Brotherly Love (1970)

          Adapted by James Kennaway from his play Country Dance (the title under which this British/American coproduction was released in the UK), Brotherly Love features Peter O’Toole at his most gloriously unhinged, with elegant Susannah York providing an effective counterpoint. The movie is long-winded, pretentious, and unpleasant, but in some ways those qualities are virtues—although Brotherly Love lacks true resonance, it has a certain sort of twisted integrity. The gist of the piece is that Sir Charles Ferguson (O’Toole) is a deranged aristocrat who enjoys complicating the relationship between his sister, Hilary (York), and her estranged husband, Douglas (Michael Craig), although none dare name the reason why until the final confrontation. By that point, of course, viewers have gleaned that Sir Charles’ affection for Hilary goes beyond the normal feelings of one sibling for another. Unanswered questions include how aware Hilary is of her brother’s incestuous interest, and how she truly feels about his ardor. In one scene, for instance, she rises from a bathtub so Sir Charles can drape her with a towel before removing his own modest covering and slipping into the bathwater.

          Woven into the storyline is a thread about Sir Charles attempting self-destruction, as when he deliberately fires a shotgun a few inches from his ear, and another thread about Sir Charles devolving into madness. O’Toole plays this psychosexual stuff with his usual mixture of authority and obnoxiousness. In some scenes, he’s remarkably sensitive as he weaves through complex dialogue and intricate behavior—but in other scenes, he simply shouts for emphasis, bludgeoning the already-questionable textures of Kennaway’s script. Not helping matters is the presence behind the camera of director J. Lee Thompson, a man best known for helming violent thrillers. He’s beyond his ken here, incapable of creating or maintaining a consistent tone. Thompson’s emphatic scenes are tiresome, and his quiet scenes are just tired. Only the dexterity of the cast and the visual interest of Scottish locations keep the piece watchable at its most undisciplined. That said, all involved deserve praise for the understated final showdown between Sir Charles, Douglas, and Hilary—that one moment, played in a dark basement, has the grounded anguish missing from the rest of the movie.

Brotherly Love: FUNKY

Under Milk Wood (1972)

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

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

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

Under Milk Wood: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Stunt Man

          To grasp the unique power of The Stunt Man, one need merely examine the impact that it had on the career of Richard Rush, who cowrote, produced, and directed the picture. The Stunt Man curried enough favor for Rush to earn twin Oscar nominations, for direction and screenwriting—but the movie also flopped so badly that it helped derail Rush’s filmmaking career. He didn’t step behind the camera again for 14 years, and his would-be comeback was the notorious bomb Color of Night (1994), an execrable erotic thriller starring Bruce Willis. That’s The Stunt Man in a nutshell: It’s simultaneously a pretentious misfire and a visionary masterpiece. The same extremes that make The Stunt Man beguiling and memorable also make the movie deeply frustrating. Continuing this duality, The Stunt Man is both a dark mystery/thriller and a vicious satire about Hollywood filmmaking. Rush’s movie is not for everyone, but it’s a singular experience.

          Based on a novel by Paul Brodeur and adapted for the screen by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus, The Stunt Man takes place almost exclusively in and around the opulent location shoot for a World War I-themed action movie. At the beginning of the picture, mystery man Cameron (Steve Railsback) flees the police and stumbles onto the shoot at the same moment a stunt man dies in a helicopter crash. The director of the movie-within-the movie, Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), senses a unique opportunity. A domineering and manipulative sociopath, Eli discovers that Cameron feels responsible for the accident, so he offers to let Cameron assume the stunt man’s identity, thereby hiding from the police. Energizing the Faustian metaphor that runs through the film, Eli uses blackmail to leverage Cameron’s soul. The director goads Cameron into performing a series of dangerous stunts, leading inevitably toward a gag so risky that Cameron becomes convinced Eli is willing to kill Cameron for a spectacular scene.

          As all of this is unfolding, Cameron becomes romantically involved with the leading lady of the movie-within-the-movie, Nina (Barbara Hershey). Yet Eli’s thirst for control extends to Nina, as well, and the psychological abuse that Eli heaps upon Nina is horrific.

          The Stunt Man is a flamboyant piece of work, with Rush aiming for fireworks on every level. The story is frenetic and grandiose. The performances are unrelentingly intense. The camerawork is wild, because Rush and cinematographer Mario Tosi employ crowded compositions, operatic movements, and rich colors to create a larger-than-life style. Even the music, by Dominic Frontiere, virtually screams. Given the voluptuousness of Rush’s cinematic attack, it’s surprising that the most resonant moments in The Stunt Man are intimate.  Specifically, the movie’s best scene involves Cross’ ultimate humiliation of Nina, because O’Toole’s Oscar-nominated performance reaches a peak of sadism at the same time Hershey incarnates vulnerability.

          To a certain degree, Railsback is the odd man out, partially because the nature of the story requires his character to be a cipher, and partially because it’s hard to shake the indelible link between Railsback and Charles Manson, whom the actor unforgettably portrayed in the TV movie Helter Skelter (1976). Yet this, too, works in Rush’s favor—the title character of The Stunt Man seems more like a pawn on a chessboard than a human being. Fitting its title, The Stunt Man offers impressive stunt work, particularly a long foot chase across the rooftop of a beautiful hotel. And that reflects another strange irony—for all of its quasi-literary aspirations, The Stunt Man is fundamentally an action movie. Which begs the question—is The Stunt Man a confused endeavor at war with itself, or a brilliant fusion of disparate elements? Yes.

The Stunt Man: GROOVY

Foxtrot (1976)

          A peculiar meditation on the nature of war that feels as if it was extrapolated from some high-minded novel, when in fact the story is an original creation by director Arturo Ripstein and his collaborators, Foxtrot explores the fanciful idea of a super-wealthy aristocrat fleeing civilization during a time of impending military conflict, only to realize that the seeds of war are buried so deeply within humankind that isolation is no protection. (Note the film’s alternate titles, The Far Side of Paradise and The Other Side of Paradise.) From a sociopolitical perspective, there’s some fascinating stuff to explore here. Unfortunately, the concepts don’t quite translate to full-blooded drama, a problem that’s compounded by the stilted performances of the film’s three leading actors. Furthermore, even though Foxtrot feels, looks, and sounds like a sophisticated intellectual exercise, it suffers from an excess of narrative contrivances, and Ripstein’s thematic ambitions often result in pretentiousness. Accordingly, the movie is frustrating and uneven, though basically worthwhile.

          Set in the early days of World War II, the picture concerns Count Liviu (Peter O’Toole), a European of considerable means. Traveling by yacht along with his elegantly beautiful wife, Julia (Charlotte Rampling), Liviu reaches a remote tropical island that he has purchased as a refuge. Waiting on the island is Liviu’s best friend, Larsen (Max von Sydow), who has established a camp replete with luxurious appointments and servants. For a brief while, the group enjoys a decadent idyll, but then a boatful of obnoxious Europeans drifts by the island, joins Liviu’s group for a dance party that becomes an orgy, and embarks on a “hunting trip” during which every animal on the island is pointlessly slaughtered. Once the visitors leave, additional problems ranging from jealousy to plague endanger Liviu’s scheme.

          The movie’s narrative is consistently interesting, even though very little of it rings true, and the technical execution of the picture is quite polished. Yet Foxtrot gets stuck in a groove because of tone. O’Toole and Rampling both underplay their roles, incarnating repression to a fault, while Von Sydow tries to make the dubious rhythms of his character’s arc feel authentic. By the time Ripstein concludes the movie with a heavy-handed juxtaposition of beauty and violence, it’s clear his literary aspirations have gotten the best of him. Nonetheless, the picture boasts several beguiling moments, particularly Rampling’s final scene, and it’s ultimately a unique piece of work.

Foxtrot: FUNKY

Man of La Mancha (1972)

          Convoluted circumstances worked against the makers of Man of La Mancha, a troubled film adaptation of the enduring stage musical that premiered in 1964, so it’s no surprise the picture earned enmity during its original release and has failed to curry much favor during the ensuing years. Bloated, grim, miscast, old-fashioned, and over-plotted, the picture seems utterly bereft of whatever charms have captivated fans of the stage version throughout decades of revivals. Even the picture’s magnificent look, courtesy of cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s painterly images and enough production-design eye candy to make Terry Gilliam jealous, is insufficient to hold the viewer’s attention as Man of La Mancha lumbers through 132 very long minutes.

          Reviewing some of the tortured history behind the project reveals why it was doomed to mediocrity, if not outright failure. In 1959, CBS broadcast a dramatic play for television titled I, Don Quixote, written by Dale Wasserman. In the story, which is set during the Spanish Inquisition, author Miguel de Cervantes gets thrown in jail and put on “trial” by his fellow inmates. Then he defends himself by describing his in-progress novel, Don Quixote, about a madman who thinks he’s a knight. All of this material, of course, was a riff on the real book Don Quixote, written by the real Cervantes. After the TV broadcast, Wasserman was invited to transform the play into a musical. Hence Man of La Mancha. A trip to the big screen seemed inevitable, given the success of the musical and the ubiquity of the musical’s theme song, “The Impossible Dream.” (Everyone from Cher to Frank Sinatra to the Temptations had a go at the song while Man of La Mancha was still on Broadway, and it briefly became a staple of Elvis Presley’s act.) Actors, directors, and producers dropped in and out of the project while debates raged about whether or not to include the music.

          When the dust settled, journeyman director Arthur Hiller inherited a cast featuring James Coco (as Cervantes/Quixote’s sidekick), Sophia Loren (as the hero’s love interest), and Peter O’Toole (as Cervantes/Quixote). O’Toole was many things, but a singer was not one of them, so the die was pretty much cast when he was given the lead role. O’Toole is potent in the film’s dramatic scenes, speechifying gloriously about dreams and honor, but it’s irritating to watch him lip-sync while John Gilbert’s voice flows on the soundtrack. Equally frustrating is watching Loren struggle with her singing chores, since her voice lacks beauty and singularity.

          And then there’s the jumbled storyline. The sequences in the dungeon require much suspension of disbelief, and the play-within-a-play bits are weirdly stylized—some exterior scenes were filmed on location, while others were shot on a soundstage with glaringly fake backdrops. Once the play-within-a-play gets mired in messy subplots during the middle of the movie, Man of La Mancha goes off the rails completely, resulting in tedium. The filmmakers would have been better served by a bolder choice—either diving wholeheartedly into musical terrain by presenting something as chipper and treacly as the music, or veering all the way back to Wasserman’s dramatic source material. Hell, even making a straightforward film of Don Quixote, with the same cast, would have been preferable. Man of La Mancha isn’t an excruciating mess, like so many other overwrought musicals of the same era, but it’s a mess nonetheless.

Man of La Mancha: FUNKY

Rosebud (1975)

          Following the horrors of the 1972 Munich Olympics, the pro-Palestine terrorist organization Black September was depicted in a number of film projects, some based on real events and some wholly fictional. In addition to this picture, which was extrapolated by producer-director Otto Preminger from a novel by Paul Bonnecarrère and Joan Hemingway, Black September appears in the big-budget thriller Black Sunday (1977). Yet while Black Sunday is a robust action thriller, Rosebud is a talky procedural depicting the complex international response to a politically motivated kidnapping. Like many of Preminger’s movies, Rosebud is simultaneously too smart for its own good—issues are discussed at such great length that the movie sometimes seems like a talk show—and too tidy. Even with the presence of characters who personify the ambiguity of the modern world, Rosebud is dry and schematic. This is exacerbated by Preminger’s predilection for scenes in which characters sit or stand in one position while delivering reams of dialogue.

          Dramaturgical shortcomings aside, Rosebud is somewhat compelling because of its level of detail. The picture begins by introducing a group of young women from various countries as they hop onto the massive yacht Rosebud, which is docked in the Mediterranean and owned by French businessman Charles-Andre Fargeau (Claude Dauphin), who is grandfather to one of the ladies. After Black September operatives hijack the boat and move the women to a hidden location, Fargeau hires Larry Martin (Peter O’Toole), a CIA-trained operative, to engineer the release of the women. Extensive back-and-forth maneuvers ensue. The terrorists use ingenious means to obfuscate their location while issuing films in which the captives read lists of demands. Larry tracks the source of the terrorists’ finances to an Englishman named Edward Sloat (Richard Attenborough), who converted to Islam and became a fanatic. Meanwhile, individuals including an activist sympathetic to the Palestinian cause are used as pawns, by both sides in the conflict, to gain information and leverage.

          Some of the scenes depicting backroom negotiations feel sterile, thanks to drab staging and inconsistent acting, but the script—credited to Preminger’s son, Erik Lee Preminger—is painstaking in the extreme. Even the film’s handful of action scenes, such as the hijacking and the climactic assault on the kidnappers’ lair, include copious details about methodology. Plus, as Preminger did in Exodus (1960) and other politically themed films, the filmmaker paints a complicated picture by showing how crisscrossing agendas create problems—for instance, while the parents of the kidnapped women want to capitulate, government officials from America and Israel advocate hard-line stances toward negotiating with terrorists. So, while Rosebud is infinitely more cerebral than visceral, the story is muscular and relevant.

          As for the performances, O’Toole dominates with his signature brand of civilized cruelty, and Attenborough infuses his small part with to-the-manor-born indignation. Kim Cattrall, in her movie debut, provides streetwise edge playing one of the kidnapped women, and Gallic star Isabelle Huppert lends dignity to the role of a released hostage who participates in the effort to rescue her friends. Other notables in the cast are Cliff Gorman (as an Israeli intelligence officer) and Raf Vallone (as the courtly father of Huppert’s character).

Rosebud: GROOVY

Rogue Male (1976)

          Fascinating but flawed, this adaptation of Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel was made for the BBC and never properly released in the U.S. Nonetheless, the picture tells such an interesting story, and features such a masterful performance by leading man Peter O’Toole, that it’s well worth seeking out for fans of offbeat thrillers. The film begins, literally, with a bang. Absent any explanation for how and why the circumstances emerged, the first scene features Sir Robert Hunter (O’Toole) pointing a powerful rifle at Adolf Hitler, who is enjoying an outdoor lunch near a country estate. Alas, Hunter’s shot misses the mark. Then the would-be assassin is captured by Hitler’s guards and tortured for an explanation of why he tried to kill Der Fürher. Incredibly, Hunter escapes and makes his way back to England—through a combination of endurance, luck, and wit—but that doesn’t end his troubles. Dogged German agents track Hunter down, forcing the Englishman to go into hiding even as global politics change perceptions of what he did.

          Set in the 1930s, before Germany and the UK became enemies, the film plays a clever game of withholding the truth about Hunter’s motivation. His planned killing wouldn’t have been an act of war, per se, but the revelation of why he put Hitler in the crosshairs is too cryptic to be entirely satisfying. Further, director Clive Donner and screenwriter Frederic Raphael employ a few awkward literary devices, such as having Robert explain his feelings during soliloquies and having various characters provide narration at random moments. Yet these are essentially minor issues, considering that most of Rogue Male is compelling and surprising. The first act, filled with bravado and danger and violence, is mesmerizing. The middle of the picture, which alternates between Hunter’s secret-agent type operations in London and his guerilla tactics in the countryside, twists in unexpected ways. And the finale, an extended showdown between Robert and his chief pursuer, bursts with intelligence in the form of debate and strategy.

          Raphael’s script works equally well during wordless moments, such as a long chase scene set in the London subway, and during lengthy dialogue exchanges. Similarly, O’Toole thrives in both extremes. His graceful physicality makes his silent scenes magnetic, and few actors convey the British idiom more entertainingly than O’Toole. (After being tortured and pushed off a cliff, Hunter dryly remarks, “I’ve had a bit of a bother.”) Also benefiting from Raphael’s best lines are costars John Standing, who plays an Englishman collaborating with the Nazis, and movie veteran Alistair Sim, who plays Hunter’s politically connected uncle. In fact, the flair of the movie’s dialogue is neatly encapsulated by one of Sim’s lines: “Shooting heads of state is never in season—they’re protected, like osprey.” Ultimately, however, it’s the sleek melding of urbane language and visceral visuals that keeps Rogue Male interesting. Despite significant hiccups in its storytelling, Rogue Male covers unique terrain in a unique fashion.

Rogue Male: GROOVY

The Ruling Class (1972)

          Insanity is the watchword when discussing the British satirical film The Ruling Class, adapted for the screen by Peter Barnes from his play of the same name and starring the incomparable Peter O’Toole. (Completing the purely coincidental Peter troika, the film was directed by Peter Medak.) Not only is insanity the subject of The Ruling Class, insanity is the best possible explanation for the existence of the picture. Surely, no reasonable person could have imagined success would flow from a project brimming with rude jabs at the moneyed caste of English society, quasi-sacrilegious jokes at the expense of Christianity, and surreal song-and-dance interludes. To describe this as risky material is to make a gross understatement, since The Ruling Class has something to offend—or at least completely bewilder—nearly everyone.

          Set largely on a British estate, the story begins when the 13th Earl of Gurney, Ralph Gurney (Harry Andrews), commits suicide in spectacular fashion. A ballerina’s tutu, a military uniform, and autoerotic self-asphyxiation are involved. After Ralph’s death, control of the Gurney estate falls to Jack Gurney (O’Toole), who has spent much of his life in psychiatric institutions. A flamboyant narcissist who thinks he’s God and tends to express himself through musical performance, Jack is so unambiguously crazy that he makes seemingly easy prey for Sir Charles (William Mervyn), a relative scheming to declare Jack unstable and thereby seize control of the family empire. Unfortunately for Sir Charles, Jack proves more formidable than expected.

          Furthermore, Sir Charles’ machinations are complicated by the strict requirements of English upper-class decorum, and that’s where the strongest elements of Barnes’ satire emerge. While far from subtle, Barnes’ strategy is to skewer a strata of people so entitled they consider deviation from social norms an inalienable right. In other words, nothing a nobleman or noblewoman does is wrong by dint of the fact that “the ruling class” has limitless largesse.

          Using this narrative framework as a license to play, Barnes (and, by extension, Medak) lets loose with myriad strange scenes. For instance, Jack spends part of the movie in full Jesus drag, delivering imperious dialogue from the cross on which he mimics crucifixion. Yet Barnes doesn’t allow The Ruling Class to float completely into the ether of anything-goes chaos, because he grounds the story—somewhat—with easily recognizable conflicts including Sir Charles’ battle for supremacy and Jack’s theological debates with Bishop Lampton (Alistair Sim), an elderly clergyman who finds Jack’s antics maddening.

          Judged by conventional criteria, The Ruling Class is an overindulgent freakshow, sprawling across two and a half hours. Taken on its own terms, however, the movie is strangely beguiling, especially because O’Toole attacks the main role with such vigor. In fact, one could easily complain that O’Tool demonstrates too much vigor, since his flouncing and screaming and speechifying gets a bit overwhelming after a while. But then again, those with a low threshold for grandstanding should give The Ruling Class a wide berth, anyway—this one’s all about the more-is-more aesthetic. Everyone involved in The Ruling Class seems to revel in the irony of filling a grand house suited for restrained comportment with deranged excess.

The Ruling Class: FREAKY

Murphy’s War (1971)

          Blending elements of classic films including The African Queen (1951) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), with a dash of Robinson Crusoe thrown in for good measure, the offbeat World War II drama Murphy’s War illustrates the madness that takes root once individuals personalize international conflicts. Specifically, the incomparable Peter O’Toole stars as Murphy, an Irish sailor who survives a U-boat attack on a civilian ship near the coast of Venezuela and finds refuge in a mission overseen by a British physician, Dr. Hayden (played by O’Toole’s real-life wife at the time, Sián Phillips). Desperate for revenge, even though radio reports indicate that the surrender of the German army is imminent, Murphy repairs a battered plane and then teaches himself to fly. Next, Murphy scouts the location of the U-boat and plans an attack involving makeshift weapons. What happens after this point in the story is surprising and tragic, because the U-boat’s commander, Lauchs (Horst Janson), turns out to be a formidable opponent.

          Adapted by slick Hollywood talent Stirling Silliphant from a novel by Max Catto, Murphy’s War tells such a simple story that it could have been presented in far fewer than 107 minutes (the film’s running time). Accordingly, some stretches of the movie feel dull and repetitive, particularly when Murphy argues the merits of violence with peacenik Dr. Hayden, or when he manipulates the emotions of his simpleton friend, Louis (Philippe Noiret), the operator of a cargo ship docked by the mission. Yet the virtues of Murphy’s War easily outweigh the shortcomings. Director Peter Yates, a versatile craftsman with a special proficiency for shooting action, makes the most of the picture’s jungle locations, creating a sweaty sense of atmosphere and maintaining tension throughout the most important scenes. (Regular cutaways to the interior of the U-boat, where German sailors wait out the end of the war with boredom and fatigue, add to the story’s credibility.) Yates also benefits from stellar work by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, whose long-lens shots of Murphy’s plane zooming over South American rivers are deeply evocative.

          Yet the film ultimately rises and falls on the strength of O’Toole’s performance. The actor had been down this road before, since Murphy is something of a cousin to T.E. Lawrence, but O’Toole gets to shift into a different gear because Murphy is a working-class slob instead of an urbane officer. Spewing his lines through a crass Irish accent, O’Toole incarnates Murphy as a creature of pure id, given license and opportunity by circumstance to inflict his dangerous passions on others. Phillips counters O’Toole well, channeling rationality and warmth, while Noiret represents a sweetly nonjudgmental type of friendship. It’s a testament to all of the actors, and to Yates, that the physical apparatus of the picture—notably the plane and the submarine—never overwhelm the human elements. One could argue that Murphy’s War is too clinical, and that the unhinged emotions of Murphy’s mission never generate much of a rooting interest, but the film is so expertly made that it sustains interest intellectually, if not always viscerally.

Murphy’s War: GROOVY

Zulu Dawn (1979)

          If amazing production values were sufficient to make a movie worthwhile, then the historical action film Zulu Dawn would be a minor classic—in addition to lavish location photography in nearly every sequence, the picture boasts massive battle scenes with hordes of combatants in elaborate costumes. Especially when director Douglas Hickox cuts to panoramic shots illustrating the scale of battlefields and opposing armies, Zulu Dawn attains an epic quality. Yet from start to finish, the movie is mired in murkiness. So many interchangeable characters are given dialogue that it’s difficult to keep straight who’s doing what to whom and why, and the non-combat scenes are dry and talky. But then again, it’s not as if Zulu Dawn represents some huge missed opportunity, because the film is a prequel to the far superior Zulu (1964), which covered the most interesting aspects of the historical event that’s depicted in both films.

          Specifically, the two movies dramatize armed conflict that occurred in British South Africa circa 1879. The encounter shown in Zulu Dawn took place hours before the one shown in Zulu, and the result of the second battle was more definitive, representing a massive defeat of British colonial soldiers by Zulu natives. Had the makers of Zulu Dawn taken a wholly different approach than the makers of the preceding film, perhaps focusing exclusively on political and sociocultural strife, then Zulu Dawn might have seemed necessary. Alas, since the prequel is primarily a combat movie—just like its predecessor—Zulu Dawn is inherently redundant.

          Nonetheless, the prequel boasts the same level of authenticity, perhaps because Cy Endfield, who cowrote and directed Zulu, also cowrote Zulu Dawn. The story of Zulu Dawn revolves around Lord Chelmsford (Peter O’Toole), a smug British commander given the impossible task of pressuring the Zulu nation into surrendering its sovereignty. Chelmsford’s principal field commander is Colonel Dumford (Burt Lancaster), an Irishman with disdain for authority and respect for his opponents. Also featured in the narrative are Lt. Veeker (Simon Ward), a naïve aristocrat eager to win glory in combat, and Sergeant-Major Williams (Bob Hoskins), a career soldier determined to keep as many of his men alive as possible. On the “enemy” side, principal characters include King Cetshwayo (Simon Sabela), who resolves to preserve his nation’s integrity despite the formidable opposition of the British.

          Lengthy scenes set amid the British encampment fail to engage interest, partially because the scenes are overpopulated and partially because the stiff-upper-lip characterizations are overly familiar. And while vignettes showing cultural habits and strategy meetings among the Zulu are far more interesting, Endfield, Hickock, and their collaborators seem unsure which thread of the narrative is most important. Adding to the movie’s iffy vibe is erratic acting. The usually explosive O’Toole is somnambulatory, and Lancaster’s characteristic flamboyance feels old-fashioned compared to the naturalism of his costars.

Zulu Dawn: FUNKY

Man Friday (1975)

          A strange re-imagination of Daniel Defoe’s classic adventure novel Robinson Crusoe, told from the perspective of the lead character’s companion/manservant Friday, Man Friday is filled with provocative ideas about the gulf between a “civilized” 17th-century Englishman and a “savage” from the tropics. The intention was clearly to examine a classic race-relations story through the prism of post-Civil Rights era enlightenment—and, indeed, much of the picture’s content fulfills this goal, illustrating Friday’s initial amusement and subsequent disgust with Crusoe’s imperialistic attitudes. In the movie’s best moments, Friday drives Crusoe to distraction with common-sense challenges to concepts like money, sports, and religion.

          Unfortunately, everything surrounding these insightful moments is awkward and borderline cringe-worthy. The acting by the two leads is erratic at best, with Peter O’Toole shouting most of his performance as Crusoe and Shaft’s Richard Roundtree vacillating between carefree ebullience and don’t-mess-with-me swagger. The picture gets bogged down in tiresome comedy bits, like a sequence of the men trying out various artificial wings during an attempt to escape the remote island on which they are marooned.

          Worse, the story’s framing device, which is clever in conception but distracting in execution, destroys the narrative rhythm: At the beginning of the movie, Friday is back on his own island after his adventures with Crusoe, relating his tale through jokes and songs around a crowded campfire as the members of his tribe listen. It’s hard to get over the jarring image of Roundtree, wearing just a loincloth, singing English-language verse over a queasy reggae beat while he explains that the man he called “Master” was a crazy person espousing alien beliefs. If the guiding aesthetic of this film was revisionist authenticity, wouldn’t shooting these scenes in Friday’s native tongue and subtitling the dialogue have been a stronger choice?

          Considering the dodgy lead performances and the story’s stop-and-start pacing, however, the stylistic choice of how to present language is really just the least of the movie’s problems. Case in point: The confusing and unsatisfying ending (which radically breaks from Defoe’s story) is a major tonal misstep. Man Friday is not without interest, especially since so few people know the movie exists, but it’s ultimately more of an offbeat curiosity than a lost classic.

Man Friday: FUNKY

Caligula (1979)

Sleaze merchant Bob Guccione, the publisher of Penthouse, tried to buy credibility by financing a historical film about debauched Roman emperor Caligula, assembling a script by Gore Vidal and a cast including John Gielgud, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, and Peter O’Toole. One suspects that Guccione sold the actors a bill of goods about making something provocative but respectable, sort of a randy I, Claudius; furthermore, Guccione had a strong precedent for his transition to the mainstream because his skin-trade competitor, Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, produced Roman Polanski’s acclaimed film of Macbeth (1971). Alas, Guccione the pornographer trumped Guccione the patron of the arts, because the final film is as grotesque as anything that ever appeared in Penthouse, if not more so. Parsing Caligula to guess which bits were shot under the original auspices of making a “real” movie, it’s clear the project went off the rails pretty quickly, because even the straight dramatic scenes involving the principal actors are overwrought in terms of florid dialogue, undisciplined performances, and wall-to-wall ugliness. The bit in which a man’s penis is sliced off and fed to a dog is exactly as enjoyable as the scene of Caligula (McDowell) raping a Roman citizen’s virginal bride. (An equal-opportunity violator, Caligula also services the groom—with his fist.) Incest between Caligula and his sister gets plenty of screen time, as well. At least Gielgud and O’Toole exit before the film devolves into a stag reel, since their characters die early in the storyline. The behind-the-scenes story goes that after director Tinto Brass wrapped principal photography, Guccione decided Caligula wasn’t rough enough, so he recruited a cast of dwarves, grotesques, studs, and Penthouse Pets to shoot reel after reel of hardcore sex that was then intercut (often randomly) with the dramatic scenes. Vidal tried to get his name taken off the picture, and the leading actors were mortified that they couldn’t be removed from the monstrosity entirely. Genuinely vile from its first frame to its last, Caligula is morbidly fascinating as the most pornographic film ever made with name actors, but it’s about as fun as dentistry without anesthesia. FYI, there’s an R-rated version of the picture available on DVD, but what’s the point of that? The only reason to slog through this atrocity is to see how far Guccione really went when carving out his loathsome little niche of cinema history.

Caligula: SQUARE