divorce His, Divorce Hers represents the last of 11 cinematic collaborations between the most famous on-again/off-again couple in Hollywood history, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. The irony that the actors divorced in real life a year after the picture was broadcast, only to remarry in 1975 and divorce again in 1976, is but one of many parallels that makes the project interesting. For while the underlying material is respectable, exploring the dissipation of a marriage first from the husband’s perspective and then from the wife’s, the script is a bit long-winded and superficial, so it’s probable the film would have faded from memory had it not been for the participation of a notorious couple. As is, Divorce His, Divorce His failed to make much noise at the time of its original broadcast (not a single Emmy nomination, for instance), and none would make the argument that it’s essential viewing. Still, those curious to explore whether Liz and Dick still had any of the fire that made Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) so powerful could do worse than tracking this one down. As in most of their latter-day projects, the leading actors rely too heavily on old tricks—his sullen scowling, her breathy overplaying—but every so often, something connects.

          Divorce His, the first part, lays out the particulars. International businessman Martin Reynolds (Burton) navigates life after his divorce from Jane (Taylor), his wife of 18 years and the mother of their three children. Present-day action takes place in Rome, where Jane lives with the kids, and the story begins with Martin returning from Africa, where he lives and works, for a visit. Seeing his estranged loved ones triggers flashbacks. From Martin’s perspective, he was in many ways the culprit for the separation, a cold and distant man who forced Jane to demand affection and to provide emotional support for their children. The more he devoted himself to business, the needier she became. In the harshest Divorce His scene, Martin strikes Jane, only to immediately regret the action, and she suffers the blow willingly: “Beat me black and blue,” she moans, “but please don’t leave me.” The implication is that he finds her complicated psychology erotic and maddening in equal measure—which isn’t far from the read most historians provide about the real Burton/Taylor relationship—but of course this dynamic is supercharged with all sorts of troubling connotations related to gender roles. At its best, Divorce His allows Taylor to convey unaffected vulnerability, something sorely lacking from most of her work in the late ’60s and beyond, while allowing Burton to channel the elegant cruelty that eventually became his cinematic signature.

          Things get messy with Divorce Hers, which portrays the end of the marriage far less clinically. Divorce Hers plays out like an emotional horror movie, with Jane pulled in myriad directions at once. The best thing Divorce Hers conveys is the way Jane handles the everyday work of managing her children’s reactions to the breakup. A young daughter asks if the divorce is her fault, and an adult son dismisses his father as a soulless cash machine. As Jane says to Martin in Divorce Hers, “Where are you when things go wrong?” Alas, things go wrong with the storytelling in Divorce Hers, because the filmmakers get mired in melodrama about the ex-spouses’ new lovers and then get totally lost in pointless scenes about Martin’s latest business deal. It should also be noted that Divorce Hers is less watchable simply because Taylor lacks Burton’s precision as an actor. Considering its cumbersome total length of three hours, Divorce His, Divorce Hers rewards the viewer’s time more often than not, especially if the viewer plays along with the game of looking for clues about the real Burton/Taylor relationship. Surely that was the filmmakers’ intention when casting the leading roles as they did.

Divorce His, Divorce Hers: FUNKY

Hammersmith Is Out (1972)

A misguided black comedy that bounces between crude farce and silly satire, Hammersmith Is Out loosely retells the legend of Faust, which concerns a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for success. As ineptly written by Stanford Whitmore and clumsily directed by Peter Ustinov, Hammersmith Is Out concerns an ignorant slob named Billy Breedlove (Beau Bridges), who works as an orderly in a mental hospital. Billy agrees to free a psychotic patient named Hammersmith (Richard Burton), who in turn agrees to kill people on Billy’s behalf, thereby imbuing Billy with the victims’ money and power. Along for the ride is greasy-spoon waitress Jimmie Jean Jackson (Elizabeth Taylor), whom Billy enjoys screwing until her vapidity becomes annoying. The narrative of Hammersmith Is Out moves at awkward rhythms, sometimes lingering on scenes as if they’re pieces of theater, and sometimes rushing through important ones by way of perfunctory voiceover. The tone of the picture is inconsistent, complementing sly verbal jokes with a crass gag about flatulence. Bridges gives an exaggerated turn playing an irredeemable scumbag, and Burton dubiously opts for icy restraint, which makes him seem bored. Taylor is awful—all cartoonish artifice—though in her defense, she’s grossly miscast as a salt-of-the-earth type. Given these wholly unsympathetic characters, it’s a drag to watch Hammersmith Is Out, because the flick is a would-be laugh riot about killing and maiming people for no reason other than greed. Furthermore, it’s hard to cut the movie slack as a spoof of 1972-era society, seeing as how Ustinov’s idea of a witty joke is showing an all-female rock band called “The Tits” performing topless. By the time the movie stops dead so La Liz can deliver an interminable monologue, gifting her character with previously unknown soulfulness, Hammersmith Is Out has degraded into pointless sludge.

Hammersmith Is Out: LAME

Massacre in Rome (1973)

          The European-made World War II drama Massacre in Rome depicts a 1944 incident during which the Third Reich killed 335 citizens in reprisal for a partisan attack that left about 30 German soldiers dead. The so-called “Ardeatine Massacre” carried sociopolitical implications extending beyond the war itself, since the Vatican was asked to intervene but refused to do so. Written and directed by George P. Cosmatos, who adapted a book by Robert Katz, Massacre in Rome is a serious attempt at cataloguing the myriad factors that led to the slaughter, although the process of dramatization led Cosmatos toward both oversimplification and turgidity. Regarding the first extreme, Cosmatos transformed historical figure Herbert Kappler, the German officer tasked with organizing the reprisal, into a cinematic protagonist, which necessitated some sanding of edges. In the movie, Kappler—as played by Richard Burton—is a pragmatist who urges his commanders to exercise restraint not out of any great wellspring of human compassion, but because he knows that an excessive response will energize opposition among the Italian citizenry. Historical accounts suggest that the real Kappler had no such reservations about following the company line.

          Regarding the second extreme, that of turgidity, Cosmatos created a composite character, Father Pietro Antonelli—portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni—to represent the tricky relationship between the church and Italian partisans. Many scenes involving the priest devolve into pretentious debates about morality. Worse, the priest ultimately serves no discernible narrative function—despite fretting a lot, he never impacts the action in a meaningful way. Given these problems, Massacre in Rome is a middling film even though it’s also a sober undertaking with terrific production values. At his best, Cosmatos conveys a vision of the Third Reich’s high command as a dysfunctional family, with insane leader Adolf Hitler (who is never shown onscreen) creating a top-down climate of paranoia and savagery while more rational people eye the inevitable future after Hitler’s power structure collapses. Marginalized in this treatment of the story are the people affected by the massacre, because Cosmatos doesn’t spend enough time with the partisans or with the common people of Rome. That said, Cosmatos and producer Carlo Ponti honor the dead with a closing text crawl featuring the names of the victims.

Massacre in Rome: FUNKY

Villain (1971)

Even with the colorful Richard Burton starring as a criminal so vicious that his first onscreen murder involves slashing a fellow with a straight razor and then hanging the poor slob’s body out of a high-rise window, the UK-made drama/thriller Villain is tedious. Running only 98 minutes but feeling much longer, the movie is one of myriad ’70s crime films that attempted to humanize gangsters by depicting their private lives and by dramatizing the constant danger of betrayal and capture. Based on a book by James Barlow, Villain also has an unusual gender-studies angle, since Burton’s character is bisexual. Oh, and Burton’s lover is played by the forceful British actor Ian McShane, who years later achieved fame on the HBO Western series Deadwood. Given the givens, Villain should be interesting. Yet somehow, the filmmaking team led by director Michael Tuchner transformed lurid raw material into something dull, lifeless, and turgid. The story tracks London gangster Vic Dakin (Burton) as he plans a payroll heist and as he struggles to keep his criminal house in order despite wounds inflicted by snitches and turncoats. Vic also spends quiet weekend mornings with his aging mother. The filmmakers periodically kick up the energy level, especially during the bloody heist scene, but more often than not, the movie presents flat dialogue scenes filled with drab exposition and predictable character dynamics. Burton exacerbates the movie’s inert quality because he’s absurdly miscast—naturally suited to playing anguished snobs, he’s out of his element portraying a vulgar thug with a Cockney accent. And even with the bisexual angle, McShane barely registers. Also wasted are the normally reliable British actors Joss Ackland, Nigel Davenport, and Fiona Lewis. Seeing as how the whole goal of the picture is to make viewers both empathize with and fear Vic Dakin, the fact that he engenders only an indifferent reaction indicates why Villain doesn’t work.

Villain: LAME

The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

Muddled and pretentious, this British drama takes the strange tack of inventing a fictional character in order to tell a story pulled from real-life. In 1940 Mexico, a Russian agent named Ramón Mercarder killed Leon Trotsky, the exiled founder of the Red Army. After helping to lead the Russian Revolution, Trotsky became a political enemy of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin and fled the USSR for Mexico. Stalin then ordered Mercader to assassinate Trotsky, thus silencing a powerful opposition voice. Since all of this historical material is fascinating, the narrative path followed by the makers of The Assassination of Trotsksy is befuddling. Nicholas Mosley’s script presents the fictional Frank Jackson (Alain Delon) as Trotsky’s killer-in-waiting, and then wastes inordinate amounts of screen time on confusing scenes depicting the codependent relationship between Frank and Gita Samuels (Romy Schneider), who works as a housekeeper in Trotsky’s villa. They scream at each other a lot. Director Joseph Losey, who seems utterly lost in terms of what sort of movie he’s trying to make, generates marginal Day of the Jackal-style interest by showing Frank’s meticulous preparations for killing Trotsky, though this material ultimately feels superfluous. Similarly, the film includes many scenes of the aging Trotsky (Richard Burton) wandering around his villa and giving speeches about how the true meaning of Marxism has been overwhelmed by Stalin’s brutal totalitarianism. Eventually, the picture brings its disparate elements together when Frank uses his relationship with Gita to insinuate his way into the villa and befriend Trotsky, whom he then kills with a hammer to the back of the head. This occasions more yelling, because Burton transitions from the prior somnambulistic mode of his performance and commences a Grand Guignol freakout replete with geysers of blood pouring down his face. Just as Delon’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses throughout most of the movie, whatever virtues The Assassination of Trotsky has are impossible to see through the fog of a lifeless and meandering storyline.

The Assassination of Trotsky: LAME

Bluebeard (1972)

          One of the many strange things about this thriller starring Richard Burton as a serial killer whose victims are his gorgeous wives is that Bluebeard was released near the apex of the Women’s Lib movement—not exactly the right moment for a piece about the ultimate misogynist. Similarly, make what you will of Burton’s casting, seeing as how he shot Bluebeard toward the end of his first tumultuous marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. Knowing that Burton had considerable friction with the woman whom he reportedly called “Miss Tits” lends strange connotations, especially during scenes in which Burton’s character is repulsed by the sight of bared breasts. Oh, and Bluebeard—which features as much gore and nudity as the raciest Hammer flicks—was among the final films directed by Hollywood veteran Edward Dmytryk (The Caine Mutiny).

          Based on the 17th-century story by Charles Perrault but set during the 1930s, Bluebeard is about Baron von Sepper (Burton), an Austrian aristocrat whose facial hair turned blue following exposure to chemicals during a fighter-plane crash in World War I. (Because that happens.) After the Baron’s current wife dies under mysterious circumstances, he falls for a spunky American showgirl, Anne (Joey Heatherton). After they marry, Anne discovers a trove of corpses in the Baron’s castle, so she persuades the Baron to explain the circumstances of his past murders in order to buy time before she becomes his latest victim. This prompts long flashbacks, one per wife.

          Tonally, Bluebeard is so inconsistent that it’s likely each participant thought he or she was making a different movie. Burton plays his scenes like high camp, as if he’s Boris Karloff or Vincent Price, while Heatherton purrs and slinks like she’s starring in a softcore picture. (Although her acting is hilariously bad, she looks great whether clothed or, as is frequently the case, not.) Supporting players incarnating the roles of the Baron’s wives/victims deliver a dizzying range of styles. Nathalie Delon exudes sincerity playing the naïve Erika (that is, until her steamy lesbian fling with buxom costar Sybil Danning). Virna Lisi croons her way through a cartoonish turn as “The Singer.” And Raquel Welch embarrasses herself with stilted line readings suitable for a high school play while portraying Magdalena, a nymphomaniac-turned-nun.

          The film’s horror aspects are silly, thanks to the use of unrealistic-looking mannequins for corpses, and the application of cheap Freudian psychology to explain Bluebeard’s motivations is tacky. As a result, good luck figuring out whether Bluebeard is a failed comedy, a failed thriller, or a horribly misguided hybrid. Despite all of these faults, however, Bluebeard is weirdly watchable because of opulent production values, a steady procession of naked beauties, and the odd rhythms of Burton’s performance, which has moments of credible intensity amid overall hamminess. Capping the whole psychosexual experience is a gonzo musical score by the inimitable Ennio Morricone.

Bluebeard: FREAKY

Absolution (1978)

          Murder and religion become entwined in Absolution, a dark mystery/thriller penned by the noted English playwright Anthony Shaffter, whose other film projects include the revered Sleuth (1972) and the notorious The Wicker Man (1973). While Absolution does not rise to the heights of those pictures, it is nonetheless a brisk piece filled with creepy implications about the capacity young people have to commit physical and psychological violence. The inevitable twist ending might strike some viewers as a bit of a stretch, and, indeed, the final scene—which features an Agatha Christie-style explanation for various mysterious events—is laborious. Nonetheless, artful dialogue, meticulous characterizations, and the presence of the great Richard Burton in the starring role make Absolution quite worthwhile.

          Burton, looking much the worse for wear after years of alcoholism and phoned-in performances, stars as Father Goddard, a strict teacher at a Catholic school in England. Shaky in his faith and weary from too many years on the job, Goddard plays favorites, heaping praise on standout student Stanfield (Dominic Guard) and incessently belittling handicapped nerd Dyson (Dai Bradley). However, when a motorcycle-riding hippie named Blakey (Billy Connolly) sets up a campsite in the woods near the school, it’s Stanfield who defies Goddard by befriending the charming stranger. Realizing that he’s misjudged Stanfield rattles Goddard, and then things get truly grim—Stanfield tells Goddard, during confession, that he’s killed Blakey. Worse, Stanfield torments Goddard based on the rule that Goddard cannot reveal anything shared in confession. The situation spirals from there, with Goddard’s sanity becoming as endangered as the lives of the other students whom Stanfield threatens.

          Shaffer apparently wrote Absolution as a play first, though the ingenious premise (confession as a cover for murder) works well cinematically given Shaffer’s use of indoor and outdoor locations to represent different worlds pulled into conflict with each other. Naturally, the dialogue is quite sharp, though Shaffer’s wordplay perpetually teeters on the line between clever and pretentious.(At one point, Goddard derides Blakey by saying, “Freedom’s a banner the unscrupulous frequently march under.”) Yet the lofty language suits the milieu, and the actors all render words so skillfully that the high-minded approach works. Further, director Anthony Page and his collaborators create an ominous mood with shadowy cinematography, the efficacy of which is maximized by Stanley Myers’ excellent suspense score. Plus, as do all good thrillers, Absolution creates a disturbing sense of inevitability, with each dark turn of the story signaling a deeper descent into oblivion.

          FYI, business complications prevented Absolution from reaching the U.S. until the late ’80s, when it was unceremoniously dumped on the public like a straight-to-video cheapie.

Absolution: GROOVY

The Voyage (1974)

          The final feature directed by venerable Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica, The Voyage is little more than a maudlin soap opera with the trappings of an art movie. Starring Richard Burton at his most disinterested and Sophia Loren at her most earnest, the movie is brisk and watchable but almost laughably trite. Why so many talented people combined their efforts to generate something this fundamentally mediocre is a mystery. Still, as romantic tearjerkers go, one could do worse than spending 102 minutes enjoying Burton’s mellifluous baritone and Loren’s legendary physical gifts. Set in turn-of-the-century Sicily, the movie begins with the reading of a will. After their father dies, brothers Cesare Braggi (Burton) and Antonio Braggi (Ian Bannen) are bequeathed control over the family’s considerable fortune. As the older brother, somber Cesare is charged with looking after business—including the arrangement of marriage between Antonio and Adriana de Mauro (Loren), the daughter of a working-class family with social ties to the Braggi clan. The complication is that Adriana and Cesare have been in love with each other for years, though they’ve never made their feelings known. (The reason why the would-be lovers kept their affection secret remains unclear throughout the film, creating a significant plot hole.) Adhering to his father’s wishes, Cesare oversees the marriage, and then suffers in silence—until circumstances introduce tragedy, happiness, and still more tragedy into the lives of the characters.

          Considering De Sica’s reputation for sophisticated social realism, it’s shocking how little material of substance makes its way into The Voyage. There’s some lip service given to class differences, but mostly the picture is preoccupied with Cesare’s operatic martyrdom, Antonio’s simple-minded innocence, and Adriana’s difficulty reconciling cultural expectations with romantic desire. Working in the film’s favor are lush production values and a quick pace, though the film’s brevity is partially enabled by the use of bluntly expositional dialogue. (Full disclosure: I committed the ultimate foreign-film travesty by watching the dubbed English-language version of The Voyage, so the use of language in the original version may be more graceful.) Burton, as always, is interesting to watch even when it’s clear he doesn’t give a shit about his work—his command of language and his natural intensity shine through. As for Loren, perpetually more noteworthy as a screen presence than as an actor, she’s beautiful and endearing, though the apex of her performance borders on camp. Yes, dear readers, Ms. Loren gets to play that old movie-queen song of a noble heroine suffering a disease without unattractive symptoms.

The Voyage: FUNKY

Equus (1977)

          British playwright Peter Shaffer has gone to many dark and deep places in his work—the crowning achievement of his career is arguably Amadeus, which premiered in 1979 and was adapted into the lauded 1984 film of the same name. Yet perhaps the most provocative of Shaffer’s works is Equus, which premiered onstage in 1973 and ran for years in London and New York before reaching the screen in this 1977 adaptation. (As with Amadeus, Shaffer handled the screenwriting chores.) Inspired by a gruesome incident from real life, Equus imagines the psychology of a young man who blinded six horses with a scythe. The picture is structured as a duel of sorts between the disturbed teenager, Alan Strang (Peter Firth), and his psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Richard Burton). Equus begins when Alan is committed to Martin’s hospital following the incident, so Martin spends the rest of the movie interviewing Alan—as well as Alan’s parents and former employer—to discover what drove the boy to heinous violence.

          Shaffer and director Sidney Lumet embellish their storytelling with vivid flashbacks depicting past events in Alan’s life, eventually culminating in a dramatization of the horse-blinding rampage, which is exactly as hard to watch as you might imagine. The crux of Shaffer’s story is revealing the complex nature of Alan’s personal belief system. Blending the religious views of his parents, the confusing impulses of burgeoning sexuality, and the mystifying impact of an early childhood encounter with a horse, Alan constructs a bizarre psychosexual ideology in which “Equus,” the spirit of all horses, is a god overseeing Alan’s development. Martin learns that Alan has secretly enjoyed erotic experiences with horses, such as stripping off his clothes to ride horses bareback until he climaxes, and that Alan’s skewed vision of physicality triggered the bloodshed. Shaffer’s story, which the writer has said is wholly invented except for the blinding incident, represents an incredible leap of imagination.

          Furthermore, Shaffer is in some sense insulated from criticism because the most outlandish proposition of the story—the notion that a boy fascinated by horses would intentionally mutilate six of them—is extracted from reality. Given a world where such things happen, can anything Shaffer presents by way of possible explanation be dismissed as too bizarre? Plus, because Shaffer complements Alan’s tragic journey with a completely fictional construct—Martin’s tortured emotional life—it becomes apparent that Shaffer is after something more than simply “explaining” a monstrous act. Among other things, Equus is a story about transference, since Martin seeks to heal Alan by absorbing the boy’s demons into his own wounded soul. This is grim stuff, and Lumet presents the narrative unflinchingly.

          Burton is rendered naked emotionally during long monologues that demonstrate the actor’s remarkable facility for rendering both intricate language and bone-deep pain. Firth is rendered naked emotionally and physically, his frequent onscreen nudity a fitting way of representing Alan’s childlike vulnerability. (Supporting actress Jenny Agutter, always a brave trouper during revealing roles, adroitly counters Firth by showing an adult’s ownership of her nudity, which confuses Firth’s character terribly.) Some viewers will accept Shaffer’s narrative as a metaphor representing the mixed signals we receive in life about religion and sex, while others will discard the story as gruesome and pretentious. To say the least, this movie is not for everyone. Yet while Equus is bleak and excessive and grandiose and strange, its finest moments have searing power.

Equus: GROOVY

Raid on Rommel (1971)

          One of the last films directed by reliable studio-era veteran Henry Hathaway, Raid on Rommel is a quasi-sequel to the director’s acclaimed 1951 war movie The Desert Fox. Whereas the earlier film was a tight character piece about Field Marshall Erwin Johannes Rommel, the military genius who led Nazi Germany’s tank divisions to a series of impressive victories in North Africa, the latter picture is a simplistic men-on-a-mission picture that only peripherally involves Rommel. And while The Desert Fox featured an intense leading performance by James Mason as Rommel, Raid on Rommel casts the comparatively anonymous Wolfgang Preiss, a veteran German actor who played Nazis in a number of American productions, as the general.

          In Raid on Rommel, Richard Burton plays Captain Alan Foster, a resourceful British commando who treks into the North African desert to meet a group of specially trained soldiers for an attack on a gun installation. Disguising himself as a wounded war victim, Foster moves behind enemy lines and then accidentally intercepts the wrong convoy. As a result, he’s thrown in with a British medical unit that’s being held captive by the Nazis. Seething that he’s got healers under his command instead of a killers, Foster nonetheless decides to not only continue the mission but to target Rommel’s fuel dumps in addition to the gun installation. The story gets awfully convoluted, because there’s also some pointless business involving the mistress (Danielle De Metz) of an Italian general; she’s being transported across the battlefield with the British prisoners, and thus becomes a problem for our heroes.

          Despite the diffuse nature of its overarching story, Raid on Rommel eventually crystallizes into a fun yarn about a few bold men facing an impossible challenge. Furthermore, a handful of enjoyable flourishes keep the picture from being completely generic—for instance, one of the medical men bonds with Rommel hbecause both are stamp collectors. The characters are mostly interchangeable types, played by a colorless band of workaday actors, and Burton has little to do except grit his teeth and look serious whenever things are going badly. The film’s production values are generally pretty good, since it’s hard to screw up tanks in the desert, but way too much stock footage is employed; the otherwise crisp-looking movie periodically cuts to grainy shots of armies amassing in the desert or ships maneuvering in the ocean, which adds to the disjointed feeling of the picture.

Raid on Rommel: FUNKY

The Klansman (1974)

          For those who enjoy charting the outer reaches of bad cinema, the title of The Klansman looms larger than that of most ’70s movies. Featuring an inexplicable combination of actors—Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, O.J. Simpson—and a lurid take on incendiary subject matter, the movie promises a feast of jaw-dropping wrongness. And sure enough, The Klansman is both uproariously terrible and consistently distasteful. It’s also, however, quite tedious.

          The story is appropriately florid. In a small southern town populated by poor black folks and foaming-at-the-mouth racist whites (narrative restraint is not the watchword here), a young white woman (Linda Evans) is raped, so the gun-toting townies decide to pin the crime on “uppity” black Garth (Simpson). The town’s sheriff, Track Bascomb (Marvin), improbably a voice of reason and tolerance, tries to protect Garth from a lynch mob, but the fugitive escapes and starts picking off white people with an M-16.

          Meanwhile—there’s always a “meanwhile” in overcooked bad movies—local landowner Breck Stancil (Burton) invokes the ire of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter because he won’t let Klan soldiers search his property for Garth, who may be hiding with Stancil’s predominantly African-American workforce. Soon, the various forces in the story converge in a violent climax. All of this should be trashy fun, but as lifelessly directed by 007 veteran Terence Young, the movie just kind of happens; it feels as if the production team showed up every day and shot the appropriate screenplay pages without any regard for what came before or what might follow.

          Reportedly, one reason for the movie’s flatness is that it’s the faint echo of a potentially more interesting project: Original writer-director Samuel Fuller conceived the piece, using William Bradford Hule’s novel as a foundation, as a full-on KKK story in which the hero would be a Klan member who learns tolerance. Instead, the studio asked for something less provocative, and Fuller walked. The project was further damned by unwise casting: Burton and Marvin were falling-down drunks at this point, and Simpson, whose character is supposed to come across as a justice-dispensing revolutionary, is, to be generous, not an actor.

          Compensating somewhat for the lackluster work by the leads, Character player Cameron Mitchell livens up the picture with his cartoonish villainy as a hateful deputy. Better still, the priceless David Huddleston gives the best performance in the movie (which is admittedly not saying a lot) as the town mayor, who moonlights as the “Exalted Cyclops” of the local Klan chapter. Yet even Huddleston can’t do anything with hopeless dialogue: “Don’t look at me like I’m the heavy. You want to know who the heavy is, I’ll tell you. It’s the system. And we’re all of us caught up in it.”

          Unbelievably, the dialogue gets even worse later. Lola Falana plays a young black woman visiting her mother, one of Stancil’s employees, so the rednecks presume she’s sleeping with Stancil and therefore rape her to make a point. “They think I’m your brown comfort,” she says. “They wanted to foul your nest.” Yet perhaps the most (morbidly) fascinating aspect of this whole disastrous enterprise is Burton’s excruciating performance—he’s exactly this awful in plenty of other movies, but The Klansman features his spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at a Southern accent, which sounds different in almost every scene.

          Given how punishingly bad every frame of this movie is, it’s a wonder no one thought to chop it down to a 90-minute highlight reel, because if The Klansman moved faster, it would at least have the quality of a fever dream. Instead, it lumbers along for 112 bludgeoning minutes, forcing viewers to soak up every nuance of its terribleness. In this case, more is less.

The Klansman: FREAKY

The Medusa Touch (1978)

          One of the more unusual pictures to appear during the post-Exorcist boom in supernatural horror, The Medusa Touch is an imaginative thriller that quietly builds up a strong head of steam on its way to a genuinely frightening climax. Set in London, the movie begins when someone attacks British writer John Morlar (Richard Burton), leaving him in a coma; visiting French detective Brunel (Lino Ventura) is assigned to investigate. The case immediately seems out of the ordinary because even though Morlar should be dead after the beating he received, his brain activity reflects superhuman stamina. Deepening the intrigue, Brunel meets with Morlar’s psychiatrist, Doctor Zonfeld (Lee Remick), who reveals that Morlar believes himself capable of willing disasters to happen.

          In flashbacks depicting Morlar at different ages, we see him “cause” the deaths of his parents, his classmates at a boarding school, and many others who were unlucky enough to cross his path. As the story progresses, Brunel becomes more and more convinced that Morlar actually does possess otherworldly powers, and that Morlar is planning to cause his most horrific disaster yet because his brain still functions while his body is barely alive. Based on a novel by Peter Van Greenaway, The Medusa Touch is much more than just a creepshow—it’s also a provocative exploration of morality, asking the question of what responsible citizens must do if they become aware of a monster in their midst.

          The cadaverous appearance and contemptuous performance style that Burton possessed later in life suits The Medusa Touch well: Burton looks like a walking incarnation of death. By the end of the movie, just watching him is unnerving, especially when he locks into the deadly stare he uses when “willing” mayhem into being. Ventura, a stocky and weathered Frenchman, offers a terrific complement to Burton’s darkness; he seems vital and humane, though experienced enough to acknowledge the limits of his own understanding. Remick’s chilly beauty adds another interesting flavor to the mix.

          Elaborate pre-CGI special effects come into play toward the end of the picture, and the vaguely surreal quality of the effects accentuates the storyline’s enigmatic quality. So even though The Medusa Touch isn’t particularly subtle, the precision with which the narrative’s various threads are introduced and connected becomes steadily more impressive as the climax approaches, giving the last act real power. So, like all of the most effective movies about supernatural horror, The Medusa Touch is ridiculous when considered from a rational perspective, yet quite engrossing when taken at face value.

The Medusa Touch: GROOVY

The Wild Geese (1978)

          An old-fashioned adventure story that could have been made in the ‘50s or even earlier, if not for its focus on ’70s-era African politics, The Wild Geese is a rousing action thriller with just enough attention to characterization that its climax has an emotional punch. More importantly, the picture features a unique combination of larger-than-life Brits playing larger-than-life roles: Welshman Richard Burton, Irishman Richard Harris, and Englishman Roger Moore play a trio of aging mercenaries hired to rescue a revolutionary African leader from political imprisonment.

          The story unfolds in classic men-on-a-mission fashion. Nefarious banker Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger) hires alcoholic ex-Army man Col. Allen Faulkner (Burton) to free African political prisoner Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona) from an unnamed African country because Limbani is slated for execution. Distrustful of his new employer but in need of a paycheck, Faulkner recruits a team including pilot Shaun Flynn (Moore), strategist Rafer Janders (Harris), drill sergeant Sandy Young (Jack Watson), and displaced South African Pieter Coetzee (Hardy Kruger). The vignettes of Faulkner building his crew are breezily entertaining, though screenwriter Reginald Rose and director Andrew McLaglen layer ominous foreshadowing into the derring-do bits to lay the groundwork for what’s coming later.

          The rescue mission goes well, but then the group’s getaway plane takes off prematurely, leaving the mercenaries and the liberated Limbani alone in enemy territory. Damn that double-crossing Matherson! This juncture is when the picture gets really exciting, because the soldiers have to fight their way through a jungle filled with heavily armed troops in order to seize another plane and escape. The movie pays clumsy lip service to social consciousness when Coetzee becomes Limbani’s bodyguard, forcing a racist white man to learn grudging respect for a saintly black man, but The Wild Geese is less about politics and more about macho militarism: By the end of the movie, nearly every character has mowed down opponents to save his mates.

          With its corny musical score, which could have been lifted from an old RAF training film, The Wild Geese is unapologetically retro, and the storyline is so schematic that some will find it trite. Nonetheless, McLaglen’s sure hand with the action scenes, combined with the easy chemistry that the three leads have with each other and a surprisingly poignant climax, make The Wild Geese a fun romp with much more substance than the average shoot-’em-up.

The Wild Geese: GROOVY

Breakthrough (1979)

          Watching Richard Burton’s physical decline had been a spectator sport since the mid-’60s, when the ravages of his alcoholism really started to become evident, so by the late ’70s it was mostly just depressing to watch the once-virile actor sleepwalk through lame movies looking like the ghost of his former self. In the World War II thriller Breakthrough, Burton looks especially desiccated, an effect only worsened by the enervated feel of the whole project. A quasi-sequel to the Sam Peckinpah war story Cross of Iron (1977), this picture eschews the moral ambiguity of Peckinpah’s picture for old-fashioned melodrama about a good German trying to help the Americans win the war.

          In 1944, after the Nazis have suffered insurmountable losses in Russia, a German general (Curt Jurgens) joins a cabal of officers planning to kill Hitler and then negotiate peace, so he asks freethinking soldier Rolf Steiner (Burton) to convey information about the plan to Allied officers. Steiner connects with a sympathetic American colonel (Robert Mitchum), who then involves his superior officer (Rod Steiger). However fate intervenes, as does an odious Nazi (Helmut Griem) unwilling to acknowledge that the war is already lost.

          Everyone in this movie looks bored and disconnected, so each actor gives an isolated performance that director Andrew V. McLaglen doesn’t even bother to unify with the other performances. Burton spits out lines quickly, like he can’t wait to walk off camera and drink; Mitchum delivers dialogue flatly, as if he’s simply repeating words that were fed to him before the camera rolled; and Steiger bludgeons his scenes with characteristic bulging-vein intensity. The only moments that have flair are the buddy-movie exchanges between the lead characters and their second-in-command guys (Burton has Klaus Lowitsch and Mitchum has Michael Parks).

          To say that Breakthrough gets off to a slow start is an understatement: The first half-hour of the movie is borderline unwatchable because nothing happens. Steiner doesn’t even get hip to the big plan until the picture is well underway, and then, when things are supposed to get exciting, somnambulistic acting and rote combat scenes add up to tedium.

          It’s amazing that just a year before shooting this turkey, Burton and McLaglen collaborated on the robust action picture The Wild Geese (1978), but apparently their efforts shouldn’t be judged entirely on the evidence of the existing version of Breakthrough. After being released in Europe in 1979, the picture went through several edits (and titles) before limping onto a few American screens in 1982. The currently available version runs a scant 95 minutes (the original was closer to two hours), and the only thing more ghastly than the print quality is the amateurish music score. Given the lifeless performances, however, it’s hard to imagine than any amount of post-production sweetening could have turned this misbegotten flick into something special.

Breakthrough: LAME

The Exorcist (1973) & Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

          Since its spectacularly successful release on December 26, 1973, the public has been divided on The Exorcist, with one audience contingent praising the picture as a powerful drama about faith and another excoriating the movie as sensationalist trash. The beauty of The Exorcist is that both interpretations are justified. While the heart of writer William Peter Blatty’s novel and screenplay is a probing exploration of the notion that definitive evidence of the devil implicitly proves the existence of God, the amped-up grotesquerie of director William Friedkin’s movie is as pandering as the content of any exploitation movie. In fact it’s the very tension between the dark and light impulses of the film that makes it so fascinating and so true to its deepest themes: Like the characters in the story, the film has to battle through the pea soup and spinning heads of manifested evil to reach a hopeful conclusion.
          The movie unfolds simply, with distraught mom Chris MacNeill (Ellen Burstyn) seeking first medical and then religious help when her young daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), devolves into a condition that might be demonic possession. The little girl urinates in front of company, flails violently, and spews guttural obscenities, all while her body disintegrates into a horrific mess of pallid skin, scars, and sores. Helping Chris combat the deterioration are an anguished young priest, Karras (Jason Miller), and a world-weary exorcist, Merrin (Max Von Sydow). Providing a sort of comic relief is the caustic police detective (Lee J. Cobb) investigating a murder for which the possessed child might have been responsible.
          Friedkin’s aggressive verité style imbues the provocative story with as much realism as possible, given the focus on special effects and supernatural occurrences, and he’s aided by powerful performances and a technical crew committed to creating vivid atmosphere. Burstyn is spectacular as a mother in an unimaginable situation, making every scene she’s in emotionally credible, and Miller, a genuinely tortured sort offscreen, fills his performance with such intense emotional pain that some of his anguished moments are as hard to watch as the film’s goriest scenes. The movie is filled with classic moments, from the subtle (Burstyn walking down a Washington, D.C., street while Mike Oldfield’s eerie instrumental “Tubular Bells” plays on the soundtrack) to the vulgar (Regan’s obscene use of a crucifix). So while it’s impossible to say for certain whether the movie is inherently exploitive or inherently provocative, it’s also impossible to deny the film’s otherworldly power.
          The same cannot be said for the picture’s first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, an insipid mixture of old ideas that worked better the first time and new ideas that should have been nixed at the development stage. Unwisely working a trippy sci-fi/fantasy groove, director John Boorman leads an impressive but slightly embarrassed and narcotized cast through one profoundly silly scene after another. (Newcomers Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, and James Earl Jones join returning stars Blair—newly curvy but still chipmunk-cheeked—and Von Sydow.) The initial story hook is intriguing, with the Vatican dispatching a priest to investigate whether Merrin was a godly man or a heretic, given his record of spectacular exorcisms, but things spin quickly spin out of control. Not only does the sequel plot indicate that Regan is still possessed, rendering the previous film moot, but Boorman weaves in a bizarre subplot about a primitive African village and its locust-centric religious beliefs.
          Boorman and master cinematographer William A. Fraker shoot nearly everything on soundstages, including scenes in African wheat fields, so the whole movie feels bogus and odd. Seriously, what’s the deal with that high-tech hospital featuring so many transparent walls it resembles a county-fair funhouse? At one point, Jones wears an elaborate bug-shaped helmet, complete with giant eyes. In another scene, 17-year-old Blair lures 51-year-old Burton into bed. And the dialogue! Consider the scene where Regan meets Sandra, a little girl played by future Diff’rent Strokes star Dana Plato. “I’m autistic,” Sandra says. “I can’t talk. What’s the matter with you?” (Never mind that she can talk, or that the filmmakers don’t understand how autism works.) “I was possessed by a demon,” Regan replies. “It’s okay. He’s gone.” Despite being a complete dud as a horror show, Exorcist II: The Heretic is so exuberantly goofy that it’s a sumptuous feast for those who consume movies ironically; bad cinema doesn’t get much better.
          Franchise creator Blatty wisely pretended Boorman’s film didn’t exist when he wrote and directed 1990’s The Exorcist III, the first worthy successor to the original film. As fans of this series know, there’s a lot more to the story of subsequent Exorcist flicks, but that’s a topic for another day.

The Exorcist: RIGHT ON
Exorcist II: The Heretic: FREAKY