A Name for Evil (1973)

          A line spoken early in A Name for Evil sets the tone for what follows: “Let’s explore our truth so we don’t wreck each other.” The line is so infused with hippy-dippy ’70s sensitivity, and yet also so laden with portent, that it symbolizes A Name for Evil. The picture wants to be hip and sensual, but it’s overwrought and sleazy. The film also wants to be mysterious and terrifying, but it’s a bewildering exercise in self-parody. Some bad movies run off the rails. This one runs off the rails, soars over a cliff, spirals into a ravine, and drills straight down to the molten center of the earth. Simply dismissing A Name for Evil as a misguided attempt at supernatural horror doesn’t do the picture justice. A Name for Evil is so completely off the mark, in every conceivable way, that it should be registered as a controlled substance. (Not one of the fun ones.)

          Fed up with the 9-to-5 grind, big-city architect John Blake (Robert Culp) uproots his semi-estranged wife, Joanna (Samantha Eggar), and moves to a lakeside mansion in the Deep South. Once owned by John’s ancestor, a Confederate major, the sprawling house is in horrible disrepair, so Joanna wants out immediately. For no discernible reason, John insists on staying, even as creepy apparitions suggest the place is haunted, and the narrative becomes more and more fragmented as it toggles between hallucinations and reality. How weird does the movie get? Try this on for size. John repeatedly spots a white horse roaming around the mansion grounds, and a caretaker claims that the horse belongs to John’s ancestor, who has been dead for decades. One evening, John leaps onto the horse’s back, rides the animal through the countryside, and continues riding it through the front entrance of a honky-tonk. When John stumbles off the horse, the patrons react as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. Then the patrons compel John to join in some feast/hoedown deal, where the evening’s culinary fare includes giant plates of spaghetti delivered from the honky-tonk’s basement. Next, the local mechanic/priest (!) hooks John up with a compliant chick named Luanna (Sheila Sullivan) while a singer serenades the crowd with a Summer of Love-style pop song. John and Luanna participate in a line dance that suddenly transforms into something resembling an all-nude occult ritual. Finally the scene shifts to a forest clearing, where John and Luanna have epic sex. Cut to the next morning. As John dresses, he casually asks Luanna if she saw where he left his horse.

          Not every scene reaches this level of incomprehensible trashiness, but A Name for Evil is spellbindingly weird from start to finish. Scenes stop and start without explanation, continuity shifts in bizarre ways, and dialogue runs the gamut from opaque to pretentious. Behavior is mystifying, though John’s insatiable sex drive is a constant—in one scene, he and Luanna screw underwater with such intensity that the ground beneath them starts to glow as if it’s become radioactive. Or maybe not. In trying to put across the notion that the mansion and/or the spirit of its previous occupant has possessed John, writer-director Bernard Girard destroys the boundary separating fantasy from reality, and not in a good way. The movie’s “hidden secrets” are laughably obvious, while basic facts, such as whether Luanna actually exists, remain unknowable. A Name for Evil is such a chaotic piece of filmmaking that the only clues it’s a fright flick, at least until the ending, are the spooky textures of Dominic Frontiere’s excellent score.

          It appears this misbegotten movie began its life in 1970, when MGM financed the film but shelved the disappointing final product. Three years later, the film-production wing of Penthouse magazine acquired the picture, amped up the horror angle and the sex stuff, and unleashed A Name for Evil on the world. Clearly, the dark forces lurking within the very celluloid of this deliciously rottten film would not be denied.

A Name for Evil: FREAKY

A Cold Night’s Death (1973)

          Like so many of the creepy supernatural thrillers that were made for television in the ’70s, A Cold Night’s Death is roughly equivalent to an extended Twilight Zone episode in that it’s all about the elaborate setup for a freaky twist ending. Two inherent problems: 1) If the audience guesses the twist prematurely, it’s slow going from that point forward, and 2) There’s nowhere for the story to go once the business of setting up the premise has been completed. Sure enough, A Cold Night’s Death lags quite badly in the middle, even though it’s only 74 minutes long. Happily, the combination of an intelligent script, dense visual atmospherics, solid acting, and a weird electronic score compensate for the enervated narrative. Nothing in this picture is jump-out-of-your-skin scary, but A Cold Night’s Death is enjoyably eerie from start to finish. Frank (Eli Wallach) and Robert (Robert Culp) are researchers tasked with operating a laboratory installation that’s positioned atop a mountain. The brutal elevation? 14,000 feet. They’re rushed to the location ahead of schedule by helicopter, because ground-level administrators lose contact with the lab’s previous occupant. Upon arrival, Frank and Robert discover that their predecessor froze to death, leaving windows open so the various primates in laboratory cages nearly died from exposure, as well. Therefore, in addition to performing normal research, the scientists must solve the mystery of why their predecessor died.

          A Cold Night’s Death takes the slow-but-steady approach to suspense. The film’s palette is carefully controlled, mostly blues and grays to complement the massive show drifts outside the laboratory, and lots of scenes take place at night, with just one character awake and prowling through empty halls while trying to identify the sources of peculiar sounds. Culp and Wallach personify extremes effectively—Culp plays a deeply curious man open to the possibilities of the unexplained, whereas Wallach sketches a fellow who is rational to a fault. This, of course, leads to tension as the situation worsens, but it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that they don’t follow the obvious path of putting these two characters at each other’s throats on a regular basis. Instead, the scientists duel intellectually until circumstances force a confrontation. Through it all, the bleeps and chirps and twangs of Gil Melle’s otherworldly electronic score jangle the viewer’s nerves appropriately. And if the twist ending is so far-fetched as to be a little bit goofy, well, that’s an occupational hazard for storytellers operating in the realm that Rod Serling charted.

A Cold Night’s Death: FUNKY

Inside Out (1975)

          Produced and released theatrically in England, but originally shown in the U.S. only on television (where it bore the moniker Hitler’s Gold), this picture offers a textbook example on how not to make a heist thriller. The characters are ciphers, the storyline is ludicrous, and the tension is nonexistent. After a dreary first half, the movie picks up somewhat once the actual heist gets underway, and the presence of three familiar actors in the leading roles generates a certain amount of interest. Nonetheless, there’s a reason why this picture never found a significant audience. Lots of reasons, actually.

          After a ho-hom prologue set in Nazi Germany, the picture cuts to modern-day London, where Harry Morgan (Telly Savalas) is a businessman, a criminal, or both. He’s approached by Ernst Furben (James Mason), who served in the German Army during World War II and claims to know the location of gold that was hidden by the Nazis. There’s some lip service given to how the men know each other, but, like Harry’s occupation, the information is neither clear nor memorable. In any event, Harry then recruits American adventurer Sylvester Wells (Robert Culp) to join the party. Together, the men concoct an absurd scheme that involves liberating an aging SS officer from jail, constructing a mock-up of Adolf Hitler’s WWII office, and training a man to portray Hitler. The plan also includes a dangerous and illegal entry into East Germany, which should be a source of great suspense, but is not.

          Anemically written by Judd Bernard and Stephen Schneck, Inside Out makes very little sense. The conspirators all seem friendly and trusting with each other, the obstacles the protagonists encounter are surmounted with relative ease, and the outrageous resources the thieves need always seem to be readily available. In terms of drama, logic, and tone, the movie is a disaster, right down to the all-over-the-place musical score, which combines disco passages and orchestral cues into sonic chaos. Still, star power matters, so Culp, Mason, and Savalas ensure that Inside Out is more or less watchable. (Mostly less.) In particular, Savalas’ smug swagger periodically creates the false impression that Inside Out has a sense of purpose, or at least a distinctive attitude. Further, cinematographer John Coquillon lends Inside Out a professional look, and the filmmakers make ample use of interesting European locations.

Inside Out: FUNKY

Sky Riders (1976)

          While it’s not much of a movie, Sky Riders is novel in two regards—it’s built around the sport of hang-gliding, and it contains one of the longest action scenes you’ll ever encounter. In fact, the first half-hour is merely preamble for a rescue mission that unfolds more or less in real time throughout the remainder of the picture. So, if you can trudge through 30 minutes of small talk and do without nuances like clearly defined characters and memorable dialogue, you’ll be rewarded with a solid hour of fighting and flying. Set in Greece, the movie begins at the estate of American industrialist Jonas Bracken (Robert Culp). While Jonas is away on business one morning, a group of terrorists breaks into his compound and kidnaps Jonas’ wife, Ellen (Susannah York), and the Brackens’ two children. Once Jonas is informed of the crime, he’s forced to work with a rigid cop named Inspector Nikolidis (Charles Aznavour), who seems more concerned with capturing the perpetrators than rescuing hostages. The X-factor in the story is Jim McCabe (James Coburn), Ellen’s ex-husband and the biological father of the Brackens’ oldest child. Vaguely introduced as some sort of international criminal/smuggler/spy, Jim decides the police aren’t moving fast enough, so he uses underworld contacts to mount a speedy investigation.

          Jim soon discovers the Brackens are being held in a remote, abandoned monastery that’s perched atop a mountain and accessible by only one road—in essence, a fortress with perfect natural defense. Eyeballing the location in person, Jim gets an idea when he sees birds flying around—so he tracks down a group of American hang-glider pilots, who perform a traveling-circus act featuring aerial stunts, and offers them a pile of cash to serve as his personal airborne commando unit. Obviously, the people behind Sky Riders had to twist their story in knots to justify the hang-gliding gimmick, but once the movie gets cooking, it’s all good—with composer Lalo Schifrin’s exciting music leading the way, vivid images of hang-glider pilots zooming toward the fortress, and then trying to escape amid a barrage of gunfire, create genuine excitement. (Coburn gets extra credit for performing a few jaw-dropping stunts, like hanging off the skids of a flying helicopter.) So, while Sky Riders offers virtually nothing of substance—although York conveys intensity during brief scenes depicting her captivity—the action is consistently colorful and dynamic.

Sky Riders: FUNKY

Goldengirl (1979)

          If nothing else, the sports drama Goldengirl delivers on its title—the film is crammed with adoring shots of leading lady Susan Anton, a gleaming Amazon with a lustrous blonde mane. Yet Anton, while not exactly horrible, is the picture’s weakest link. The fault is not entirely hers, since screenwriter John Kohn and director Joseph Sargent failed to provide her with a fleshed-out role—but because Anton is in nearly every scene, her superficiality defines the movie.
          Story-wise, Goldengirl is a cautionary tale with a touch of sci-fi. During the run-up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, top sports agent Jack Dryden (James Coburn) is asked to join the team preparing Goldine (Anton) for an unprecedented feat—winning three gold medals in sprinting events. As Jack is shown around a remote mountaintop training facility, we learn that Goldine—nicknamed “Goldengirl”—has been conditioned from childhood for Olympic victory. Her adoptive father, Serafin (Curt Jurgens), is an obsessed Germanic scientist whose work may or may not have begun during the Third Reich’s grotesque eugenics experiments.

          Jack is considered crucial to the Goldengirl team because he’s got the connections to line up millions in endorsement deals if she wins all three medals, thus recouping the money that’s been invested in her. The more the story progresses, however, the more apparent it becomes that Serafin is a lunatic who’s been pumping Goldine full of dangerous hormones for years, simply to gain an international spotlight with which to showcase his crackpot theories about human evolution.

          Based on a novel by Peter Lear, Goldengirl could (and should) have been a provocative conspiracy movie, with the innocent Goldine caught in the machinations of commerce and megalomania. Unfortunately, the film is diffuse and passive, so no real tension develops until the last 30 minutes, when it’s revealed that running is dangerous to Goldine’s health. It’s also incredibly distracting that Anton looks nothing like an athlete—she’s lean but soft, and she wears dense mascara even during major races. Furthermore, the name actors surrounding Anton—in addition to those mentioned, Leslie Caron plays a shrink and Robert Culp plays a journalist—perform their paycheck gigs indifferently. Compounding Goldengirl’s second-rate status is the fact that America didn’t actually participate in the 1980 Olympics—after this picture was filmed, the U.S. pulled out of the Moscow games in response to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Goldengirl: FUNKY

The Castaway Cowboy (1974)

One can only marvel at the imagination the team at Walt Disney Productions brought to the plotting of the studio’s live-action films back in the day, because the stories for some of these movies are so bizarre and elaborate they seem like transcriptions of fever dreams. In the offbeat Western The Castaway Cowboy, James Garner plays Lincoln Castain, an amiable Texan who gets dumped from a vessel crossing the Pacific and drifts to shore near the struggling Hawaiian plantation of plucky widow Henrietta McAvoy (Vera Miles). In the course of working to earn money for passage home, Lincoln discovers that Henrietta’s estate is home to a sizable cattle herd, which would fetch a handsome price on the mainland. The only problem is that the rocky shores of the island of Kauai make it impossible to get cows from the beach to cargo ships. As Lincoln ponders this issue, he (of course) falls for Henrietta and (of course) gets into a hassle with his rival for her affections, one Calvin Bryson (Robert Culp). Calvin’s a competing landowner intent on ruining Henrietta’s farm, so when Lincoln comes up with a way around the transportation problem—using small boats to guide swimming cows through ocean waters right up to the sides of waiting ships—Calvin mucks up the works with tricks like persuading a crazy local to use island magic against Lincoln. As with many Disney pictures of the same vintage, The Castaway Cowboy is as exhausting to watch as it is to describe, because character development and logical credibility get smothered by nonstop plot twists. Garner’s innate charm cuts through the overwrought narrative, and the location photography is impressive. There’s also minor novelty in watching the bovines swim through crystal-clear Hawaiian waters, but that only goes so far. Still, The Castaway Cowboy is hard to match for sheer randomness: A would-be cattle baron kickin’ it Hawaiian-style? Whatever.

The Castaway Cowboy: FUNKY

Breaking Point (1976)

Yet another in the endless stream of vigilante flicks that spewed forth after the success of Straw Dogs (1971) and Death Wish (1974), this Canadian actioner starring long-forgotten ’70s leading man Bo Svenson falls short in terms of characterization, drama, logic, and thrills. The last exploitation flick that eclectic director Bob Clark made before going mainstream with 1979’s Murder by Decree, the picture is competent to the point of utter homogenization, as if an editor threw pieces of similar films up in the air and then assembled the pieces in more or less the right order to create a Frankenstein hodgepodge of a vigilante movie. In other words, everything in Breaking Point was done better elsewhere. As is the norm in the genre, a decent man gets on the wrong side of bad people, then takes all he can take until he reaches his—well, it’s all in the title, isn’t it? Michael McBain (Svenson) is an unassuming judo instructor (convenient!) who witnesses a mob-related crime, then enters witness protection under the care of cop Frank Sirrianni (Robert Culp) while preparing to testify against the soldiers of crime boss Vincent Karbone (John Colicos). Predictably, Karbone’s people reach McBain where he’s most vulnerable, by violently harassing the people he loves, so soon enough McBain has to unleash some of his judo whup-ass on the villains. Lacking the psychological complexity of Straw Dogs and the relentless intensity of Death Wish—or even the go-for-broke excess of a self-respecting exploitation picture—this film offers all of the shortcomings of the vigilante genre and none of the cathartic jolts. Clark’s direction is indifferent, as if he had already left the grindhouse in spirit, and Svenson is believably tough but in every other regard forgettable. Thus, the only reason to watch Breaking Point is to discover how long it takes for you to reach your napping point.

Breaking Point: SQUARE

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976)

An idiotic farce set in the Old West, this embarrassing misfire stars two of cinema’s great offscreen drunkards, Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed. Yet while Marvin’s role as a frontier schemer is in the vicinity of his Oscar-winning Cat Ballou wheelhouse, Englishman Reed is embarrassingly miscast as an inebriated Indian, mugging his way through a cringe-inducing performance complete with grotesque body makeup. The overstuffed storyline involves con men Sam (Marvin), Joe (Reed), and Billy (Strother Martin) trying to strong-arm money out of their former partner in crime, Jack (Robert Culp), who hid his criminal past to begin a career in politics, but of course Sam, Joe, and Billy are too stupid to properly manipulate their slick confrere. Hardy-har. For no particular reason, Joe kidnaps a bevy of whores from the titular cathouse, including one he names Thursday (Kay Lenz), and for no particular reason, she falls for the decades-older Sam. The lecherous nonsense eventually leads to a protracted chase scene, with the heroes driving a jalopy across the desert while—oh, who cares? This is one of those “madcap” comedies in the vein of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), with incessant slapstick noise thrown at the audience instead of actual jokes; virtually everyone gets punched in the face at least once, even Elizabeth Ashley, who plays Culp’s wife. So rather than being amusing, The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday provides the painful experience of watching actors who deserve better marking time in drivel. One hopes Marvin and Reed at least had fun imbibing their paychecks. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday: LAME

Hickey & Boggs (1972)

          Screenwriter Walter Hill arrived in a big way with the release of 1972’s The Getaway, a Sam Peckinpah hit starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, but his actual cinematic debut slipped in below the radar just months before The Getaway opened. Directed by and starring Robert Culp, Hickey & Boggs is an early example of the black cop/white cop buddy-movie formula that became ubiquitous after the release of 48 Hrs. (1982), which was directed by none other than Walter Hill. Costarring Culp’s old I Spy sparring partner Bill Cosby, Hickey & Boggs represents Hill’s spare screenwriting style at its most extreme; the characters are enigmatic figures only vaguely differentiated from each other, so they collectively form a vision of a violent, unforgiving universe in which personal identity is irrelevant since everyone’s headed for oblivion sooner rather than later. Still, the glimmers of character that peek through the opaque storytelling are intriguing, especially the nonjudgmental assertions that Culp’s character is gay.
          The plot concerns two pathetic private detectives (Culp and Cosby) who are hired to find a missing girl. The case, naturally, leads them to a bigger mystery. What’s really at stake is a pile of money that was stolen from a bank in Pittsburgh, but who stole the money, how it arrived in L.A. (where the movie takes place), and who’s scheming to get the money is never explained particularly well. Fortunately, the actual narrative takes a backseat to ice-cold attitude. The picture showcases not only the casual dynamic between Culp and Cosby, but also the fact that Culp had more to offer than his career’s worth of middling credits suggests. Onscreen, he’s a cynical rogue with an offbeat approach to delivering dialogue, and behind the camera, he seems interested in combining macho minimalism with unusual character work. Had Hickey & Boggs connected with audiences, it might have opened interesting doors for Culp as a filmmaker, but it’s unsurprising that neither critics nor viewers latched onto a film so cryptic that it plays out like a depressing inside joke.
          Some of Culp’s directorial choices are downright bewildering, like his frequently employed technique of connecting scenes without establishing shots or other transitions, which jars viewers’ sense of place; similarly, he often fixes his camera on minor details during scenes, forgetting to show major actions that would help provide clarity. Still, this is individualistic stuff, even if, ultimately, Hicky & Boggs is hard to follow and even harder to connect with on emotional level. It’s also worth mentioning, by the way, that several established and/or up-and-coming character players show up in the cast: Watch for Rosalind Cash, Vincent Gardenia, Ed Lauter, Robert Mandan, Michael Moriarty, Isabel Sanford, and even a young James Woods. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Hickey & Boggs: FUNKY

Hannie Caulder (1971)

          After achieving stardom in roles that accentuated her figure—she did a lot of bikini scenes—Raquel Welch began striving for credibility with parts that required acting as well as posing. To that end, Welch and her husband at the time, Patrick Curtis, used their production company to develop vehicles for the actress, though Curtwel Productions only issued three Welch projects: the 1970 television special Raquel, the lurid melodrama Sin (aka The Beloved and Restless), and Hannie Caulder. A nasty little Western shot in Spain as a collaboration with Tigon British Film Productions, Hannie Caulder puts a feminine spin on the familiar archetype of the frontier vigilante. While the movie has an inherently sleazy aspect, a raft of interesting supporting actors and solid production values compensate somewhat for the weak script and (despite her best efforts) Welch’s lackluster performance.
          After a trio of slovenly brothers (played by the character-actor dream team of Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin) botch a bank robbery and escape into a desert, they stumble onto a small ranch owned by the title character and her husband. The brothers kill the husband, gang-rape Hannie, and leave her for dead. (This setup aligns Hannie Caulder with other 1971 revenge pictures featuring sexual-assault themes, from Billy Jack to Straw Dogs.) In one of the movie’s many overly convenient plot contrivances, conscientious bounty hunter Thomas Price (Robert Culp) happens upon the ranch soon after the siege, then agrees to teach Hannie about guns so she can track down and murder her assailants. Predictably, they fall in love while she trains, and just as predictably, circumstances ensure that Hannie must confront the brothers without Thomas by her side. Excepting an interlude during which Hannie and Thomas hang out with a philosophical gunsmith played by Christopher Lee, of all people, that’s more or less the extent of the story.
          Thanks to the considerable skills of director/co-writer Burt Kennedy, the picture moves along at a good clip, frequently exploding with bursts of brutality, and Hannie Caulder looks terrific. Yet the story is trite and even periodically nonsensical; virtually no explanation is provided for a shootout at the gunsmith’s home or for the presence of a mysterious gunfighter played, silently, by Stephen Boyd. This narrative opacity makes the movie seem more and more haphazard as it speeds toward an insipid climax. Yet the picture’s biggest shortcoming is also its biggest attraction, and that’s Welch—unable to believably simulate emotions, she’s never more than a beautiful physical presence. That said, Borgnine, Elam, and Martin are enjoyably repulsive as they bicker and whine their way across the frontier, and Culp is terrific as the bounty hunter. Calm, prickly, and wise, his characterization commands the screen, so Hannie Caulder rises when he’s present and wanes when he’s not.

Hannie Caulder: FUNKY