In short: Thief (1971)

Neal Wilkinson (Richard Crenna) is a professional burglar. Two convictions and prison sentences behind him, the next time he’s caught he’d be up for a mandatory ten year sentence (because US laws make no sense). Neal also has a son somewhere he genuinely wants to regain custody of, and a new, increasingly serious girlfriend in Jean (Angie Dickinson), who knows nothing of his past. So he has every reason to keep on the straight and narrow; he’s even serious enough to have hired a lawyer (Cameron Mitchell) to help him there.

But right now, Neal really isn’t quite as straight as he pretends to be. He’s still clearly enhancing his income through opportunistic acts of thievery, and he’s lying through his nose to his probation officer (Michael Lerner). To make matters even more dicey, the thief also has a gambling problem, and he’s stupid enough to pay his gambling debts to civilians with cheques he knows will bounce and end his parole. To keep that particular wolf from the door, Neal is all too willing to go on a rather more risky crime spree than is his usual style.

As directed by TV movie specialist William A. Graham, this crime drama is an unassuming little film. Its protagonist’s troubles are life-shattering for him but not terribly dramatic in form or execution.

This will make Thief a bore to some, but I’d argue its small scale and its air of the quotidian are the film’s strengths. While this always stays a – well, if unspectacularly, directed – TV movie and can’t go as far in certain directions as contemporary theatrical films would have, there’s a groundedness and a sense of somewhat sad, small-scale reality to the film that works very well for it. Not every genre film needs to be big and spectacular.

Thief also recommends itself through a very 70s style downer ending with a side dish of dramatic irony. One could find it unpleasantly moralizing – thieves weren’t allowed to prosper by the era’s TV rules, after all, but Graham throws his ending at the audience so quickly and off-handedly, it feels organic and surprisingly true to the rest of the film.

Pray for the Wildcats (1974)

Rich macho asshole and deeply unpleasant sleazebag Sam Farragut (Andy Griffith) is one of the richest, most lucrative and most important clients of an ad agency. He knows it too, and because he is that sort of man, he uses his position to belittle, manipulate and denigrate the poor guys who are in charge of his account. So the plan for a campaign using Baja California in Mexico as the backdrop for his campaign turns into him blackmailing his “favourite” ad executives into going on a dirt bike trip through the desert with him, or else. So off Warren Summerfield (William Shatner), his old colleague and work buddy Paul (Robert Reed) and young turk fancying himself an artist Terry Maxon (Marjoe Gortner) have to go with him, as if they didn’t have their own problems. Namely, Warren is in some sort of quantum state of being secretly half-fired, with Paul pegged as his replacement, while Warren is sleeping with Paul’s wife Nancy (Angie Dickinson) who clearly wants the also married Warren as a replacement for Paul in her life. Warren is also suicidal, and believes the trip might just be the way for him to kill himself and make it look like an accident, leaving a fat insurance policy for his family as some sort of ultimate, idiotic “I’m sorry I failed at being THE MAN SOCIETY TELLS ME I’M SUPPOSED TO BE!”. Terry for his part as problems admitting to himself that the work he is doing stands against all of his supposed values, and that he’s turning into a Yes Man for the worst kind of person possible, even though pretending Farragut isn’t the worst humanity has to offer is pretty much akin to talking oneself into a state of actual delusion.

Things don’t get better for anyone in Baja, not just because Farragut just loves to push everybody’s buttons, but because he’ll also turn out to be a murderer just waiting for an opportunity and a pretext.

I don’t generally fall into this jargon (it’s not really mine, philosophically), so when even I want to call Robert Michael Lewis’s TV movie about a trio of ad men, all broken in their own, distinct ways, and their horrible rich guy client a film about the destructive force of various 70s versions of toxic masculinity, it probably really is that. The script by Jack Turley isn’t exactly subtle about this either, doubling down on everything that’s dysfunctional about these men and how dangerous and oppressive this kind of dysfunctionality is for those around them; unlike a film made today would be, it’s not without compassion for these men (except for Farragut), though, so it will not only show them as the destructive forces they are, but also grief how they got there. It doesn’t show a terrible amount of hope for them ever getting better, alas.

Even the way the film side-lines the female characters after the first act for the main narrative thrust but never wants to quite lose sight of them seems to be a pointed, conscious choice, suggesting much about the divide between men and women the culture they live in will build, even when there’s love and an actual human connection between them.

Because that’s not quite enough for a little TV movie, apparently, Pray also adds an equally unsubtle yet effective criticism of a style of capitalism that seems to be build to create exactly this kind of behaviour in men, turning artists into yes-men, and middle-aged men bitter and self-destructive because they can’t quite keep up with the monsters.

Not surprisingly with this cast and the film’s themes, there’s quite a bit of scenery chewing going around, though it’s really Griffith (with the understandable relish of a guy who mostly played the aw-shucks Southerner in his career) and Reed who take the greatest bites, while Shatner, quite unexpectedly, turns in a comparatively nuanced (for his acting style, obviously) performance that makes quite a bit out of all the little hurts, betrayals and self-betrayals this character’s life has become, somehow making Warren more sympathetic than you’d believe.

With all of this going on, it’s not much of a surprise that the film’s actual thriller plot takes a bit of a backseat and is really just there to give characters the final push into the direction fate and the script need them to go; but then, that’s not so much a criticism than it is an observation.

Death Hunt (1981)

The early 1930s, Canada, the Yukon territory. A trapper named Albert Johnson (Charles Bronson) has just returned to the area to reclaim a way of life he followed before he became a spy in World War I (and did whatever guys like he do after that). When he sees local influential asshole Hazel (Ed Lauter) attempt to kill his own dog because it was losing a dog fight, he intervenes, making Hazel and his gang of violent cronies his bitter enemies. Hazel does his best to escalate things when it turns out that Johnson isn’t one to be easily killed by the likes of him, eventually managing to set the – very unwilling and generally tired – local Mountie Millen (Lee Marvin), his partner Sundog (Carl Weathers) and newly arrived rookie Mountie Alvin (Andrew Stevens, quite some time before he became one of the kings of Skinemax) against the trapper.

Because Johnson is a very dangerous man when riled, and a master at survival in dangerous circumstances, things escalate into a huge manhunt that makes the national news, making any idea of a peaceful solution nearly ridiculous.

Peter R. Hunt’s Northern Death Hunt is a wonderful film, basically doing nothing whatsoever that could destroy its balance, and doing very many things very right indeed.

The character work is strong throughout: Hunt makes excellent use of those elements of Bronson’s external stoicism that can suggest a combination of compassion and stubbornness when used properly (and Bronson clearly liked to do that when a film gave him the chance, and so applied himself fully in these situations instead of going through the motions of being Bronson), showing all the complexities of the character despite him only having a handful of dialogue scenes.

This ability to work via the body language of veteran actors also produces quite a resonant relationship between Marvin and Bronson despite them never meeting between glances through binoculars. Of course, these two are constructed as very parallel characters, decent men of violence who see their ways of life coming to an end, and not liking the replacement at all. It’s not that the film is getting all melancholy about the great times of frontier barbarism, mind you: it’s clear that nearly everyone populating these last spaces ruled by the old ways is a violent thug of some kind, cruel and callous; the film’s just as clear about the fact that the new ways of living coming up North now are not really any less terrible – they just like to pretend they are.

The film works wonderfully as a grim adventure movie with quite a few great set pieces, atmospherically filmed. The environmental dangers of snow and ice are ever-present, and, the film seems to suggest, are outward symbols of everyone’s mental states, which generally aren’t terribly healthy. The film takes some rather clever detours when it puts its mind to it, using tropes of the Western and revisionist Western but giving them interesting little twists to turn characters more human. Somewhat surprisingly, but certainly fitting in this context, for a film whose view on human nature seems to be rather cynical as a whole, Death Hunt shows a decided tendency to give every single side character (all played by wonderful character actors) something to be beyond their premeditated genre role, even fleshing out some of Hazel’s shithead henchmen as if they were proper human beings. The most impressive thing is not just that Hunt had the immense ambition to add all this humanity to his icy chase movie, it’s that he managed to do this while keeping the film ticking away like clockwork, ending up with a film that’s sprawling when thought about, but which feels tight and focussed while you watch it.

The Norliss Tapes (1973)

Writer David Norliss (Roy Thinnes), tasked with writing a book debunking the supernatural, ceases all contact with his publisher. He seems to spend his time lounging around sweating, not buttoning his shirt a lot. When the publisher finally makes contact with Norliss, the writer rambles something about being in too deep and having dictated his book onto tape. It will explain everything, apparently. He’s certainly not going to do that himself, for he doesn’t appear to a meeting with said publisher and seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth now.

His publisher does find the titular tapes, though. What is on the first of them makes up most of the film. Ellen Cort (Angie Dickinson), the widow of apparently somewhat famous sculptor James Raymond Cort (Nick Dimitri) calls Norliss in for help in a rather mysterious case. Despite being quite dead, a blue-faced version of Cort with pretty frightening eyes leaves his sarcophagus in the family crypt to murder dogs – later people – and work on a final sculpture. Ellen thinks it has something to do with the occult circles her husband started moving in when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Ellen particularly suspects the sinister Madame Jeckiel (Vonetta McGee) and a ring she gave James to have something to do with her husband’s very eventful version of the afterlife.

Norliss isn’t the most sceptical of sceptics, so he’s soon the one trying to convince your typical incompetent local Sheriff (as is usually the case played by Claude Akins) of the truth of a blue zombie dude walking around, murdering people, and sculpting a pretty creepy looking demon sculpture.

Dan Curtis’s – this time around not only producing but also directing – NBC TV movie The Norliss Tapes was supposed to be the pilot for a series of Norliss adventures, but the network never did pick the series up in the end. Therefor, we never will learn why Norliss disappeared, but since this was made in the age of done-in-one TV stories, his disappearance is really more an atmospheric set-up for the film’s actual plot.

I have to admit I’m not terribly surprised by the series not having been picked up. In an age where pretty much only soap operas had continuing storylines as we understand them today, much of the rest of the TV show world really had to sell themselves on the pull of their central characters, and I don’t see Norliss making much of a mark in many viewers’ minds. While it is nice to have a main character who isn’t a walking, talking gimmick, Norliss seems rather lacking in personality of any kind. He’s somewhat cool and aloof, but not in a terribly interesting way, he dresses to suggest he’s a pretty successful writer – and that’s it. Which I don’t think is enough to carry a show.

Of course, having said that, Norliss’s only actual adventure is at least an entertaining bit of TV horror throughout, starting off as a well-constructed series of investigative interviews and becoming a bit more gruesome and horror movie-like as things continue. Curtis, while for my tastes not quite as good a director as the best examples of the trade he worked with, does manage some fine scenes, always trying for the more atmospheric shot in a medium easily falling into the blandly generic for budget and cost reason and often making excellent use of rain, darkness and shadow to create a mood of classicist creeps. There are some fine sets and locations too – I’m particularly partial to the tunnels under the crypt – as well as a good cast doing the expected good work. Though I would have wished the film had made better use of Dickinson, who nonetheless turns out to be a rather adept screamer.

The monster design is simple yet on the effective side. The blue skin is in practice much more convincing than it sounds on paper, and our undead’s eyes are indeed pleasantly creepy (and Curtis clearly knows this). Dimitri’s fine, increasingly less human snarling isn’t too bad, either.


I also appreciate that Curtis doesn’t just use an early 70s undead but throws in a whole bunch of occult stuff that escalates to a bonus monster and provides the whole affair with a pleasant pulpy flavour. So, while I never really warmed to Norliss as a character or an occult detective, the film he’s in is a fine use of 70 minutes of anyone’s time, I believe.