Honky (1971)

          Race-relations melodrama Honky is an indie production with all the slickness of a Hollywood feature, including a sprightly score by Quincy Jones. The movie starts out innocently enough, tenderly depicting the unexpected romance between a white high-school athlete, Wayne (John Neilson), and his sexy black classmate, Sheila (Brenda Sykes). Very quickly, however, Will Chaney’s script—adapted from a novel by Gunard Solberg—takes a weird left turn. Eager to make quick cash dealing grass, Sheila announces to her new boyfriend that she needs money to buy a supply of weed. In a long scene that’s staged like the climax of a heist movie, Wayne uses a forged signature to get the money from his small trust account at a local bank. More crimes follow, including breaking and entering and grand theft auto, so eventually the couple decides to leave their small New Jersey town for California. During their travels, they become victims of crime instead of perpetrators. By the time it’s over, Honky peppers its dubious storyline with stereotypical portrayals of blacks, conservatives, gays, and transvestites. Try finding another picture that features a gentle interracial love scene, violent rednecks, and the startling vision of future Happy Days mom Marion Ross complaining about “coons.”

          Like so many clumsy pictures about race from the ’60s and ’70s, Honky tries so hard to convey progressive attitudes that it ends up becoming inadvertently offensive. It’s defeated by its own aspirations to significance. The way the movie derails is a shame, because in many ways, Honky is impressive. Director William A. Graham and his collaborators give the picture a glossy look and, when the plot isn’t wandering off on pointless detours, a zippy pace. Leading lady Sykes is beguiling, though she was already in her 20s when she made the picture. Supporting players including John Fiedler, Lincoln Kilpatrick, and William Marshall deliver strong work in tiny roles, while Matt Clark lends his reliable brand of rural villainy to the climax. What’s more, that Jones music is pretty sweet. Alas, the central relationship stretches credibility just as much as the plot does, a problem exacerbated by the filmmakers’ tenuous grasp on with-it lingo. For example, Honky contains the following exchange. “Don’t get hung up on my hangup.” “I’m getting caught in your hangup?” “Your ego is.” Wow. Honky is alternately exciting, involving, and sexy, but, seeing as how the crux of the picture involves a white guy learning about the black experience, it’s hard to reconcile the film’s meritorious elements with the filmmakers’ backwards-looking portrayal of African-American characters as criminals, freaks, Uncle Toms, victims, and vixens.

Honky: LAME

Abby (1974)

          Lest there be any doubt, Abby is a truly awful movie—even given the low expectations set by the premise, since Abby is nothing but a shameless riff on The Exorcist (1973) featuring an all-black cast. The scares are nonexistent, the script is schlocky, and the special effects are pathetic. However, the movie has one minor saving grace: William Marshall, the stentorian-voiced actor who lent unexpected dignity to the role of Blacula in two cheesy horror movies, plays the exorcist in Abby. Marshall’s elegant presence isn’t nearly enough to make Abby respectable, but his appearance is sufficient to make the movie watchable, at least periodically. It’s also worth noting that Abby was directed by William Girdler, who later made a string of colorful horror flicks—Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), and the completely insane supernatural epic The Manitou (1978). Abby isn’t as slick as the later films, but it’s just as brazen and zippy.

          The story, naturally, involves a young woman being possessed by a demon. Specifically, after Bishop Garnet Williams (Marshall) accidentally releases an evil god named “Eshu” while exploring in Nigeria, Eshu invades the body of Garnet’s daughter-in-law, Abby (Carol Speed), who lives back in the U.S. with Garnet’s son, Emmett (Terry Carter). Violence, vomiting, and vulgarity follow, until Garent returns from Africa for a supernatural showdown. Giving the material a blaxploitation vibe, cowriter/director Girdler features the wholesome Abby speaking in crude street slang while possessed—for instance, before kicking Emmett in the crotch, she squeals, “Shit, you ain’t got enough to satisfy me!” In another scene, Abby experiences an orgasm while handling a piece of raw chicken on a kitchen counter. (Make your own “finger-lickin’ good” jokes.)

          While it’s all exactly as derivative and silly and tacky as it sounds. Marshall does what he can to play the material straight, especially when he performs with Austin Stoker (Assault on Precinct 13), who plays Abby’s brother. Alas, neither Speed nor costar Terry Carter (a regular on the original Battlestar Galactica series) rise to the same level. Still, what’s not to like about a quasi-camp drive-in distraction that kicks off with Marshall releasing a demon by recklessly twisting the tiny wooden penis of a figurine that’s carved into the shell of wooden box? Safe to say Girdler harbored no illusions of making great art.

Abby: FUNKY

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

          While it's easy to see why Twilight's Las Gleaming tanked at the box office during its original release and remains, at best, a minor cult favorite to this day, the movie is a lively addition to the venerable tradition of loopy conspiracy flicks. Featuring an outlandish plot about a crazed U.S. general seizing control of a nuclear-missile launch site in order to force the president to reveal secret documents about America's involvement in Vietnam, the picture is far-fetched in the extreme. It's also ridiculously overlong, sprawling over two and a half hours. Furthermore, gonzo director Robert Aldrich filigrees the story with such unnecessary adornments as split-screen photography, which he uses to simultaneously show the goings-on at the launch site and the reactions of power-brokers in Washington, D.C. Plus, of course, the storyline is downbeat in every imaginable way. For adventurous moviegoers, however, these weaknesses are just as easily interpreted as strengths, particularly when the entertainment value of the acting is taken into consideration.

          Burt Lancaster stars as the general, memorably incarnating a macho idealist who uses duplicity and strategy to manipulate enemies and subordinates alike. Charles Durning, rarely cast as authority figures beyond the level of middle management, makes an unlikely president, his innate likability and the darkness that always simmered beneath his persona offering a complex image of humanistic leadership. Also populating the movie are leather-faced tough guy Richard Widmark, as the officer charged with wresting control of the launch site from the general’s gang; Paul Winfield and Burt Young, as two members of the gang; and reliable veterans Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, and Richard Jaeckel (to say nothing of Blacula himself, William Marshall). Quite a tony cast for a whackadoodle thriller that borders on science fiction.

          Based on a novel by Walter Wager, Twilight's Last Gleaming represents Aldrich's bleeding-heart storytelling at its most arch—the goal of Lancaster's character is revealing that the U.S. government knew Vietnam was a lost cause but kept fighting, at great cost of blood and treasure, simply to intimidate the Soviet Union. If there's a single ginormous logical flaw in the picture (in fact, there are probably many), it's that Lancaster's character could have achieved his goal through simpler means. But the ballsy contrivance of the picture is that seizing the launch site is a theatrical gesture meant to capture the world's attention. As such, the operatic bloat of Twilight's Last Gleaming reflects the protagonist's modus operandi--like the crusading general, Aldrich swings for the fences. Twilight's Last Gleaming is a strange hybrid of hand-wringing political drama (somewhat in the Rod Serling mode) with guns-a-blazin' action—for better or worse, there's not another movie like this one. Genuine novelty is a rare virtue, and so is the passion with which Aldrich made this offbeat picture.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: GROOVY

Blacula (1972) & Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

          For a few funky years in the early ’70s, the blaxploitation genre was so popular that it produced subgenres including a string of campy horror movies whose titles were urbanized puns on the names of classic monsters. The first and best of these flicks is Blacula. Starring Shakespearean actor William Marshall, whose elegant bearing and resonant voice class up the inherently trashy surroundings, Blacula transposes tropes from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula into a modern African-American milieu. The story begins in Transylvania circa the 1700s, when Count Dracula (Charles Macaulay) greets two visitors from Africa, Prince Mamawulde (Marshall) and his beautiful wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee). They seek the count’s assistance in abolishing slavery. Bad host that he is, Dracula responds by taking a chomp out of Mamawulde’s neck and burying the prince, cursing him to eternal half-life beneath the earth. Two hundred years later, screaming-queen antique dealers buy the contents of Castle Dracula—including Mamawulde’s coffin—and take the goods to Los Angeles, leading to the release of the long-buried Mamawulde. Black-on-black bloodsucking ensues as the vampire meets and woos Tina (also played by McGee), whom he believes is the reincarnated Luva.

          Enthusiastically directed by William Crain, Blacula moves along at a decent clip whenever it stays focused on the tragic storyline, and the picture still delivering such blaxploitation signifiers as pimptastic clothes, streetwise trash talk, and wah-wah guitars on the soundtrack. (On the topic of music, an extended performance sequence in a nightclub pads the running time and briefly stops forward momentum.) Blacula boasts one or two genuine jolts, and the gloomy finale has a hint of an emotional punch. This isn’t sophisticated stuff by any measure, but it’s moderately better than one might expect—and the fact that Mamawulde sprouts bitchin’ sideburns every time his blood gets boiling adds an extra blast of campy ’70s flava.

          In addition to triggering inferior ripoffs  (please avoid Blackenstein at all costs), Blacula inspired a quickie sequel with less kitschy charm than the original, even though Marshall reprises his role. (Bob Kelijan, director of the underwhelming Count Yorga pictures, puts Marshall through his paces.) Bearing the fabulously lurid title Scream, Blacula, Scream, the foll0w-up suffers from a drab script and a dull second act. The story begins when a dying voodoo queen bequeaths her power to her apprentice, Lisa (Pam Grier), instead of her closest relative, the craven Willis (Richard Lawson). Eager for payback, Willis uses voodoo to summon Mamawulde, who promptly turns Willis into an undead slave. Mamawulde meets and falls for Lisa—understandable, given Grier’s casting—then asks her to cure his vampirism with that voodoo that she do-do. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get that far into the narrative, and the whole movie is so enervated that even Grier’s formidable charisma is stifled. Except for some tribal-drum-led tension during the movie’s climax, Scream, Blacula, Scream fails to get anyone’s blood pumping, which might explain why Blacula never returned for a third adventure.

Blacula: FUNKY

Scream, Blacula, Scream: FUNKY

Zig Zag (1970)

          This twisty thriller kicks off with a terrific premise before faltering due to sloppy execution. George Kennedy stars as Paul Cameron, a claims investigator at an insurance company who learns he’s got only a few months to live. Desperate to provide for his wife and daughter, Paul digs through his company’s records and discovers that a $250,000 reward is still outstanding for the capture of an unknown criminal who kidnapped and murdered a millionaire. (Paul’s company paid a substantial death benefit to the victim’s family.) Using his wife’s maiden name as an alias, Paul sends a letter to the millionaire’s company claiming that he, Paul Cameron, was the murderer. Paul’s complex scheme is to get himself indicted and jailed for the crime so his wife, her identity hidden behind a web of bank accounts and P.O. boxes, can claim the reward. As this description indicates, the plot of Zig Zag ties itself in knots, stacking implausible developments until the storyline is impossibly muddled. Furthermore, the filmmakers present the story in a jagged style that justifies the title, jumping back and forth between the “present” (which begins with Paul’s arrest) and the “past” (which depicts his methodical planning).

          That said, a number of interesting things happen, like the casual revelation that Paul used to be a jazz drummer and therefore has connections in the hepcat underworld of drug dealers and musicians. Additionally, the relationship between Paul and his exasperated lawyer (Eli Wallach) is entertaining. On a stylistic level, director Richard A. Colla, a TV veteran who directed a handful of middling features, executes Zig Zag with visual panache, building many scenes around trick shots that open by peering deep into some partially obstructed background, then pull back to reveal previously hidden details. In fact, the gimmicky camerawork makes some sequences feel more interesting than they actually are, though the sleight of hand loses efficacy once the shortcomings of the script become impossible to ignore. Kennedy barrels through scenes with watchable intensity, employing vigor in place of nuance, while Anne Jackson (costar Wallach’s real-life spouse) delivers credible anguish as Paul’s worried wife, and Blacula star William Marshall lends his sonorous voice to key role as a nightclub owner who helps Paul out of a jam. These appealing performers and Colla’s kicky visuals make Zig Zag a pleasant distraction—until the confusing mess of a finale, that is. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Zig Zag: FUNKY