Doctors’ Wives (1971)

          Pure trash that’s bearable only because of the lurid storyline and the presence of many skilled actors, Doctors’ Wives is a melodrama about the problems of wealthy surgeons and their long-suffering spouses. Somewhat improbably, the movie revolves around a murderer’s elaborate scheme to escape police custody and flee to Europe. And if that makes you think that perhaps a thoughtful examination of the medical community is not the real goal of this movie, then congratulations, you’ve cracked the code. Even with two lengthy surgery scenes that integrate bloody documentary footage, this movie’s about the healing arts in the same way that the 1980s TV show Dynasty was about big business. The nominal milieu is nothing but an excuse for depicting people with too little compassion and too much money.

          The main characters are Dr. Brennan (Richard Crenna) and his estranged wife, Amy (Janice Rule); Dr. Gray (Carroll O’Connor) and his self-loathing wife, Maggie (Cara Williams); Dr. Randolph (Gene Hackman) and his embittered wife, Delia (Rachel Roberts); and Dr. Dellman (John Colicos). In the opening scene, Dr. Dellman’s horny wife, Lorrie (Dyan Cannon), announces her plan to sleep with all of the doctors in order to report back to the women on each man’s sexual failing. When Dr. Dellman catches Lorrie in bed with a surgeon, he shoots her dead, wounding the surgeon in the process. Dr. Dellman confesses and surrenders to the police, but then he contrives a plan. He uses dirty secrets to blackmail his fellow doctors for getaway money, and when he’s asked to perform emergency surgery on a boy who requires Dr. Dellman’s specialized services, Dr. Dellman makes arrangements to slip out of the hospital, avoiding the cops who are watching him. Also thrown into the mix is a tawdry subplot about Dr. Brennan’s extramarital affair with an African-American nurse, Helen (Diana Sands), as well as a separate subplot about a doctor’s wife stealing his meds in order to feed her appetite for morphine.

          Suffering from one-dimensional characterizations and trite dialogue, Doctors’ Wives is so generic that even the best actors in the cast operate, no pun intended, while handicapped by the material. O’Connor and Sands wring some pathos out of key scenes, but otherwise everyone is stuck delivering obvious lines amid predictable scenarios. At least the flmmakers keep things moving along quickly, so viewers never have to linger on any particular scene very long. It says a lot that Cannon, the liveliest actor in the cast seeing as how Hackman is hamstrung by the limitations of a small secondary role, disappears from the movie after the first 10 minutes. When a movie that’s largely about sex loses its principal sexpot early, that’s a sure sign of trouble.

Doctors’ Wives: FUNKY

Prime Cut (1972)

          If appraised solely for its attitude, style, and tone, Prime Cut would easily qualify as one of the best crime films of the ’70s. A Midwestern noir set primarily on a cattle ranch and the surrounding area—think county fairs and wheat fields—the movie boasts crisp low-angle cinematography, offbeat situations, rough violence, and tasty performances by actors including Gene Hackman, Lee Marvin, and Sissy Spacek. It’s hard to think of another action picture that features a hay-bailing machine as a potential murder weapon—or one that features a scene of a mob enforcer getting chopped up and packaged as a tube of sausages. Yet for all the things Prime Cut does well, the movie fails in the most important regard. The script is an absolute mess, with murky characters pursuing unclear goals based upon perplexing motivations.

          The narrative is so poorly constructed, in fact, that it’s often difficult to enjoy the movie’s amazing moment-to-moment texture. One gets the sense that director Michael Ritchie and his collaborators wanted to present a movie so cryptic and hard-boiled that it was devoid of clichés and easy explanations. If that was the goal, they succeeded. Yet the filmmakers sacrificed clarity on the altar of cinematic style. Having said all that, Prime Cut is pretty damn badass whenever it locks into a groove.

          The principal focus of the story is a Midwestern gangster nicknamed “Mary Ann” (Hackman), who has decided to cut ties with his former bosses in the Chicago underworld. Running a dugs-and-prostitution ring out of his cattle ranch, Mary Ann has become a beloved community leader thanks to his largesse and a feared opponent thanks to his cruelty—he’s the proverbial big fish in a small town. After several operatives have failed to rein in Mary Ann’s reckless behavior, Chicago bosses send hired gun Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) to set Mary Ann straight. Immediately upon his arrival at Mary Ann’s place, Nick takes possession of Poppy (Spacek), a teenager whom Mary Ann’s goons have kidnapped and drugged for sale as a sex slave. That’s where the story goes off the rails. Instead of focusing on his mission, Nick spends a lot of time hanging out at his hotel, wining and dining Poppy (even though he seems not to have any sexual interest in her), and articulating vague plans for giving Mary Ann a hard time. Meanwhile, Mary Ann picks off Nick’s men with apparent ease.

          Much of what happens during the movie’s lugubrious middle section is interesting simply because of novelty—for instance, the shootout during a county fair—but the story gets particularly aimless whenever Spacek is on screen. Thus, when the movie finally trundles into a bloody final showdown at Mary Ann’s place, the dramatic stakes have become so dissipated that it’s hard to care what happens.

          Amazingly, the three leads manage to give interesting performances despite the script’s shortcomings. Marvin blends humor and a dash of romanticism into his signature ice-cold persona, so he’s frequently riveting. Hackman essays one of his most monstrous villains, and he’s terrific in small moments like the bit during which he capriciously buys a child’s pet cow and sends the animal to the slaughterhouse. Spacek struggles to figure out what purpose she serves in the movie, because at one moment she’s eye candy (Spacek performs a long sequence wearing a see-through dress), and at the next moment she’s the film’s soul (demonstrating anguish at the abuse of women). Even though all of this is quite perplexing, one is unlikely to find a better-acted or better-looking mess of an action flick.

Prime Cut: FUNKY

The Conversation (1974)

          To fully grasp the hot streak filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was on in the ’70s, it’s necessary to look beyond the titanic accomplishments of The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). Released the same year as The Godfather: Part II—and, amazingly, also nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that year, giving Coppola two slots in the category—was The Conversation, which arguably represents the purest artistic statement of Coppola’s early career. Whereas Coppola’s other ’70s films are adaptations, The Conversation is an original. Moreover, the picture is so intimate that it demonstrates the filmmaker’s preternatural ability to use image and sound as a means of communicating nearly microscopic details about a protagonist’s inner life. Yet beyond simply being an auteurist showpiece, The Conversation tells a resonant story about themes ranging from paranoia to personal responsibility, and it contains one of the finest leading performances of the decade, by the incomparable Gene Hackman. In sum, The Conversation is a pinnacle achievement whether viewed as personal art, social critique, or even just craftsmanship.

          Set in Coppola’s beloved San Francisco, the movie concerns Harry Caul (Hackman), a surveillance contractor revered by fellow professionals for his skill at secretly recording conversations in tricky situations. The opening scene depicts Harry’s team using a trio of strategically placed microphones to eavesdrop on an exchange between young lovers Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest), who speak while walking in circles through a crowded urban square. Harry merges the recordings until he’s extracted a pristine master tape, and then attempts to make delivery to his client, a director at the CIA. Yet when Harry is denied access to the director, he suspects trouble, so he withholds the master tape. It turns out that in the past, one of Harry’s tapes was used to justify an assassination, so Harry fears history might repeat itself. The problem, however, is that Harry is so reclusive that he has no close friends from whom to seek guidance or support. Therefore, the incredible drama of the movie stems from Harry’s quandary over whether to maintain his personal code of noninvolvement or violate his self-preserving principles in order to serve the greater good.

          Every character surrounding Harry is used by Coppola to illuminate a different facet of the protagonist. Amiable coworker Stan (John Cazale) reveals Harry’s inability to trust; gentle prostitute Meredith (Elizabeth McRae) reveals Harry’s inability to share emotionally; undemanding kept woman Amy (Teri Garr) reveals Harry’s inability to commit; and so on. Meanwhile, edgy supporting characters including ice-blooded functionary Martin (Harrison Ford) and vulgar surveillance-industry competitor Bernie (Allen Garfield) represent the types of avarice and duplicity that first drove Harry to become a recluse. On nearly every textual and subtextual level, The Conversation is a master class in character development.

          It’s also a wonder in terms of technical execution. Coppola and expert cinematographers Bill Butler and Haskell Wexler carve delicate images from light, movement, and shadow, articulating the significance of how different people occupy different spaces. Unsung hero Walter Murch, performing the role of sound designer before that job title existed, works magic with distortion and fragmentation to evoke Harry’s insular life experience, while composer David Shire’s whirling piano figures address the painful tension pervading the story. The performances are uniformly good, from Garr’s slightly pathetic likeability to Garfield’s crass aggression, but, obviously, the brittle textures of Hackman’s work hold The Conversation together. Disappearing behind dumpy clothes, horn-rimmed glasses, and a receding hairline, Hackman sketches Harry Caul with incredible restraint, so the flashes of emotion that the actor makes visible speak volumes. The Conversation isn’t perfect, thanks to occasional directorial flourishes that slip into pretention and thanks to a slightly overlong running time. Nonetheless, in every important way, The Conversation defines what made New Hollywood cinema bracing, innovative, and meaningful.

The Conversation: OUTTA SIGHT

Cisco Pike (1972)

          During the early ’70s, one of the most happening scenes in the music business revolved around the Troubadour club in West Hollywood, the watering hole of choice for folks like Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt. Perhaps no single narrative movie captures the texture of this scene better than Cisco Pike, which tells the story of a rock star who turns to dealing grass when his career goes cold. Starring singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson in his first acting role, Cisco Pike exudes atmosphere and authenticity as the storyline winds through nightclubs, recording studios, and the streets of Los Angeles—at its best, the movie almost feels like a documentary capturing what it was like to be high on tunes (and weed) in the City of Angels during a transitional moment between the idealism of the late ’60s and the decadence of the late ’70s.

          The weird part, though, is that Cisco Pike isn’t really a story about the music business. It’s a crime thriller exploring what happens when the title character gets into a hassle with a whacked-out cop who’s playing both sides of the law. The basic story involves an LAPD psycho named Leo Holland (Gene Hackman) forcing rocker-turned-recidivist Cisco (Kristofferson) to sell a huge trove of pot that’s fallen into Holland’s hands. In shaking down his old music-industry contacts for cash, Cisco finds out which friends have integrity and thereby arrives at a new but unsettling understanding of his place in the world. Thanks to this offbeat storyline, viewers can consume Cisco Pike several different ways. For instance, it’s possible to groove on the picture as a nostalgia trip, and it’s also possible to enjoy the narrative’s mild suspense.

          What makes film so rich, besides the colorful details woven into writer-director Bill L. Norton’s script and the extensive location photography, is the lively cast. Beyond Kristofferson, who exudes such powerful natural charisma that he subsequently became a movie star, Cisco Pike benefits from Hackman giving an energetically weird performance as the dirty cop, as well as Harry Dean Stanton blending humor and pathos as the title character’s once-and-future singing partner. The picture also features ’70s stalwarts Allan Arbus, Karen Black, Roscoe Lee Browne, Antonio Fargas, Howard Hesseman, and Severn Darden. For some fans, however, the highlight is a cameo by real-life rocker Doug Sahm, who plays a campy riff on himself—rhapsodizing about the virtues of great ganja and spewing subliterate hipster jive about music, he epitomizes the far-out vibe of stoned ’70s rock.

          It’s easy to find flaws with Cisco Pike, because the movie’s energy is fairly low and because Norton’s filmmaking style is way more conventional than, say, Dennis Hopper’s mind-bending approach, which might have suited this milieu better. But considering how many interesting things Cisco Pike presents in its 95 minutes, complaining that it could have been a stronger picture seems petty.

Cisco Pike: GROOVY

Scarecrow (1973)

          Given its casting, pedigree, and subject matter, Scarecrow sounds like an automatic addition to the Mount Olympus of ’70s cinema. It’s a downbeat road movie about two vagabonds ineptly pursuing small dreams, the vagabonds are played by Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, the film was directed by adventurous humanist Jerry Schatzberg, and the cinematography is by the extraordinary Vilmos Zsigmond. Yet while the movie has a lovely intimacy, it doesn’t linger in the memory anywhere near as much as it should. That said, Scarecrow is near-essential viewing for fans of this period in American cinema simply because it exudes integrity and contains strong but obscure performances by two of the best actors America has ever produced. Although Hackman and Pacino each did better work in other films (because other films gave them better raw material from which to craft performances), it’s still a tremendous pleasure to watch these remarkable men amplify and complement each other’s talents.

          Hackman plays Max, a volatile ex-con traveling like a hobo from California to Pennsylvania, where he plans to open a car wash. (Whether Max actually has the financial or managerial wherewithal to realize his dream is one of the film’s many richly ambiguous elements.) Max becomes traveling companions with Lionel Delbuchi (Pacino), a former sailor who approaches life with boyish exuberance; barely more than a simpleton, Lionel believes there’s almost no problem a good joke can’t solve. One of the inherent shortcomings of George Michael White’s script is that the Max/Lionel friendship always feels a bit contrived; their bond is more narratively convenient than purely organic. Nonetheless, Hackman and Pacino lend as much credibility to the relationship as possible, even when the characters behave in predictable ways—Lionel rarely steps outside his man-child persona, and Max keeps getting into stupid brawls even though he seems, in other respects, like a mature human being with real self-awareness. The film also suffers from the inherently episodic nature of most road movies.

          Therefore, it’s almost all about the acting. Hackman is explosive and haunted and tender all at once, demonstrating his unique gift for incarnating emotionally conflicted men, and Pacino—though a bit over the top, thanks to a set of indulgent physical tics—creates many resonant moments. Supporting players Eileen Brennan, Richard Lynch, and Ann Wedgeworth lend strong atmosphere as well, though their characters border on being clichéd movie-hick grotesques. Former photographer Schatzberg and master cinematographer Zsigmond capture all of these lively performances in artful frames that showcase grungy locations and meticulous production design, so the physicality of the movie feels real even when the dramaturgy slips into artificiality.

Scarecrow: GROOVY

Night Moves (1975)

          Complementing outright throwbacks such as Chinatown (1974), several ’70s thrillers updated classic film-noir style with modern characters, settings, and themes. Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is among the best of these current-day noirs, featuring a small-time detective who has seen too much misery to muster any real hope for the human species. Nonetheless, like all the best noir heroes, he strives to do something good as a way of compensating for all the bad in the world, and thus ironically dooms not only himself but also the very people he’s trying to protect. Penn, whose erratic feature career peaked with a run of counterculture-themed pictures spanning from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to this film, was at his best orchestrating subtle interactions between complicated characters, and he does a terrific job in Night Moves of meshing bitter tonalities.

          A seething Gene Hackman stars as low-rent L.A. investigator Harry Moseby. An amiable idealist whose principles alienate him from the compromisers who surround him, Harry is married to Ellen (Susan Clark), who wants him to shutter his one-man agency and work for a big firm. Preferring to steer his own course, Harry focuses on his next case, which involves tracking down teen runaway Delly (Melanie Griffith), the daughter of a blowsy widow (Janet Ward) who, a lifetime ago, was a promiscuous Hollywood starlet. During downtime between investigative chores, Harry discovers that Ellen is cheating on him, so he’s only too happy to follow a lead on Delly’s whereabouts to Florida, a continent away from his troubled marriage. In the sweaty Florida Keys, Harry finds Delly living with her lecherous stepfather, Tom (John Crawford), and his sexy companion, Paula (Jennifer Warren). Also part of the mix is Quentin (James Woods), a squirrelly friend of Delly’s who works as a mechanic for film-industry stuntmen.

          Alan Sharp’s provocative script features murky plotting but crisp character work, so even when the story is hard to follow, moment-to-moment engagement between people is interesting. And since the film is driven by Harry’s zigzag journey from naïveté to despair and then to a misguided sort of optimism, each time he encounters some tricky new piece of information, his relationship with someone changes. Though Hackman was never one to play for cheap sympathy, it’s heartbreaking to watch Harry cast about for someone who deserves his trust, only to be disappointed again and again.

          Every performance in the movie exists in the shadow of Hackman’s great work, but all of the actors hit the right notes, with Griffith’s adolescent petulance resonating strongly. Composer Michael Small and cinematographer Bruce Surtees contribute tremendously to the film’s shadowy mood, and Penn achieves one of his finest cinematic moments with the picture’s desolate finale. Night Moves gets a bit pretentious at times, but when the movie is really flying, it becomes a potent meditation on the challenge of finding sold moral footing during a confusing period in the evolution of the American identity.

Night Moves: GROOVY

I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

          An elegant, insightful character piece grounded by precise writing and masterful acting, I Never Sang for My Father is one of the best small dramas of the ’70s, and it contains a crucial early performance by Gene Hackman. Already recognized as an extraordinary actor (his memorable supporting turn in 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde earned an Oscar nomination), Hackman was on the verge of becoming a Hollywood leading man, and he commands the screen throughout I Never Sang for My Father with the confidence of a veteran star. Indeed, had established actor Melvyn Douglas not received top billing for this movie, it’s likely Hackman’s well-deserved Oscar nomination for I Never Sang for My Father would have been in the leading-actor category, not the supporting-actor category.

          Such considerations aside, I Never Sang for My Father benefits from Douglas’ expert acting as much as it does from Hackman’s touching work. Hackman plays Gene Garrison, an author and teacher who has never been able to win the approval of his father, Tom (Douglas). A self-made man who rose from a miserable childhood to high achievement, Tom lords over every member of his family, exerting such merciless authority that Gene’s sister, Alice (Estelle Parsons), was excommunicated for the sin of marrying a Jew. Despite Tom’s hard edges, Gene struggles to find kindness in the man, especially after Gene’s mother dies and Tom becomes an aging widower with rapidly diminishing mental capacity. Meanwhile, Gene contemplates a move from the family’s East Coast home base to California, where Gene has a chance to start a new life with his girlfriend, Peggy (Elizabeth Hubbard). Thus, in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Gene becomes the de facto caretaker of his domineering dad, potentially at the cost of a chance for personal happiness.

          Exploring themes of duty, independence, love, and what it means to be a man, screenwriter Robert Anderson—adapting his successful play of the same name—digs deep into his characters, presenting everyone in the movie as a complex individual with warring impulses. For instance, Tom is nurturing and tender with his children until the instant he perceives disobedience, which instantly transforms him into a scornful monster. Similarly, Gene is soulful despite exhibiting faint echoes of his father’s macho stubbornness. That both Douglas and Hackman illustrate such subtle nuances is a testament to their thoughtful work. An even greater testament to their skill is that both actors assiduously avoid playing for cheap sentiment: Every painful moment in I Never Sang for My Father is earned. Producer-director Gilbert Cates, who worked on the Broadway presentation of Anderson’s play, serves the material well with unobtrusive camerawork, and his use of unvarnished locations adds greatly to the movie’s diligent realism. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

I Never Sang for My Father: RIGHT ON

The Domino Principle (1977)

          By the late ’70s, the cinematic marketplace was clogged with so many like-minded conspiracy thrillers that filmmakers had to struggle to contrive credible new conspiracies—and in some cases they didn’t even bother with credibility at all. The latter circumstance is true of The Domino Principle, which was inexplicably directed by venerable Hollywood filmmaker Stanley Kramer, a man best known for hand-wringing dramas about Big Issues like injustice and racism. This profoundly stupid movie follows Vietnam vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman), a prison inmate offered clemency by mysterious but high-powered conspirators in exchange for committing an assassination.

          Right away, the film raises bizarre questions it never answers. Why bother recruiting a convict instead of simply hiring a criminal who’s walking free? Why go through all the trouble of bribing and manipulating prison personnel to engineer Tucker’s “escape”? Why go through an extended negotiation with Tucker about his desired terms, when the simpler thing to do is simply threaten his beloved wife (Candice Bergen) in order to pressure Tucker? Why send Tucker to an expensive hideaway in Mexico after the assassination is over, instead of just cutting him loose or gunning him down? And why does the supposedly savvy Tucker think all this will end well?

          Instead of raising intriguing questions about why the bad guys are scheming, the film stacks idiotic plot contrivances upon each other until the viewer’s brain is numbed. It’s even unclear what sort of reaction The Domino Principle is supposed to generate. Tucker is a callous son of a bitch, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to care that he’s in trouble. The stakes of the assassination are never made clear, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to worry about the world order getting overthrown. Worst of all, the movie is so confusing, talky, and tedious that it’s not as if viewers can simply cast logic aside and groove on the thrills.

         Hackman seems peevish throughout the entire movie, as if he’s upbraiding himself for agreeing to yet another pointless paycheck gig; Bergen is upstaged by the horrific perm she wears throughout the picture; and villains Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach sneer happily even though they probably can’t make any damn sense of the inane dialogue they’re spouting. (Plus, the less said about the pointless supporting character portrayed by an out-of-place Mickey Rooney, the better.) By the time the movie sputters to an overheated conclusion that’s as nonsensical as it is merciless, The Domino Principle has bludgeoned viewers so badly that only one mystery remains: Were the conspirators behind this cinematic atrocity ever brought to justice?

The Domino Principle: LAME

March or Die (1977)

          Though gorgeous to look at, thanks to sensuous imagery created by cinematographer John Alcott, the French Foreign Legion drama March or Die is an absolute mess. The story is unfocused, the characterizations are unsatisfying, the villain is laughably miscast, and the filmmakers seem confused about which characters should engender audience sympathy. The fact that the picture is more or less watchable, despite these huge flaws, is almost entirely attributable to Alcott’s photography and to the charisma of leading players Catherine Deneuve, Gene Hackman, and Max von Sydow.

          March or Die begins in a tellingly murky fashion: A few years after the end of World War I, Major Foster (Hackman) leads his troops back to France following a bloody deployment. In a tense meeting with his superiors, American-born Foster is assigned to protect a group of archeologists led by François Marneau (Von Sydow) during a dig in Morocco, where Arab locals are hostile to foreigners. Foster frets about the possible human cost, suggesting he’s a noble soldier who cares only about his men. But then, as soon as Foster starts training new recruits for the mission, he’s depicted as a heartless bastard who takes sadistic pleasure in abusing subordinates.

          Confusing matters further is a long sequence of the soldiers traveling to Morocco. One of their fellow passengers is Simone Picard (Deneuve), who falls for Marco (Terence Hill), a part-Gypsy enlisted man. Foster expends considerable energy humiliating Marco, even though it’s plain that Marco is a favorite among the men because he looks out for gentle souls like the soft-spoken musician who’s withering under the rigors of military service. Upon reaching Morocco, the troops are confronted by Arab leader El Krim (Ian Holm), who is determined to derail the French expedition. Turns out he and Foster have history, meaning a showdown is inevitable.

          There’s enough story here for a dozen movies, or at least one rich epic, but co-writer/director Dick Richards can’t corral the material. Working with co-writer David Zelag Goodman, Richards fails to guide viewers through this maze of interconnected narrative, and he fails to define his characters as specific people. There are tantalizing glimpses of internal life, like the vignette of Hackman lounging with a Moroccan courtesan, and there are poetic moments, like the final fate of the musician. However, none of it hangs together, and false notes abound.

          Hill, the Italian-born stud who starred in a string of ’60s and ’70s Westerns, is physically impressive but blank in dramatic scenes, while Holm, the Englishman best known for fantasy films like Alien (1979), derails his performance with bug-eyed overacting. Hackman plays individual scenes beautifully, though each seems appropriate for a totally different character, and Deneuve merely provides alluring ornamentation. Worse, the florid score by Maurice Jarre sounds like a satire of his legendary work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

March or Die: FUNKY

Lucky Lady (1975)

          Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were hot after American Graffiti, scoring a huge purchase price for their screenplay Lucky Lady, which gene-spliced the music-driven ribaldry of Cabaret (1972) with the twisty plotting of The Sting (1973). An impressive roster of A-list talents converged on the project, including director Stanley Donen and the three stars billed above the title: Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and Cabaret Oscar-winner Liza Minnelli. Cabaret vets working behind the camera include cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth and songwriters Fred Ebb and John Kander. But even with all of this cinematic firepower, and a hefty budget of $13 million, Lucky Lady is little more than a well-made train wreck.

          The main problem is that expensive script, which puts three despicable characters into an icky housekeeping arrangement. After an unnecessarily convoluted set-up, Prohibition-era schemers Kibby (Hackman), Claire (Minnelli), and Walker (Reynolds) become rum-runners sailing their ship, the Lucky Lady, back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., chased by a homicidal Coast Guard captain (Geoffrey Lewis) and a ruthless fellow bootlegger (John Hillerman). Half of the picture is devoted to criminal intrigue, including several high-seas shootouts, so the movie’s frothy tone disappears whenever the story turns dark and violent, which is often. The other half of the picture is devoted to the farce of Kibby and Walker competing for Claire; she moves back and forth between their beds until all three finally sleep together. Why these two men are so excited by the abrasive Claire is as mystifying as why viewers are expected to care about any of them, since all three are deceitful, shallow, and tiresome. (Supporting player Robby Benson, as a Lucky Lady shipmate, adds the film’s only glimmer of sweetness.)

          With its painfully episodic structure, the movie feels much longer than its 118-minute running time, and Unsworth goes berserk with his signature haze filters, making some images almost indecipherable. The stars try valiantly to make the material work, with Reynolds thriving in his light-comedy métier and Minnelli belting out a few numbers, but aside from the production values and star power, there’s little to recommend in Lucky Lady.

Lucky Lady: LAME

The Hunting Party (1971)

          One of the most vicious movies I’ve ever seen—which is saying a lot, believe me—this grisly British flick opens by introducing Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman), a wealthy rancher who gets off on beating his wife, Melissa (Candice Bergen), during sex. When this charmer and his sleazy buddies take off on a luxurious hunting trip, Melissa wanders over to a small schoolhouse to keep herself occupied. Along comes rough-ridin' outlaw Frank Calder (British madman Oliver Reed) and his gang, who kidnap Melissa and head off toward the frontier. Frank keeps his cronies from raping Melissa because he wants her to teach him to read. Meanwhile, Brandt hears what happened and enlists his hunting buddies to help track down the scoundrels. Thing is, Brandt figures Melissa's been tarnished, so he decides to take her out with one of the fancy rifles he uses to bag prey from a safe distance. As Hackman’s character devolves from meanie to monster, Frank evolves from scummy to sensitive. Sort of. Because, see, he wins Melissa's heart by raping her, which she secretly enjoys because it's the first time she’s ever been with a real man.

          But wait—there’s more! The movie was shot in Spain, which allows the picture to inexplicably shift from palm-tree-dotted plains to high desert, and in true spaghetti-Western style, The Hunting Party features a faux-Morricone score that’s beyond overbearing. During this bizarre picture’s goofiest sequence, Frank taunts a starving Bergen by eating peaches obscenely in front of her, all to the strains of cringe-worthy "comical" music. Plus, as was the cinematic fashion of the time, Brandt turns totally psychotic about halfway through the picture, leading to endless slow-mo bloodbaths. The Hunting Party is unconscionably mean-spirited, but it’s not boring. Quite to the contrary, it’s arresting in a nauseating sort of way, offering prime evidence of Hackman’s disturbing ability to incarnate unstable sons of bitches, and equally telling images of Reed portraying animalistic charisma. So if sadism is your bag, then The Hunting Party is your movie.

The Hunting Party: LAME

Zandy’s Bride (1974)

          Of the many peculiar ’70s subgenres for which I have undying fondness, the revisionist Western is perhaps the most rewarding. Filmmakers in the ’70s went nuts overturning the tropes of a beloved Hollywood genre, using gritty realism to transform Westerns into social commentary. Those highfalutin ambitions go a long way toward explaining Zandy’s Bride, the story of a grudging romance that develops between a son-of-a-bitch rancher and his mail-order bride. While the underlying story is familiar, the sort of thing John Wayne might have made in the ’40s or ’50s, the execution is unsentimental. It’s hard to envision Wayne proclaiming, as the lead character in this film does, that he doesn’t need his wife for sex, because he’s content with “the five sisters,” meaning the fingers of his right hand. Similarly, it’s difficult to picture the Duke ditching his long-suffering spouse every time the local tramp comes sniffing around. None of this should create the illusion that Zandy’s Bride fully overcomes the trite rhythms of its storyline. Rather, these remarks should contextualize Zandy’s Bride as a nasty ride through terrain that, seen previously, might have seemed idyllic.

          Gene Hackman, adding yet another scowling meanie to his gallery of cinematic pricks, is frightening as reclusive rancher Zandy Allen. Eking out a rugged existence on his small California homestead, he sends away for a spouse, expecting nothing more than someone to share his workload and spew children. Matching Hackman’s energy is the formidable Swedish actress Liv Ullmann, who plays Hannah Lund, the woman who accepts Zandy’s overture. She alienates Zandy the moment she arrives, because she’s in her 30s and not the dewy young thing he expected. Having left her old life behind, so she has no choice but to endure his abuse for as long as she can. Once the couple experiences assorted frontier travails together, they fight burgeoning affection, as if warmth is a sign of weakness. Yet the more they fortify their respective emotional boundaries, the more they realize they’re compatible enough to coexist.

          The picture’s evocative portrayal of the natural world makes sense, seeing as how director Jan Troell previously made the acclaimed foreign films The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972), which dramatized the experiences of Swedish people relocating to the American frontier. The film’s dour portrait of life for women in the Wild West also rings true, and vivid characterizations by supporting players Frank Cady, Eileen Heckart, Harry Dean Stanton, and especially Susan Tyrell add to the effect. Though Zandy’s Bride is too long at 116 minutes, the ending pays things off nicely, and the picture is replete with gorgeous images: Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth creates the palpable sense of a frontier that’s simultaneously liberating and oppressive.

Zandy’s Bride: GROOVY

The French Connection (1971) & French Connection II (1975)

          Cop movies were never the same after The French Connection, a scalding thriller about a New York detective obsessively tracking a Gallic drug smuggler. Once audiences watched morally challenged policeman Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) dress like a Salvation Army Santa Claus to snare a hoodlum, rattle suspects with twisted psychological tricks, and recklessly instigate the most frightening car chase 1971 audiences had ever seen, any subsequent policier with less verve seemed old-fashioned by comparison.

          Based on a bestselling nonfiction book by Robin Moore and directed with docudrama realism by William Friedkin, the movie meticulously tracks how Doyle and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), latch onto a small-time hood, Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), who unwittingly leads the cops to enigmatic European crook Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Among many other things, the film is a respectful but unflinching homage to dogged police work, because surveiling Sol way past the point when superiors see the value in doing so unlocks clues leading to a much more significant target. Ernest Tidyman’s muscular script juxtaposes vivid character-development scenes with explosive sequences of police action, creating just the right ambiguous context for signature moments including the harrowing vignette of Doyle shooting an escaping felon in the back. Throughout, the storyline uses Doyle as a means of exploring of whether Machiavellian law enforcement degrades or protects society.

          Yet beyond its probing questions about right and wrong, The French Connection is breathlessly exciting, particularly during that infamous car chase, which has Doyle pursuing an elevated train carrying a suspect; Doyle’s near-misses with pedestrians are so terrifying that they reinforce the movie’s theme of a cop who’s arguably as dangerous as any crook. Lo Bianco, Rey, and Scheider provide sterling support, with Scheider demonstrating the streetwise suaveness that made him a leading man a few years later. As for Hackman, he’s on fire, alternately ferocious, funny, perverse, and wild, turning scenes like the “pick your toes in Poughkeepsie” interrogation into unforgettable moments. His performance is a master class in channeling the unique energy of the male animal into an expression of complicated sociopolitical concepts. Friedkin, Hackman, and Tidyman all won Oscars for their work, and they each spent much of their subsequent careers trying to recapture the bristling intensity of this film.

          For instance, Hackman continued charting Doyle dark odyssey in French Connection II, for which hard-hitting journeyman John Frankenheimer replaced brash provocateur Friedkin. A respectable thriller in its own right, French Connection II sends Doyle to Marseilles, where he tries to capture the evasive Charnier on the Frenchman’s home turf. In the sequel’s brilliant contrivance, Doyle gets abducted and by Charneri’s thugs, who force heroin into the cop’s system until he becomes a desperate junkie. This eventually leads to an extraordinary sequence of Doyle going through violent DT’s. Another strong moment is the grim finale, which pays off the French Connection journey on an appropriate note of moral ambiguity.

          Overall, however, the storyline of French Connection II isn’t nearly as focused or potent as that of its predecessor. The rivalry between Doyle and his Gallic counterpart (Bernard Fresson) plays well without lodging too firmly in the viewer’s imagination, and too many scenes feature Doyle killing time. As wonderful as it is to luxuriate in character development, leisurely pacing does not an exciting crime thriller make. That said, Frankenheimer plays rough whenever the action starts, and Hackman’s portrayal of Doyle is just as powerful the second time around. So while French Connection II ultimately feels unnecessary, it’s sufficiently well-crafted that both of these movies deserve spaces on the top shelf of ’70s crime cinema. FYI, the real-life cops who inspired The French Connection also inspired two other thrillers, both released in 1973: Badge 373 and The Seven-Ups.

The French Connection: OUTTA SIGHT

French Connection II: GROOVY

The Poseidon Adventure (1971) & Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)

          For some reason, I’ve always remembered a remark that Will Smith made around the time he broke through as a big-screen star with 1994’s Independence Day: When asked how he got so much mileage out of so little screen time, Smith explained that he studied Ernest Borgnine’s performance in The Poseidon Adventure because of how vigorously Borgnine attacked every scene. Smith was onto something, because even though Irwin Allen’s production of The Poseidon Adventure deserves its reputation as one of the cheesiest movies of the ’70s, it’s undeniably compelling for the same reason that Borgnine’s supporting performance is effective—the picture will do anything to get a reaction. Based on a novel by Paul Gallico, the story about a luxury liner turned upside down by a giant rogue wave is silly, because it presumes that the liner can stay afloat long enough for survivors to seek rescue through a hole in the bottom of the hull, but the movie is jam-packed with action, melodrama, romance, schmaltz, and spectacle. What’s not to like about unpretentious hokum that intercuts shots of gussied-up New Year’s Eve revelers singing “Auld Lang Syne” with vignettes of the ship’s stoic captain (Leslie Nielsen!) watching watery doom approach a few decks above their heads? Perfecting the disaster-movie template established by Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure offers a slapdash ensemble of familiar faces romping through one overwrought crisis after another. In sheer paycheck-cashing mode, Gene Hackman plays the hero of the piece, a swaggering priest who rediscovers his purpose in life by leading a band of hearty survivors to possible salvation; his performance is so faux-intense that it’s embarrassing and thrilling at the same time. Lending campy gravitas are Borgnine and other showbiz veterans, including Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, and the flamboyantly buoyant Shelley Winters (“In the water, I’m a very skinny lady!”). Meanwhile, Carol Lynley, Pamela Sue Martin, and Stella Stevens shriek their lungs out in various states of soggy undress.
          The soap-opera storylines are drab, like the one about marital strife between a crass cop (Borgnine) and an ex-hooker (Stevens), but the fun of the picture is watching broadly sketched caricatures clash with each other against a backdrop of death and devastation. Allen spent a bundle on massive sets that could be flipped upside down and flooded, so what’s happening onscreen feels real because the actors actually got soaked, and drowning is such a universal phobia that it’s impossible not to sympathize with the characters’ anxiety. On top of everything, there’s a sky-high kitsch factor, especially when Lynley lip-syncs the movie’s atrocious but Oscar-winning theme song “The Morning After”—so whether you embrace the flick for its legit thrills or its unintentional humor, The Poseidon Adventure is a great ride.
          Allen reprised the story several years later, when his career was faltering; the sleep-inducing Beyond the Poseidon Adventure stars a bored Michael Caine as a sea captain who tries to salvage loot from wreck of the Poseidon shortly after the last moments of the original movie. Peter Boyle, Sally Field, and Jack Warden join the festivities, with Karl Malden playing Caine’s salty sidekick and Telly Savalas portraying the main villain. Unfortunately, the direction and script are so lifeless that even the colorful cast isn’t enough to keep the sequel afloat—Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is a grade-Z heist picture that merely happens to take place on an abandoned boat.

The Poseidon Adventure: GROOVY

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure: LAME

Young Frankenstein (1974)

          Astonishingly, comedy giant Mel Brooks managed to crank out his masterpiece, Young Frankenstein, less than a year after completing another outrageously funny spoof, Blazing Saddles. Yet while Blazing Saddles is an anything-goes romp that throws out narrative continuity whenever the opportunity for a gag arises, Young Frankenstein trumps its predecessor because in addition to featuring some of the funniest moments in cinema history, the picture also works as the bittersweet tale of a man, a monster, and the women who love them.

          Conceived by leading man Gene Wilder, who eventually had a falling-out with Brooks after he perceived Brooks as taking too much credit for this project, Young Frankenstein is a pseudo-continuation of the classic Universal Studios Frankenstein series that begin in the early ’30s. The picture is shot in glorious black-and-white to evoke a studio-era vibe, and the filmmakers even tracked down the original Kenneth Strickfaden-created props that appeared in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory during the earlier films.

          The screenplay, by Wilder and Brooks, picks up a generation after the events of the older pictures, when Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) inherits the castle where his crazed grandfather, Victor, once conducted unholy experiments. Discovering his ancestor’s records, Frederick casts aside his nature as a rational modern scientist in order to stitch together body parts and make a monster all his own. Aided by a trusty hunchbacked accomplice, Igor (Marty Feldman), and a fetching local girl, Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick creates a lumbering Monster (Peter Boyle).

          Wilder and Brooks borrow and spoof famous bits from the Universal Pictures, leading to uproarious scenes like the Monster’s encounter with a blind man (Gene Hackman) whose desire to share a cigar turns disastrous, and Frederick’s hilarious run-ins with an officious policeman (Kenneth Mars), who lost a limb to the monster that Victor Frankenstein created long ago. There’s also room for Frederick’s uptight fiancée, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), and the mysterious Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachman), who knew Victor better than anyone suspects.

          Virtually every scene in Young Frankenstein is a comedy classic, from the opening bit of Fredrick experimenting on an elderly patient during a medical class to the climactic musical number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which Wilder actually had to fight to keep in the movie because Brooks didn’t originally see the value of the scene. In addition to being riotously funny, Young Frankenstein is virtually note-perfect from beginning to end in terms of character and storyline. The acting is also consistently wonderful, with Boyle delivering a heartbreaker of a performance as the monster; his scene with Hackman is a perfect blend of pathos and whimsy.

          A career high point for everyone involved, Young Frankenstein showcases everything Brooks does well and features none of his often tiresome excesses, and it’s a triumph for Wilder as an actor and as a writer.

Young Frankenstein: OUTTA SIGHT

Superman (1978)

          Hard as it may be to imagine, now that seemingly every Spandex-clad character who ever fought crime has been featured in movies, reboots, sequels, and spinoffs, there was a time when the idea of turning a comic-book hero into a movie character seemed preposterous. In the early 1970s, when Superman was conceived, audiences mostly knew caped crusaders from campy TV series like The Adventures of Superman (1952-1957) and Batman (1966-1968). As one colorful story from the development process goes, Warren Beatty was approached to play the Man of Steel, so he slipped on a Superman costume and walked around his backyard trying to decide if he could get over feeling ridiculous. He couldn’t, and neither could any of the other big names offered the role. And that was just one of myriad behind-the-scenes dramas.

          Original scripter Mario Puzo delivered an unwieldy draft running 500 pages. Millions were spent on test footage for flying effects. Christopher Reeve was so scrawny when he was cast that English bodybuilder David Prowse (Darth Vader in the original Star Wars flicks) was recruited to help the Son of Krypton add bulk. Marlon Brando, hired to play Superman’s dad, was an overpaid diva, trying to convince the producers he didn’t need to appear onscreen. A plan to shoot the film and its sequel back-to-back fell apart, with production on the sequel halted halfway through. But amazingly, offscreen mishegoss translated to onscreen magic.

          As helmed by director Richard Donner, Superman treats the superhero’s origin story like a great piece of cornpone Americana. The movie proper begins with a long prologue on Krypton, where trippy costumes and grandiose production design give the movie a snazzy sci-fi jolt. The next major passage is a lengthy tenure in Smallville, anchored by Glenn Ford’s touching appearance as Superman’s surrogate father. Finally the movie shifts to Metropolis, where Gene Hackman has a blast playing amiable psychotic Lex Luthor. The plot is wonderfully overstuffed, with long detours for things like Luthor’s elaborate theft of two nuclear missiles, and the narrative voluptuousness works in the movie’s favor: Everything is Super-sized. John Williams, on a major roll after Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), contributes a perfect score loaded with orchestral grandeur, while cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth gives the picture a dreamlike glow. (The Smallville sequence is especially beautiful, with luxurious tracking shots of wheat fields.) And though the effects have lost their ability to astonish, they’re still pictorially elegant.

          The heart of the movie, however, is the love story between sweet Clark/Superman and salty Lois Lane. That memorable romance is brought to life by Reeve, balancing sly humor with square-jawed earnestness, and Margot Kidder, simultaneously sexy and abrasive. Not everything in the movie works; the “Can You Read My Mind” scene was rightly cited in a recent book titled Creepiosity: A Hilarious Guide to the Unintentionally Creepy. But in terms of treating a comic-book story with just the right mix of irony and respect, nothing came remotely close to Superman until along came a Spider-Man more than two decades later.

Superman: RIGHT ON

Bite the Bullet (1975)

          There’s a major story problem at the center of this big-canvas adventure set in the afterglow of the Wild West era, so your ability to overlook the problem will determine whether you can enjoy the film’s many verbal, visceral, and visual pleasures. Here’s the problem. A macho adventure story about a brutal 700-mile horseback race across some of the southwest’s most unforgiving terrain, the narrative is predicated on the notion that competitors are willing to endanger their steeds in the hope of winning a significant cash prize. Fair enough. Yet the film’s hero, Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman), is consistently portrayed as such a devoted equine caretaker that he beats the tar out of anyone he observes abusing horses. Therefore, his choice to enter the race—even though his original role was merely to deliver a champion stallion to one of the competitors—makes very little sense. Seriously, is the most effective means of protesting an event that you consider to be inhumane participating in that event?

          As was often his wont, writer-director Richard Brooks pushes the story deep into the Myth of the American Man, which means that notions of heroism and legacy and pride often trump basic logic. That said, for viewers who can overlook the basic disconnect at the heart of the film’s principal characterization, Bite the Bullet is an exciting film.

          Predictably, the race attracts a colorful group of competitors. Clayton and Luke Matthews (James Coburns), are both veterans of Teddy Roosevelt’s famed Rough Riders. Sir Harry Norfolk (Ian Bannen) is an Englishman with high-minded notions of sportsmanship. Carbo (Jan-Michael Vincent) is a hotheaded kid looking to make a reputation as a tough guy, no matter the cost to animals or people. Miss Jones (Candice Bergen) is a prostitute eager to change her life. The oldest competitor (Ben Johnson), is a saddletramp with health problems who never shares his name—making him a surrogate for the countless anonymous adventurers whose labors helped birth the legend of the Old West.

          Brooks, an adept screenwriter who often wandered into strange narrative terrain, mostly stays focused in generating character-driven pathos and rip-roaring adventure, essentially recapturing the vivacious tone of his great film The Professionals (1966) while infusing the picture with a thread of melancholy. Much of this works. Brooks capably introduces the characters with pre-race vignettes, and then he follows groups and individuals during intimate scenes of adversity and bravery. Hackman hits consistently interesting notes by playing to his mean streak while also demonstrating compassion, Johnson hums the same elegiac melodies he performed so beautifully in The Last Picture Show (1971), and Vincent incarnates the arrogance of youth. Meanwhile, Bannen, Bergen, Coburn and fellow supporting player Mario Arteaga add important colors to Brooks’ palette.

         Speaking of palettes, the film looks terrific, with cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr. crafting just the right mixture of frontier grit and nostalgic beauty.

          Ultimately, the lingering image from this picture is that of horses moving in slow motion, sweat pouring out of their bodies in clouds of foam, as their riders push them beyond their limits. One imagines Brooks was after some sort of Big Statement here, so it’s a shame he didn’t find the right leading character to use as a prism. At best, the film’s Big Statement is hopelessly murky; at worst, the assertion is bewilderingly hypocritical. It doesn’t help, of course, that the film is quite long-winded, especially during a pair of endless monologues, one inflicted by Hackman and the other by Johnson.

Bite the Bullet: FUNKY