Cry Blood, Apache (1970)

Low-budget crap riddled with amateurish editing, godawful dubbing, and vapid performances, this violent Western was presumably made to kick-start the moribund acting career of Jody McCrea, a second-generation performer who spent the ’50s and ’60s playing supporting roles in forgettable movies (including various Frankie-and-Annette Beach Party flicks). The son of famed cowboy actor Joel McCrea, Jody McCrea stars in and co-produced Cry Blood, Apache. The picture begins when a group of outlaws massacre the residents of an Indian village while searching for the location of hidden gold. The criminals abduct a survivor, pretty squaw Jemme (Marie Gahva), but one of the hoodlums, Pitcalin (Jody McCrea), tries to protect her from abuse. Meanwhile, an unnamed Indian brave (Marcus Rudnick) returns to the village and discovers the carnage, so he sets out to find the killers and exact vengeance. (The scene of Rudnick screaming in pain after finding his family dead is so overwrought that it’s unintentionally funny.) Right from the start, the picture makes zero sense. If Pitcalin’s such a nice guy, why is he hanging around with killers? And since Indians of the Old West era didn’t value gold, why not simply cooperate with the heavily armed whites and avoid the slaughter? Anyway, such logical considerations are immaterial, because nothing about Cry Blood, Apache merits close inspection. Most of the movie comprises tedious scenes of the criminals trekking across the prairie, with one member of the group, Deacon (Jack Starrett), giving long-winded religious speeches. (Starrett, who also directed the picture, was a prolific helmer of offbeat exploitation films throughout the ’70s, with subsequent credits including 1973's Cleopatra Jones and 1975's Race With the Devil.) Aside from the drab story and the lifeless acting (Jody McCrea being the worst offender), the most pathetic aspect of Cry Blood, Apache is the soundtrack, because nearly every line of dialogue sounds like it was looped in a wind tunnel. FYI, Joel McCrea turns up at the beginning of the picture to play his son’s character as an older man, then exits the movie as quickly as possible. Smart move.

Cry Blood, Apache: SQUARE

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

The Gatling Gun (1973)

Dull and forgettable, The Gatling Gun is a low-budget Western populated by C-list actors giving mindless performances in the service of a story so thin it barely exists. The title comprises virtually the entire premise, because the gist of the piece is that pacifist priest Rev. Harper (John Carradine) has stolen a Gatling gun from a U.S. Cavalry troop that’s battling an Indian band led by Two-Knife (Carlos Rivera). A group of soldiers under the command of Lt. Malcolm (Guy Stockwell) chases Rev. Harper and his followers into Indian territory, where Rev. Harper realizes that Two-Knife is just as bloodthirsty as the soldiers from whom Rev. Harper was trying to provide protection. A back-and-forth battle for possession of the gun ensues, with heavy casualties on all sides. There’s a teensy bit of “oh, the humanity” gravitas to the end of the story, but getting there isn’t worth the effort. The film’s production values are so bland that The Gatling Gun looks less impressive than an average episode of Gunsmoke, and the picture is marred by several unintentionally funny moments. For instance, at one point, Rev. Harper gives a speech about human compassion even as he’s being impaled with arrows fired from unseen Indian assailants. It’s a little much. Carradine, a fresh-baked ham on the best of days, delivers a performance so overripe that it’s off-putting, and even the normally respectable Woody Strode’s stoic screen persona gets bludgeoned by the overall mediocrity of the endeavor. Leading man Stockwell is a non-entity, while bargain-basement actors including Barbara Luna (a sexy regular on ’60s TV shows) and Patrick Wayne (son of John) deliver amateurish supporting work. At best, The Gatling Gun rises from substandard to mediocre, as when familiar character actor Pat Buttram lays on hokey “charm” as the Cavalry group’s smart-mouthed chef, Tin Pot. But to say that you’ve seen it all before doesn’t come close to communicating how numbingly trite this movie feels as it grinds through 93 long minutes.

The Gatling Gun: LAME

The McMasters (1970)

Despite earning cinematic immortality with his moving performance as a victim of prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Brock Peters didn’t get many opportunities to play leading movie roles. The middling race-relations Western The McMasters is an exception, because even though avuncular thespian Burl Ives has top billing, this is Peters’ movie from start to finish. Set in a small Deep South town just after the Civil War, the picture dramatizes the explosive consequences of a free black man trying to live quietly as a property owner in a heavily racist white community. Benjie (Peters) returns from service in the Union army and reconnects with Neal McMasters (Ives), the white rancher who raised Benjie and regards him as a son. Recognizing that he’s getting older and has no other heirs, Neal gives Benjie his last name and half-ownership of his ranch. This development doesn’t sit well with nasty rednecks including Kolby (Jack Palance), a former Confederate officer, and Russel (L.Q. Jones), a local troublemaker. The racists ensure that Benjie and Neal can’t hire white workers for their ranch. However, Benjie befriends a band of Indians led by White Feather (David Carradine), and the Indians agree to help with chores. White Feather also “gives” his sister, Robin (Nancy Kwan), to Benjie as a concubine. Predictably, Benjie and Robin fall in love, and just as predictably, Robin is raped during a siege on the ranch. All of this leads up to a bloody showdown, though the climax of The McMasters is neither as decisive nor or simplistic as one might expect. And while it would be inaccurate to describe The McMasters as a surprising film, the story has just enough emotional texture to make a casual viewing worthwhile. The acting is generally solid, although Ives delivers rote work and Peters comes on a bit theatrically at times, while Western-cinema veterans including Jones, Palance, and R.G. Armstrong provide standard-issue varmint flavor. The miscast Kwan is appealing, and as for Carradine, his performance as an Indian is a stretch, since his line deliveries sound suspiciously modern, but his unique persona adds vitality. (The actor’s father, John Carradine, shows up for a small role as an idealistic preacher.) One of the only features directed by prolific TV helmer Alf Kjellin, The McMasters is never less than competent in terms of technical execution, and it’s never less than serious about its subject matter.

The McMasters: FUNKY

Claudine (1974)

          Charming, engrossing, and socially relevant, the small-scale dramedy Claudine is an anomaly among ’70s pictures about African-American life. Eschewing the militant politics of underground films and the sleazy grit of blaxploitation flicks, Claudine tells a simple human story in an accessible style. Further, the movie is rooted in respect for individuals who survive life below the poverty line with their dignity intact. Although this is an unmistakably a black story, exploring the myriad ways social ills complicate life for a family in Harlem, the themes of Claudineare relatable to anyone who has faced difficulty balancing family and finances. If the movie has a noteworthy flaw, it’s that Claudine sometimes employs sitcom-style cuteness in terms of dialogue and presentation—but the underlying story is so grounded that the cuteness is at most an occasional distraction.

          Diahann Carroll, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance, plays Claudine Price, the single mother of six who’s squeaking by on welfare after being abandoned by every man to whom she’s been married or with whom she’s been romantically involved. The beautiful but tough Claudine catches the eye of jovial trash collector Rupert Marshall (James Earl Jones), who eventually persuades Claudine to go out on a date. Rupert encounters resistance as soon as he meets Claudine’s kids, who haven’t met many trustworthy men. Nonetheless, Rupert wins over all of Claudine’s spirited offspring except her oldest son, Charles (Laurence Hilton-Jacobs), who has a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan Island.

          Aside from the lively performances and sensitive writing, the most interesting aspect of Claudine is the film’s exploration of what welfare means in the life of a woman like Claudine. She can’t make enough money through menial jobs to support her children, so she needs government assistance, but even welfare can’t bridge the gap between expenses and income. Therefore, Claudine must lie to her welfare officer once she starts dating Rupert, because, technically, his participation in the family represents additional income—even though his presence in the long run isn’t guaranteed. It’s fascinating to watch a proud woman navigate this moral quagmire, and it’s informative to see how Rupert recognizes that his interest in Claudine carries economic baggage. Given the feather-light premises of most romantic comedies, which tend to involve characters with all the options in the world, Claudinerepresents an unusually plugged-in take on the rom-com genre.

            It’s also a great pleasure to see the chemistry between Carroll and Jones. Not to downplay the many virtues of Carroll’s leading performance, the mixture of anguish and approachability within Jones’ performance gives Claudine much of its texture. Guiding these actors is director John Berry, a veteran of the studio era who was blacklisted for his left-leaning politics in the ’50s; Claudinewas one of several African-American-themed movies Berry directed upon his return from Hollywood exile. Another notable Claudine player is composer Curtis Mayfield, who created the score as well as a handful of songs that are performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips.

Claudine: GROOVY

The Black Godfather (1974)

Once the blaxploitation genre reached full flight, many low-rent producers were content simply adding the word “black” to an existing title and then spinning a rudimentary story to justify the new hybrid moniker. The Black Godfather is ostensibly a riff on The Godfather (1972), so both films depict a transfer of power within a criminal empire. Yet while The Godfather is cinematic masterpiece, The Black Godfather is execrable. The acting is terrible, the music score is chaotic, the story is lifeless, and to describe the characterizations as nonexistent would be to give them too much credit. Rod Perry, an amiable but unskilled actor best known for playing the second-in-command cop on the TV series S.W.A.T.(1975-1976), stars as J.J., a street punk who gets taken in by a crime boss after J.J. is wounded during a brazen robbery attempt. The crime boss, Nate Williams (Jimmy Witherspoon), grooms J.J. as an underworld apprentice. Once J.J. rises to power, he clashes with a white gangster, Tony Burton (Don Chastain), who has flooded black neighborhoods with heroin. You see, J.J. is a criminal with a conscience, and he wants to draw the line at hard drugs (a nuance stolen from Marlon Brando’s character in The Godfather). The narrative of The Black Godfather is pedestrian, but it should have been sufficient for generating passable escapism. Unfortunately, writer-producer-director John Evans’ work is incompetent on nearly every level—his scenes lack focus and rhythm and shape. Furthermore, Evans fails to include enough action to keep the story moving (instead lingering on uninteresting dialogue scenes), and he has difficulty presenting story events in a coherent manner. Actors suffer for the lack of guidance, so the embarrassingly bad Witherspoon, for instance, comes off like a camera double running lines before the real actor arrives. (As a result, his character may be the mellowest hoodlum in all of blaxploitation.) In the lead role, Perry simply seems confused. He’s calm in one scene and enraged in the next, with very little narrative explanation for his mood swings. If you’re hankering for a blaxploitation riff on gangsters, stick with Larry Cohen’s vivacious Black Caeasar(1973), which is high art by comparison with The Black Godfather.

The Black Godfather: LAME

Brian’s Song (1971)

          From the time of its release until, arguably, the arrival of Field of Dreams (1991), the iconic TV movie Brian’s Songenjoyed an enviable status as the ultimate male-oriented tearjerker, combining the bittersweet tropes of the melodrama genre with the macho textures of sports cinema. Yet it would be wrong to dismiss Brian’s Song as a cheap exercise in audience manipulation—even though the film is too brief and schematic to dig particularly deep into the lives of its characters, Brian’s Song is a credible drama distinguished by a terrific leading performance and solid supporting turns. In fact, much of the picture’s power stems from the presence of James Caan in the title role, because at the time he made Brian’s Song, Caan was bursting with so much ambition and talent that his imminent ascendance to big-screen stardom was inevitable; all it took was an incendiary supporting performance in The Godfather, released a few months later, to complete Caan’s transformation from up-and-comer to household name.
          Based on pro football player Gale Sayers’ memoir about his friendship with doomed fellow Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, Brian’s Song is a sensitive exploration of camaraderie in the face of hardship. Adapted with restraint and taste by screenwriter William Blinn and director Buzz Kulik, the picture begins with the arrival of Gale (Billy Dee Williams) to a Bears training camp. He’s immediately razzed by fellow newbie Brian (Caan), but the two subsequently bond. Later, Brian provides stalwart support when racists resist African-American Gale’s integration into the team. The budding friendship deepens further once Bears coach George Halas (Jack Warden) breaks a color barrier by making Brian and Gale roommates during trips for away games, and one of the warmest scenes in Brian’s Song revolves around Brian’s inability to make racist remarks even when he’s trying to motivate Gale during the painful recovery from a leg injury.

          Brian’s Song gets heavy during its second half, after Brian is diagnosed with cancer.  Suffice to say that only the most hard-hearted viewer could possibly get through the picture’s final scenes without shedding a tear, because the aim of Brian’s Song isn’t to bludgeon audiences with the pointless tragedy of a young life cut short, but rather to invigorate audiences by celebrating a friendship that outlasted death. Caan hits one right note after another here, blending sensitivity and toughness in a manner that later became his signature. Williams, never the most dexterous performer, benefits from a characterization based on reticence, so when the cracks in his character’s emotional armor finally show, the moments count. Warden, who won an Emmy for his performance, provides the definition of reliable support, grounding the film in the harsh realities of professional sports while also conveying a strong sense of innate decency.

Brian’s Song: RIGHT ON

Youngblood (1978)

          It’s hard to figure what the makers of Youngblood were after, because while the picture strives to portray a group of young African-Americans as fully realized individuals, the movie also traffics in stereotypes. After all, the overarching narrative involves an impressionable Los Angeles teenager who gets drawn into street violence, and the most dynamic scene in the film features a chaotic street fight between rival gangs. So is Youngblood a serious-minded melodrama designed to spotlight social ills, or is it merely a gussied-up riff on blaxploitation? Chances are the picture represents a well-meaning attempt at merging both things. However, parsing such nuances might not be worth the trouble, because even though Youngblood eventually arrives at a mildly exciting climax, the first hour of the movie is numbingly dull. The story’s protagonist is Michael (Bryan O’Dell), a latchkey teen who’s acting out at school and getting into trouble while roaming the crime- and drug-infested streets of his neighborhood at night. Michael joins a gang called the Kingsmen after proving his bravery during a fight, and the gang’s top guy, Rommel (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), accepts Michael as a protégé. Meanwhile, Michael’s older brother, Reggie (David Pendleton), seems to have escaped the ghetto for life as a businessman—but in actuality, Reggie’s a middleman for a drug cartel.

          You can pretty much guess where it goes from here. Michael gets pulled deeper and deeper into gang violence, his brother tries to keep him out of trouble (while also concealing his illegal activities), and Rommel turns out to be a terrible role model. No surprise, things end badly. Despite the trite storyline, there’s some decent stuff in Youngblood, a lot of it related to Hilton-Jacobs’ character. (The actor was riding high on TV’s Welcome Back, Kotter at the time, and was therefore the biggest name in the cast.) His character, Rommel, is portrayed as a conflicted Vietnam vet who’s slowly realizing he’s outgrown gang life, so the pertinent dramatic question is how much hardship he will cause for the people who emulate him until he learns the error of his ways. Ultimately, though, the drab elements of Youngblood drown out the meritorious ones. Just to name two examples, the star-crossed-lovers subplot about Michael’s love for a girl whose brother belongs to a rival gang is hopelessly contrived, and the song-driven soundtrack by R&B group War gets old fast—how many aimlessly funky jams can one movie handle?

Youngblood: FUNKY

Eagle’s Wing (1979)

          There’s a good reason you’ve likely never heard of a Western called Eagle’s Wing: It tells such a diffuse and underdeveloped story that even with dynamic actors Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston starring, the picture is painfully dull. On the plus side, the movie looks gorgeous—director Anthony Harvey and cinematographer Billy Williams arrange visuals with artful precision. Yet the only thing more dispiriting than Harvey’s lethargic pacing is the director’s inability to fuse his narrative’s various strands. Eagle’s Wing bounces around between vignettes involving Plains Indians, white fur traders, a displaced Irish priest and his sister, and the denizens of a Mexican hacienda. The various characters eventually converge, more or less, but it’s a long haul getting to the point where the story feels unified. Worse, since the heart of the piece is really just a simplistic macho duel between an Indian (Waterston) and a trader (Sheen), everything else feels like a distraction.
          Before moving onto anything else, by the way, it’s worth noting that Wasterston’s casting as a Native American isn’t as ridiculous as it might seem. Yes, there were plenty of Native actors would could have played his role, and yes, Waterston is a Northeastern WASP, but with his lean physicality, massive eyebrows, prominent nose, thin eyes, and generally sober demeanor, the actor cuts a striking figure.

          The plot isn’t worth describing in detail except to say that the Indian and the trader begin their duel over possession of a horse, and then deepen their conflict once the Indian abducts the priest’s sister. (English actress Caroline Langrishe, playing the girl, lends grit and loveliness but has virtually nothing to do except suffer and watch while male characters advance the narrative.) The reason the plot isn’t worth describing is that it doesn’t seem to be of particular importance to the filmmakers—Eagle’s Wing is primarily a mood piece about desperation, obsession, and survival. However, these themes are not dramatized effectively. Many of Sheen’s sequences, for instance, comprise the actor soliloquizing in order to explain what his character is thinking. (It’s a rare movie that makes one wish Sheen would stop talking, given that he possesses one of Hollywood’s most mesmerizing voices.)

          Further, the film is littered with wordless scenes in which nothing of significance happens, or in which significant events are shown at excessive length—such as an interminable scene of Sheen’s character breaking a horse. Virtually the only stretch of the film that sustains interest is the long opening sequence featuring Harvey Keitel; he and Sheen play bickering partners until Keitel’s character meets the business end of an arrow. Nonetheless, if you’re able to groove on a movie simply for the beauty of its visuals, you might be able to do so with Eagle’s Wing, at least for a while, because the film offers an endless procession of elegantly minimalistic images sculpted from subtle textures of color and light.

Eagle’s Wing: FUNKY

Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (1971)

          The lore of Melvin Van Peebles’ breakthrough picture is well known, especially since the maverick auteur’s son, Mario Van Peebles, made an entire movie about the creation of Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song. As it happens, Mario’s highly entertaining behind-the-scenes flick, Badasssss!(2003), is much more accessible than Melvin’s guerilla-style original, in part because Mario’s narrative juxtaposes the overwrought subject matter of Sweet Sweetback with amazing tales about the obstacles Melvin surmounted to get the picture completed.

          That said, Sweet Sweetback occupies a unique place in both film history and sociopolitical history. Perhaps more than any other movie made by an African-American director in the ’70s, Sweet Sweetback captures the rage of the Black Power era by presenting a grim parable about a dude who fights back after getting fucked over by The Man. Sweet Sweetback was famously embraced by members of the Black Panther Party during early screenings, and this groundswell of support helped transform a scrappy little underground project into a surprise hit—despite being made for just $150,000, the movie grossed more than $15 million.

          Melvin Van Peebles’ storyline is lurid and nasty. In a brief prologue, young Mario plays the title character as a teenaged orphan—Sweetback earns his nickname by demonstrating tremendous sexual powers while losing his virginity in an L.A. whorehouse. After the movie cuts to the present, Melvin takes over the title role. (In addition to starring, he wrote, produced, directed, and scored the movie.) Now grown into a regular performer at the whorehouse who impresses crowds with his size and stamina while screwing in public, Sweetback is stuck in a degrading life cycle. Naturally, things get worse. Through a convoluted series of events, Sweetback gets framed for a murder and handcuffed to a Black Panther named Mu-Mu (Hubert Scales). Eventually, Sweetback and Mu-Mu escape police custody, resulting in an extended chase. By the climax of the movie, Sweetback makes a solo run for the Mexican border, surviving through the support of black strangers and, at regular intervals, by trading sex for patronage from women.

          Viewed through the most forgiving lens, Sweet Sweetback is a revolutionary fable that both employs and subverts clichés about African-American male identity. It’s also, unmistakably, a call for open revolution—if not necessarily violent uprisings, then at the very least angry protests against the racially imbalanced status quo. Because the picture is so politically charged, appraising Sweet Sweetback’s merits as a cinematic experience is something of a pointless endeavor—rather than being pure entertainment, Sweet Sweetback is an incendiary statement.

          And, indeed, Melvin’s politics are more evolved than his filmmaking skills. Certain segments of Sweet Sweetback have great power thanks to the use of trippy montages accompanied by dense sound design, and some scenes pack a punch simply because they contain so much sex and violence. But while the director/star brings innate tough-guy charisma to his leading performance, the supporting cast mostly comprises nonactors, giving many scenes an amateurish quality. Further, the camerawork is dodgy, with lots of grainy shots and hard-to-read nighttime photography. Yet in the end, it’s the attitude of Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song that makes the movie so unique, and that loud-and-proud perspective is characterized by a provocative slogan on the movie’s poster: “Rated X by an All-White Jury.”

Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song: FREAKY

Take a Hard Ride (1975)

          Despite featuring several interesting B-movie personalities and despite having a solid story premise, the European-made Western Take a Hard Ride never realizes its potential. Part of the problem has to do with audience expectations. Since the movie features blaxploitation stars Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—as well as spaghetti-Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef—the obvious approach would have been to combine the actors into a fighting unit for a Magnificent Seven-style flick. Alas, Take a Hard Ride is essentially a Brown-Williamson buddy picture in which Kelly and Van Cleef, among others, play supporting roles. Worse, director Antonio Margheriti employs a hacky visual style that makes every scene feel haphazard and rushed. The picture is watchable, but it gets awfully dull after a while, especially because Brown and Williamson end up playing repetitive variations on the exact same scene for most of the film’s middle hour.

          The story hook is simple enough. Black gunslinger Pike (Brown) accompanies his white boss, rancher Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews), to the end of a cattle drive, where Morgan gets paid $86,000 in cash. After Morgan has a fatal heart attack, the sterling Pike vows to return the money to Morgan’s widow. Unfortunately, once Pike sets off on his journey, various criminals get wind of his cargo and conspire to ambush him. One such outlaw, slick gambler Tyree (Williamson), saves Pike from an attacker and subsequently accompanies Pike on the trail—even though Tyree says outright that he plans to rob Pike once they reach the Mexican border. Another pursuer is Kiefer (Van Cleef), a bounty hunter who eventually gathers a small army of money-hungry varmints to chase after Pike. There’s also a subplot involving an ex-hooker, Catherine (Catherine Spaak), whom Pike and Tyree rescue from rapists—she joins Pike’s group, as does her mute Indian sidekick, Kashtok (Kelly).

          Considering that Take a Hard Ride is basically a chase movie, it’s amazing how little excitement the narrative generates. The script is filled with dull scenes of Pike and Tyree challenging each other, and the supporting characters are under-utilized; for instance, Kiefer spends most of the picture standing on ridges and squinting while other people get into fights. And speaking of the movie’s numerous battles, none is novel or surprising—think standard fire-and-duck shootouts, with the minor exception of quick bits during which Kelly takes down attackers with karate and throwing knives. If one struggles for a compliment, it could be noted that Take a Hard Ride has better production values that most movies starring Van Cleef or Williamson—but that’s not saying much.

Take a Hard Ride: FUNKY

Detroit 9000 (1973)

          During his Pulp Fiction afterglow, Quentin Tarantino created a short-lived Miramax subsidiary called Rolling Thunder, which distributed handful of indie movies and re-released faves from Tarantino’s days as a grindhouse habitué. One of the obscure ’70s movies that benefited from Tarantino’s largesse was Detroit 9000, a racially charged action thriller set in the urban wasteland of the Motor City. Yet while the picture has a lively cast and solid action scenes, it’s strictly a run-of-the-mill endeavor, so Tarantino’s imprimatur should not unreasonably raise expectations. Yes, Detroit 9000 is relatively unique in the way it blends elements of blaxploitation and mainstream action movies, and yes, the movie flips a cliché by portraying a black guy as the book-smart half of a buddy-cop duo—but novel elements can’t compensate for the lack of a memorable story. Detroit 9000 begins with crooks stealing millions from a fundraiser for a black gubernatorial candidate. The cops assigned to the case are street-smart white dude Det. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco) and college-educated African-American Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes). Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t fully exploit the culture-clash potential of this dynamic, even though Rhodes and Rocco are both interesting performers.
          Rhodes, best known for his role on the TV adventure series Daktari(1966-1969), was a man of letters offscreen and, accordingly, brought eloquence and poise to his acting. Therefore, it’s a shame that Detroit 9000 give Rhodes one of his only leading roles, since he’s got nothing to do here but strive to retain his dignity while running through gutted urban locations and/or spewing bland dialogue. Rocco, a versatile character actor whose filmography includes everything from The Godfather (1972) to a string of sitcoms, provides a totally different flavor of authenticity, although he, too, is handicapped by an underwritten characterization. Among the supporting cast, Scatman Crothers does some energetic speechifying as a preacher; Vonetta McGee classes up a trite hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold role; and Herbert Jefferson Jr., later a regular on the original Battlestar Galacticaseries, shows up in full pimp regalia. The problem is that everyone involved in Detroit 9000, including second-rate blaxploitation director Arthur Marks, did better work elsewhere—so why this mediocre flick lingered in Tarantino’s memory is a mystery.

Detroit 9000: FUNKY

The Yakuza (1974)

          Director Sydney Pollack took a lot of critical flack for shoehorning love stories into movies that couldn’t organically contain them, as if he wanted to sprinkle the fairy dust of his breakthrough hit The Way We Were (1973) onto every subsequent project. It’s a fair complaint, especially when one considers a Pollack film such as The Yakuza, which suffers from narrative bloat—the film’s romantic subplots are handled with intelligence and taste, but they’re borderline superfluous. That said, it seems ungallant to gripe about a director who endeavored to invest all of his pictures with as much grown-up human feeling as possible. So perhaps it’s best to regard The Yakuza as an embarrassment of riches: Nearly everything in the movie is interesting, even though Pollack regularly forgets what sort of film he’s trying to make.

          At its best, the picture is a tough gangster story with an exotic setting; at its worst, The Yakuza is a sensitive drama about a man in late life reconnecting with a lost love. So while action funs may find the touchy-feely stuff dull, and while viewers more interested in the heartfelt material may be turned off by the bloody bits, watching the disparate elements fight for dominance is fascinating.

          Based on an original script by Leonard Schrader, who lived in Japan for some time, and his celebrated brother, Taxi Driverscreenwriter Paul Schrader, The Yakuzawent through the usual Pollack-supervised rewrite routine, getting a credited overhaul from A-lister Robert Towne (as well as, presumably, uncredited tinkering by others). The convoluted story revolves around Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum), an aging WWII vet asked to perform a favor for his old friend, George Tanner (Brian Keith). George has gotten into trouble with the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), so he needs Harry, who knows Japanese culture, to smooth out relations. Harry travels to Japan with George’s hotheaded young associate, Dusty (Richard Jordan), and coordinates with a former Yakuza member, Ken Tanaka (Ken Takakura). Harry’s crew stumbles into a complicated war between American and Japanese criminals, and also between various Yakuza factions. Meanwhile, Harry reconnects with Eiko (Keiko Kishi), the Japanese woman he loved while he was stationed in Japan during WWII. Both obviously want to pick up where they left off, but their relationship is complicated by ancient traditions and surprising family ties.

          Describing the plot doesn’t do The Yakuza any favors, since the story doesn’t “work” in a conventional sense; the narrative is far too muddled and tonally inconsistent. Nonetheless, The Yakuza offers rewards for patient viewers. The performances are uniformly poignant, with Mitchum’s world-weariness setting the downbeat tone. Jordan and Keith complement him with macho brashness; Kishi and Takakura are quietly soulful; and Richard Libertini, playing an old friend of Harry’s, offers a sweet quality of peacenik anguish. James Shigeta is terrific, too, in a handful of scenes as Ken’s tightly wound brother. Melding his signature classicism with uniquely Japanese textures, such as highly formalized framing, Pollack and cinematographer Kôzô Okazaki fill the screen with artistry and color. Plus, the movie introduced America viewers to a bloody Yakuza ritual that will linger with you long after the movie ends—ouch!

The Yakuza: GROOVY

Across 110th Street (1972)

          This gritty crime picture crams a dizzying number of characters, storylines, and themes into 102 frenetic minutes. Ostensibly a police thriller about two mismatched detectives investigating a Mafia-related shooting in Harlem, the racially charged movie also devotes considerable screen time to infighting among criminals. Based on a novel by Wally Ferris and written for the screen by Luther Davis, the film does a great job of taking viewers inside the minds of hoodlums, thereby conveying a morally gray picture of life in the big city. However, because the detectives are the lead characters, the potential impact of this humanistic approach to criminality is dulled—it’s hard for viewers to know whether they’re being asked to root for the heroes, the villains, both, or neither. In short, Across 110th Street has great texture but lacks a clear point of view.

          When the movie begins, black street crooks deliver a cash payoff to white Mafia lieutenants in a dingy Harlem apartment. Then uniformed police offers “raid” the apartment—but it turns out the cops are robbers in disguise. The theft goes smoothly until a crook reaches for a gun, at which point the lead robber, Jim Harris (Paul Benjamin), gets trigger-happy. Jim and his two partners, Joe (Ed Bernard) and Henry (Antonio Fargas), escape with the Mafia’s cash, leaving a pile of bodies behind.

          Two factions respond to the incident. The first is the Mob, represented by Nick D’Salvo (Anthony Franciosa), a godfather-in-waiting who’s reached middle age without proving himself; Nick becomes obsessed with killing the robbers in order elevate his standing. Also responding is the NYPD, specifically a veteran white cop named Capt. Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) and a younger black cop named Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto). Mattelli wants to handle the investigation his usual way (abuse informants until secrets are spilled), but Pope—who is given jurisdiction over the case for political reasons—wants to exercise post-Miranda Act restraint.

          The most interesting material in this overstuffed movie concerns the disintegrating relationships between the robbers, who react in varied ways as pressure mounts for their capture. Benjamin commands the movie with a jittery, raging performance as a black man robbed of life choices by hard circumstance, so whenever he’s onscreen, the movie sizzles. And even when the storyline meanders, director Barry Shear and cinematographer Jack Priestley create a vivid sense of place with the use of grungy locations and verité-style shooting on New York streets. Across 110th Street is a mess, but it’s an interesting mess.

Across 110th Street: FUNKY

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

          Representing a great opportunity for historical spectacle that was sacrificed on the altar of its own leviathan scope, Tora! Tora! Tora!was conceived by Twentieth Century-Fox chief Daryl F. Zanuck as a companion piece to his epic war movie The Longest Day (1962). Whereas the earlier film was a star-studded reenactment of the D-Day invasion, focusing primarily on the heroism of a successful Allied assault, Tora! Tora! Tora! paints across a bigger canvas. The picture follows both American and Japanese forces before, during, and after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Zanuck’s intentions were basically honorable, since he put together a coproduction with a Japanese team that was responsible for portraying their country’s soldiers in a humane light; Zanuck even hired the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa to develop and direct the Japanese half of the picture, although Kurosawa was replaced once production got underway. Journeyman Richard Fleischer, an efficient traffic cop not known for his artistry, handled the English-language scenes.

          Yet Zanuck’s overreaching vision of an opulent super-production almost inevitably generated a bloated movie in which hardware overwhelms humanity. The leaden screenplay, credited to Larry Forrester and Kurosawa allies Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni—and based on two different books—is a dull recitation of names and dates without any memorable characterizations. In the American scenes alone, venerable actors including Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, E.G. Marshall, Jason Robards, and James Whitmore get lost amid the generic hordes of men in military uniforms wandering through command centers and battleship bridges. In the admirable effort to explain how and why the Japanese military caught American forces unaware, the movie provides dry description when it should provide intense drama—paradoxically, trying to do too much led the filmmakers to do too little.

          Nonetheless, the movie gets exciting whenever it departs from its inept attempts at personal interplay and focuses on battlefield spectacle. Employing a huge assortment of boats and planes (plus a whole lot of pyro, of course), Fleischer stages lavish scenes of wartime destruction, all of which are jacked up by composer Jerry Goldsmith’s invigorating music. Thus, it’s no surprise that the lasting legacy of Tora! Tora! Tora! is as a stockpile of endlessly reused footage—according to Wikipedia, clips and outtakes from this film appear in Midway (1976), The Final Countdown (1980), several TV episodes and miniseries, and even Pearl Harbor (2001). So, if you’re a military-history buff, you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy in Tora! Tora! Tora!–otherwise, you might have a hard time trudging through the movie’s 144 impressive but inert minutes.

Tora! Tora! Tora!: FUNKY

I Will Fight No More Forever (1975)

          Although it’s so heavily skewed toward providing educational content that it plays more like a dry documentary than a lively feature, the TV movie I Will Fight No More Forever illuminates such an important chapter of American history that it’s possible to overlook the textbook presentation and enjoy the underlying narrative. The title emanates from a quote by Chief Joseph, who in 1877 helped guide his Nez Perce tribe from Oregon to Montana in a quest to escape the clutches of the U.S. government by slipping into Canada. While Joseph was neither the only leader of the Nez Perce nor the only Native American who engendered sympathy among whites, his determination and eloquence were unique—during his flight from Oregon, Joseph evaded the U.S. Cavalry for nearly 2,000 miles with minimal loss of life, and when he finally surrendered, he did so with such poetry that he shamed his pursuers.

          I Will Fight No More Forever tells the story of the Nez Perce exodus simply, and with a commendable degree of balance—some Nez Perce braves are shown as reckless, providing a counterpoint to Joseph’s rationality, just as Joseph’s main pursuer, Gen. Oliver Howard, is shown to sympathize with Joseph’s goals rather than hating the man. The story begins with a white civilian murdering a Nez Perce brave based on a false accusation of theft. As his people call for war, Joseph (Ned Romero) counsels patience and brings the matter to the attention of his friend, Howard (James Whitmore). Howard pledges to bring the killer to justice, but then he drops a bombshell by saying the U.S. government wants the Nez Perce moved onto a reservation. Appalled that a treaty designed to prevent exactly that outcome has been broken, Joseph walks away from his meeting with Howard and confers with his tribe. Reasoning that flight is wiser than open war, Joseph begins the journey to the Canadian border, with Howard’s troops in pursuit. As the chase spreads from days to weeks to months, Howard gains respect for his opponent’s strategic genius.

          Romero, a journeyman actor of partial Native American descent, makes up in presence what he lacks in skill, because he looks perfect in flowing hair and feathers, his face seemingly carved from granite and his voice a resonant instrument. Whitmore and costar Sam Elliot, who plays Howard’s aide (and sparring partner during moral debates), invest their scenes with feeling, often surmounting the limitations of stilted dialogue. The physicality of the movie is okay, with wide-open locations compensating for iffy makeup and too-tidy costuming, though a Native-themed music score lends texture. I Will Fight No More Forever is not the best tribute one might imagine for Chief Joseph, but it’s an honorable attempt.

I Will Fight No More Forever: GROOVY