Soldier Blue (1970)

          Nineteen-seventy was a wild year for Hollywood movies about the Native American experience, even if most of the stories Hollywood generated were told through the prism of white people assimilating into Indian culture. The best of the 1970 batch is undoubtedly Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman, although A Man Called Horse, with Richard Harris, has noteworthy virtues, as well. And then there’s Soldier Blue, which is in odd hybrid of bleeding-heart liberalism, culture-clash comedy, gut-wrenching violence, and Vietnam allegory. The movie’s a mess, but it’s strangely compelling and undeniably memorable, if for no other reason than how well it captures the anguished spirit of the historical moment in which it was created. Based on a novel by Theodore V. Olsen (which was originally titled Arrow in the Sun), the movie is set in the American West during the Civil War and revolves around two white characters with opposing views on Indians. Thrown together by circumstance, they bicker until arriving at an understanding, only to stumble into a horrific slaughter by U.S. soldiers of an entire Cheyenne village.

          Although the film’s bloody climax is based on a real historical incident from the time of the Indian Wars—the infamous Sand Creek massacre—the filmmakers’ thematic and visual parallels to the 1968 My Lai atrocity in Vietnam are unmistakable. So, in a weird way, the Native Americans supposedly at the heart of Soldier Blue are doubly marginalized—not only are Caucasians the leading characters, Indians are used as an all-purpose metaphor representing oppressed indigenous people everywhere. Still, iffy politics are the least of Soldier Blue’s problems from a cinematic perspective, because the film wobbles between sitcom-style banter and ugly scenes of murder and rape. Nearly everything in the movie is highly watchable for some reason or another, but Soldier Blue feels like several films cobbled together into one sloppy whole.

          The picture begins when Cheyenne warriors attack a group of civilians and soldiers. Only Cresta (Candice Bergen) and Honus (Peter Strauss) survive. She’s a white woman who has been held captive by Indians for a long period of time and has unexpectedly developed sympathy for their plight, whereas he’s a straight-line military man with ignorantly racist attitudes. The duo travels through a remote wilderness, arguing their way to mutual attraction while surviving near-death experiences as well as encounters with weird frontier characters. (Reliably odd character actor Donald Pleasance plays one of these folks.) Eventually, Cresta and Honus reach a military fort, where Cresta becomes permanently disillusioned with white culture—the soldier to whom she’s engaged reveals his plans to annihilate the village where she was held.
          The heroes try to prevent mass bloodshed, to no avail, so director Ralph Nelson unleashes an incendiary barrage for the movie’s big finish—the raid on the Indian village is filled with graphic violence and intense rape scenes as nature-loving Indians fall victim to monstrous whites. All of this is exactly as heavy-handed as it sounds, even if the underlying message is historically valid. Viewed as a piece of dramatic art, Soldier Blue is a train wreck. But viewed as a window into the concerns of its time, Soldier Blue gains a measure of twisted relevance.

Solider Blue: FREAKY

Tales That Witness Madness (1973)

          UK-based Amicus Productions, a second-tier competitor to Hammer Films, earned a niche in the horror marketplace by making a series of anthology movies, nasty little numbers featuring terse vignettes grouped by framing stories. Examples include Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). The success of these pictures inevitably led other companies to ape the Amicus formula, hence this silly project from World Film Services. Although Tales That Witness Madness is a respectable endeavor thanks to decent production values and the presence of familiar actors, the script by Jennifer Jayne (writing as Jay Fairbank) is an uninspired pastiche of hoary shock-fiction tropes. There’s not a genuine scare in Tales That Witness Madness, and most of the humor is of the unintentional sort. Plus, the longest story is almost interminably boring.

          The picture begins with a shrink, Dr. Tremayne (Donald Pleasance), showing a colleague around a psychiatric facility where four odd patients are housed. As each patient is presented, his or her tale appears in flashback. The first bit, “Mr. Tiger,” features a little boy whose bickering parents discover the lad’s imaginary friend may not be imaginary. Next comes “Penny Farthing,” a drab yarn about an antique dealer getting possessed by the figure in an old painting. In “Mel,” the best vignette of the batch, an artist (Michael Jayston) brings home an old tree and then decides he likes the tree better than his wife (Joan Collins). The final sequence, “Luau,” is a tedious tale about people caught up in a ritual-sacrifice scheme. Except for “Mel,” which has a pithy, Twilight Zone-esque tone, the stories drone on lifelessly. (“Mr. Tiger” is fine, but the “twist” ending is so obvious from the first frame that there’s no tension.)

          The actors all deliver serviceable work, with young Russell Lewis (as the boy in “Mr. Tiger”) and Jayston (the artist in “Mel”) providing the most vivid performances. As for the leading ladies, Collins, who inexplicably spent much of the ’70s appearing in bad horror movies, does her usual shrewish-sexpot routine, while Hollywood actress Kim Novak—playing the lead in “Luau”—drains all vitality from the movie with her colorless non-acting. Director Freddie Francis, the former cinematographer who directed numerous frightfests for Hammer and Amicus (including the aforementioned Tales from the Crypt, among other horror anthology movies), handles this project with his characteristic aplomb, but even his smooth style can only compensate so much for the enervated nature of the stories.

Tales That Witness Madness: FUNKY

The Mutations (1974)

          Reflecting its storyline about a mad scientist who gene-splices people and plants to create monsters, this lurid UK flick offers two movies for the price of one. The putative main story is an unintentionally hilarious stinker, with Donald Pleasance phoning in his bad-guy performance while the film’s special-effects team delivers laughably bad monster costumes. However, a major subplot about the mad scientist’s deformed henchman has a certain degree of pathos and suspense, especially because the subplot borrows many elements from the 1932 cult classic Freaks. Set in modern-day England, The Mutations stars Pleasance as Professor Nolter, a psycho who envisions a new race of humans imbued with plant characteristics. Nolter’s accomplice is Lynch (Tom Baker), a deformed giant who abducts young men and women for Nolter to use as test subjects. Lynch is the leader of a group of circus freaks living at an amusement park, yet while the other circus performers are harmless, Lynch is a self-loathing psychotic. Thus, while Nolter tempts fate by taking his experiments too far, Lynch is driven to madness by waiting for Nolter to deliver on promises of correcting Lynch’s deformity. (The picture also features perfunctory material involving attractive students either investigating the disappearances of their classmates or becoming victims of Nolter’s weird science.)

          As helmed by Jack Cardiff, a master cinematographer who occasionally directed, The Mutations has a colorful look and one or two genuinely creepy scenes, notably the Freaks-influenced conclusion of Lynch’s storyline. The acting is generally bland, but Baker (beloved by many for his long run on the UK TV series Doctor Who) does well playing Lynch in the Vincent Price mode of a killer besieged by inner demons. The film’s other noteworthy performance comes from the diminutive Michael Dunn, familiar to American TV fans for his work as Dr. Loveless on the ’60s show The Wild Wild West. He plays the little person who represents the conscience of the circus-freak community. Furthermore, starlets including the scrumptious Julie Ege provide major eye candy while clothed and otherwise, and The Mutationsbenefits from an eerie music score that utilizes dissonant classical music—a truly unsettling flourish. FYI, The Mutations sometimes carries the alternate title The Freakmaker.

The Mutations: FUNKY

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

Representing a middling finale to an impressive career, The Eagle Has Landed was the last movie directed by action guy John Sturges, whose previous output included such classics as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). Considering Sturges’ skill and the caliber of the film’s cast, The Eagle Has Landed should be terrific, but the story is hopelessly convoluted, and the film never quite overcomes the problem of featuring Nazis as protagonists. Based on a novel by Jack Higgins and written by Bond-movie veteran Tom Mankiewicz, who was generally better suited to tongue-in-cheek escapist fare, the narrative concerns an outlandish Third Reich plot to kidnap British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the height of the war’s European action. Some of the Germans behind the scheme are, in descending order of rank, Hitler confidante Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasance), an officer named Radl (Robert Duvall, complete with eye patch), an IRA double-agent named Devlin (Donald Sutherland), and a disgraced Nazi officer named Steiner (Michael Caine). The overcooked plot also includes American soldiers (played by, among others, Larry Hagman and Treat Williams), plus a British lass (Jenny Agutter) who shares romantic history with Devlin. (In case you’ve already forgotten, he’s the IRA guy.) Just describing the plot of The Eagle Has Landed is exhausting, and while watching the movie is not quite as much of a chore as this synopsis might suggest, The Eagle Has Landed lacks the jaunty quality of Sturges’ best action pictures. On the bright side, there’s some low-wattage fun to be had in watching Caine play a snotty officer who openly expresses contempt for his superiors, or in watching Sutherland play one of his signature romantic rogues. Plus, Duvall has a few strong moments as the put-upon Radl, a mid-level officer who endeavors to follow orders while slyly working the Third Reich political system to protect himself from punishment in the event of failure. Good luck, pal!

The Eagle Has Landed: FUNKY

Telefon (1977)

          Built around a fun premise but suffering from humdrum execution and lifeless leading performances, this Cold War thriller plays with the provocative notion of “sleeper” agents, international operatives brainwashed into acting like normal people until exposure to code words triggers their lethal training. Specifically, the story begins when KGB bad guy Nicolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasance) leaves the U.S.S.R. for America and brings along the codebook for a program called “Telefon.” Activating long-dormant killers who wreak havoc on U.S. targets, Dalchimsky is an anarchist bent on provoking a war. In response, Soviet overlords send KGB tough guy Major Grigori Borzov (Charles Bronson) to America, where he goes undercover to track down and stop Dalchimsky. Tasked with aiding Borzov is a Russian mole living as an American, codenamed “Barbara” (Lee Remick).

          Based on a novel by Walter Wager and written for the screen by highly capable thriller specialists Peter Hyams and Stirling Silliphant, Telefonshould work, but the casting is problematic. Bronson is so harsh and stoic that it’s hard to accept him playing the romantic-hero rhythms of the Borzov role, and while it’s a relief that the leading lady isn’t Bronson’s real-life bride, Jill Ireland, who costarred in a large number of his ’70s movies, Remick seems highly disconnected from Bronson; any hope of chemistry between the leading characters probably ended the first time Bronson and Remick played a scene together.

          Another problem is that the film’s director, Don Siegel, was slipping into decline. After his respectable career in B-movies enjoyed a huge late-’60s/early-’70s boost thanks to a vibrant collaboration with Clint Eastwood, Siegel was apparently suffering health problems by the late ’70s. (It’s long been rumored that Eastwood did a lot of the directing on Siegel’s next picture, 1979’s terrific Escape from Alcatraz.) Whatever the cause, however, the result is the same—Telefon feels more like a generic TV movie than a big-budget feature, thanks to flat acting and perfunctory camerawork. So even though the twisty story has a few enjoyable moments, and even though Pleasance is weirdly beguiling as always, watching Telefon becomes a chore by the time the plot gets contrived toward the climax.

Telefon: FUNKY

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

          One of the Bee Gees’ catchy disco ballads, released a year before they conquered the world’s dancefloors with the Saturday Night Feversoundtrack, was titled “Love So Right.” The song’s anguished chorus laments, “Maybe you can tell me how a love so right can turn out to be so wrong.” It seems apropos to paraphrase the sentiment when considering Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which costars the Bee Gees and ’70s rock god Peter Frampton: Can anyonetell why an idea so right turned into a movie so very, very wrong? It’s not as if there wasn’t ample precedent for translating the music of the Beatles into amiable motion pictures.

          During their ’60s heyday, the Fab Four appeared in several lively flicks powered by tunes from the Lennon-McCartney songbook. And if the Beatles were no longer a band by the time this project took shape, who’s to say a fresh batch of mop-topped kids couldn’t have carried the cinematic torch? Unfortunately, producer Robert Stigwood transformed the Beatles’ LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandinto one of the most deranged flops in cinema history: Every frame of Sgt. Pepper’s is so mind-bogglingly inappropriate that the film is mesmerizing for the wrong reasons.

          Here’s the backstory. In 1974, Stigwood produced a London stage show called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road, which combined the Beatles’ music with a loose narrative. Three years later, Stigwood produced the movie and soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, which made the Bee Gees into superstars. Combining two of his assets, Stigwood hired the Bee Gees to act in a film adapted from the stage show. He also recruited white-hot English guitarist/singer Frampton to round out the principal cast. (The fact that none of the leads had significant acting experience apparently didn’t matter.) Pressing forward, Stigwood hired first-time screenwriter Henry Edwards to pen the screenplay, then enlisted Michael Schultz, best known for helming a series of African-American-themed comedies, to direct. (Again, the fact that neither Edwards nor Schultz had demonstrated affinity for musical storytelling was disregarded.)

          Stigwood’s hubris was compounded by the choice to make Sgt. Pepper’s on a grand scale, employing gaudy special effects, opulent production design, and random guest appearances. A mishmash of clichés culled from the worlds of fantasy fiction and showbiz melodrama, Sgt. Pepper’splays out like a fever-dream fusion of A Star Is Born and The Wizard of Oz. From the very first scene, the bad-movie die is cast. A title card announces that we’re in “August 1918, the tiny village of Fleu de Coup.” Against a World War I backdrop, we meet the original Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an American marching band so likeable they convince soldiers to stop fighting. Returning to their U.S. hometown, Heartland, the band continues entertaining people through to the World War II era, and the citizens of Heartland decide to erect a golden weathervane in Sgt. Pepper’s honor.

          The now-aged musician strikes up the band for one final performance at the weathervane unveiling, then drops dead after a few notes. A generation later, circa the ’70s, four new musicians take up the Sgt. Pepper mantle: Billy Shears (Frampton) and the Henderson brothers (the Bee Gees). Barely 10 minutes into the movie, Sgt. Pepper’s is already buried in convoluted hogwash. Yet somehow, it gets worse.

          While an evil record executive (Donald Pleasance) seduces the young musicians with drugs, money, and women, the bizarre villain Mean Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howard) conspires to steal the original Sgt. Pepper instruments from a Heartland museum. Later, the musicians encounter a madman (Alice Cooper) who brainwashes America’s youth, and a plastic surgeon (Steve Martin) who gives rich old people new bodies. There’s also a love story between Billy and his hometown sweetheart, Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina), and battle between the heroes and a villainous rock group (portrayed by Aerosmith).

          The whole thing climaxes with the weathervane coming to life as a super-powered messiah (played by real-life Beatles sideman Billy Preston) in a bizarre scene that completely reverses every significant dramatic event that happened previously. In a word, Sgt. Pepper’sis insane. Consider the dream sequence in which costar George Burns, then 80-ish, straps on an electric guitar to croak “Fixing a Hole.” And we haven’t even discussed the dancing robots. The Bee Gees and Frampton feel like guest stars in their own movie, since none of the quartet delivers a single line of dialogue, and even their musical performances are wildly erratic (although Frampton sings “Golden Slumbers” nicely). Therefore, the only people who don’t completely embarrass themselves are Martin, who gets to be funny on purpose, and Preston, whose natural funk somehow elevates him above the ludicrous surroundings.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band: FREAKY

The Devil Within Her (1975)

          Originally titled I Don’t Want to Be Born for its domestic release in the UK, then renamed The Devil Within Her for American exhibition, this supernatural howler may be the silliest of the myriad evil-baby movies that proliferated in the post-Rosemary’s Baby era. Joan Collins, as glamorously awful as ever, plays Lucy Carlesi, the English wife of an Italian businessman. When the movie begins, Lucy moans and screams through the difficult delivery of her first child, a sequence so extreme that attending physician Dr. Finch (Donald Pleasance) remarks, “It’s as if he doesn’t want to be born!” But born he is, a black-haired, 12-pound tot named Nicholas, and trouble soon follows. In a serious of ridiculous scenes, the newborn bites people with teeth he shouldn’t have yet, scratches their faces with nails that shouldn’t be as sharp as they are, and even commits impossible crimes like shoving people into rivers. Although Lucy’s husband, Gino (Ralph Bates), stupidly ignores the obvious, Lucy realizes that little Nicholas is a problem child. Making a rather dramatic leap of logic, she determines that her pregnancy was cursed by the evil dwarf whose affections she spurned when they worked together in a strip club.
          Thus informed, Lucy seeks assistance from Gino’s sister, Albana (Eileen Atkins), who conveniently happens to be a nun. Cue exorcism! Powered by an insane score that mixes influences from Indian, Italian, and progressive-rock music, The Devil Within Her glides along smoothly for a while, with logical characterizations and sensible scenes complementing the gonzo premise. But once the movie really gets cooking, logic and sense give way to absurdity and goofiness. Atkins’ performance gets more bug-eyed and frenetic, Bates’ Italian accent fades in and out, and Collins’ breathy speaking voice grows more irritating. (It’s a sure sign of trouble when Donald Pleasance comes across as the most restrained cast member.) The finale of the movie approaches a kind of so-bad-it’s-good campiness, and the filmmakers get points for making it clear that no character is safe from the nasty newborn. Nonetheless, calling The Devil Within Her anything but awful would be irresponsible.

The Devil Within Her: LAME