Television Review: ZUMA BEACH (1978, Lee H. Katzin)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Suzanne Somers (THREE'S COMPANY, SERIAL MOM), Michael Biehn (ALIENS, TOMBSTONE, THE TERMINATOR), Rosanna Arquette (PULP FICTION, AFTER HOURS, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN), P.J. Soles (HALLOWEEN, ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, CARRIE), Tanya Roberts (THE BEASTMASTER, A VIEW TO A KILL), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Mark Wheeler (THE CONVERSATION, APOLLO 13), Gary Imhoff (SUMMER SCHOOL, THE GREEN MILE), Delta Burke (DESIGNING WOMEN, WHAT WOMEN WANT), Kimberly Beck (ROLLER BOOGIE, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER).
Tagline: "Her life had suddenly become a long drive to nowhere... so what better place to get it all together than her old stomping grounds, Zuma Beach! Let's get it together with a batch of beach boys and their golden girls... frolic with Suzanne Somers on Zuma Beach!"
Best one-liner: "Have some confidence in yourself." –"I can't. It's 9:30, and the stores stop selling confidence at five o'clock. And tomorrow is a holiday."

"I wrote that for a producer who just said he wanted a beach movie. He ended up selling it to Warner Bros., and soon Suzanne Somers was starring in it. I was going to direct it––for about ten seconds––but one of my mentors, Richard Kobritz, who later produced Christine, helped me see I didn’t want to do it. It was vastly rewritten, so I really shouldn’t have taken credit for it, but I was a little asshole in those days."

–John Carpenter, when asked about ZUMA BEACH by Fangoria in 2013 

 

Almost ten years ago, I did a "Poor Man's Carpy" series on this blog, devoted to John Carpenter marginalia like the co-scripted TV movie SILENT PREDATORS, the Tommy Lee Wallace-helmed VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS, trashy Hallo-sequels HALLOWEEN 666 and RESURRECTION, and the Dennis Etchison novelizations of THE FOG and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH. One which slipped under the radar was ZUMA BEACH. So here we are, in the dog days of summer, finally taking a look at this forgotten CBS Late Movie "sort of" written by Carpenter and three other guys.

What can we learn about John Carpenter from ZUMA BEACH? Very little, I'm sure, given his above quote, but I think it's worth looking into. (Says the guy who did a two-part deep dive into John Carpenter's filmmaker-buddy-garage band, The Coupe de Villes.)

It's a straightforward slice of life, giggle and jiggle flick designed to eliminate two hours on a lazy, hazy summer evening. Though it ends with a volleyball game, it never even possesses stakes as high as in SIDE OUT. 

 Suzanne Somers plays a pop star (whose big hit is the fictitious "Silent Whisper"), and she's having a mid-career crisis. 

In need of a reset, she clears her head at Zuma Beach, where she once enjoyed poetry and sand castles as a child. Zuma Beach is populated with a rogue's gallery of horny teens, pre-makeover nerds, beach bums, surfers, football jerks, hot dog enthusiasts, kite fliers, windjammers, cool visor-dudes and the like.

Somers becomes something of a beach elder here, primarily because it's a teenage hotspot. She dispenses wisdom, smiles pensively, and takes in some rays. 

 

Bullies vaguely receive their comeuppance, romances spark and fizzle, and everyone more or less fritters the summer away. This is ZUMA BEACH, ladies and gentlemen. It's so dedicated to its quotidian ensemble that if it were better written and had more interesting characters, it might even feel like an Altman or Linklater flick. As is, it's merely a pleasant time-waster filled with bright 1970s colors and some amusing and unexpected performances. For reference, the real Zuma Beach is in Malibu, about a 70 minute drive from the PRINCE OF DARKNESS church.

If I were trying to draw a real John Carpenter connection, I'd probably compare it to THE FOG, which also sees a strong woman adjacent to the music industry (Adrienne Barbeau as "DJ Stevie Wayne") finding her footing in a California beach community. There are even times that ZUMA BEACH feels like "a Carpenter horror movie, but before the horror begins."

The image of a child playing with his dog in the surf... recalls Stevie Wayne's son finding a plank from the Elizabeth Dane in THE FOG? C'mon, I'm trying here.

Oh, and there is a lot of feathered hair in this movie. Might I remind you that it was shot in 1978.

Mark Wheeler's elaborate feathered coiffure helmet puts Mark Hamill's to shame

With such a bare bones plot, you start focusing on strange details. Like Suzanne Somers' suntan oil, which looks like it's being dispensed from an Elmer's glue bottle.

We have young, Toto-era Rosanna Arquette as a character who tokes a lot of reefer. She's doing that quirky comedic 'Rosanna Arquette thing,' mostly indistinguishable from her performances in AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, which is okay!

You have to admire (pre-Reagan) CBS Standards & Practices allowing such casual drug use to slip by without dramaturgical rebuke. 

Michael Biehn pops up, also in one of his very first roles, as a crazy-eyed, eyebrow-indicating lifeguard who uses his lifeguard tower as a bachelor pad.

Here, he's trying to pressure HALLOWEEN's own P.J. Soles into pre-marital sex. It's a good thing Michael Myers isn't around!

HALLOWEEN was released October 25, 1978; ZUMA BEACH debuted September 27, 1978. HALLOWEEN was filmed in May, and based on the look and general disposability of ZUMA BEACH, I have to imagine it was filmed that summer. It's quite possible that P.J. appears here as part of some John Carpenter favor; but given his disconnect to this movie, it's equally plausible that it's pure coincidence. I at least have to hope that John Carpenter was not responsible for a line of dialogue about "extracurricular sex-tivity."

Soles: "I have six pigtails"

As usual, P.J. Soles is a hilarious delight. And she has six pigtails. Count 'em––six! Why would anybody need six pigtails? Maybe she's choosing to pull focus by-way-of ridiculous hair/costume accoutrement––she does has a history of that. You may recall that in Brian De Palma's CARRIE, she established herself as the Queen of Pulling Focus with her big 'ol red rainbow ballcap. Bless.

There are some terrible, copyright-skirting faux-Beach Boys songs which play throughout, Tanya Roberts and Delta Burke wander through the frame, and Michael Biehn gets sand kicked in his face: a sobering experience for Zuma Beach's resident bully/Casanova.

There's a volleyball game and a riding-men-by-the-shoulders race,

and that's all she wrote. Er, rather, that's all John Carpenter and (at least) three other guys wrote. Do you feel like know all you need to about the ZUMA BEACH experience? I hope so.

Film Review: SILENT RAGE (1982, Michael Miller)

Stars: 3.9 of 5. Running Time: 103 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Chuck Norris, Ron Silver (TIMECOP, ROMANCING THE STONE), Steven Keats (DEATH WISH, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE), Toni Kalem (SISTER ACT, THE WANDERERS), Stephen Furst (MIDNIGHT MADNESS). Written by Joseph Fraley (GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK). Music by Mark Goldenberg (HOT DOG THE MOVIE, TEEN WOLF TOO) and Peter Bernstein (HAMBURGER THE MOTION PICTURE, EWOKS: THE BATTLE FOR ENDOR). Hmmmm. Makes you wonder. Tag-line: "Science created him. Now Chuck Norris must destroy him." Best one-liner: "I don't care if he killed 100 people! We are scientists, not moralists!" SILENT RAGE is your typical early 80's Norris flick, except for one thing: it's smattered with contemporaneously popular horror! We got long steadicam shots like HALLOWEEN, an axe-thru-door scene like THE SHINING, and a back-from-the-dead emerging-from-water scene straight out of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH. Psycho killer puts the squeeze on Chuck... ...and Stephen Furst. The plot is basically FRANKENSTEIN meets WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. Chuck is in fine form here: karate kicking bikers in the mouth (who all spew beer on impact), awkward buddy bonding with a greenhorn, overweight deputy (Stephen Furst, Flounder from ANIMAL HOUSE and the rich brat in MIDNIGHT MADNESS), and making love to a woman and then lavishing her with fruit platters and hammock-time. CHUCK WILL TALK SMOOTH TO YOU CHUCK WILL TOWEL HIMSELF DOWN CHUCK WILL BE GENEROUS WITH HIS KISSES, FRUIT PLATTERS, AND UNINSTALLED PULL-UP BARS CHUCK WILL LAVISH YOU WITH HAMMOCK-TIME AND A REPLENISHED FRUIT PLATTER The noodling synth score (courtesy of Mark Goldenberg (TEEN WOLF TOO) and Peter Bernstein (the EWOK TV movies)) is whacky and frequently inappropriate, the anti-science message is whimsical and true to Norris form, and the suspenseful scenes laboriously drag in a manner that reveals an action director's sad first attempt at horror. Look at how evil science is. Don't worry, though, science will get its comeuppance. Then we got this moody psychiatrist played by Ron Silver, who obviously watched SERPICO like twelve times right before filming began. We got two main characters (Norris and his gal) who evidently don't know how elevators work (they press the up and down arrows both, and in a crisis scenario, no less!). Are you serious? Up or down. One or the other. Please not both. We got yet another Norris character with two first names: Dan Stevens. Even the villain has two first names: John Kirby. Then the whole thing ends on a pretty sweet freeze frame as well. If you like Norris, you will like this movie. This is one of the stronger ones; as far as early Norris goes, I'd put it beneath LONE WOLF MCQUADE, but above THE OCTAGON. Four stars. -Sean Gill 2009 Halloween Countdown 31. PROM NIGHT (1980, Paul Lynch) 30. PHENOMENA (1985, Dario Argento) 29. HOUSE OF WAX (1953, André de Toth) 28. SILENT RAGE (1982, Michael Miller) 27. ...

Film Review: THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973, Peter Yates)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 102 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Steven Keats, Richard Jordan. Cinematography by Victor J. Kemper (DOG DAY AFTERNOON, CLUE, XANADU, HUSBANDS).
Tag-lines: "It's a grubby, violent, dangerous world. But it's the only world they know. And they're the only friends Eddie has."
Best Mitchum lament: "Look, I'm gettin' old, you hear? I spent most of my life hanging around crummy joints with a buncha punks drinkin' the beer, eatin' the hash and the hot dogs and watchin' the other people go off to Florida while I'm sweatin' out how I'm gonna pay the plumber. I done time and I stood up but I can't take no more chances. Next time, it's gonna be me goin' to Florida."

Something happens early on in THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE that nearly caused me to fall out of my chair. Bob Mitchum opened his mouth, and something approximating a Boston accent came out. Mitchum's one of the greatest actors of all time, but when he worked on a movie, his attitude generally fell between "doesn't give a shit" and "hardly gives a shit."

But doing an accent?! That's going above and beyond- that means he might have felt strongly about the material- (well, as strongly as Mitchum can feel about these things). So if a film can command Mitchum's respect, then, by God, you'd better sit up straight, sober up, and give this your full and honest attention.

Directed by Peter "BULLITT" Yates, EDDIE COYLE takes aim at genre convention. 'We gotta have action! Gotta have CAR CHASES!' Nope, it's a somber character study. A melancholy look at the everyday goings-on of those who choose to partake in this 'left-handed' form of human endeavor. It has far more in common with a film by Antonioni or Jacques Becker than a genre pic. 'But, wait, I wanted explosions! One-liners!' How about just Bob Mitchum sitting at a barstool, thinking about his life: that pretty much beats the shit out of any action sequence I can think of.


There's heaps of reasons to love this film: the beautiful, immersive atmosphere of Boston in late autumn; Steven Keats' smarmy Jackie Brown ("This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid!"); Richard Jordan's pithy, no-frills cop; Peter Boyle's loathsome, sad sack bartender; Mitchum's explanation of what happened to his knuckles as a master's class in acting; that bank robbery scene we've all seen a thousand times made fresh and taut... the list is nearly endless. And it's all there in Mitchum's rumpled eyes. What once indicated disinterest and badassery now merely observes, pensively. With crestfallen passivity, Mitchum awaits his turn, his moment, his Florida retirement. And he waits. And waits...

-Sean Gill

Film Review: DEATH WISH (1974, Michael Winner)

Stars: 5 of 5. Running Time: 93 minutes. Notable Cast or Crew: Charles Bronson (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, RIDER ON THE RAIN, MR. MAJESTYK, HARD TIMES), Hope Lange (BLUE VELVET, PEYTON PLACE, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2), Vincent Gardenia (THE HUSTLER, 80's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), William Redfield (Dale in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST), Jeff Goldblum, music by Herbie Hancock. Tag-lines: "Vigilante, city style -Judge, Jury, and Executioner." Best one-liner: "I'm listening to the weather report - why haven't you found my dog - he's vital to my income - he paints such marvelous pictures with his paws!" Best anecdote: After shooting wrapped on THE STONE KILLER, Bronson and Winner wanted to collaborate again, and discussed future projects. "What do we do next?" asked Bronson. "The best script I've got is DEATH WISH. It's about a man whose wife and daughter are mugged and he goes out and shoots muggers," said Winner. "I'd like to do that," Bronson said. "The film?" inquired Winner. Bronson replied, "No . . . shoot muggers."


"Man, check out that mild-mannered little architect."

"Look at 'im. He can hardly lift those groceries. C'mon guys, I'm gonna mug 'im."


I guess, in a way, that's the fundamental flaw of this picture––the idea that anyone would think they could take on Charles Bronson, groceries or no.

Though supposedly an Italian once tried it, attempting to rob him at gunpoint. Bronson later said of the incident, "I am not a Casper Milquetoast. A guy in broken English asked me for money. I said, 'You give ME money.' He turned around and walked away." Regardless of that story's veracity, or the strength of the concept (that hoodlums would try to mug Bronson), this is an entertaining time at the movies... with Spillane-style fascist-apologetic undertones. Here's some actual dialogue:

"Oh Christ, you are such a bleeding-heart liberal, Paul."
–"My heart bleeds a little for the underprivileged, yes."
"The underprivileged are beating our goddamned brains out. You know what I say? Stick them in concentration camps, that's what I say."

Ummm... WHUTTTTTT?! Somehow its reactionary political leanings are reconciled by the fact that there's so much cathartic fun to be had watching Bronson do his thing. No one can deny that. Combine that with a super-young Jeff Goldblum as Freak #1 (see him also menace Bronson in ST. IVES), Vincent Gardenia in the now-cliched role of 'cop begrudgingly impressed by vigilante,' and a groovin' soundtrack by Herbie Hancock, and you've got yourself a bona fide classic. Followed by FOUR sequels of increasingly deranged (Cannon Films) quality and literally thousands of rip-offs (MS. 45 probably being the best), DEATH WISH's punch-in-the-guts impact is undeniable

Tangent: And the final scene reveals that a 'forefinger and thumb gun' battle between Bronson and Eastwood would be extremely satisfying:

Look at that smile. The wink! You want it? You got it!


Conversely, Clint takes no pleasure from this.


But hey, now we're gettin' classy, too! I don't think Bronson can top that.


Whoa! I have been rendered speechless. My mind races with the possibilities of a 'Charles Bronson Album.' What if Bronson and Eastwood had recorded 'Beers to You' together, instead of Ray Charles and Eastwood? So many unanswered questions. I'm not sure I can declare a winner at this point. Stay tuned.

COMING SOON: Reviews of DEATH WISHES 2-5. And more on the Bronson/Eastwood rivalry.