Tiger by the Tail (1970)

          Twisty thriller Tiger by the Tail is damn near the perfect Christopher George movie, inasmuch as the film’s shortcomings parallel George’s strengths and weaknesses as an actor. In the same way that George looks and sounds like the ideal macho leading man, thanks to his hairy chest and square jaw, Tiger by the Tail has the ingredients for fun escapism: betrayal, chases, drama, gunplay, money, murder, sex. Yet in the same way that George’s acting ability withers upon close inspection, since his performances always rely on mannered line deliveries and stiff poses, Tiger by the Tail has zero happening below the surface. The characterizations are shallow, the plot is far-fetched, and the thrills feel like callbacks to moments form other (better) movies. Note how the credits trumpet the first major appearance of a starlet named Charo—in her handful of scenes as the performer in a local bar, the future Love Boat regular comes across like a poor substitute for Brigitte Bardot, as if any curvy European blonde will suffice.

          Regarding the plot, Steve Michaels (George) returns from Vietnam to a Southwestern resort town, where he immediately clashes with his older brother, Frank (Dennis Patrick), the manager of a racetrack. During a brazen robbery, Frank is killed. Steve gets framed for the crime, sparking a battle of wits between Steve and erudite Sheriff Chancey Jones (John Dehner)—can Steve prove his innocence before Chancey gathers enough circumstantial evidence to put Steve away? Naturally, there’s a million bucks at stake, too.

          The scenes between Chancey and Steve strike sparks, even if screenwriter Charles A. Wallace gets carried away with the lawman’s lofty dialogue, so it’s disappointing whenever Tiger by the Tail gets mired in uninteresting peripheral material. Scenes with Charo dancing and singing are dull, while those with Tippi Hedren as Steve’s old flame aren’t much better. Tiger by the Tail also has way too many characters, with Lloyd Bochner, Alan Hale Jr., and Dean Jagger rendering disposable performances. Furthermore, the movie drags at 109 minutes seeing as how it doesn’t have enough real story to support that much screen time. Yet all these flaws reinforce why Christopher George was the right man for the job. A better movie would have attracted a better actor, and vice versa.

Tiger by the Tail: FUNKY

The Delta Factor (1970)

Dopey intrigue adapted from a Mickey Spillane novel, which means viewers should brace themselves for lots of stereotypical dames and goons, The Delta Factor celebrates the crudest sort of machismo. Morgan (Christopher George) is a smooth-talking scoundrel who drives ladies mad with desire, and who grins his way through car chases, fistfights, shootouts, and the like. Naturally, he knows how to drive any vehicle, how to win any game of chance, and how to identify compatriots in any foreign locale. Some Spillane stories channel his fascination with masculine energy into tough parables about the elusiveness of moral clarity, but The Delta Factor plays like a goofy, 007-inflected male fantasy. Many scenes are laughable, whether they involve Morgan vanquishing some lady with his superhuman virility or Morgan defeating a horde of soldiers with his spectacular marksmanship. The idiotic narrative goes something like this—after escaping from jail and getting recaptured, Morgan is offered a reduced sentence in exchange for going to South America on behalf of the U.S. government and liberating a political prisoner. Keeping tabs on Morgan during his mission is a slinky Fed named Kim (Yvette Mimieux), and complicating the situation is Morgan’s plan to recover $40 million in missing cash, then flee. Lots of stuff happens in The Delta Factor, so it’s never boring, per se, but, man, is this picture silly. Character motivations run the gamut from inconsistent to trite, narrative logic is in short supply, and the production looks and feels cheap. (What’s with the color of Kim’s hair changing from scene to scene?) George has fun playing the living incarnation of male id, Mimieux rocks a bikini well, and the villains are suitably swarthy—but The Delta Factor is pathetic compared to the James Bond epics it so desperately tries to emulate.

The Delta Factor: LAME

1980 Week: The Exterminator

Offering a glimpse of where action movies were headed in the ’80s—less nuance, more ultraviolence—this borderline incompetent exploitation flick was the second directorial effort from shameless hack James Glickenhaus. Stealing the basic plot of Death Wish (1974) and juicing the material with a crass Vietnam-vet angle, Glickenhaus tells the ugly story of John Eastland, a former soldier who turns vigilante after Mafia thugs paralyze his best friend. Dubbed “The Exterminator” by reporters, John  feeds a villain into an industrial meat grinder, and he leaves a pair of criminals tied up on a garbage heap so they can be eaten alive by rats. Yet the most horrific sequence is a prologue set in Vietnam, during which John and his best friend witness enemy soldiers committing atrocities including beheadings. The idea, presumably, is that “The Exterminator” became a monster because his overseas experience made him that way. But then again, ascribing psychological depth to this movie is unwise, because Glickenhaus—who also wrote the screenplay—seems unfamiliar with the human experience that the rest of us acknowledge as reality. In Glickenhaus’ skewed universe, violence justifies violence, so it’s okay that, for instance, the movie’s antihero murders a guard dog with an electric knife because he’s on a mission to steal money from mobsters. The Exterminator has a fever-dream quality, seeing as how many pieces seem to be missing; the story makes bizarre leaps forward, and it frequently appears Glickenhaus got only two-thirds of the shots needed for each scene. What’s more, whenever The Exterminator veers into a laughable subplot about a cop (Christopher George) romancing a doctor (Samantha Eggar), it’s as if pieces of another bad movie got spliced into Glickenhaus’ vile revenge fantasy. The Exterminator is brisk and eventful, but if this is your idea of a good time at the movies, seek help.

The Exterminator: LAME

Whiskey Mountain (1977)

          If you’re willing to trudge through this drive-in flick’s tedious first half, Whiskey Mountain eventually becomes a florid and violent Deliverance rip-off, complete with an unexpected drug angle. All the familiar clichés are here, from deranged hillbilly weirdos to gang rape, and the storyline is predicated on both stereotypes and the stupidity of protagonists who venture into places they know are dangerous. Yet there’s a certain vigor to the picture’s second half, with prolific B-movie actor Christopher George delivering most of his lines through gritted teeth and, in the finale, storming an enemy stronghold with a shotgun in each hand. Suffice to say, this picture was not designed to challenge viewers’ intellectual faculties. The story begins when two couples—Bill (George) and Jamie (Linda Borgeson), Dan (Preston Pierce) and Diana (Roberta Collins)—head into a Southern mountain range looking for a priceless cache of Civil War-era rifles. The couples have dirt bikes for transportation. Even though the behavior of locals grows more and more threatening as the couples transition from civilization to rural enclaves, they press forward, driven by adventurousness and greed. Per the Deliverance formula, things take a dark turn once the couples reach the vicinity of their ultimate destination, Whiskey Mountain, home turf for a gang of redneck criminals led by the menacing Rudy (John Davis Chandler).

          As noted earlier, the first half of the picture is almost interminable, with lots of repetitive musical montages showcasing dirt bikes as they zoom through forests. The scenery is pretty and some of the tunes (including a few originals by the Charlie Daniels Band) have spunk, but cowriter/director William Grefe has zero control over the film’s tone. Instead of conveying ever-present danger, Grefe wastes time on bland travelogue footage and flimsy buddy-humor scenes. However, once mysterious bad guys cut the cables on a rope-drawn raft over rough water, nearly sending one of the couples to their doom, the movie transitions to a livelier predators-vs.-victims style. The acting in Whiskey Mountain is never more than serviceable, and the plot machinations toward the end are so far-fetched as to be almost laughable. Nonetheless, it’s novel to see an evil-hillbilly flick that isn’t about moonshine or pointless savagery, since the villains in Whiskey Mountain wreak havoc in order to protect a profitable enterprise.

Whiskey Mountain: FUNKY

Dixie Dynamite (1976)

          The rampaging-rednecks genre took a distaff turn in the mid-’70s, resulting in lowbrow pictures along the lines of Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976), ’Gator Bait (1974), and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976). Like the other members of its dubious cinematic breed, Dixie Dynamite grinds together various drive-in signifiers, resulting in a meandering string of chase scenes, explosions, leering glances at curvaceous bodies, and—because apparently no B-movie party is complete without one—a rape scene. While Dixie Dynamite has meager pleasures to stimulate the viewer’s reptile brain, expectations of good acting, meaningful storytelling, and social relevance should be set aside. Although Dixie Dynamite is far less exploitive than other pictures of the same ilk (since there’s barely any flesh on display), one should not form the impression that the filmmakers substituted substance for sleaze—erotic content is simply another item on the long list of things the film lacks. Oh, and don’t be fooled by Warren Oates’ top billing, because the grizzled veteran of myriad rough-and-tumble movies has perhaps 15 minutes of mostly inconsequential screen time.

          Rather than Oates, the picture spotlights forgettable starlets Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley as, respectively, Dixie and Patsy Eldridge, the adult daughters of a moonshiner named Tom Eldridge (Mark Miller). When the picture begins, morally conflicted Sheriff Phil Marsh (Christopher George) escorts IRS agents to Tom’s homestead, where the agents try arresting Tom for tax evasion. Tom makes a run for it, and Phl’s overzealous deputy, Frank (Wes Bishop), opens fire on Tom’s car, causing an accident in which Tom is killed. Tom’s daughters, who were away from home at the time of the tragedy, initially respond by accepting help from family friend Mack (Warren Oates) and by seeking jobs. Yet local crime lord Dade McCrutchen (Stanley Adams) ensures the girls can’t catch a break. In fact, he’s out to displace every smalltime moonshiner in the county so he can gain a monopoly, and he was behind the IRS raid on the Eldridge place. Out of options, the Eldridge girls become robbers, distributing most of their loot to poor people, and they contrive a plan to get revenge on McCrutchen. Trigger-happy deputy Frank becomes a target as well, especially after he forces himself on Patsy.

          Even with colorful actors including R.G. Armstrong, George, and Oates in the cast, Dixie Dynamite fails to generate any real interest, though it’s borderline watchable thanks to an adequate number of action scenes. The movie even has some enjoyably ludicrous moments, such as the vignette of Oates’ character teaching the girls to ride motorcycles while a singer on the soundtrack croons, “There’ll be a sunshine highway if you’re going my way.” Also worth mentioning is the scene in which a villain gets launched into the air like a rocket when a bundle of dynamite explodes. Eagle-eyed viewers not lulled into submission by the general monotony of the movie might be able to spot Steve McQueen during a sequence depicting a dirt-bike race, because the actor plays an unbilled cameo.

Dixie Dynamite: FUNKY

Chisum (1970)

          A textbook example of movie-star ego riding roughshod over a potentially engrossing storyline, this latter-day John Wayne Western puts the Duke’s character at the center of a notorious real-life feud that involved dueling ranchers, out-of-control capitalism, and frenemies Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Chisum has so many story elements that it feels like a highlight reel from a miniseries, but the centrality of a typical Wayne protagonist bludgeons interesting nuances, transforming Chisum into a flat story of he-man heroism. Making matters worse are such painfully old-fashioned flourishes as the corny songs that play over tedious montages. Chisum has many watchable passages, thanks to abundant action scenes, vibrantly colorful location photography, and zesty supporting performances, but the picture is something of a mess.

          Set in New Mexico circa the late 1870s, the movie revolves around a rivalry between noble cattleman John Chisum (Wayne) and his disreputable competitor, Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker). Chisum owns huge tracts of land but treats people fairly, whereas Murphy is an avaricious creep willing to cheat, lie, and steal in order to expand his holdings. As Murphy’s greed becomes more rapacious, Chisum gathers colleagues including crusty sidekick Pepper (Ben Johnson), fellow gentleman rancher Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowles), and principled nomad Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett). Also drawn into the good guys’ armada is semi-reformed outlaw William “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Geoffrey Dueul), who works for Tunstall but romances Chisum’s niece. Meanwhile, Murphy gathers a horde of snarling henchmen, played in cartoonish fashion by lively actors including Robert Donner, Christopher George, and Richard Jaeckel. The cast of Chisum is huge, and as a result, most of the actors get shortchanged in terms of character development and screen time.

          Written and produced by Andrew J. Fenady, Chisum attempts to tackle an epic story within the confines of a standard feature, which makes everything seem rushed and superficial. Plus, whenever the movie slows down for something pointless, such as Chisum’s meeting with an Indian chief—a scene that communicates nothing except the lead character’s principles, which have already been described ad nauseum—narrative momentum suffers. As for the performances, Wayne is Wayne, still quite virile and not yet inhabiting the late-life gravitas that made some of his subsequent ’70s Westerns elegiac, while old hands from Johnson to Tucker sprinkle their one-dimensional roles with charm. Unfortunately, the younger players incarnating the star-crossed lovers (any sensible viewer knows it won’t go well for Billy and Chisum’s niece) are bland, and the actors portraying secondary villains have nothing to do except strut around in filthy clothes and shoot likable people.

Chisum: FUNKY

The Train Robbers (1973)

Quite possibly John Wayne’s least distinguished ’70s Western, The Train Robbers is so enervated that easily one-quarter of the film’s brisk running time is consumed by aimless montages of posses riding across rough terrain. These sequences of horses and riders plodding across deserts or pounding through rivers are pleasant enough, with composer Dominic Frontiere’s lively music complementing lyrical imagery, but after a while it becomes apparent that writer-director Burt Kennedy failed to generate enough plot to sustain a feature film. The overall narrative of the picture is okay, a standard-issue quest involving rough men hired by a lady to recover stolen gold, and there are enough flashes of action and character interplay to more or less justify the movie’s existence. Yet it’s a measure of The Train Robbers’ shortcomings that the closest thing the picture has to a villain is poor Ricardo Montalban, who shows up every 20 minutes or so to glower at Wayne’s gang from a distance, puff on a cigar, and stand still while the image dissolves to another scene; Montalban doesn’t even speak until the very end of the movie. Equally malnourished is the flick’s love-story component, and not just because the gigantic, aging Wayne looks ridiculous when sharing the frame with tiny, young Ann-Margret. The flirtation between the leads comprises the Duke admiring Ann-Margret’s figure and spitfire personality (which is discussed but never really demonstrated) and Ann-Margret, in turn, batting her eyelashes during cringe-inducing interludes such as an unconvincing drunk scene. But, as with so many latter-day Wayne movies, The Train Robbers is really about mythologizing the Wayne persona. In one laughable moment, ornery sidekick Calhoun (Christopher George) is asked what’s wrong with Wayne’s character: Calhoun’s response, delivered with vaguely homoerotic glee? “Not a damn thing!” Alas, such a kind appraisal cannot be made of The Train Robbers, which, it should be noted, never actually features a train robbery. Even the presence of reliable cowboy-movie player Ben Johnson in a supporting role isn’t sufficient to make this one memorable.

The Train Robbers: FUNKY

Day of the Animals (1977)

          While it has a certain schlocky appeal, Day of the Animals is a significant comedown from director William Girdler’s previous critters-run-amok flick, Grizzly (1976). Whereas the earlier movie is a shameless Jaws rip-off, Day of the Animals is a mishmash of Hitchockian avian terror, eco-themed sci-fi, and generic “something is out there” spookiness. (The movie’s blunt alternate title? Something Is Out There.) The premise is that ultraviolet radiation released via ozone-layer depletion has transformed animals living at high altitudes into killers, which means a group of hikers on a remote mountaintop path become fodder for nature gone wild. The denizens of a town at the base of the mountain also fall prey to rampaging creatures. Day of the Animals features attacks by bears, birds, dogs, mountain lions, rats, snakes, and wolves, but these events are nonsensical—at some points, the picture suggests that animals have formed an army, and at other times, critters simply attack independent of each other. In other words, any old plot contrivance that helps endanger and/or kill a given character at a given time is acceptable to the filmmakers, who couldn’t care less about consistency.

          As with Grizzly, Girdler’s comin’-at-ya jolts and sturdy widescreen compositions ensure that Day of the Animals basically delivers the goods. Nonetheless, the movie runs out of gas far before its 97 minutes are through, although there are a few campy highlights. For instance, the bit in which rats leap from a turkey carcass like tiny acrobats is particularly goofy. The movie’s “best” moment, however, is the climax of Leslie Neilsen’s performance as one of the hikers—crazed with fear and hunger, Neilsen strips to the waist, screams about how he’s the god of his own life, impales a fellow hiker with a walking stick, tries to rape another hiker, and wrestles a bear. Good times. Christopher George plays the rugged leader of the hikers, and his gritted-teeth performance is entertainingly cheesy, while Richard Jaeckel plays it straight as a professor. Also present are B-movie fave Michael Ansara (playing the movie’s resident Native American) and actress/animal handler Susan Backlinie, best known as the skinny dipper in the opening sequence of Jaws.

Day of the Animals: FUNKY

I Escaped from Devil’s Island (1973)

Produced by Roger Corman to piggyback on the release of Papillon (1973), a big-budget drama about the inhuman conditions on the French penal colony known as Devil’s Island, this colorful but dull exploitation flick features an eye-popping procession of abuse, murder, sex, sweat, and torture. Set in the early 20th century, the picture follows the attempts of a violent criminal named Le Bras (Jim Brown) to flee the seemingly inescapable Devil’s Island, which is run by sadistic prison guards who whip inmates whenever the convicts aren’t being worked to death. Le Bras recruits unlikely accomplices in political prisoner Davert (Christopher George), who initially shuns violence, and Jo-Jo (Richard Ely), a “fancy boy”—or, in the less delicate terminology of today’s prison pictures, a “bitch.” The movie trudges through several repetitive and ugly scenes of these and other inmates getting beaten by guards until the “heroes” build a raft and flee, only to suffer a series of melodramatic crises. Their raft falls apart, they’re attacked by sharks while adrift on the ocean, they stumble into a leper colony once returning to shore on a remote part of the island, they’re captured by bloodthirsty natives, and so on. Director William Witney, a veteran of ’30s serials and Golden Age television, was near the end of an epic career when he helmed this pedestrian flick, and while he seems perfectly efficient at organizing crowd scenes and simulating violence, the film’s storytelling is enervated in the extreme. Brown occasionally livens up the proceedings with a sly line delivery or a charming smile, but since he’s mostly tasked with looking impressive while parading around shirtless, it’s not as if there’s much room for him to shape a persona. As for George, a limited actor with a campy sort of appeal, he spends most of his time gritting his teeth and snarling. Plus, while some of the production values are impressive-ish, notably crowd scenes during the climax, the film’s reliance on unvarnished exterior locations and tacky stock footage is unhelpful. Worse, the movie’s plot is so turgid the flick feels like it’s three hours long even though it’s only 89 minutes.

I Escaped from Devil’s Island: LAME

Grizzly (1976)

          When you’re in the mood for 90 minutes of pure ’70s cheese, you’d be hard-pressed to find something more appetizing than the shameless Jaws rip-off Grizzly. As the title suggests, the movie depicts the rampage of a ravenous 18-foot bear through a national park filled with unsuspecting campers. Narrative logic isn’t exactly this picture’s greatest strength—so don’t ask why hunters have such a hard time tracking the bear, or why rangers can’t simply evacuate the park until the danger is past. Just go with the flow, and you’ll have a goofy good time, because the movie delivers all the requisite creature-feature clichés. The picture stars square-jawed ’70s guy Christopher George as the peace officer charged with protecting a small community from a hungry menace—except instead of a sheriff, like Roy Scheider’s character in Jaws, he’s a park ranger, so his jurisdiction is millions of acres of wild, mountainous forest. When a grizzly inexplicably appears in the forest and starts chomping on folks, George teams up with a bleeding-heart naturalist (Richard Jaeckel) and a good ol’ boy helicopter pilot (Andrew Prine) to hunt down the beastie, even though—wait for it!—a greedy politician (Joe Dorsey) stands in his way.
          Hewing to the Jaws formula allows the picture to toggle between bloody bear attacks and angry confrontations between the righteous ranger and his smarmy superior; the formula also facilitates Jaws-style scenes of manly men bonding out in the wild as they stalk their prey. The acting is erratic, the dialogue is terrible, and the storyline is the definition of predicable. Yet Grizzly has a certain kind of vibe. George is endearingly square, but Jaeckel and Prine bring pleasant degrees of crazy to their characters, and the location photography lends authenticity—the film’s many aerial shots, for instance, offer intoxicatingly lush tableaux. Better still, the thrills-per-hour ratio is pretty good, the PG-level gore gets the job done without succumbing to excess, and there are a handful of solid comin’-at-ya jolts. Further, it’s amusing to see how reverently the filmmakers copy Jaws, from the way Jaeckel’s naturalist character echoes Richard Dreyfuss’ shark guy in the earlier film, to the way Prine delivers a monologue about a bear attack in the style of Robert Shaw’s legendary U.S.S. Indianapolis speech in Jaws. For viewers with certain cinematic appetites (myself included), Grizzly is a nearly perfect specimen of ’70s drive-in shlock.

Grizzly: FUNKY