Pacific Inferno (1979)

The challenge when discussing this abysmal WWII saga isn’t explaining why it’s a bad movie, but picking the best examples to illustrate how it’s a bad movie. Perhaps it’s the way the first seven minutes of this brief action flick almost exclusively comprise stock footage. Or perhaps it’s the way the filmmakers regularly disrupt any sense of 1940s verisimilitude by awkwardly interjecting ’70s soul music, such as Edwin Starr’s furious anthem “War.” Or perhaps it’s the way star Jim Brown frequently slips into anachronistic dialogue straight out of a low-rent blaxploitation joint, as when his enlisted-man character berates a racist superior officer thusly: “Now you wait a minute, my man—you do whatever you want to me when we get outta here, but until then, don’t mess with my life!” Set and shot in the Philippines, the discombobulated and dull Pacific Inferno concerns a group of American POWs forced by Japanese captors to dive for sunken treasure. Among many galling logical lapses, the captors somehow have extensive personnel files on their prisoners, hence their discovery that characters played by Brown, Richard Jaeckel, and others are experienced divers. One would laugh at this degree of cinematic ineptitude if Pacific Inferno were sufficiently interesting to provoke any reaction beyond boredom. Better to keep a safe distance and ignore that fact that Brown did this to himself, seeing as how he’s listed as an executive producer. Hopefully he enjoyed some pleasant time in the sun between takes.

Pacific Inferno: SQUARE

The Grasshopper (1970)

          How campy is the sexualized melodrama The Grasshopper? In one memorable scene, bereaved heroine Christine Adams (Jacqueline Bisset), still dressed in black from a loved one’s funeral, demands that her limo driver pull to the side of the road and pick up two scraggly-looking hitchhikers. Once the longhairs are inside the limo, Christine screeches, “Are you holding? Do you have any shit?” By the next scene, Christine is unconscious from an overdose, and the movie still has another half-hour to go. Based on a novel by Mark McShane and written by the unlikely duo of Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall, whose most famous collaboration was the 1970-1975 sitcom The Odd Couple, this fast and furious soap opera charts the spiritual decay of a wholesome Canadian girl who tumbles into a degrading cycle of drugs, prostitution, and tragedy. Yet because the Belson/Marshall script is peppered with quippy dialogue and because director Jerry Paris films the whole story with the bright visual style of, say, a Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy, The Grasshopper is impossible to take seriously. Plus, with all due respect to the fine acting skills that she later developed, Bisset plays the leading role with a kind of sunny vapidity, smiling blankly through some scenes and unpersuasively mimicking anguish in others.

          When the movie begins, 19-year-old Christine drops out of college and flees her home in British Columbia to join her boyfriend, who has already begun his working life in Los Angeles. Along the way, Christine has car trouble and is given a ride by Danny Raymond (Corbett Monica), a Las Vegas nightclub comedian. Although Christine declines Danny’s sexual overtures, she’s dazzled by Sin City while staying overnight there. So when Christine grows bored with her quietly domestic life in LA, she ditches her boyfriend and returns to Vegas, where she gets a job as a showgirl. Eventually, she becomes romantically involved with Tommy Marcott (Jm Brown), an ex-NFL player now working as the manager of a cheesy football-themed restaurant. For a few moments depicting the heyday of the relationship between Christine and Tommy, The Grasshopper is energetic and fresh—addressing miscegenation without sensationalism, the movie draws a connection between two people who wish to be appreciated for more than just their bodies. Alas, Christine’s chance encounter with a horny, Mob-connected businessman (Ramon Bieri) triggers violence, which in turn begins the spiral leading to Christine’s drug problems and sex work. By the end of the picture, when Christine is juggling relationships with an aging sugar daddy (Joseph Cotten) and a craven young stud (Christopher Stone), the lurid aspects of The Grasshopper have spun out of control.

          From start to finish, the presentation of The Grasshopper is slick but garish, epitomized by Christine’s showgirl costume of a blue wig, a sparkly leotard complete with built-in pasties, and giant feather wings. Meanwhile, the soundtrack features absurdly on-the-nose songs explaining the heroine’s emotional state. Brown elevates his scenes with the casual cool he brought to all of his screen work, and some of the supporting players are excellent, particularly Ed Flanders as a sleazy hotel manager. Nonetheless, The Grasshopper is unrelentingly artificial, a cautionary tale without credibility, and a jokey treatment of bleak subject matter.

The Grasshopper: FUNKY

Three the Hard Way (1974)

One of three features costarring blaxploitation luminaries Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—the others are Take a Hard Ride (1975) and One Down, Two to Go (1982)—this muddled conspiracy thriller represents a missed opportunity on many levels. Not only does director Gordon Parks Jr. fail to exploit the action-hero possibilities created by the participation of his three stars, but the picture includes what should be the ultimate campy blaxploitation premise, only to botch the notion’s potential via confusing storytelling, dull pacing, and flat characterization. Bad guy Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson) creates a serum that, when introduced into the water supply of major cities, will kill every black person who consumes the serum. Yet instead of introducing this outlandish concept right at the beginning, thereby positioning the titular trio as African-American crusaders, the filmmakers take a good half-hour to get to the point. Worse, the characters played by Brown, Kelly, and Williamson don’t join forces until fairly late in the story, so Three the Hard Way feels less like a men-on-a-mission picture and more like a hodgepodge of scenes from three separate movies. The filmmakers also waste lots of time on nonsense, such as the very long sequence of Brown’s character producing a recording session for an R&B vocal group. And whenever Three the Hard Way tries to deliver the blaxploitation goods, the material feels half-hearted. For instance, the scene of martial artist Kelly fighting off something like a dozen armed assailants with his bare hands (and feet) is ridiculous, especially because Parks can’t muster camera angles that properly accentuate the action. (The haphazard shooting style makes the encounter feel like a run-through instead of a fully realized scene.) And then there’s the one truly bizarre sequence in the picture—at one point, the heroes recruit three motorcycle-riding babes to doff their tops and then interrogate a prisoner using some sort of sex torture. Like most everything else in Three the Hard Way, the scene is lurid but nonsensical.

Three the Hard Way: LAME

Fingers (1978)

          The first movie directed by James Toback, a ferocious chronicler of the male animal in extremis, Fingers can be viewed as a blueblood’s response to the cinema of Martin Scorsese. Whereas Scorsese made his name by dramatizing the lives of small-time hoods prowling the streets of New York, Toback announced his presence by depicting intersections between New York street crime and the city’s supposedly civilized intelligentsia. In his script for The Gambler (1974), which was directed by Karel Reisz, Toback presented the semiautobiographical character of a college professor who spends his private hours feeding his gambling addiction no matter how dangerous his circumstances become. In Fingers, Toback introduces a character following the opposite trajectory, thereby approaching the same themes from a different perspective.

          Jimmy “Fingers” Angelelli (Harvey Keitel) is the son of aging loan shark Ben Angelleli (Michael V. Gazzo), but Jimmy wants more from life than threatening people for repayment. A self-taught pianist, he has visions of performing on the Carnegie Hall stage, and he may or may not have sufficient talent to realize his dream. As with all of the troubled men in Toback’s movies, however, Jimmy is his own worst enemy. Not only does he allow feelings of guilt and obligation to pull him deeper into his father’s violent world, but Jimmy is a sexual daredevil who can’t resist the thrill of the chase. Everything in Jimmy’s twisted psyche conspires to shift his focus away from his dreams. Even before the grim machinations of the plot take hold, this is grim material on every level—meaning that Fingers exists in the creative sweet spot for both Toback and leading man Keitel.

          Toback has a special gift for showing how testosterone drives men to madness, and he’s also a master at creating fully rounded leading characters—by accumulating detail and drawing subtle connections, Toback creates a space in which strange behaviors feel like eccentricities instead of literary contrivances. Jimmy blows through his world like a whirlwind, all fidgety energy and pretentious scarves, and he nearly always carries a portable radio issuing vintage pop tunes along the lines of “Mockingbird” and “One Fine Day”; the juxtaposition of these sweet melodies with the savage nature of Jimmy’s actions is strangely appropriate.

          Toback also plays an interesting game by having Jimmy alternate between gutter vulgarity and outrageously lofty dialogue, because it’s clear that Jimmy receives messages on frequencies inaudible to others. Consider this jaw-dropping pickup line, which Jimmy uses on artist/prostitute Carol (Tisa Farrow): “Don’t you understand? I’m going to bring you into your dreams of yourself. All you have to do is believe in me.” Showing his street side, Jimmy takes a wholly different tack when trying to make time with gang moll Julie (Tanya Roberts), cooing that he can sense her nether regions are like “silk.”

          Fingers goes to many, many strange places—for instance, the subplot about Jimmy’s encounters with Carol’s brutal pimp, Dreems (Jim Brown)—even though the movie eventually drifts down to earth for a violent finale that borrows from the Scorsese playbook. Keitel gives one of his most crucial performances, employing so much intensity while channeling the soul of the peculiar man he portrays that Jimmy seems alternately magnetic, pathetic, and terrifying. While very much an acquired taste thanks to its bone-deep darkness, its fascination with sleaze, and its primitive portrayal of women, Fingers ranks among the most unique American directorial debuts of the ’70s.

Fingers: GROOVY

Black Gunn (1972)

          Despite tasty dialogue and a virile performance by leading man Jim Brown, the blaxploitation actioner Black Gunn is never more than mediocre. The plot introduces a number of exciting elements that should create friction, such as a war between a black-power activist group and Italian mobsters, but cowriter/director Robert Hatford-Davis focuses too heavily on dialogue, relegating action scenes to the periphery of the movie. Further, Hartford-Davis and his collaborators can’t figure out how to utilize important characters—so, for instance, costar Martin Landau barely appears in the film even though he’s ostensibly the main villain, hence his second billing after Brown. All in all, the movie is watchable, but just barely. Set in Los Angeles, Black Gunn kicks off with an armed robbery at a secret mob office. Invaders steal cash and incriminating ledgers. The robbery was executed by soldiers of the Black Action Group (BAG), one of whom is a young man named Scott (Herbert Jefferson Jr.), and Scott asks his older brother, nightclub proprietor Gunn (Brown), to stash the ledgers. Soon afterward, Gunn finds himself caught in the middle of the aforementioned war. Also thrown into the mix are policemen who are investigating BAG’s activities and trying to take down the mob.

          All of this should play out smoothly, providing a steady stream of chases and fights and shootouts, but Hartford-Davis lets the film go slack during long interludes of quasi-casual conversation. On the plus side, some of the dialogue is hip and snide, with Brown and costar Bernie Casey—who plays a BAG operative—coming off especially well whenever they spew insults and threats. (Leading lady Brenda Sykes is wasted as badly as Landau, while Bruce Glover—who plays a sadistic mob enforcer—has some amusingly over-the-top moments even though his characterization is largely pedestrian.) It’s worth noting that as blaxploitation movies go, Black Gunn is restrained in the area of presenting African-American stereotypes, since most of the black characters in the movie seem resourceful and tough. The problem, of course, is that restraint is not the quality viewers generally seek from blaxploitation movies. So by the time Black Gunn busts out the heavy artillery for a perfunctory shoot-’em-up finale, it’s very much a case of too little, too late.

Black Gunn: FUNKY

Slaughter (1972) & Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off (1973)

          For various reasons, it’s not entirely accurate to call the 1972 Jim Brown movie Slaughter a blaxploitation flick. After all, ex-football player Brown was already a movie star before the blaxploitation genre emerged; he’s nearly the only actor of color in the movie; the story takes place outside the urban milieu normally associated with the genre; and certain tropes in Slaughter, such as the lead character’s sexual appeal to white women, had been present in Brown’s cinematic output since the late ’60s. That said, even if Slaughter wasn’t conceived as a blaxploitation movie, it was completed and marketed as one—the funky Billy Preston theme song and the “stickin’ it to the man” vibe of promotional materials reflect the influence of films including Shaft (1971). Anyway, if all this quibbling about categories seems tangential to the movie itself, that’s because Slaughter is so vapid that there’s not much to discuss in the way of actual content.

          Brown stars as Slaughter, an ex-Green Beret whose parents are murdered by mobsters. After killing two functionaries in reprisal, Slaughter is offered amnesty by the Feds so long as he travels to South America and takes out higher-level mobsters. That puts Slaughter into the orbit of crooks including Hoffo (Rip Torn), whose girl, Ann (Stella Stevens), is assigned to seduce Slaughter. (Torn lends a fair measure of weirdness, and Stevens mostly parades around in various states of undress.) A romantic triangle emerges, and everything leads, inevitably to a big showdown. Director Jack Starrett fills Slaughter with car chases, fistfights, shoot-outs, and nudity—Stevens’ topless appearance is probably the most memorable scene in the movie—but it’s all quite crude and routine. Brown holds the thing together, more or less, with his casual cool, and it’s a kick to hear Slaughter describe himself as “the baddest cat that ever walked the earth.” Thankfully, costar Don Gordon livens things up by providing comic relief as Slaughter’s unlikely sidekick; as is true for every other actor in the picture, however, he’s forced to make the best of clichéd dramatic situations.

          When the Slaughter character returned to movie screens a year later, in Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, a new creative team was in place, led by director Gordon Douglas, and their mandate was clearly to make a full-on blaxploitation joint. Unlike its predecessor, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off is filled with hookers, pimps, slang, terrible clothes, and white women who can’t get enough of Slaughter—played, once more, by Brown. Deepening its blaxploitation bona fides, the sequel even boasts a high-octane funk score by the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. The story is diffuse, because even though the plot kicks off with another murder/revenge scenario, the narrative gets mired in convoluted underworld machinations. Furthermore, there’s zero urgency in the story until the very end, so Slaughter spends lots of time driving around, enjoying meals, and getting laid. Plus, in lieu of the previous film’s Rip Torn, the sequel’s main villain is played by Ed McMahon, better known as Johnny Carson’s second banana. McMahon does competent work, but he hardly makes a formidable opponent for “the baddest cat that ever walked the earth” (a line reprised in the sequel). Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off also loses points for a narrative predicated on wildly incompetent assassins, seeing as how the lead character survives a crazy number of attempts on his life. Neither of the Slaughter films is genuinely awful, but neither of them is anything special, either.

Slaughter: FUNKY

Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off: FUNKY

Take a Hard Ride (1975)

          Despite featuring several interesting B-movie personalities and despite having a solid story premise, the European-made Western Take a Hard Ride never realizes its potential. Part of the problem has to do with audience expectations. Since the movie features blaxploitation stars Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—as well as spaghetti-Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef—the obvious approach would have been to combine the actors into a fighting unit for a Magnificent Seven-style flick. Alas, Take a Hard Ride is essentially a Brown-Williamson buddy picture in which Kelly and Van Cleef, among others, play supporting roles. Worse, director Antonio Margheriti employs a hacky visual style that makes every scene feel haphazard and rushed. The picture is watchable, but it gets awfully dull after a while, especially because Brown and Williamson end up playing repetitive variations on the exact same scene for most of the film’s middle hour.

          The story hook is simple enough. Black gunslinger Pike (Brown) accompanies his white boss, rancher Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews), to the end of a cattle drive, where Morgan gets paid $86,000 in cash. After Morgan has a fatal heart attack, the sterling Pike vows to return the money to Morgan’s widow. Unfortunately, once Pike sets off on his journey, various criminals get wind of his cargo and conspire to ambush him. One such outlaw, slick gambler Tyree (Williamson), saves Pike from an attacker and subsequently accompanies Pike on the trail—even though Tyree says outright that he plans to rob Pike once they reach the Mexican border. Another pursuer is Kiefer (Van Cleef), a bounty hunter who eventually gathers a small army of money-hungry varmints to chase after Pike. There’s also a subplot involving an ex-hooker, Catherine (Catherine Spaak), whom Pike and Tyree rescue from rapists—she joins Pike’s group, as does her mute Indian sidekick, Kashtok (Kelly).

          Considering that Take a Hard Ride is basically a chase movie, it’s amazing how little excitement the narrative generates. The script is filled with dull scenes of Pike and Tyree challenging each other, and the supporting characters are under-utilized; for instance, Kiefer spends most of the picture standing on ridges and squinting while other people get into fights. And speaking of the movie’s numerous battles, none is novel or surprising—think standard fire-and-duck shootouts, with the minor exception of quick bits during which Kelly takes down attackers with karate and throwing knives. If one struggles for a compliment, it could be noted that Take a Hard Ride has better production values that most movies starring Van Cleef or Williamson—but that’s not saying much.

Take a Hard Ride: 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

The Slams (1973)

          Ostensibly a blaxploitation picture because it stars Jim Brown, the imposing football player-turned-actor, The Slams is actually a straightforward prison-break flick with a sprinkling of urban style. Curtis Hook (Brown) helps steal a briefcase full of a dope, as well as a half-million dollars in cash, from organized-crime types. However, Hook’s accomplices turn on him, so he kills them and gets a nasty gunshot wound for his trouble. After destroying the drugs and hiding the cash, Hook tries to drive to a hospital but runs off the road in view of a cop, leading to his incarceration. Once he’s in prison, Hook becomes a target for convicts after his stolen loot, and he gets into hassles with a corrupt guard and a mobster. Hoping to wait out his jail term, Hook discovers that the building where he stashed the stolen cash is scheduled for demolition, so he enlists his girlfriend and a pal for assistance in busting out of the joint.

          The Slams has some gruesome murders, and Hooks’ climactic escape attempt is fairly suspenseful, so the movie is pleasantly diverting even though it’s not memorable. Brown does his usual super-cool thing, working badass mojo during action scenes and likeable swagger while making time with his lady; in other words, he’s on macho autopilot, but his reserved quality works for a story about a dude keeping secrets from everyone around him. None of the supporting players has much impact, though leading lady Judy Pace is sexy and it’s a hoot to see Ted Cassidy playing Hooks’ main prison-yard antagonist. The six-foot-nine character player best known as “Lurch” from the ’60s TV series The Addams Family, Cassidy naturally looked like a cartoon character (and sounded like one, thanks to his impossibly deep voice), so he cuts an appropriately outsized figure.

          The Slams was directed by Jonathan Kaplan while he was making his way up from the B-movie slum of sexploitation movies to the legitimate terrain of studio pictures like The Accused (1988). Kaplan keeps the movie fast and violent, though he didn’t fully commit to the kitschy joys of blaxploitation until his next movie, the luridly entertaining Truck Turner (1974). (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Slams: FUNKY

El Condor (1970)

          South-of-the-border Western El Condor offers plenty of nasty violence, a splash of bickering-buddies humor, and a show-stopping nude scene, but the characters and storyline are so threadbare it’s impossible to feel more than lizard-brain reactions. If the preceding is enough to pique your interest, or if you dig watching former NFL star Jim Brown swagger his way through dangerous situations, then El Condor will provide an undemanding (and unrewarding) distraction. Otherwise, expect a bit of a slog. Brown plays Luke, an escaped convict who happens upon dimwitted prospector Jaroo (Lee Van Cleef). Together they contrive a plan to lead Apaches in a siege on a fortress containing a huge trove of gold bars. This puts Luke and Jaroo into conflict with the fortress’s sadistic commandant, Chavez (Patrick O’Neal). Further complications arise when Luke becomes attracted to Chavez’s comely companion, Claudine (Marianna Hill).

          Alas, everything before the spectacular climax is just foreplay. Scenes establishing the dynamic between Luke and Jaroo include such queasy vignettes as a “comedy” bit of the dudes getting tarred and feathered. And while Brown’s role basically makes sense—an outlaw with a moral code—Van Cleef’s characterization shifts from scene to scene. Sometimes he’s a master criminal, sometimes he’s a bumbling idiot, and in one eye-roll-inducing sequence, he’s a tender father figure. Yet Van Cleef has it easy compared to O’Neal and Hill. Calling O’Neal’s character one-dimensional would require exaggeration, and Hill’s character is zero-dimensional because her only consequential action defies comprehension. (Spoiler alert!) In the lead-up to the siege, Claudine inexplicably decides to distract the fortress’ soldiers by stripping naked in public view. Why? Apparently she’s intoxicated by the idea of getting intimate with Luke, which tracks with the movie’s retrograde portrayals of Apaches and Mexicans as mindless savages.

          On the plus side, the other memorable component of the siege is the imagery of Brown, Van Cleef, and the Apaches climbing fortress walls with metal claws. Moreover, Brown’s supercool vibe is always watchable, and Van Cleef is effectively squirmy and sweaty. As for behind-the-camera talent, B-movie icon Larry Cohen wrote the shooting script, so his unique style of cheerful sensationalism permeates the picture. (Actual line spoken by O’Neal to Hill: “You’re a crazy, annoying child, bitch—and I love you.”) Additionally, director John Guillermin contributes his usual elegant camerawork, giving this lurid enterprise much more gloss than it deserves.

El Condor: FUNKY

. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . (1970)

Gotta love a Southern racial-tension flick that begins on a day hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement—as shown by an egg actually frying on the pavement. That opening scene perfectly captures the pulpy entertainment value of this drama starring Jim Brown, George Kennedy, and Fredric March. Brown plays Jimmy Price, the first black man elected sheriff of a small Deep South community, and Kennedy plays John Little, the white predecessor who angrily surrenders his badge. Camping it up with amusing details like taped-together cigars and a Colonel Sanders string tie, Hollywood veteran March is along for the ride as the mayor who tries to keep his town from exploding after Price’s polarizing election. The plotting is arch (Price alienates half the town by arresting a white man, and the other half by arresting a black man), but the pacing is swift and the performances seethe with sweaty intensity. Brown’s low-key persona and Kennedy’s combustive style make for a fun combination, and they’re surrounded by vibrant personalities: Clifton James plays a strutting redneck who grows a conscience, Bernie Casey plays a hot-headed townie resentful of Price, and veteran varmints Anthony James and Dub Taylor lurk around the periphery of scenes, adding Southern-fried flavor. The movie’s wildly inappropriate music adds to the overripe appeal, like the random use of “Gentle on My Mind” during a scene of Price chasing down a drunk who killed a six-year-old girl in a traffic accident. Oddly pitched ’70s cinema doesn’t get much better than that, except perhaps when Brown forces a straight face for lines like, “I’m the sheriff. Not the white sheriff, not the black sheriff, not the soul sheriff, but the sheriff.” (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

. . . tick . . . tick  . . . tick . . . : FUNKY