The Legend of Hillbilly John (1974)

          Lore emanating from insular communities can be fascinating, because local legends are shot through with metaphors reflecting ideals and superstition; the nature of fictional characters elevated to heroic status is as revelatory as the nature of figures regarded as monsters. All of which goes to say why the offbeat fantasy picture The Legend of Hillbilly John is interesting even though it’s far from impressive as a piece of filmmaking. Based on stories by Manly Wade Wellman, an imaginative fiction writer who spent time in the Ozarks researching the folklore of mountain people, The Legend of Hillbilly John concerns a traveling troubadour whose guitar has magically powered silver strings that repel the devil. Moving from one rural enclave to the next, the hero discovers residents living in fear of various oppressive forces, then helps the residents escape tyranny by, in some fashion or another, robbing the oppressive forces of their power. Taken to its most literal extreme, this mode of supernatural crimefighting manifests as the hero battling a giant bird that’s put onscreen by way of old-fashioned stop-motion animation. In other words, the narrative spirit is willing but the cinematic flesh is weak.

          The story’s hero, John (Hedges Capers), is an easygoing singer whose Grandpappy John (Denver Pyle) loses a fiery musical duel with the devil. Thereafter, John carries a magic guitar from one Appalachian community to the next, accompanied by a dog he calls “Hunter Hound.” In one very long sequence, John escorts a dangerous man called Zebulon Yandro (Harris Yulin) to a meeting with Yandro’s ultimate fate. And in the most dynamic sequence, John duels with “Ugly Bird” atop Hark Mountain. Somewhat holding the pieces of the story together is Mr. Marduke (Severn Darden), a host/narrator who lists among the enemies plaguing the Appalachian Mountains the devil and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (The insertion of a ’70s ecological message is as pointless as it sounds.) Some have noted that a core flaw in this weird picture is the way the filmmakers altered John’s personality from the source material, transforming him from a backwoods avenger to a peace-and-love hippie. Indeed, the less authentically rural a moment in this movie is, the less entertainment it provides. Still, there’s something inherently unique about The Legend of Hillbilly John, though curious viewers should be advised to set their expectations very, very low.

The Legend of Hillbilly John: FUNKY

Watched! (1974)

Every cinefile has endured the dispiriting experience of realizing that an obscure but promising-sounding film actually deserves its outsider status. Case in point: Watched!, a paranoid drug film starring Stacy Keach. Seeing as how Keach was not only one of the most vibrant actors of the ’70s but also, sadly, a real-life drug addict before he ended his relationship with cocaine, the synchronicity between actor and subject matter would seem ideal. Yet writer/director John Parsons squandered the opportunity, because Watched! is amateurish, boring, and opaque. Keach stars as Mike Mandell, a California assistant district attorney celebrated for putting drug dealers in jail—at least until he becomes a drug addict himself. The movie toggles between scenes of straight Mike, a hardass in a suit who shows criminals no mercy, and user Mike, an alternately wild- and vacant-eyed waste case who spends his time trying to score with women whenever he’s not trying to score dope. Interspersed between these elements, naturally, are weird dream sequences. Although the lead character was apparently based on a real attorney who fell into an abyss of drug use, Parsons can’t figure out how to put across the story. The opening titles situate onscreen events “sometime in 1980,” which was six years in the future at the time Watched! was made. Huh? Furthermore, Parsons dives right into cutting between different phases of Mike’s life, without giving audiences the benefit of anything to orient them. Worst of all, Parsons employs a cheesy cinema-verité technique of displaying “surveillance footage” recorded by authorities. This translates to flat scenes of Keach delivering aimless monologues in tight closeups. One of Keach’s great gifts is intense focus, so asking him to loiter in static frames while spewing reams of drab dialogue wastes his talent. Harris Yulin costars as a cop who first works with Mike and later works against Mike, though his scenes are as lifeless as everything else in Watched! In fact, “watched” is the last thing this ponderous movie should be.

Watched!: LAME

The Midnight Man (1974)

          Like farce, the mystery genre is a space where convoluted plotting is not necessarily a detriment. Consider The Midnight Man, a twisty thriller starring, cowritten, coproduced, and codirected by the venerable Burt Lancaster, who adapted the picture from a novel by David Anthony. Set on a college campus, the movie features an offbeat leading man—a former cop turned ex-con who becomes a night watchman on the campus of a small college because his old police buddy runs the school’s security detail. Shortly after beginning his new job, Jim Slade (Lancaster) responds to the discovery of a dead coed. Thereafter, Jim battles with an obnoxious small-town sheriff, Casey (Harris Yulin), who determines that a creepy campus janitor was the culprit. Unsatisfied with Casey’s hasty resolution, Jim investigates further and discovers a complex web of conspiracies, lies, and secrets involving a United States Senator and several people connected with the college. Before long, Jim becomes a target, even as he begins a romance with his parole officer, Linda (Susan Clark), who may or may not be connected to various prime murder suspects.

          Although The Midnight Man is unquestionably too complicated for its own good—since it’s occasionally difficult to keep track of who’s doing what to whom and why—the movie is enjoyably melancholy and seedy on a moment-to-moment basis. Lancaster underplays, always a relief given his usual tendency toward grandiosity, and he generates an easygoing vibe with veteran supporting player Cameron Mitchell, who plays Slade’s boss/friend. Each of the significant performers in the cast delivers exactly what’s needed for his or her character, lending the whole piece depth and tonal variations. Clark is tough but vulnerable as the seen-it-all parole officer who fights to protect ex-cons from being needlessly hassled; Yulin is formidable and oily as the shoot-first/ask-questions-later sheriff; Catherine Bach, later of Dukes of Hazard fame, is intriguing as the sexy but troubled coed whose tragic fate drives the story; Charles Tyner is believably squirrely as the Bible-thumping, porn-reading janitor; and Morgan Woodward oozes smug confidence as the senator with one too many dirty secrets. Furthermore, Dave Grusin’s moody score, which is dominated by buttery electric-piano melodies, is as comfortingly smooth, warm, and unmistakably ’70s as a V-neck pullover.

          So, even if the story gets stuck in the mud of double-crosses and reversals and surprises, the vibe of the piece and the seriousness with which actors play their roles carry the day. The Midnight Man isn’t a superlative ’70s noir on the order of The Long Goodbye (1973) or Night Moves (1975), but it’s an interesting distraction with plenty of pessimism and a smattering of sleaze.

The Midnight Man: GROOVY

End of the Road (1970)

          Film editor Aram Avakian made his solo directorial debut with this uncompromising phantasmagoria, which was slapped with an “X” rating during its original release. Telling the story of a young man who goes insane after receiving his master’s degree—thus tapping into the zeitgeist of youth-culture ambivalence toward American ideals in the Vietnam era—End of the Road features assaultive editing patterns, crass images, pummeling sound effects, and stylized performances. It’s a deliberately bizarre experience, derived from a 1958 novel by John Barth that fits somewhere on a continuum with Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Unlike the movies adapted from those books, one of which is an admirable misfire and one of which is a stone classic, Avakian’s End of the Road doesn’t strike a nerve so much as it gets on one’s nerves. The picture is filled with dynamic visuals, impassioned performances, and offbeat themes, but the style of the piece is so aggressively ugly and weird that it’s a chore to watch.

          Plus, like most counterculture-era films, End of the Road is best defined in terms of what it shuns. The movie avoids conventional storytelling tropes and “traditional” American values at every turn, so it’s something of a position paper railing against the Establishment, delivered in the confrontational and fractured idiom of the generation that brought psychedelia into the mainstream. There’s a germ of something human buried inside the trippy flourishes, but good luck latching onto that simple core while enduring headache-inducing montages.

          Stacy Keach stars as Jacob Horner, who walks from his graduation ceremony to a nearby railway station, where he stands in a catatonic state for what appears to be several days before the arrival of a concerned psychiatrist, Doctor D (James Earl Jones). Combative and sarcastic, Doctor D drags Jacob to a facility called “The Farm,” where Doctor D lets lunatics play out their fantasies as a form of therapy. (One patient cross-dresses as a nun, one endures S&M abuse while crucified, and one rapes a chicken.) Doctor D leads Jacob through harsh therapy sessions complete with heavy audiovisual gimmicks and occasional physical punishment. Then he declares Jacob cured and ready for a job.

          Jacob bullshits his way into a gig teaching English at a university, soon befriending fellow teacher Joe Morgan (Harris Yulin) and Joe’s long-suffering wife, Rennie (Dorothy Tristan). Joe’s a weirdo who spends most of his time wearing a Boy Scout uniform, and he’s prone to slapping Rennie around. Jacob begins an affair with Rennie, and their loveplay includes a strange scene of spying on Joe while he thinks he’s alone—as Jacob and Rennie watch from a hiding place, Joe shoves a gun in his mouth and pantomimes suicide, then masturbates while reciting Shakespeare. Meanwhile, Jacob exhibits loopy behavior of his own, at one point parading around in a toga. Eventually, the story resolves with a painfully detailed abortion scene.

          Avakian, who also edited the picture, benefits from the participation of cinematographer Gordon Willis, who notched his first feature credit with this picture; Willis’ muscular images impose coherence onto the madness of the onscreen events. Avakian also makes ample use of Jones, Keach, and Yulin, all of whom provide frightening levels of intensity. Still, the big question remains: Is End of the Road anything more than a hearty fuck-you to normalcy? Further, even though time has not lessened the film’s ability to shock, has time erased the relevance of the narrative—or whatever it is that Avakian employs in place of a narrative? The answers to those questions are very much in the eyes of the beholder. Nonetheless, thanks to its mercilessly abrasive textures, End of the Road is bold and innovative filmmaking that’s deeply evocative of a certain time. While far from essential, it’s at the very least emblematic.

End of the Road: FREAKY

Steel (1979)

          While it’s mildly enjoyable as a manly-man action movie, Steel is actually more amusing when viewed for its unintentional subtext—endeavoring for macho swagger led the filmmakers weirdly close to the realm of gay erotica. The story begins when contractor “Big” Lew Cassidy (George Kennedy) heads to work on a new high-rise he’s building in Texas, explaining that the sight of a tall building “still gives me a hard-on.” When Lew dies in a workplace accident, his pretty daughter Cass (Jennifer O’Neill) pledges to finish the building, thus saving her family’s company from bankruptcy. To do so, she needs a “ramrod”—no, really, that’s the phallic job title of the movie’s real leading character, Mike Catton, played by the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors.

          Mike is a construction foreman who quit working at high altitudes after suddenly developing a fear of heights. Now working as a trucker (picture Majors behind the wheel of a big rig in a cowboy hat and a wife-beater), Mike accepts the job on the condition that he can supervise work from a completed floor instead of climbing onto beams. As Cass’ second-in-command, “Pignose” Morgan (Art Carney), says to Mike: “You’re here because this building will give you a chance to get it up again.” Scout’s honor, that’s the line!

          The first half of the movie comprises Mike building his team of world-class steel workers, Dirty Dozen-style. These roughnecks include such walking clichés as a horny Italian named Valentino (Terry Kiser); a jive-talking African-American named Lionel (Roger E. Mosley); a stoic Indian named Cherokee (Robert Tessier); and a taunting bruiser named Dancer (Richard Lynch). Meanwhile, Lew’s estranged brother, Eddie (Harris Yulin), conspires to derail the project because he wants to seize control of Lew’s company. As the movie progresses, Mike tries to overcome his fear of heights while coaching his fellow dudes through long days of hard work and hard drinking.

          Steel is such a he-man enterprise that even though Majors engages in close physical contact and soft talk with most of his male costars, he can barely muster furtive glances for his nominal love interest, O’Neill. All of this is pleasantly diverting, in a Saturday-matinee kind of way—director Steve Carver’s cartoony style didn’t peak until his 1983 Chuck Norris/David Carradine epic Lone Wolf McQuade, but he moves things along—so it doesn’t really matter that the script is ridiculous, or that Majors is ineffectual as a leading man. Plus, to Carver’s credit, the plentiful scenes taking place on girders high above city streets are enough to give any viewer vertigo. And as for those lingering shots of sweaty men working hard, their biceps glistening in the hot Texas sun . . .

Steel: FUNKY

Doc (1971)

Yet another in the string of revisionist Westerns designed to upend romantic myths about legendary gunfighters, this soft-spoken drama takes a fresh look at tubercular outlaw “Doc” Holliday and his fateful friendship with lawman Wyatt Earp. Stacy Keach, seething with the quiet intensity that made him one of the most interesting leading men of the ’70s, stars as Doc, and Harris Yulin, better known for the character parts he’s played in countless movies and TV shows, costars as Earp. (A miscast and ineffectual Faye Dunaway appears as Katie Elder, Doc’s lover.) Although Doc covers the same events as most Earp stories—he ruthlessly wields his power as the lawman of Tombstone, Arizona, until a showdown with the violent Clanton clan becomes inevitable—the picture examines the events surrounding the notorious “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” from a new perspective. Yulin plays Earp as a cold-blooded opportunist using his badge to build a petty empire, and Doc is the thoughtful but troubled friend drawn into Earp’s grudge match. Written by celebrated newspaper columnist and novelist Pete Hamill, the script for Doc is probably too probing and sensitive for its own good—it’s one thing to strip archetypal heroes of their mythic power in order to reveal the flesh-and-blood people behind the legends, but it’s another thing to make them so blandly ordinary that they’re not interesting enough to sustain a feature-length narrative. Matters are not helped by the fact that director Frank Perry is calling the shots. At his best orchestrating pretentious oddities like The Swimmer (1968) and Play It As It Lays (1972), Perry offers no special flair for straight drama or, for that matter, the unique demands of the Western genre. So while admirable for its intentions, Doc isn’t exciting to watch or even particularly memorable, even though the richly textured performances by Keach and Yulin hint at what the movie could have been.

Doc: FUNKY