The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)

          Quite possibly the least truthful film ever to win an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, The Hellstrom Chronicle plays like a horror movie about insects plotting to seize control of the Earth from mankind. Actor Lawrence Pressman appears onscreen in the role of Dr. Nils Helstrom, a scientist whose investigation into the adaptive and reproductive habits of insects leads him to believe they are the only species on the planet capable of evolving in step with changes wrought upon the environment by humans. The picture is loaded with “real” footage depicting activities within ant colonies and beehives, filmed with macro lenses that capture tiny objects in fantastic detail. This stuff is breathtaking, not just because of cinematic beauty—directors Walon Green and Ed Spiegel, abetted by a small army of cinematographers, shot insect scenes as if the creatures were trained extras hitting their marks perfectly—but also because of insights the footage provides about a world beyond normal human vision.

          Allowing that certain things were juiced through editing, musical scoring, and narration, the behavior and feats of strength shown in The Hellstrom Chronicle are stunning. Drone insects sacrificing their bodies simply to move an immobile queen and her pulsing egg sac from one safe place to another. Bees breeding several replacement queens, forcing the first two replacements to fight to the death upon birth, and then eating the half-formed bodies of unborn replacements so only one queen exists. Hordes of ferocious jungle ants piling onto the body of a lizard easily 100 times the size of an ant, then immobilizing and eventually consuming the huge lizard through a terrifying process of attrition.

          Holding all of these scenes together are creepy vignettes of Pressman hammering the theme that when insects prey upon man, man doesn’t stand a chance—hence locusts, which Pressman-as-Hellstrom says can consume in one week the quantity of grain that would otherwise feed 1 million people for a year. Codirectors Spiegel and Green, the latter of whom is a prolific Hollywood screenwriter with credits ranging from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) to myriad episodes of various Law & Order shows, and Spiegel gracefully advance The Hellstrom Chronicle from a cautionary tone to an apocalyptic one. The picture’s screenplay was penned by David Seltzer, who later scripted The Omen (1976), so there’s more than a little bit of horror-movie mojo sprinkled into the Hellstrom Chronicle mix. Still, there’s no arguing with results, and The Hellstrom Chronicle is compelling and even periodically frightening. Even though the movie’s bullshit quotient probably exceeds in scope the number of verifiable facts that Pressman delivers with quiet menace, The Hellstrom Chronicle is mightily entertaining.

The Hellstrom Chronicle: GROOVY

The Secret Life of Plants (1979)

          For better or worse, the ’70s was the heyday of documentaries, nonfiction books, and TV specials based on pseudoscience, that hippy-dippy confluence of factoids, metaphysical musings, outright speculation, and sensationalistic bullshit. Think ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP, Stonehenge, and so on. It was a good time to be an open-minded searcher, and it was also a good time to be a pandering huckster; for every well-intentioned project grounded in sincere belief, it seems, there were a dozen snowjobs that sprang from sucker-born-every-minute cynicism. Where The Secret Life of Plants falls in that spectrum is, of course, a matter for individual viewers to decide, though one gets the strong impression that the filmmakers bought what they were selling—The Secret Life of Plants is lovingly crafted, even if the scientific principles underlying the piece are dubious at best. (The documentary was based on a 1973 nonfiction book by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird.)

          Although it features other concepts, the movie primarily focuses on the notion that plants have previously unknown levels of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sensitivity. Some phenomena offered as evidence are commonly held beliefs, such as the idea that plants respond to soothing tones of music and speech. Other ideas stretch credibility quite a bit further, such as the bold assertion from one documentary participant that plants are capable of receiving messages from outer space. About half of the film is devoted to straight reportage (with a smidgen of staging for dramatic effect), so these sequences feature scientists performing various experiments. In one bit, a lab worker chops a head of lettuce to see if an “emotional” reaction can be detected in a nearby houseplant that’s wired to electrodes; later, another scientist drops several living brine shrimp to their deaths in boiling water to see if a nearby plant responds to the loss of life. Unsurprisingly, in both cases, the experiments “prove” the sensitivity of plants thanks to computer readouts—after all, failed experiments wouldn’t validate the picture’s thesis.

          The documentary’s remaining screen time is devoted to impressionistic and lyrical passages, most of which are set to music by Stevie Wonder, who scored the film and wrote a handful of original songs for the project, including the hit ballad “Send One Your Love.” (In the final scene, Wonder appears onscreen to wander through fields of flowers, dense forests, and vibrant jungles as he lip-syncs the title track.) The most impressive passages in The Secret Life of Plants are the simplest, from the ominous creation-of-the-world montage that opens the picture to a lovely compilation of time-lapse flower-opening shots set to the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” In these gorgeously filmed and edited vignettes, the natural wonders of plants are placed in the forefront, so the musical sequences feel harmless and trippy. The straight-documentary bits are interesting, too, but it’s hard to go with the flow while stopping every few seconds for a skeptical eye-roll.
          FYI, the director of The Secret Life of Plants is the versatile Walon Green, best known as the screenwriter of The Wild Bunch (1969). Living up to his surname, Green has directed numerous nature-themed documentaries, providing an unexpected complement to his screenwriting work in features and episodic television.

The Secret Life of Plants: FUNKY

The Brink’s Job (1978)

Since director William Friedkin is mostly known for making intense pictures like The Exorcist (1973), it should come as no surprise to report that his occasional ventures into comedy aren’t among his most impressive achievements. So, even though The Brink’s Job has many of his trademarks (naturalistic acting, realistic locations) it fails in a rather significant regard: It’s not the least bit funny. Telling the real-life story of a group of brazen thieves who broke into a Brink’s building in late ’40s Boston and boosted almost $3 million, the picture is supposed to be a farce about a gang of nincompoops who slipped through cracks in the Brink’s security system, then became folk heroes once FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made catching them a top priority. Instead, it’s a good-looking but flat recitation of events involving people who aren’t admirable or interesting. The ensemble Friedkin assembled couldn’t be more appropriate for this sort of thing, with Peter Falk leading a gang that includes Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield (billed as Allen Goorwitz), Warren Oates, and Paul Sorvino, but they all play dull stereotypes: Falk is a cantankerous mastermind, Boyle is a hot-headed career criminal, Garfield is a simpering idiot, Oates is a shell-shocked war veteran eager to kill people, and Sorvino is a seen-it-all dandy who prefers jobs that don’t require him to get his hands dirty. The performances are fine, but they’re not specific enough to elevate the ho-hum screenplay by Walon Green; although some of Green’s dialogue has street-level authenticity, his narrative is plodding. Plenty of crime films have surmounted turgid narratives, however, so The Brink’s Job might have fared better if audiences hadn’t been told to expect laughs that the movie never delivers. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Brink’s Job: FUNKY