A Force of One (1979)

Former karate champ Chuck Norris continued his ascendance to B-movie stardom with this lifeless martial-arts saga, which tries to compensate for its myriad shortcomings by showcasing long scenes of Norris in action. Karate aficionados may find this picture more satisfying than the actor’s previous flick, Good Guys Wear Black (1978), but, as always, catering to a niche audience is the easiest way to alienate everyone else. Accordingly, viewers hoping for things like believable acting, intriguing drama, and passable writing should direct their attention elsewhere. Model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill stars as Mandy Rust, the lone female on a San Diego police unit tasked with investigating narcotics activity in the city. When two cops from the unit are murdered via karate, Mandy persuades her boss (Clu Gulager) that everyone on the unit needs martial-arts training. Then she recruits title contender Matt Logan (Norris), who runs a local dojo, for the job. Predictably, Matt gets drawn into the investigation, suffers a horrific personal loss that makes him vengeful, and helps the police take down the drug kingpin who ordered the hits on the cops. There’s also a twist involving a corrupt detective, a quasi-romance between Mandy and Matt, and a touchy-feely subplot concerning Matt’s guardianship of a plucky teenager. It’s all very rote, with nary an original idea in evidence, and the storytelling is turgid in the extreme. Scenes plod along aimlessly, and the only thing flatter than the writing is the acting. Norris is awful, since he had not yet learned to emulate Clint Eastwood’s less-is-more approach, so his line deliveries sound awkward and his “emoting” is pathetic. O’Neill is almost as bad, a delicate beauty preening her way through the absurd role of a tough street cop. Gulager borders on camp with his twitchy take on the clichéd role of a put-upon top cop, and Ron O’Neal (of Superflyfame), who plays one of the officers on the drug unit, waffles between distracted indifference and silly swagger. In short, if you want to see an in-his-prime Norris deliver lightning-fast punches and walloping roundhouse kicks, A Force of One will satisfy for needs. Beyond that? Not so much.

A Force of One: LAME

The Carey Treatment (1972)

          Even though it’s executed with obvious craftsmanship and intelligence, The Carey Treatment suffers from a lack of novelty and substance, which isn’t helped by the jagged narrative rhythms that were presumably transposed from the Michael Crichton novel upon which the film is based. The best Crichton yarns have such fascinating underlying ideas that storytelling hiccups don’t matter, but The Carey Treatment is far from being one of Crichton’s best. James Coburn stars as Dr. Peter Carey, a swaggering pathologist newly arrived at a Boston hospital. Quickly shacking up with beautiful Dr. Georgia Hightower (Jennifer O’Neill), Carey springs into action when his old friend, Dr. David Tao (James Hong), is arrested for allegedly botching an illegal abortion that resulted in the death of a young woman with important society connections. The story gets confusing when Carey simultaneously investigates whether Tao actually performed the abortion and looks into the sordid lifestyle of Roger Hudson (Michael Blodgett), a pretty-boy masseuse with a bad habit of knocking up young women. Adding other dimensions to the story are Carey’s fraught relationships with a diligent policeman (Pat Hingle), a senior physician (Dan O’Herlihy), and various other characters.

         Director Blake Edwards, skewing toward the thriller side of his style but still lacing the picture with the sort of urbane dialogue found in his many comedy films, handles individual scenes effectively but can’t quite get a handle on the overarching storyline. It doesn’t help that the movie constantly puts Carey into antihero mode, because logic suffers when Carey does things like trapping a college girl in his car and then taking her for a terrifying high-speed ride along a cliff in order to extract information. Even though Carey’s ostensibly doing everything in the service of justice, he’s such an arrogant prick that it’s hard to root for him. That said, the performances are generally quite entertaining, with Alex Drier standing out as an eccentric blueblood whom Carey interrogates. And, for what it’s worth, O’Neill is beguilingly pretty. The Carey Treatment is murky and ultimately forgettable, but it’s pleasant enough for a single casual viewing. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Carey Treatment: FUNKY

Summer of ’42 (1971) & Class of ’44 (1973)

          Featuring one of the most lyrical love scenes in all of ’70s cinema, Summer of ’42 is an offbeat romance involving a teenage boy and a grown woman. Compassionately directed by Robert Mulligan, the film takes a bittersweet look at characters moving through profound life changes, conveying a sense of how deeply two people can comfort each other in times of need despite coming from different worlds. Screenwriter Herman Raucher, who adapted his original story into a novelization after completing the script—the book version eventually became a best-seller, just like the movie eventually became a sleeper hit—has said that the tale is autobiographical.

          According to Raucher, he was a confused 15-year-old vacationing with his family on Nantucket Island during World War II, and he became friends with a beautiful woman named Dorothy and her husband, a U.S. soldier. After the soldier was summoned to active duty, young Raucher remained friendly with Dorothy. Then, one afternoon, young Raucher arrived at Dorothy’s house moments after she learned of her husband’s death in combat. Distraught and lonely, she took young Raucher to bed, and then departed the island the next day, leaving her adolescent lover only a note.

          In the film version of this story, young Raucher is “Hermie” (Gary Grimes), a curious and kind-hearted teen spending the summer with his pals Benjie (Oliver Conant) and Oscy (Jerry Houser). Dorothy is portrayed by the mesmerizingly beautiful model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill. The teen high jinks that comprise much of the movie’s first half are forgettable, but all of the scenes with O’Neill have a certain magic. Not only does Mulligan guide O’Neill to a higher performance level than she ever reached in another project, but Mulligan captures the wonderment Hermie feels at connecting with a sophisticated adult. The entire movie has a nostalgic feel, with cinematographer Robert Surtees capturing the stark beauty of East Coast shorelines and composer Michel Legrand contributing tender melodies. Yet the appeal of the picture stems almost entirely from that one key scene—handled with unusual elegance and restraint, Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is beautiful and bewildering and sad. The sequence is poetry.

          Alas, the success of the movie compelled Raucher to write a thoroughly unnecessary sequel titled Class of ’44, which was produced and released two years after the original film. Neither director Mulligan nor costar O’Neill returned, though Grimes reprised his role as Hermie. (Conant and Houser return, as well, portraying Hermie’s pals, but they remain in supporting roles.) Set during Hermie’s college years—which are heavily fictionalized extrapolations of Raucher’s real-life experiences—the bland and meandering picture primarily concerns Hermie’s romance with Julie (Deborah Winters), a high-strung coed. Julie comes off as difficult and domineering, and Winters’ performance is strident, so it’s difficult to get excited about the prospect of these two forming a lasting bond.

          Worse, Hermie emerges as a deeply ordinary collegiate who neither changes significantly during the course of the story nor has a major impact on those around him. Yes, he suffers a few coming-of-age blows, such as the death of his father, but these events feel trite compared with the transcendent experience Hermie had in Summer of ’42. The likeable Grimes does what he can with bland material, however, leavening the story’s inherent navel-gazing quality with admirable toughness. In sum, while the execution of Class of ’44 is more or less acceptable—particularly in terms of period details and production values—the whole enterprise feels perfunctory.

Summer of ’42: GROOVY

Class of ’44: FUNKY

Steel (1979)

          While it’s mildly enjoyable as a manly-man action movie, Steel is actually more amusing when viewed for its unintentional subtext—endeavoring for macho swagger led the filmmakers weirdly close to the realm of gay erotica. The story begins when contractor “Big” Lew Cassidy (George Kennedy) heads to work on a new high-rise he’s building in Texas, explaining that the sight of a tall building “still gives me a hard-on.” When Lew dies in a workplace accident, his pretty daughter Cass (Jennifer O’Neill) pledges to finish the building, thus saving her family’s company from bankruptcy. To do so, she needs a “ramrod”—no, really, that’s the phallic job title of the movie’s real leading character, Mike Catton, played by the Six Million Dollar Man himself, Lee Majors.

          Mike is a construction foreman who quit working at high altitudes after suddenly developing a fear of heights. Now working as a trucker (picture Majors behind the wheel of a big rig in a cowboy hat and a wife-beater), Mike accepts the job on the condition that he can supervise work from a completed floor instead of climbing onto beams. As Cass’ second-in-command, “Pignose” Morgan (Art Carney), says to Mike: “You’re here because this building will give you a chance to get it up again.” Scout’s honor, that’s the line!

          The first half of the movie comprises Mike building his team of world-class steel workers, Dirty Dozen-style. These roughnecks include such walking clichés as a horny Italian named Valentino (Terry Kiser); a jive-talking African-American named Lionel (Roger E. Mosley); a stoic Indian named Cherokee (Robert Tessier); and a taunting bruiser named Dancer (Richard Lynch). Meanwhile, Lew’s estranged brother, Eddie (Harris Yulin), conspires to derail the project because he wants to seize control of Lew’s company. As the movie progresses, Mike tries to overcome his fear of heights while coaching his fellow dudes through long days of hard work and hard drinking.

          Steel is such a he-man enterprise that even though Majors engages in close physical contact and soft talk with most of his male costars, he can barely muster furtive glances for his nominal love interest, O’Neill. All of this is pleasantly diverting, in a Saturday-matinee kind of way—director Steve Carver’s cartoony style didn’t peak until his 1983 Chuck Norris/David Carradine epic Lone Wolf McQuade, but he moves things along—so it doesn’t really matter that the script is ridiculous, or that Majors is ineffectual as a leading man. Plus, to Carver’s credit, the plentiful scenes taking place on girders high above city streets are enough to give any viewer vertigo. And as for those lingering shots of sweaty men working hard, their biceps glistening in the hot Texas sun . . .

Steel: FUNKY

Such Good Friends (1971)

          Another of director Otto Preminger’s cringe-inducing attempts to explore themes related to the youth culture of the late ’60s and early ’70s, this awkward movie features a few cutting one-liners, but is so scattershot and tone-deaf that it’s nearly a disaster. Worse, this is very much a case of the director being a film’s biggest impediment, because had a filmmaker with more restraint and a deeper connection to then-current themes stood behind the lens, the very same script could have inspired a memorable movie.

          Adapted from a provocative novel by Lois Gould, the movie tells the story of Julie Messigner (Dyan Cannon), a New York City housewife who discovers that her husband (Lawrence Luckinbill) is a philanderer—at the very same time her husband is stuck in a coma following complications from surgery. (Any resemblances to the 2011 movie The Descendants, which features a similar plot, are presumably coincidental.) As Julie discovers more and more about her husband’s wandering ways, she moves through stages of grief, first denying the evidence with which she’s confronted, and then acting out in anger by having affairs of her own.

          Mixed into the main storyline are semi-satirical flourishes about the medical industry, because one of Julie’s close friends is Timmy (James Coco), the leader of the incompetent medical team treating Julie’s husband. As if that’s not enough, Preminger also includes trippy bits in which Julie flashes back and/or hallucinates because she’s looking at the world in a new way. In one such scene, Julie dreams that a publishing executive played by Burgess Meredith is naked while he’s talking to her at a party, leading to the odd sight of Meredith doing a few bare-assed dance moves.

          Preminger’s atonal discursions clash with the poignant nature of the story, thereby undercutting strong qualities found in the movie’s script—the great Elaine May (credited under the pseudonym Esther Dale) and other writers contributed pithy dialogue exchanges that occasionally rise above the film’s overall mediocrity.
          Preminger’s sledgehammer filmmaking hurts performances, too. Cannon tries to infuse her character with a sense of awakening, but Preminger seems more preoccupied with ogling her body and pushing her toward jokey line deliveries. Costars Coco and Ken Howard, both of whom appeared in Preminger’s awful Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), have funny moments playing unforgivably sexist characters, and model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill is lovely but vapid as a friend with a secret. As for poor Luckinbill, his role is so colorless that he’s a non-presence.

Such Good Friends: FUNKY