Harry Moseby Confidential

Moseby Confidential is Dead...Viva Harry Moseby!

2011-11-19T18:42:00.001-08:00

Hello all. After some careful consideration I have decided that I am no longer going to be updating Harry Moseby Confidential due to time constraints and the fact that so much of the archives need cleaning up due to Zooomr's collapse. For those who dig the site, not to worry as I am going to start transferring the best of Moseby over to Moon in the Gutter and Gutter on the Moon where hopefully more readers will be able to enjoy them. I really appreciate the friends I have made here and the fellow lovers of the seventies I have come in contact with. It's been a lot of fun but this blog has come to an end. So long Moseby Confidential but Viva Harry Moseby, who will continue to reign supreme (along with my love for the seventies) over at Moon in the Gutter!

Far Out Films from the Seventies: Jack + Jill (1979)

2011-05-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

An extremely sexy and witty take on Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) from auteur Chuck Vincent, Jack + Jill (1979) is one of the savviest adult films of the seventies. Featuring an extraordinary cast including the awesome Samantha Fox (who won a Best Actress award for her fetching and funny portrayal of Jill), handsome Jack Wrangler, Eric Edwards, Merle Michaels, Vanessa Del Rio and Annie Sprinkle, Jack + Jill is a steamy satirical joyride that is as entertaining as it is smart.

Jack and Jill are a happily married couple who enjoy role-playing and who are always open to new experiences to spice up their already enjoyable sex-lives. The deeply in love pair find that ‘swinging’ is the next logical next and they begin to hook up with a variety of partners without ever losing focus on each other.

Guided by Vincent’s sure-handed direction, Billy Schaeffer’s amusing script and Larry Revene’s vivid color photography, Jack + Jill is a wonderful mixture of snappy dialogue, funny situations and hot sex. Breezy at just over seventy minutes, Vincent’s film manages to be both a satirical look at the swinging scene of the late seventies as well as a tribute to a couple very much in love with each other. Jack + Jill is also a wonderful tribute to New York with one particularly stunning extended shot of a sunrise being a particularly sweet valentine to the city.

Michigan native Vincent had already been working steadily through the better part of the seventies and by 1979 had well established himself as one of adult cinema’s great directors. He had hit a major winning streak in 1978 with the releases of the great Misbehavin, Bad Penny and That Lucky Stiff. Working sometimes under the pseudonym of Mark Ubell, Vincent was an extremely intelligent filmmaker who managed to make what could have been run of the mill sex films compelling and engaging. Jack + Jill is one of his greatest works and it would help mark his cinematic partnership with smokin' Samantha Fox as one of the most important of the period.

Born Stasia Therese Angela Micula in New York City in 1951, petite Samantha Fox came of age as a classical trained dancer and theater-based actress in her teenage years before she ended up hosting a popular local television show in the early seventies. Fox began appearing in adult features by the mid seventies but she didn’t really hit gold until Chuck Vincent cast her Bad Penny (1978). A charming and lovely woman who had serious acting chops, Fox was a perfect Lombard to Vincent’s Lubitsch and their work together is quite remarkable and would continue well into the eighties.

While Jack + Jill is ultimately a celebration of the Fox-Vincent team, Jack Wrangler makes a perfect Jack in the film and is both charismatic and funny. Edwards is of course always strong and Del Rio makes the most of her one (Shakespeare inspired) sequence. The best supporting players though are the delightful Annie Sprinkle and Rikki O’Neal (an often underused stunner who would only appear in a handful of films after Jack + Jill) who play a pair of beautiful prank callers whose place in the film doesn’t become apparent until a delightful twist at the end.

Jack + Jill was a big hit on the adult circuit when it hit theaters in 1979 and got a lot of justified acclaim. It is since become known as one of the great adult films of the era and it is available uncut through Distribpix’s great Video X Pix’s DVD label. While the disc doesn’t have any film specific extras, it is uncut and contains a fairly nice looking print of the film and is highly recommended.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: Midnight Desires (1976)

2011-05-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

Released a year after his ambitious and fascinating feature The Passions of Carol (1975), Shaun Costello’s Midnight Desires (1976) helped continue to solidify him as one of the most original voices in all of adult cinema. Featuring a superb cast of some of the era’s best actors and adult-icons, including Jamie Gillis, C.J. Laing, Eric Edwards, Jenny Baxter and Vanessa del Rio, Midnight Desires is an erotic and witty film that is as entertaining as it is sizzling.

Essentially a series of four vignettes tied together by a humorous storyline, Midnight Desires focuses on a wealthy bored couple (Gillis and Laing) who entertain themselves each weekend by inviting another couple over to tell their fantasies to each other. The script, from Costello’s own pen, is given a nice twist with a funny plot device that has a butler bringing Gillis updates on Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and the outcome of World War Two, even though the film is set in the late seventies. This bizarre behavior of Gillis and Laing adds to Costello’s ingenious look at just how docile and humdrum the lives of the rich can be, and Midnight Desires finally plays out as an erotic satire, and a comedy of manners, elevated at every tun by Costello’s solid direction and the great performances from his talented cast.

Indeed it is the cast that makes Midnight Desires so compulsively watchable and downright fun. Gillis is at his most debonair and charming here and his vignette with del Rio, in which he plays a boxer who refuses to be bought out, shows how ferociously physical he could be. Simply put, there has never been anyone quite like Jamie Gillis and he shines here. Equally compelling is Laing, as his bored but loving wife, who stands as one of the most underrated great stars of the era. Like her work in Waterpower (1977) a year later for Costello, Laing shows herself as absolutely fearless, with go-for-broke anddevil-may-care attitude that few adult performers can match. She’s also absolutely gorgeous and cinematographer Bill Markle photographs her obsessively well here.

As the unsuspecting couple who visit Gillis and Laing, Edwards and Baxter are both quite charming in Midnight Desires. Edwards is of course, along with Gillis, one of the great male performers in adult film history and he’s very funny here and plays both shock and surprise at Gillis and Laing’s antics quite well. Baxter, who would prove so memorable in a couple of key Radley Metzger productions in the years following Midnight Desires, is also a delight and her period-based vignette that ends the film is quite unforgettable.

Even though it was shot very quickly, Midnight Desires is an exceptionally good-looking film, thanks to Craig Esposito’s production design and art-direction. As he did for Costello in The Passions of Carol, Esposito helps Costello make what is in reality a very low-budget work into something that looks both elegant and plush. The DVD from Video-X-Pix serves the film well and the rumored possible special edition of the film would be cause for celebration. More information on Midnight Desires can be found at Distribpix’s website and blog.

Midnight Desires is a terrific film from adult’s golden age, as well as being one of the best works from Shaun Costello, one of the great auteur’s of porn. Fans shouldn’t miss it.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: A Sharon Mitchell Double-Feature

2011-04-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

When listing the greatest performers in adult cinema history, one would have to include Sharon Mitchell. The New Jersey born beauty always proved a great addition to any film she graced and she would turn out to be one of the most admirable people in the adult world, thanks to her tireless work in providing AIDS information and testing for other performers. Mitchell, now a PHD and the founder of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, is a survivor, who made it through everything from hard drug addiction to a terrible attack and rape from a sick stalker, and she is deserving of a whole lot of respect. She’s also one of my favorite actors from Adult Films' Golden era. Let’s take a look at two of her films from the swinging seventies.

First up we have one of Sharon’s greatest films, the extremely well done Joy (1976), in which Mitchell plays the title character. Shot on location in New York City in 1976 by director first-time director Harley Mansfield, Joy is one of the most entertaining adult-films of the seventies and one of the funniest.

Joy is quite a wicked politically incorrect black comedy, as well as a startling revenge thriller that tells the tale of a teenage girl who begins ‘raping’ the men of NYC after she is attacked in her home at the beginning of the film. Joy’s sexual exploits starts a wave of copycats all over town that leaves the cops baffled and puts an end to all other crime in the city.

If the plot for Joy sounds somewhat ugly, Harwell’s successfully satirical slant takes much of the sting away. Joy is, at heart, a vigilante film about female-empowerment being told in a period where society was still mostly male-dominated. As the title character, Sharon Mitchell is an absolute delight and she gives one of the best performances in all of seventies adult cinema. Mitchell manages to be laugh out loud funny, as well as extremely sexy, and Harwell films her wonderfully. Everything from a back-alley hook-up with the great Robert Kerman (R. Bolla) to an audacious subway sequence with Frank Kewood is handled expertly and it is impossible to take your eyes off the 21-year-old Mitchell, who was at her most fetching in 1976.

While Joy is basically a vehicle that highlights the charms and talent of Sharon Mitchell, some other adult icons are on hand for Mansfield as well including Melinda Marlowe, who appears as a Burglar in one-scene, Gloria Leonard, in a blink and miss cameo, and Herschel Savage, who gets taken advantage of by three eager ladies in an elevator. Bobby Astyr and Eric Edwards are also on hand for the festivities, as well as scene-stealing Jake Teague as the hapless Lt. Handcock.

Harley Mansfield’s IMDB listing states that Joy was his only work as a director and that is a surprise as the film is so well done. Mitchell would become an accomplished director later on in her own career so one can imagine her taking notes on the set of Joy, as it is finally such a succesful work.

Joy is available from VideoXPix on DVD and it is a nice disc, featuring a well-preserved and clean print of the film. No film-specific extras are on the disc but it is an essential addition for adult film fans.

Up next on our Sharon Mitchell double feature is a work from one of adult films greatest auteurs, Chuck Vincent. Visions (1977) is an ambitious, if not entirely successful, work from Vincent that is more of an avant-garde piece than a typical narrative film. Focusing on a composer named Larry, played well by Wade Nichols, who enters a sexual otherworld after being hit on the head by a burglar, Visions plays out as an almost silent film and it is an admirably forward-thinking work. Ultimately though I didn’t find the film to be among Vincent’s best works like the more dialogue driven pieces he would later make with great actors like Kelly Nichols and Veronica Hart. Visions is a fascinating work though and it is always great to see a filmmaker pushing the boundaries as Vincent does here.

Sharon only has a small part in Visions and appears in just a couple of scenes. Wade Nichols is the real star of the show and he is joined by memorable figures such as Susan McBain and Victoria Corsaut, who would prove to be quite unforgettable in a couple of lesser-known Gerard Damiano films from the period.
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Visions is that none other than much-loved cult filmmaker Roberta Findlay handles the cinematography, operating under the pseudonym of Anna Riva. It is finally the fantastical look of Visions that separates it from most adult films of the period and Findlay does an excellent job, considering the miniscule budget and quick shooting schedule.
Visions isn’t one of VideoXPix’s sharper DVDs and a remastered version would be a very welcome addition to their catalogue. While I don’t think this is one of Chuck Vincent’s more successful films I think Visions would make a splendid title for special edition status down the line. More information on Joy and Visions can be found here at the official site and blog for Distribpix and VideoXDVD.

Far Out Films: Blue Magic

2011-03-20T11:03:00.001-07:00

No serious student of cinema in the seventies should go through life without knowing the name Candida Royalle. Born Candice Vitala in New York City just a couple weeks before Halloween in 1950, Candida developed an active interest in the arts as a youth. While she eventually found her calling in film, Candida initially had her eye on music, dance and design and she would end up studying all at a number of New York area schools. Her amazing looks, and open-minded attitude, eventually placed her on the big-screen in her mid-twenties when she made her adult-film debut in 1975’s The Analyst. Royalle immediately established herself as one of the key figures in Porn’s Golden Age due to her striking dark beauty, natural acting abilities and obvious intelligence.

Royalle shot well over two-dozen adult productions throughout the mid-to-late seventies and she brought a real sense of class and style to each project. While she was one of the leading lights of the adult-film world, Candida was much more ambitious than many of her peers and, as the seventies gave way to the eighties, her interest turned more and more behind the camera. Blue Magic (1982) was a pivotal film for Royalle as it not only gave her one of her most memorable roles but it also marked the first production she would script.

Blue Magic would help lead Candida to form her own production company, Femme, within a couple years of its release. As the leader of Femmes Productions, Candida Royalle not only scripted but also directed her own movies in an attempt to make adult films geared towards a female audience. Royalle has continued in the industry and is now one of the most beloved and respected icons in its history. Now also an acclaimed author, Royalle maintains an excellent website which can be viewed here.

While it was shot in 1981, Blue Magic (like all of the remaining shot on film productions from the early eighties) still has the spirit of the seventies coursing through it. Directed with flair by Larry Revene, the just over an hour Blue Magic is finally most notable for its cast (which sees Royalle joined by adult royalty Veronica Hart, Samantha Fox, Merle Michaels and Jack Wrangler). Candida’s sharp and quite humorous dialogue, which has more in common with the rhythm of a classic screwball comedy rather than a typical adult production of the period, also makes the film extremely memorable. Blue Magic, a rather daffy supernatural period piece concerning a witch like character who invites a group of strangers to her castle for a weekend of otherworldly delights, isn’t among the absolute best that any of the talented cast had shot but it’s a fun and memorable adult film that is essential viewing for fans of the genre.

VideoXPix’s DVD of the film is fine. The print utilized is a bit faded but is in fairly good shape, and Revene’s own cinematography is still quite striking. The period based costume design of Eddie Heath, who also handled the film’s impressive art design, is also quite nice and makes Blue Magic look like a much more expensive production than it actually was. Royalle’s sharp dialogue is in good hands with the entire main cast, especially Hart and Fox, as they were some of the best adult actors of the period.

Candida Royalle and Veronica Hart would soon reteam with excellent Delicious and Revene would hit paydirt with just a year later with the tremendous Hart vehicle Wanda Whips Wall Street (both available from DistribPix), one of the best adult films ever made.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: Radley Metzger's Maraschino Cherry (1978)

2011-03-05T12:51:00.001-08:00

Few American filmmakers of the past fifty years have deserved critical and popular reconsideration more than New York born director Radley Metzger. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Metzger consistently proved himself as one of the most inspired, inventive, and original directors American cinema had ever seen with works such as Carmen Baby, Camille 2000 and The Liquorish Quartet standing as some of the great masterworks of the period. While Metzger’s reputation has grown in the years since he stopped making films in the mid eighties, his name still isn’t held in as high regard as it should, but time should solve that as his great films look better and better with each passing year.

Perhaps the most intriguing period of Radley Metzger’s career was a five-year span in the seventies when he worked in the adult industry under the gloriously stylish pseudonym of Henry Paris. As Paris, Metzger delivered a stirring collection of adult films that are without peer in the industry, with his stunning The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976) rightly considered the greatest adult film ever made. While it isn’t his greatest work as Henry Paris, 1978’s Maraschino Cherry is one of the most important, as it the swansong for Metzger’s alter-ego.

Starring a dazzling cast made up of the best New York based adult actresses of the seventies, including Gloria Leonard, Leslie Bovee, Annette Haven, C.J. Laing, Jenny Baxter, Susan McBain and Constance Money, Maraschino Cherry is an extremely stylish and unbelievably erotic adult spectacle that sends Henry Paris out in style.

Made up of new footage interspersed with some unused older scenes (including the ones including Money), Maraschino Cherry is, along with Barbara Broadcast (1977), the most episodic film Metzger created under the Paris pseudonym, but what it lacks in narrative consistency is made up for by the go for broke attitude of Radley and his extremely talented cast. Maraschino Cherry is a seriously cool film that run hot in its rather slim running time of 84 minutes, and it remains one of the most justifiably acclaimed adult films from porn’s golden age.

A visually dynamic production, thanks to Metzger’s always dazzling cinematic eye, Maraschino Cherry also benefits greatly from sharp editing (credited to a Harvey Katz but probably done by Metzger himself) that keeps the production flowing quickly and smoothly. Metzger’s directorial flourishes and great camera work is also apparent in every shot of the film as his great eye for composition, even though Maraschino Cherry finally plays out as one of the least defined great films of Radley’s career.

What will really put Seventies adult film enthusiasts in absolute heaven with Maraschino Cherry is its extraordinary cast. The always reliable Gloria Leonard was never better, or sexier, as the title character and she generates so much intelligence and wit for Metzger here. Scene-stealing Leslie Bouvee is particularly lovely here and drop-dead gorgeous Annette Haven is especially memorable in the film’s final section. The exquisite Constance Money also brings her oh so distinctive brand of eroticism and Jenny Baxter is a real charmer as Maraschino’s sister Jenny, but the film ultimately belongs to the fearless C.J. Laing, who really blows the roof off the place in the show-stopping ‘dungeon’ set finale. Laing, as she did in Barbara Broadcast, proves herself to be one of the most searing and sexiest performers the adult film world has ever seen and it is impossible to take your eyes off her when she appears.

Radley Metzger would all but retire from the film world after the release of Maraschino Cherry, as he only had a few relatively minor works on his resume after its release. His final Henry Paris production is marked by the same innovation, skill and style of all his great works and it is an absolute must see for Metzger enthusiasts and adult film fans in general.

Thankfully Maraschino Cherry has been granted a full-blown special edition release thanks to VideoXPix’s Platinum Elite Edition. This beautiful double disc collection, which comes with a booklet and film negative, contains a very nicely remastered version from the uncut 35 mm negative as well several really nice extras, including a fascinating 30 minute recent interview with Leonard, bonus scenes, rare photos and trailers. Like their other collectors editions, the team at Distribpix put a lot of love into the release of Maraschino Cherry and it gives this important film a great home. More info on the disc can be found at this (NSFW) link.

Superstars of the Seventies: Annie Sprinkle

2011-02-23T16:39:00.000-08:00

The first time I ever heard of Annie Sprinkle was in my early twenties when I read Research Publication's Angry Women. The book, which featured chapters on a number of important artists ranging from Diamanda Galas to Karen Finley to Lydia Lunch, was a real eye-opener for me and the section on Annie was particularly fascinating. I was impressed by her intelligence, strength and uncompromising attitude. There was, is, something positively inspiring about her and I think time has proven her as the biggest nightmare for anti-porn crusaders. Annie, an outspoken feminist, has never been any one's victim and every aspect of her career and life goes against the hollow, and often wrongheaded, attitude many of the most outspoken critics of porn have. Annie Sprinkle is one of adult cinema's great pioneers and as the industry thankfully becomes more and more dominated by strong women in charge of their own careers (and often companies), such as Kimberly Kane, Sasha Grey, Jenna Haze, Joanna Angel and Belladonna, Annie's role as a trailblazer becomes more and more apparent.
Annie's finest film, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, was released in 1981 but it is a product of the swinging seventies in every way. It is available from Video-X-Pix in a stunning three disc box-set that contains the long-suppressed uncut copy of the film, along with some truly generous video and printed extras. The film, directed by Joe Sarno and written by Annie herself, is one of adult cinema's most daring and trend setting productions and it is a must for fans.
Beginning with one of the most audacious openings in adult film history, a section that immediately establishes itself as a documentary more than anything else with Annie introducing family photographs from throughout her life, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle might very well be the greatest of the 'Inside' films. While some of her co-stars are recognizable, Sprinkle controls every frame with her charisma, frankness, humor, sex appeal and go-for-broke attitude. It's a tour-de-force performance that is simultaneously charming and daring, as well as perverse and sweet.
While the feature Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle is the stuff of legend, just as good are the extras on the box set. Disc two is a wonderful filmed commentary with Sprinkle sharing her vivid memories of the film and her life, while disc three has a long interview with Annie, two bonus scenes and the original trailer. The impressive package also contains a fascinating 25-page booklet and an Annie Sprinkle Finger Puppet!

The print Video-X-Pix uses for the Platinum Elite Edition has been remastered from the original negative and it is in quite good shape, outside of a short section that has a jitter in the frame. Otherwise though, Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle has never looked better and the fact that it is uncut makes it positively the definitive release of this important title.
More information on the Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle collection can be found at Distribpix's (NSFW) homepage. Annie Sprinkle's official page can be viewed here. Now, enjoy these stills that I captured from Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle and join me in saluting a creative spirit that doesn't understand the words conform or compromise.

Far Out Films of the Seventies: Inside Jennifer Welles

2011-02-09T18:14:00.001-08:00

A trailblazing and influential work from legendary director Joseph W. Sarno, Inside Jennifer Welles (1979) is essential viewing for fans of seventies adult cinema. Starring and co-created by the iconic Miss Welles, Sarno's film has lost none of its punch in the thirty years since its release.

Like the rest of the Inside series, Inside Jennifer Welles is designed as a vehicle for a top adult icon to share and act out their most intimate fantasies. Inside Jennifer Welles is one of the best titles in the series due to how dedicated and enthusiastic Welles is about the film. She is clearly having a blast and was so pleased with the film that she allowed it to act as her major swan-song to the industry.

The star of many of Sarno's classic films, Jennifer Welles was a real distinctive stand-out among the adult icons of the seventies. The voluptuous Welles was a bit older than many of her peers and projected a real sense of class that not many could match. Their is an element of old Hollywood to her and she is quite breathtaking and Sarno's camera clearly loves her, as do her many on-screen lovers.

Inside Jennifer Welles is served up quite well by VideoXPix's DVD. Colors are sharp and stable and the print is thankfully uncut. Sadly the title has not been granted a collectors edition status yet, so no real extras are on the disc, but it's still highly recommended.

Film lovers who dig their films from the seventies swinging, wild and off-the-chain should visit Distribpix's excellent website for more information on their Inside Jennifer Welles DVD. Keep in mind though that this link isn't safe for work, unless your boss is as cool as hell.

Far Out Films from the Seventies: Cruising (Shot in 1979, Released in 1980)

2010-04-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

***This is part of a piece that originally appeared at my main site, Moon in the Gutter.***

While I can't prove it, I suspect that the very evil spirit Pazuzu, otherwise known as Captain Howdy, from William Peter Blatty's THE EXORCIST inhabits many more of William Friedkin's films than one might think. You can feel the Captain in the final shots of THE FRENCH CONNECTION, just after Popeye Doyle has shot an innocent man and he doesn't care. The Captain certainly makes his way into SORCERER, he's what is keeping Roy Scheider's character driving that truck long after any mere human being would have completely collapsed. John Pankow is clearly possessed by him as the credits role on TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., and that's certainly the Captain's glare staring at Linda Fiorentino from Chaz Palminteri in JADE. While he is just a bit player in those film though, Pazuzu is present in nearly every scene of CRUISING, a work which is surely Friedkin's most controversial and dangerous film.
CRUISING started out life as a true crime novel by Gerald Walker. The controversial book was bought up by movie producer and concert promoter Jerry Weintraub in the late seventies and was offered to Friedkin shortly after. Friedkin's career was in trouble by 1979 and he needed a film that could reestablish him as the major American director that he clearly was.
Even though he had just been nominated for another Oscar for AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, Al Pacino's career had also gone slightly off the tracks by 1979. It had been nearly five years since DOG DAY AFTERNOON and the very personal BOBBY DEERFIELD had failed to spark any kind of fire with audiences or critics. CRUISING must have seemed perfect to Pacino as the film he signed on for would be a fairly traditional murder mystery that would bring him back to the New York streets; unbeknown to Pacino though is that nothing involving William Friedkin could have a hope at being traditional.
I first saw CRUISING just after my seventeenth birthday in 1989. Pacino had become my favorite actor a few years before and Friedkin was one of my favorite directors, so CRUISING was a film that I had greatly anticipated seeing. My thoughts in the past near twenty years haven't changed in regards to the film. CRUISING is still to me one of the most effective and undervalued American films of the past few decades, and no amount of critical or popular derision will change my mind.
I have always thought of CRUISING as THE EXORCIST'S strange and dark little brother. While the often misread EXORCIST does finally remind us that, if there is indeed evil in the world, then there must also be good, CRUISING has real black and cynical heart that suggests that all men posses evil or at least have the capacity for it. In CRUISING, Captain Howdy doesn't lose.

Many critics have argued that CRUISING fails as a murder mystery, and I would agree with them. This film isn't interested in who the killer is, ultimately it is more about who the killer isn't. As the great Laurent Bouzereau documentary points out, Friedkin cast several people as the killer, including at one point an actor who played one of the film's early victims! Friedkin makes it clear early on that this is a film, like THE EXORCIST, that deals very much with the transference of evil and the loss of one's own identity. If THE EXORCIST was a great spiritual work posing as as a horror film, then CRUISING is very much an existential horror film posing as a murder mystery.
There were several things that struck me re-watching CRUISING this week. One is just how sad and dislocated nearly everyone looks in the film. All of the characters in it seem to be going through their own very personal crisis...at one point Pacino's character pleads with his girlfriend Karen Allen "Don't let me lose you" but if you listen really close it sounds like he is saying, "Don't ever lose you." The film is filled with odd little moments like that, moments that remind us that sometimes the easiest thing to lose in this life is yourself.
The Karen Allen character is fascinating and she is really splendid in the role. As the only major female character in the film, and one of the only positive, Allen is only seen with Pacino in their apartment as a reminder of the life that he is losing that he might not even want. Early in the film Pacino whispers to her, "There's a lot you don't know about me." and that perhaps sums up the film perfectly.
Outside of Karen Allen, the only other real positive force in the film is Ted, Pacino's gay neighbor played wonderfully by Don Scarino. The film's main critics that continually accuse the film of being homophobic seem to always look over this role. Ted is the most human character in the film and the one who is ultimately sacrificed the hardest. His scenes with Pacino are the warmest moments the film has and it gives CRUISING an extra added layer that makes it much more complex than its critics have often given it credit for.

The infamous club scenes in the film are still incredibly evocative. What really struck me was, and the documentary mentions it, is how nonjudgmental the film is in these sequences. I would argue that some of the only real joy and freedom the film exhibits comes through in these scenes. CRUISING doesn't feel like a denouncement of the gay community or this particular subculture, instead it feels like a denouncement towards people who can't accept truths about themselves; which goes very much back to the loss of identity and the susceptibility of evil.
Technically one thing that struck me while watching this film is that it feels more like an Italian film from the period, rather than a Hollywood studio production. A big part of this is the massive amount of post dubbing that the film went through due to all of the noise the protesters were making while they were shooting it. I kept thinking about Fulci's underrated NEW YORK RIPPER from just a few years later as well, and I wondered if Fulci had seen CRUISING and had it mind when he produced that subversive, brilliant and incredibly cynical work.
The cast is extraordinary. Friedkin managed to find some of the most unforgettable faces of the period and everyone from Paul Sorvino (a powerful performance) to Richard Cox and Joe Spinell are incredible to watch in this. One moment with Spinell when he briefly faces off with Pacino in a Central Park tunnel is particularly chill inducing.
As for Pacino, I have always considered CRUISING to be one of his great moments. Gone is the ferocious intensity that had inhabited DOG DAY AFTERNOON and later SCARFACE. His performance here is chillingly cold, subtle and finally very tragic. It is a shame that Pacino's bad experiences shooting the film have caused him to not talk on the film. It is a bold, adventurous performance that contains some of the best moments of his incredibly distinguished film career. The last shot alone belongs in any best of Al Pacino reel imaginable, and it is one of the most complex and stunning closing close-ups in film history.
The sound of CRUISING is also particularly great, from Charles L. Campbell's incredibly creepy soundscapes to Jack Nitzsche's experimental and crucial score, CRUISING sounds like no other film I can think of. Also worth noting is the amazing line up of songs Friedkin added from bands like The Germs to Willy Deville's unforgettable IT'S SO EASY. Tarantino is a major fan of CRUISING and his director's cut of DEATH PROOF features this stunning little Deville number.

The film opened up disastrously in the bitterly cold February of 1980. Friedkin had been forced to remove over forty minutes of material and the protests that had been with the film during production bled over into its brief release. While not a total box office bomb, the film received scathing reviews across the board as very few critics bothered looking past its surface. It was pulled shortly after but seemed to almost immediately gain a cult following and the last two decades has seen the tide slowly but surely turning in its favor. The currently available DVD will probably find a lot more critics, but I suspect it will also strike many people in the way it strikes me...as a great film that has never been given its due.

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (Screenshots Post 2 of 2)

2009-07-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (Screenshots Post 1 of 2)

2009-07-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle in the Country Screenshots

2009-06-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals Screenshots (Post 3)

2009-06-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals Screenshots (Post 2)

2009-06-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-06-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Around the World (Screenshots Post 2)

2009-06-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Around the World Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-06-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Sister Emanuelle Screenshots

2009-06-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle in America Screenshots (Post 2)

2009-06-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle in America Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-06-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Velluto Nero Screenshots (Post 2)

2009-05-29T15:14:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Velluto Nero Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-05-29T10:10:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Eva Nera Screenshots (Post 2)

2009-05-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Eva Nera Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-05-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Orient Reportage Screenshots (Post 4)

2009-05-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Orient Reportage Screenshots (Post 3)

2009-05-27T05:55:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Orient Reportage Screenshots (Post 2)

2009-05-26T04:20:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Orient Reportage Screenshots (Post 1)

2009-05-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: La spiaggia del desiderio Screenshots (Post 2 of 2)

2009-05-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: La spiaggia del desiderio Screenshots (Post 1 of 2)

2009-05-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Screenshots (Post 3 of 3)

2009-05-24T14:15:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Screenshots (Post 2 of 3)

2009-05-24T14:06:00.001-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Emanuelle Nera Screenshots (Post 1 of 3)

2009-05-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser in the Seventies: Amore Libero-Free Love Screenshots

2009-05-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

Scarecrow Tribute Week: Far Out Films of the Seventies

2008-07-28T07:07:00.000-07:00

Bronx born director Jerry Schatzberg came to fame in the sixties as a photographer whose work graced the pages of Vogue, Esquire and many other of the period’s most respected and famed publications. He also found time to photograph some of the decade’s greatest album covers including the legendary Blonde on Blonde sleeve for Bob Dylan.
In the late sixties he began dating up and coming Hollywood legend Faye Dunaway and it would indeed be the Bonnie and Clyde star who would be the leading lady of Schatzberg’s first film, 1970’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child. The film would generate quite a bit of controversy and received a vastly mixed critical reaction when it was released, although many agreed that Schatzberg was a talent to watch.
Schatzberg would follow up Puzzle of a Downfall Child with the acclaimed junkie drama Panic in Needle Park, a film which starred a young actor named Al Pacino. The harrowing film would lead to Scarecrow, a picture that would see the director and the future Oscar winning actor collaborating for the second and final time.
Schatzberg has never received the credit he has deserved as being one of the key American directors of the early seventies. Scarecrow remains arguably the greatest achievement of an often overlooked career behind the camera.

Schatzberg’s film would mark the first screen credit for award winning and revered playwright Garry Michael White. Pacino would call White’s original script as the best he had ever read and Scarecrow does indeed stand as one of the most challenging and moving scripts of the seventies, a poignant work that would work as an entirely personal project while securing itself as an insightful look at an America that was becoming more and more distrustful of authority. Is there a more knowing and chilling acknowledgement of what was happening to America in the midst of Vietnam and Watergate than when Hackman’s Max says towards the end of the film, “Who Can I trust now”?

Gene Hackman has called Scarecrow the favorite of all of the films he worked on in his career, impressive considering the number of classics that have appeared among the 100 or so titles he has starred in. Hackman had just won the Oscar for William Friedkin’s searing The French Connection when he shot Scarecrow, and his performance as Max for Schatzberg is the equal of his work as the famed Popeye Doyle that had won him so much acclaim. Incredibly neither Hackman nor Pacino were nominated for Oscars for Scarecrow.

The film would become a sensation in Europe when it was initially released in 1973 and it won the coveted Golden Palm at that year’s Cannes Festival. Schatzberg and his film would also win several other top European prizes, a fact that makes the initial relative failure of the film in America all the more surprising. The film would open to poor box office and mixed reviews in the Spring of 1973 causing a disillusioned Hackman to announce he would only work on commercial projects afterwards, a promise thankfully he didn’t keep. It would take years for the film to really find its audience in America, even though it is still not held perhaps in the esteem that it should be.

There was some reported tension between Hackman and Pacino on the set as the two had vastly different ways of approaching the material. The two would have the up most respect for each other though and have spoken highly of the experience since. Hackman would recall on Larry King that he loved and admired Pacino, a factor that went into him naming Scarecrow as his favorite film. Scarecrow marks the only time these two giants would work together.

Behind the scenes players included legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and his work combined with Scatzbergs marks Scarecrow as a photography lover’s dream and one of the most striking looking features of the seventies. The film’s intriguing editing which melds some surprising jump cuts into Schatzberg’s celebrated long takes is courtesy of none other than Evan A. Lottman, the man who would cut The Exorcist in the same year as Scarecrow. The film’s off kilter but effective score is credited to Fred Myrow, an interesting composer who would later provide the very effective music for the influential shocker Phantasm in 1979.

Scarecrow came out just a month before I was born in 1973. I first saw it when I was around 15 courtesy of a censored TV print and I immediately fell in love with it. I consider it one of the key American films of the seventies and more than a dozen viewings of it over the years have only increased my admiration and love for the film.

Caroline Munro Tribute Week: Far Out Films From The Seventies (I Don't Want to be Born)

2008-07-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

I wish I could report that one for Caroline's hardest to see films from the seventies, 1975's I Don't Want to be Born, is some sort of lost cult classic but unfortunately the film is fairly dreadful despite some stylish direction from Peter Sasdy and an atmospheric (if not altogether appropriate score) from Ron Grainer.
The film, known under several titles including The Devil Within Her and The Monster, is an uneasy mixture of Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist and It's Alive that is severaly hampered by a very poor script by Stanley Price and a tiresome lead performance by Joan Collins.
Concerning a murderous newborn possessed by an angry jilted dwarf, I Don't Want To Be Born goes beyond stretching credibility into the realms of sheer jaw dropping ridiculousness. If your looking for a film where Donald Pleasence gets beheaded by a crazed little bundle of joy then I Don't Want To Be Born is for you but even a devout lover of the fantastic (like myself) will have trouble swallowing much of the 89 minute running time this films offers up.
Caroline only appears in a few scenes and she possesses such a naturalness compared to Collin's annoyingly overbearing performance that it's a shame the producers didn't have the good sense to cast her in the lead instead of Joan.
The film possesses a certain watchability and it's worth seeking out for at least one viewing if you are fan of Caroline's or British horror in the seventies but don't expect much as there is a reason I Don't Want to be Born has slipped into relatively obscurity...it just simply isn't very good.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet Tribute Week: The Wrap Up

2008-07-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

The best way to see Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet right now is through a German DVD that Xploited offers. The screen-shots I have posted come from this DVD and it is currently the best thing going right now. Whether or not Paramount will ever release the film on a truly restored DVD remains to be seen.
As for the film itself, I rank it below Bird With Crystal Plumage and above Cat O Nine Tails as far as Argento's Animal Trilogy goes with special note going to the final few scenes that I think are among the best Argento has ever delivered.
To close out the tribute week, here are ten iconic images from this flawed but undeniably important and haunting film from one of cinema's greatest masters.

Thanks to everyone who visited and commented througout the week.

The Stepford Wives Tribute Week: Far Out Films From The Seventies: The Stepford Wives (1975)

2008-06-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Scripted with a fierce intelligence by author William Goldman and directed with an equal amount of astuteness by British born filmmaker Bryan Forbes, 1975’s The Stepford Wives is one of the most chilling and important horror films of the seventies and one of the best.
The film started out as an acclaimed and popular novel by Rosemary’s Baby author Ira Levin. Levin’s original story was a much more ambiguous work than the film version it spawned but the two share the same austere chilliness and sharp satirical mindset, making them a remarkably unique pair in the history of novel to film adaptations.
Director Forbes was born in Stratford in the summer of 1926 and he actually broke into film not as a writer and director but as an actor in the 1949 Powell-Pressburger film The Small Back Room. After working throughout the fifties as a performer and sometimes screenwriter, Forbes made his directorial debut with the fantastic BAFTA nomintated Whistle Down The Wind, which gave young Hayley Mills one of her finest roles.
After his successful first venture as a filmmaker, Forbes continued to show himself as one of the most promising young British filmmakers of the sixties with films like The L-Shaped Room (1962) and Séance On A Wet Afternoon (1964). After being removed as director on the controversial Kim Novak version of Of Human Bondage in 1964, Forbes made the Oscar nominated King Rat which would signal Hollywood of his considerable talents behind the camera, as would his work with up and coming British actor Michael Caine in Deadfall (1968).

Forbes would continue writing, directing and sometimes acting throughout the sixties but his career began to slow down after 1971’s The Raging Moon as he settled down with his wife, and sometimes star, Nanette Newman. Five years would pass after The Raging Moon before Forbes would step behind the camera again, this time on an American finance production set and filmed in Connecticut.

Shot mostly in and around both Darien and Fairfield Connecticut with some location work in New York City, Forbes The Stepford Wives is a stylistic triumph filled with telling POV shots, incredible production design, smart performances and a haunting score courtesy of the great and underrated Michael Small. Forbes directs the film with a real sincerity and sympathy towards the horrifying journey that his lead character Joanna takes and the audience follows along thanks to the remarkable work of Katharine Ross, a wonderful and down to earth actress who never got the credit she deserved.

The film is filled with moments that alert the audience to just how incredible crafted, well planned and smart it is. Take the key moment when Johanna meets the head of the men’s club, and the mastermind of her eventual doom, for the first time in her kitchen. Forbes shows him from behind walking into the kitchen and seeing her for the first time. He cleverly positions the camera just behind his shoulder so we can see them both in frame, this alerts the audience that it is not the expected POV shot, which takes away the traditional male oriented gaze. The next shot is a head on of the male character and it is an absolute POV shot from Johanna. This is one of many moments in the film where Forbes cleverly and forcefully reminds the audience that this is a film very much siding and sympathizing with Johanna’s character.

The heart of Forbes film revolves around the friendship that develops between Joanna and Bobbie (played by the always outstanding Paula Prentiss). Hollywood has always had issues in portraying friendship between two women as it typically seems either forced or pandering but the bond that develops between Joanna and Bobbie is extremely resonate and well handled, a fact that gives the final act of the film an even more haunting and added emotional pull.

Along with Ross and Prentiss, who give near career best performances here, the film is filled with a number of notable actors delivering strong performances. As the plotting but emotionally torn Walter Eberhart, Houston born Peter Masterson gives a haunting performance as a man losing his soul while planning to take another's away. Masterson’s young daughter, and future star of films in her own right, Mary Stewart is also very good as Joanna’s lonely and troubled child Kim.

Making the biggest impact among the wives themselves is Tina Louise, seen here about eight years after wrapping up her famed turn as Ginger on Gilligan’s Island. The beautiful Louise is very memorable in the role of the sassy turned stoic Charmaine, as is Carole Mallory as Kit. Making a strong impression among the husbands is Franklin Cover, who would begin his long and much loved turn as Tom Willis on The Jeffersons later in 1975. Future E.T. and The Howling star Dee Wallace appears in a small role as well, as the maid Nettie.

One can’t talk about The Stepford Wives without paying tribute to the incredible score by Michael Small. A haunting and involving weaving of acoustic guitars, electronics and strings, Small’s score ranks among the best that graced any thriller of the seventies and the fact that it has never enjoyed an official release is tragic. Sadly that would be something that would mark much of the late Small’s life, as many of his best scores from Night Moves (1975) to Marathon Man (1979) remain unreleased.

The Stepford Wives is also an incredibly attractive film to watch, thanks to the vivid (Forbes said he wanted to make one of the brightest horror films ever) photography of Oscar Nominated cinematographer Owen Roizman. The set decoration by Oscar winner Robert Drumheller also stands out making The Stepford Wives one the distinctive looking films of the seventies with its influence stretching to Ang Lee’s Connecticut set The Ice Storm (1997) more than two decades later.

The controversial choice of Forbes as director on The Stepford Wives has been chronicled quite a bit throughout the years and the issues between him and Goldman centers on the casting of Newman in the role of one of the wives, and Forbes' differing viewpoint as to how they should be portrayed. Originally set up to be a group of Playboy like bunnies in Goldman’s screenplay, Forbes pictured a much more sinister and old fashioned suburban housewife as the model for his version of The Stepford Wives. The men in the town wouldn’t be seeking out simple adolescent male fantasies for their diabolical male dominated world but would instead go for wives quite simply fashioned after the first woman in their lives, their mother, making Forbes’ version of Levin’s novel a much more twisted and perverse vision of male arrogance, wish-fulfillment and dominance.

The Stepford Wives is a remarkable film on many levels. It is first and foremost one of the key feministic works of the seventies and people who have labeled it misogynistic are way off the mark. Outside of being told almost entirely from Joanna’s (Katharine Ross) point of view the film presents the men as being coldly arrogant and boring at best. The Stepford Wives is very much a womens’ picture and a chilling reminder at the consequences of foregoing oneself in the service of another. It’s also a remarkably eerie picture in just how much it foreshadowed a society that would eventually switch it’s role models from strong and independent minded women like Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave to Stepford-like children like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. One need only look at the crushingly bad Frank Oz remake from 2004 to see just how far the individualistic and liberating ideas of Forbes film have fallen in the three decades since its release.

The Stepford Wives was released to theaters in Febuary 1975 to fairly strong box office and mostly positive (with some major hold-outs) reviews. It would play throughout Europe in the seventies where it would find quite a bit of success as well. It was a television fixture in the States throughout the late seventies and early eighties but strangely didn’t have a home video release until the mid nineties when Anchor Bay released it on VHS and Laserdisc. It is currently available on DVD with a nice widescreen transfer and a solid if short fifteen minute making of documentary featuring interviews with most of the main players. The film and Levin’s original book have both entered into our public consciousness and they inspired three made for TV sequels of diminishing returns (Revenge of The Stepford Wives (1980), The Stepford Children (1987) and The Stepford Husbands (1996).

Frank Oz brought his atrocious comedic remake to screens in 2004, a film that managed to waste the considerable talents of Nicole Kidman and Bette Midler and made a mockery of both Levin’s original novel and Forbes vastly superior film.

Candice Rialson Tribute Week: Far Out Films Of The Seventies (Hollywood Boulevard)

2008-06-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

The Original Version Of This Article Can Be Found Here At Moon In The Gutter.

Joe Dante's and Alan Arkush's 1976 film, HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, for Roger Corman's New World Pictures is an absolute treasure of in-jokes and allusions for film lovers. The film, which stars the lovely and much missed Candice Rialson, is one of the great films made about films; specifically in this case low budget exploitation films of the seventies.
Joe Dante is one of those great directors who wears his love for film clearly on his sleeve, as his work is often often filled with sly nods and outright tributes to his favorite pictures. HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD is an incredibly funny send up and tribute to the exploitation film genre, of which HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD is proud to be a part of.
The film is scattered with stock footage from other Corman productions from the seventies including DEATH RACE 2000 and BIG DOLL HOUSE. Dante had been working as an editor on New World's incredible trailers and HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD'S quick and clever editing is one of it's biggest assets. This is a deliciously fast moving and entertaining picture that demands repeat viewings to get not only all of the references, but also all of the jokes.

Co-director Alan Arkush makes, along with Dante, his major film directorial debut and he would of course deliver the glorious ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (also with Dante's assistance) just a few years after HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD. His other 70's film, the sci-fi action epic DEATHSPORT, is also notable if just for the casting of the talented and tragic Claudia Jennings.
HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD was reportedly shot in less than two weeks and features, along with Rialson, some of New World's brightest and funniest stars including Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Rita George and of course Dick Miller. Bartel, as the egotistical out of control director, is particularly brilliant and it remains one of my favorite performances by him.
The sharp sun drenched photography is very well done here by cinematographer Jamie Anderson. Anderson has gone on to work on a few of Dante's productions including PIRANHA and SMALL SOLDIERS. It is also worth pointing out that Anderson filmed Claudia Jennings the same year in the similarly lit THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE, another seventies jewel that deserves a wider audience.

The film hops several genres in it's breezy 83 minute running time including action pictures, gangster films, sexploitation, horror, a very odd musical sequence and of course the women in prison film. It wears it's un-pc stamp proudly and with the release of GRINDHOUSE it is a shame that the anniversary dvd (featuring a fine commentary) is still currently out of print.

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD'S brightest spot remains the delectable and hilarious Rialson. Looking very much like a young Michelle Pfeiffer, this is Rialson's greatest role and proof positive that she deserved much more of a career than she ever received. The opening credit sequence where she is excitedly walking down the Hollywood Walk Of Fame has become particularly poignant since her untimely death a couple of years ago. She is simply breathtaking throughout the film...funny, alive, sexy and just unforgettable.
Joe Dante's HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD should be required viewing for all film lovers and students. It is a textbook example on how to make a great low budget film about films and its prideful stance as an exploitation picture crammed with nudity, off-kilter humor and violence is especially enduring.
Dante really started to cook after this with the one two knockout punch of PIRANHA and THE HOWLING. Rialson was derailed by her next film, CHATTERBOX, and her career never fully recovered. She remains one of the seventies brightest lights and HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD isn't just a good film, but it is a small miracle.

Candice Rialson Tribute Week: Far Out Films Of The Seventies (Chatterbox, 1977)

2008-05-30T09:21:00.001-07:00

I’ve always suspected Chatterbox would have made a good short film in something like Woody Allen’s Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). Unfortunately the film that stalled what should have been the thriving career of talented Candice Rialson is feature length and it isn’t written by someone of Allen’s creativity and intelligence.

1977’s Chatterbox, inspired by the successful French film Le Sexe Qui Parle from a few years earlier features the last starring role of the late Candice Rialson. Candice would appear in just a few more productions in just smaller supporting and bit roles. How much the failure of Chatterbox hurt Candice’s career is perhaps up for question, but it needs to be noted that that failure is in no way due to her performance as it is the only real bright spot the doomed production has.

Director Tom DeSimone had mostly worked in the adult industry in the years leading up to Chatterbox under the name of Lancer Brooks. He would go onto to direct features such as Hell Night (1981) with Linda Blair and Reform School Girls (1984) with Sybil Danning. His direction of Chatterbox, while flat at times, is surprisingly spirited with special note going to a couple of the film’s montages and one particular musical number towards the end inspired by the MGM musicals of Hollywood’s first Golden Age.

The problem with Chatterbox doesn’t lie with Rialson or DeSimone, but instead rests on the lap of novice screenwriter Mark Rosin. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (a much better film than Chatterbox) writer’s work is really flat here. Chatterbox wants more than anything else to be funny and it simply isn’t. The majorities of the films jokes are the kind that could have been found on any number of second rate sitcoms from the period and they really bury the film, which is a real pity as in the right hands Chatterbox could have been something of a camp classic or even a probing satirical work on female sexuality…it’s neither. It’s like a gaudy knock-knock joke with a cheap punch line and Candice Rialson deserved much better.

The film, brief at under 75 minutes, is absolutely worth a look though to see Rialson at possibly her most radiant. She’s charming even when the film isn’t and amazingly enough manages to give the role respectability when any other actress would have struggled to even achieve trashiness (this is after all a film about a woman with a talking and singing vagina). Without a decent script and having to recite some of the worst dialogue of her career, Rialson’s charisma, poise and intelligence still shines through…a remarkable achievement is a sadly vacant film.
Lots of familiar faces pop up from Rip Taylor to Sandra Gould to Larry Gelman but none of them can elevate the material much. The film is at least an attractive one, thanks to the cinematography by future legend Tak Fujimoto. The score by Neil Sedaka is also fairly pleasing although it none of it compares to the best of the singer-songwriter’s work.

Chatterbox is also a surprisingly conservative picture, with only a glimpse of full frontal nudity on display. It’s not a relatively titillating production and those hoping to uncover one of the seventies more explicit exploitation films will no likely be disappointed.

The film does come to life during the audacious and successful final musical number but it only serves as a note to what kind of film it could have been. Rialson is positively radiant in this scene and it serves as another reminder to the scope of this woman’s talent.

Chatterbox was released by AIP in Febuary of 1977 to pretty much universal disdain. It was released on VHS in the mid eighties by Vestron but quickly sank out of print and legitimate copies are fairly hard to come by. To my knowledge it has never had an official DVD release, although grey market copies are fairly easy to track down for those interested.

Candice Rialson Tribute Week: Far Out Films Of The Seventies (Pets, 1974)

2008-05-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

Part sexploitation film and part social commentary, Raphael Nussbaum’s 1974 feature Pets is a fairly remarkable feature on all counts. A low budget film with big ideas, Pets is mostly remembered today for giving talented 23 year old actress Candice Rialson her first starring role in a feature film. Rialson, who had previously appeared in just a handful of small feature and television roles, gives one of the most electric debut performances of the seventies under Nussbaum’s direction and Pets is worth a larger audience than it has ever had.

German born Nussbaum has had an interesting if fairly unremarkable career as a writer, producer and director and Pets stands as his most important and fully realized work. After making some early features in Germany in the early sixties (including one with Daliah Lavi), Nussbaum relocated to America in the late part of the decade with his first American credit being a co-writing detail on the 1969 Al Adamson film, The Female Bunch.

Pets started out life as a 1969 series of one act plays by Richard Reich starring notable future film actress Marlene Clark. Reich’s play received mostly scathing reviews during its Off-Broadway run by critics not able to see that its scenes of sado-masochism and male dominance were attempting to make a sharp statement on the changing role of women in society due to the blossoming feminist movement. Reich’s play and Nussbaum’s film makes the point that it wasn’t just the misogynistic male world that feminists had to overcome but also years of personal imprisonment as undervalued housewives and unfairly treated citizens. Regardless of Pets notorious ad campaign and the fact that it has to play into some of the trappings of a strictly exploitation vehicle, there is a lot more going on here than the misogynistic work it is often being accused of being.

The three one act plays came into the hand of Nussbaum and exploitation producer Mardi Rustam in the 1973 and they quickly worked it into a film script and began casting soon after. Several familiar faces were soon signed on including Ed Bishop and two-time Elvis Presley co-star Joan Blackman. The key role of Bonnie though would go to the near completely unknown Candice Rialson, billed here as Candy Rialson, and it would turn out to be the film’s masterstroke as Rialson controls the film with a ferociously intelligent and electric performance that still resonates over thirty years later.

Pets is about overcoming submission…submission not only to others but more importantly an imprisonment of a personal kind to society’s expectations. Pets is a political film posing as a sexy drive in feature…the fact that it works as both quite well marks it as one of the most impressive low budget features of the seventies.

***Spoilers Follow***
After an eerie and striking opening sequence showing a series of animals and finally Rialson (Bonnie) chained in a group of cages, Pets begins (as it ends) in a car. We are introduced to Bonnie who is being driven around town late at night by her controlling and abusive brother. After being pushed one step too far, Bonnie escapes from her brother and makes her way into the lonely city night. The next morning Bonnie meets Pat (Teri Guzman) a tough talking thief who connives her into kidnapping a middle aged man fresh from the beach, tying him up, and robbing his house. Bonnie is a good person, but she clearly enjoys being the one in control and not tied down and foolishly follows through with Pat's plan. After she is not surprisingly abandoned by the double crossing Pat, Bonnie runs away again only to meet another person looking to control her, a lesbian painter named Geraldine (Blackman).

Bonnie soon enters into a relationship with Geraldine but is soon yearning to escape as the same feelings of entrapment and personal disillusionment creep on. After Geraldine murders a burglar Bonnie has a one night stand with, Bonnie escapes once again this time to a perverted art collector named Victor...a man who collects not only paintings but also exotic animals and women (both of which he keeps imprisoned in his basement). After submitting Bonnie to torture and humiliation she finally pretends to submit to his every whim and ends up chained in a cage in his basement. When Victor lures Geraldine to his house, Bonnie captures them both and abandons the house and her ways as a prisoner. As the film ends it is now Bonnie driving the car...independent and in control and free of the real and invisible chains that have been around her all of her life.

Pets benefits greatly from the editing of actress and producer Roberta Reeves. I suspect that Reeves understood the films underlying themes and her cutting style slyly gives the upper hand to Rialson all the way through. We are not only sympathetic to Rialson but can also feel her blossoming empowerment...when she finally escapes from the house and her role as society's second class citizen, Reeves cleverly cuts between Bonnie triumphantly leaving the house with the sight of the animals escaping as well. Draped in a fur coat and smiling, the ending of Pets is exhilarating stuff and the clever question mark after the "The End" notice doesn't mark the hint of the sequel, but instead the beginning of a new generation of women not refusing to buckle under the weight of the chains much of society to this day stills tries to put them under.

Rialson is nothing short of spectacular in the role of Bonnie. Breathtakingly beautiful and seemingly totally aware that her role is representative of much more than just a single woman in peril, Rialson injects Bonnie with a strength and intelligence rare for any film of this kind in the seventies or since. Pets should have been the beginning of a long and prolific career for the charismatic and talented Rialson and it is tragic that only a handful of roles followed for her.

The rest of the cast is okay if not overly noteworthy. Bishop plays the sickening Victor with the right amount of sleeze and charm but Blackman is rather bland in what should be one of the film's most dynamic characters. Guzman is quite good in her part as is television actor Brett Parker in his small but memorable role as the kidnap victim.

My version of Pets comes from a poor quality full frame VHS dub (as you can see from these screen grabs) so it is a bit hard to comment on some of the films technical qualities. Art director Mike McCloskey does a solid job with Victor's foreboding house and fills it with antiquities and reminders of his role as a villainous collector. Nussbaum's direction is also fairly thoughtful if un-showy throughout although Pets does suffer from its low budget trappings. The film also feels more than a little episodic, no doubt due to its origins as three separate one act plays. Still, for the most part, Pets is a remarkable achievement and its relative obscurity is unfortunate.

Pets came out in the early part of 1974 with one of the most notorious and misleading ad campaigns of its day. If the film manages to transcend its sexploitation stature then the seedy promotional art embraces it. The film, originally released under the title Submission, was for the most part ignored by the critics, never caught on with the public and to my knowledge has never been granted a legitimate home video release. This is thankfully going to change as Code Red have been working on a DVD although a specific release date has not been given. I hope they can line up some extras that put it in its proper place as a strong pro-feminist film instead of the trashy exploitation flick it is often labeled as.

Far Out Films From The Seventies: Fright (1971)

2008-05-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Originally at My Moon In The Gutter

Directed with style to spare by Peter Collinson, 1971’s Fright is an often overlooked and very solid British Fright Film well worth a first, second or even third look for film fans. Featuring a great lead performance from lovely Susan George and script from popular screenwriter Tudor Gates, Fright (pre-dating both Halloween and When A Stranger Calls by several years) centers on a young and very vulnerable babysitter being terrorized in an isolated British country house by a deranged psychopath.

Lincolnshire born Collinson was just over a year past his incredibly successful The Italian Job (1969) when he shot Fright in the early part of 1971. I like a number of of the late Collinson’s films quite a bit and Fright joins the ranks of 1967’s intense The Penthouse and the sorely undervalued 1972 feature Straight On Till Morning as being among his most eerie and terrifying productions. Often framing his actors rather oppressively through doorways and window panes, Collinson had an especially unique ability to make you believe his characters were really in danger. I find his style to be quite arresting and at times extremely bold. Fright is a great entry point into his varied filmography (which includes everything from heavy dramas to a western).

Screenwriter Tudor Gates (who passed away just last year) is undoubtedly best known for his scripts for the remarkable trilogy of Hammer films from the early seventies that included the The Vampire Lovers ( 1970), Lust For a Vampire (1971) and Twins Of Evil (1971). A quick glance at his filmography will also show his name mixed into the stew of a lot of varied credits including everything from Mario Bava’s masterful Danger: Diabolik and Roger Vadim’s trippy Barbarella (both 1968). Like Collinson, Gates worked in a wide variety of genres (even directing a couple of sexploitation features under the pseudonym of Teddy White) and while Fright isn’t the most noteworthy work he ever delivered, it is still a nice addition to his canon.

London born Susan George was just getting ready to turn 21 years old when she shot Fright for Collinson. An underrated and very smart actress, George had been acting since she was a teenager in British television and by 1971 had already appeared in productions helmed by everyone from Michael Reeves to Ken Russell. Fright marked her second feature with Collinson, after 1968’s Up The Junction in which she had had a small role in. George is totally believable in the role as the terrorized babysitter Amanda and it makes an interesting companion to her other tour de force performance of 1971 in Sam Peckinpah’s ferocious masterpiece Straw Dogs.

Joining Susan George is one of the most impressive casts Collinson ever assembled. Honor Blackman, Ian Bannen, George Cole and, in his last film role, John Gregson all provide ample support for George. Collinson had a knack for getting consistently great performances out of his actors and Fright is no different, as everyone (particularly Bannen) deliver extremely solid performances.

Keeping the Hammer Horror connections coming, Fright was brought to the screen by the same two men responsible for producing the above mentioned Hammer trilogy Gates was involved in, namely Harry Fine and Michael Style. It’s lovely full textured palette of colors is courtesy of Captain Kronos-Vampire Hunter cinematographer Ian Wilson and its creepy score is courtesy of yet another Hammer veteran, Harry Robertson.

The real star of Fright, along with George, though is the incredible interior design of the isolated country house by late Production Designer Disley Jones. The relatively small body of work by Jones shows him as someone with a real special eye for detail, and his work on Fright is extremely noteworthy as the house is filled with colors, items and pieces that all manage to add to the increasingly claustrophobic and severe state that envelopes George as the production continues to its startling and violent climax. The former theater designer Jones should have been granted more film work as Fright stands tragically as one of just nine productions on his resume.

While not a complete blueprint to the American slasher films that would flood theaters after John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, like Bob Clark’s Black Christmas is or Mario Bava’s Twitch Of The Death Nerve, Fright should at least get more mention as being one of the clear precursors. Despite lagging a bit in the mid-section with some rather flat scenes outside of the house, Fright is a splendid little thriller that has been deserving of a larger audience since the day it premiered in the summer of 72.

Fright made its DVD debut about five years ago courtesy of a solid if not perfect Anchor Bay DVD that featured the film’s trailer and a Collinson text bio as its sole extras. George, who comes across as so cultured and intelligent in the DVD extras she has been involved with, will hopefully appear as an interview subject on any future additions of the DVD. The Anchor Bay disc is currently out of print but can still be found used online for reasonably cheap prices. To my knowledge, the American Anchor Bay disc is the only version of the film released on DVD, a surprising fate for such a uniquely British production.

Far Out Films Of The Seventies: Mort d’un Pourri (Death Of A Corrupt Man) 1978

2008-04-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Originally at my Moon In The Gutter.

Despite having the admittedly remarkable cast of Alain Delon, Ornella Muti, Stephane Audran, Mireille Darc, Maurice Ronet and Klaus Kinski, Georges Lautner’s 1978 thriller Mort d’un Pourri (Death Of A Corrupt Man) isn’t as noteworthy as it might seem. The Cesar nominated film, despite some intriguing and powerful moments, finally falls a bit flat due to an overly convoluted script and some downright odd directorial decisions by Lautner.

Born in Nice in the early part of 1926, Lautner got his start as an Assistant Director and actor in a number of French films throughout the fifties. Graduating to the director’s chair in 1958, Lautner delivered around forty or so features up until the early nineties when he mostly switched to television productions.

Mort d’un Pourri is a political thriller based on a Raf Vallet novel and adapted by talented Michel Audiard. The extremely prolific and Cesar winning Audiard had his work cut out for him adapting Vallet’s complex and cynical tale of a man caught up in a world where everyone is seemingly corrupt and it shows as the final script for Mort d’un Pourri is just too layered for its own good. At nearly two hours, the film is quite exhausting and one can’t help thinking that a more toned down distillation of the novel’s themes might have worked better for the screen.

The Delon produced Mort d’un Pourri is an extremely attractive production thanks to the always noteworthy Henri Decae, who provides some typically wonderful photography here. The Stan Getz performed Phillippe Sarde score is also a thing of beauty and the soundtrack is ultimately more recommended than the film it graces.
The cast is uniformly fine and if the film is finally ultimately disappointing, then it is at least worth a look due to the actors involved with it. Delon dominates the film and is featured in nearly every scene. Just past the height of his beauty in 1978, Delon has begun to take on the sad world-weariness that he play so well throughout the eighties and nineties. He is quite good in this role, although finally it isn’t among his great works, and the Cesar nomination he received for it was well deserved.

Although billed just below Delon in the film, breathtaking Ornella Muti has a surprisingly smaller role in the film and one cant help but wonder what more screen time for her might have done for the production. As always, she is a wonder to watch and looks lovely under the thoughtful lenses of Decae.
The rest of the cast is fine, although some of their work, specifically Kinski, was hurt by some truly atrocious dubbing in the version I saw. Still seeing Alain Delon and Klaus Kinski working together in a few scenes is remarkable.

Mort d’un Pourri is finally damaged the most by the rather flat direction of Lautner, whose work here is competent but never all that inspired (although it should be mentioned that there are some nice visual motifs repeated throughout the picture that I have tried to highlight with the sceenshots here). Honestly, it would have been preferable to have Delon directing the picture himself as it seems fairly obvious he was pulling many of the behind the scenes strings in general. There is a great film somewhere in Mort d’un Pourri, but unfortunately it never comes out and as it is it is just an average entry in the French Crime Thriller genre of the seventies.

Lautner’s film did fairly well in French cinemas in the early part of 78 and it played throughout the year all over the world. It has never, to my knowledge, had a legitimate home video release in America and is currently only available on DVD in Europe. Fans of the genre, Delon and Muti should of course seek it out but it remains a flawed film that could have been something really special.

Far Out Films From The Seventies: Thomasine and Bushrod (1974)

2008-04-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

I recently presented this as part of a Research Conference at my school. I hope it proves interesting to readers here (this can also be read at my Moon In The Gutter). I'd like to dedicate this piece to the memory of Gordon Parks Jr., an gifted artist taken from us too soon whose place in American cinema needs to be reevaluated.

The strange saga of filmmaker Gordon Parks Junior’s Thomasine and Bushrod (1974) came to a tragic end on an April morning in 1979 when a small plane he was traveling in crashed into a Kenya mountainside. More than a decade later Parks’ father, famed photographer, poet and filmmaker Gordon Parks, remembered that the crash had been so bad that “only ashes” were left of his son making a proper burial impossible. The death of the younger Parks not only marked a eerie footnote to his most overlooked film, but also effectively ended one of the most controversial and misunderstood movements in Hollywood history.

The so-called Blaxploitation genre is often looked upon as a genre consisting only of urban films centering on negative stereotypes of African American culture made by white filmmakers. A deeper investigation into the genre reveals a treasure trove of mostly forgotten films shot, written by and starring African Americans, focusing on family, childhood, politics and civil rights, with none being more startling than Thomasine and Bushrod.

African Americans had appeared in Hollywood productions since the earliest films, but their roles were mostly relegated to ignorant sidekicks, apologetic caricatures and other harmful stereotypes. While there had been many independently produced African American films as early as the twenties, the ‘blaxploitation’ genre in the late sixties would mark the first time that African Americans would be given financing by major studios to make their own films. Thomasine and Bushrod is a particularly special production, as it was one of the earliest and only examples of a major Hollywood studio financing a film written, directed and starring African Americans in that oldest of genres, the western.

The story of Thomasine and Bushrod begins with Max Julien, a writer and actor best known for his role as the ambitious pimp Goldie in 1973’s The Mack. Author Darius James would note that Julien’s early life would be as far removed from his most famous role as possible and that he had “studied at Carnegie Hall’s Dramatic Workshop” and by his early twenties was appearing in “Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival”.

Julien’s role in The Mack would make him an overnight star but the film, like almost all of the ‘blaxploitation’ films of the period, would garner as much derision as praise. Author Donald Bogle would argue that despite its popularity The Mack exemplified the problems with the movement and “was a mess without much of a script” and that it was “gaudy and cheap”. Still, others found much to admire in the film and the genre, such as film historian James Robert Parrish who noted that Julien was one of the genre’s shining lights and was “talented and charismatic”. Despite its many virtues and its success with audiences, The Mack was looked upon as by many as a film made by whites about blacks, something that Julien wanted very much to rectify for his next project. A meeting between Julien with a young up and coming actress shortly after The Mack’s premiere would plant the seeds for what would eventually become Thomasine and Bushrod.

Vonetta Mcgee was born in San Francisco in January 1940. After graduating from San Francisco’s Polytechnic High School in 1962 she became more and more interested in acting. After traveling to Europe, she began appearing in a number of Italian productions in the late sixties before getting steady work in a number of low budget exploitation films in the early seventies upon her return to America. Shortly after their introduction Mcgee became involved romantically with Julien, who was in the process of working on his first screenplay. The script, centering on an African American female version of James Bond named Cleopatra Jones, was quickly refashioned as a vehicle for McGee. Once the script was sold however to Warner Brothers, both Julien and McGee were removed from the project, which caused Julien to quickly write another script, a western called Thomasine and Bushrod.

Max Julien’s original script for Thomasine and Bushrod is a confrontational and genre bending work posing as a take on Arthur Penn’s influential Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Focusing on a fictional outlaw in the old west named Bushrod and his partner in crime and love, a former female bounty hunter named Thomasine, who steals from the rich in order to help out various minorities, Julien’s script and the final film would delight in reversing gender roles, questioning accepted history and rethinking the western genre as a whole.

The script for Thomasine and Bushrod was bought by Columbia Pictures in 1973 and an agreement was made with Julien and McGee that they could both star in it as long they didn’t mind working with a relatively inexperienced director who had just scored a major success with his first film, 1972’s Super Fly.

Gordon Parks Jr. was born just a few weeks before Christmas in 1934 and life immediately proved difficult for the young man. His father would remember years later that “Gordon Jr. had developed a serious asthmatic” condition and that “doctoring didn’t seem to help”. The young Parks would spend much of his early life inside and under his father’s shadow but the two were always close and they began to collaborate on various artistic endeavors and civil rights activities in the mid sixties.

When his father, who had turned to filmmaking in the late sixties, scored big with his second theatrical feature, 1971’s Shaft, Parks Jr. was able to negotiate a deal to direct his first feature, which would turn out to be Super Fly. This production marked the first time the younger Parks would really make a name for himself and his short but intriguing film career that followed is an interesting mixture of his father’s early documentary work, his passion for photography and music and his interest in changing the way Hollywood viewed African Americans in film.

Thomasine and Bushrod is a flawed production, hampered by a quick shooting schedule on a low budget in a scorching New Mexico summer, yet remains downright ingenious in the way it confounds so many expectations. There are several things that separate the film from almost any other before or since with the most obvious being that it would have African American protagonists in the old west. The most daring move the film makes though is with MgGee’s character Thomasine who is placed in the clearly more traditionally masculine role. Not only does her name come first in the title, but the character of Thomasine is shown time and time again to be smarter, stronger, more controlled and more interesting than the weaker Bushrod. Julien’s script suggests strongly a rethinking of not only the Western genre in the placing of African Americans as the leads but also in its forceful questioning of clear gender roles.

Parks as a director obviously understood the subtleties of Julien’s script and how subversive it was. Filming McGee often from lower angles to give her power and authority while placing Julien much lower in the frame with the camera tilted down at him, Thomasine and Bushrod shows Parks to be a sensitive and intelligent stylist. This role as a stylist also distinguishes the film in another way, which is perhaps even more subversive than the gender and race relations it delights in subverting.

Thomasine and Bushrod's biggest attribute is one of its most surprising, that being how much Parks, Julien and McGee chose to highlight that it was a film made in 1973 about 1873. Not content with making a mere historically accurate piece, Parks fills nearly every frame of the film with visual references to the seventies, a move that makes it clearly more about the period it was made in than the period it was set in. The outlandish and stylish costume design by Andrea Lilly and Mcgee herself, the hair styles, the soundtrack (which features a title track by San Francisco band Love) and even some of the dialogue are clearly products of the seventies. Many critics mis-viewed this as laziness and lack of research on the part of Parks and Julien, but today it looks to be a clear headed and deliberate decision on their parts that goes along perfectly with the other subversive thematic elements of the film. Thomasine and Bushrod isn’t a film attempting to be historically accurate, it is instead a work that questions just what accuracy means in cinema.

The film is typified as the work of Gordon Parks Jr. by several visual motifs that he worked into all of his short filmography. These include a bittersweet slow motion love sequence and most notably a mid-film montage of still photographs of not only the actors but an extraordinary collection of rare shots of actual African Americans in the turn of the century old west. This section of the film is particularly important as it shows Parks not only marking himself as an auteur in the making but brings into question Hollywood’s continuing betraying of the historical events that critics accused Thomasine and Bushrod of ignoring.

Parks film was released briefly in the summer of 1973 with a half hearted ad campaign by Columbia attempting to capitalize on the real life relationship between Julien and McGee. The film failed to attract an audience and the critical community mostly ignored the production, although Nora Sayre in The New York Times found much to admire and picked up on how “utterly contemporary” the film was deliberately trying to be. The only other point of recognition came in late 1973 when Julien’s script was nominated for an NAACP award, which it lost.

Outside of a handful of television airings, Thomasine and Bushrod was pulled from circulation in 1973 and has never had a home video release. It is virtually a lost film. The films failure hurt all three of the main player’s careers. McGee has spent the rest of her career in mostly supporting roles while Julien dropped out of sight for nearly a quarter of a century. He resurfaced in the late nineties as his role in The Mack gained more and more popularity, but Thomasine and Bushrod remains his swan song as a lead actor and a screenwriter.

Gordon Parks Jr. completed just two more films, 1974’s Three The Hard Way and 1975’s Aaron Loves Angela, before losing his life in that Kenya plane crash of 1979 while scouting a new film. His father would write that television stations all over the world were “reporting my death” (336) instead of his sons marking the talented Gordon Parks Jr. as anonymous in death as in life. His Thomasine and Bushrod remains one of the great-unnoticed chapters in not only African American film history, but also American film in general.

Far Out Films Of The Seventies: Claudia Jennings in Unholy Rollers (1972) and Gator Bait (1974)

2008-03-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

If I ever had the chance to go back in time and work as a director in 1970’s American cinema there would be a certain number of specific actresses I would relish working with. They wouldn’t be the ‘great actors’ of the day like Fonda, Redgrave, Dunaway etc (although I love all of them) but instead would be any number of the remarkable women who were best known for their work in the A.I.P. type exploitation flicks I have come to love so much. You can bet that the likes of Roberta Collins, Rainbeaux Smith, and Candice Rialson would have been badgered constantly to appear in every film I would have made. I would perhaps not badger any as much as I would have the late Claudia Jennings though, a force on the seventies independent scene whose personality, beauty and spark still resonate to this day almost thirty years after her tragic death.

Mary Eileen Chesterson was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1949 but was raised mostly around Milwaukee. Just before her twentieth birthday she moved to Chicago and got a job at the Playboy Offices as a receptionist. It wasn’t long after that the extraordinarily beautiful red-head was noticed, and her first appearance in the magazine came in November of 1969 under the name of Claudia Jennings.

There is something touching and sweet about the photos of Claudia in this period and it’s not surprising she quickly became one of the most popular playmates in history, earning the title Playmate of the Year in 1970. She would appear in the magazine throughout the seventies but it was her role as an actress in Hollywood that really set her apart from most of the models that had appeared in Hefner’s publication.
From her earliest work in Jud (1971) to her memorable Brady Bunch appearance up until her final role in David Cronenberg’s Fast Company (1979) there was something special about Jennings. Exuding charm, charisma and most importantly intelligence, Jennings came across incredibly natural on the screen in whatever role she was playing. This was never more true than it was in a series of popular drive in pictures she made from 1972 to 1978, often under the banner of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

I recently re-watched two of Claudia’s key films, 1972’s Unholy Rollers and 1974’s Gator Bait and was struck by just how enduring a screen presence she remains and just how good an actress she was. Of the two, I definitely prefer the delicious and delirious Unholy Rollers (surely one of the most entertaining movies of its kind from the seventies) although the very odd and rather dark Gator Bait certainly has its charms as well.

Unholy Rollers, directed with zing by Vernon Zimmerman with editing by Martin Scorsese, premiered in November 0f 1972 about three months after Raquel Welch’s smashing Kansas City Bomber had wowed audiences. Think of Unholy Rollers as a down and dirty version of Kansas City Bomber and you kind of have the picture in a nutshell.

Claudia stars as a feisty and angry former factory worker named Karen who gets to realize her violent roller-derby dreams when she joins a local team. She quickly becomes the star of the league while managing to alienate and anger everyone around her with her piss and vinegar attitude. Defiant, independent and in total control, Jenning’s Karen is a notable addition to the great ‘new woman’ roles that were coming out in the early seventies…she is a major badass and she relishes in it.
Zimmerman didn’t have that prolific of a career as he has just a handful of titles to his name with the most famous being 1980’s terrific Fade To Black. I love his work on Unholy Rollers though and the film zips along at lightning speed thanks to his no budget no problem style and Scorsese’s clever cutting which is especially potent during the exciting Roller Derby scenes.

Working from a script by New World writer Howard R. Cohen with a solid and at times surprisingly subtle score by Kendall Schmidt, Zimmerman’s Unholy Rollers is an absolute blast that perhaps sacrifice’s the heart of Kansas City Bomber for an infectious jolt of 90 minutes worth of pure adrenaline.

While the film belongs to Claudia, who appears in almost every scene and is at her absolute physical peak, some of the supporting cast is also very notable. First and foremost is the inclusion of the great Roberta Collins and her scenes with Claudia are absolutely electric. The always undervalued and always excellent Collins provides a perfect chilly blond counterpoint to Jenning’s sizzling red-headed persona. Seeing the two together on screen all these years later is still incredible and might even bring a tear to the eyes of people like myself obsessed with these films from a period very much gone.

Lots of other familiar faces pop up from Sugar Hill’s Betty Anne Rees to a young Victor Argo as the team’s irritable trainer. Unholy Rollers is a potpourri of remembered faces but often forgotten names from this great period in American filmmaking and it’s a fun experience just going through and attempting to pick them out.

Claudia is just amazing in this film and it might very well be her greatest role. It is at the very least one of her strongest and its hard to imagine any man or woman controller her as her Karen is absolutely and unapologetically ferocious. She has a chip on both shoulders and her final moment in the film where she defiantly flashes her team tattoo to a street filled with astonished onlookers and cops is one of the most iconic moments from American exploitation cinema in the seventies. She’s a knockout in every possible meaning of the word…

Unholy Rollers is strangely enough not available on DVD which is a real and unfortunate oversight. Copies of the old VHS, from which these screenshots were taken, can be found but they are not cheap. A full blown special edition of the film would be most welcome and would be a great tribute to Jennings who really worked her ass off in this role. As someone stated in a review on Amazon, Unholy Rollers is “a cult movie in need of a cult” and I wholeheartedly agree.

Even more popular, although nowhere near as strong, than Unholy Rollers is a film that Claudia shot two years later set in the sticky swamps of Thibodaux, Louisiana by husband and wife directing team Beverly and Ferd Sebastian.
Gator Bait is a surprisingly unpleasant and mean little film that has all of the necessary ingredients for this type of redneck exploitation that was so popular for a short while in the mid seventies…namely incest, backwoods humor, murder, rape and revenge.

Inspired by Burt Reynold’s name in 1973’s fantastic White Lightning, Gator Bait is a simple revenge story set around a mysterious red head Gator hunter named Desiree who haunts the swamps setting traps and breaking hearts.
The film, directed rather flatly by the Sebastians, is probably mostly remembered for its very striking one sheet and VHS artwork and for the images of a wild looking Claudia in cut off shorts running around in the woods. I am always taken aback when I revisit it by just how nasty a little number it is and how it lacks the energy and fun that so many of these types of films possessed in this period.

Gator Bait, despite all its flaws, is an interesting film though that is worth another look. While the Sebastians aren’t great filmmakers one has to respect how much they did (direction, script, editing and music) on what must have been a difficult production to mount, stage and complete. Anyone who has ever felt the sticky humidity of the south will know how oppressive and exhausting it could be and the fact that Gator Bait exists as a completed film at all is probably worth celebrating.

The small cast surrounding Claudia is fine, especially Janit Baldwin who really has to endure some rough and violent scenes. Claudia herself is great in what is almost a silent role but truth be told she is almost a supporting player who just pops up occasionally almost like a ghost creeping through the swamps.

The ending still surprises me as it trades in the trademark coda of the revenge genre for a more existential final that is actually one of the more effective parts of the film. Gator Bait is a sweaty little stinger of a film that I suspect would lose a lot of its menace on a polished widescreen DVD as its ugly quality seems almost tailor maid for an ancient full frame VHS…which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t welcome a disc of it…

Some of Claudia’s best work would follow in the five years after Gator Bait before her tragic death in a Malibu car accident. Watching her small body of work today is still exhilarating and I plan on posting a few more of these double feature looks at some more of her key works. There’s no telling what the eighties and beyond might have held for Claudia Jennings, but as it is she is frozen in time as one of the loveliest and most powerful actresses of the seventies even though she rarely gets her due for it.

Far Out Films From The Seventies: Johnny Tough (1974)

2008-03-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

It is a real shame that the directorial debut from Horace Jackson, 1974’s Johnny Tough, isn’t a better film. A shame because the idea behind it, to remake Francois Truffaut’s monumental masterpiece The 400 Blows as an inner city African American drama, is a fascinating and compelling one. Even though the film is a disappointment and a heavily flawed feature it is still an interesting one and is deserving of a look if you can track the film down.

Jackson only directed two features in his career, with the other being 1977’s Joey (a.k.a. Deliver Us From Evil), and he is probably best know as the screenwriter of the fascinating The Bus Is Coming (1971)…a film I will be focusing on soon.
Jackson’s film career started in the mid sixties with Living Between Two Worlds (1963), a film he wrote, produced and even acted in. Johnny Tough shows him as an ambitious talent but unfortunately an experienced cast and budgetary problems damage the film nearly beyond repair and today it is mostly just a valuable curiosity more than anything else.
Johnny Tough is indeed an almost straight remake of Truffaut’s legendary first Antoine Doinel film with young Dion Gossett (seen here in his only big screen appearance) as the troubled title character. Gossett is actually quite good in the film and, truth be told, he is more convincing than most of the adult actors that surround him.

The rest of the cast is almost entirely made up of actors with no film experience and it shows as almost everyone struggles with Jackson’s ambitious screenplay. Character actor Renny Roker is the only one featured of the major players who has more than a handful of credits on his resume and it is no surprise that he gives one of the better performances in the film. The rest of the cast, put simply, fail to sell the material at nearly every turn and the film has a hard time making up for this.
The film is also visually flat and resembles a TV movie more than a big screen feature, although admittedly the faded full frame print I saw makes it hard to definitively judge the photography of Pets cinematographer Mark Rasmussen. Even in this print though it is clear that Johnny Tough lacks the urban finesse that typified the best of this period. It is a bland looking picture about an exciting subject and it simply never visually pops.

The score, by acclaimed Detroit musician Dennis Coffey, is also a bit of a let down as it suffers from a lot of needless repetition, which is more than likely due to the limited budget and short shooting schedule.
Despite all of the major problems the film has, it is still hard not to admire what Jackson was attempting here. The film has balls and I must admit by the closing scene (which does a fascinating turn on Truffaut’s famed closing still of Jean-Pierre Leaud’s Doinel) I was more than a little moved…even though my emotion was due more to the fact of what was behind the film rather than what was actually on the screen.

Johnny Tough was released in theaters in 1974 and failed to connect with audiences or critics. It floated around for awhile (sometimes under the title of just Tough) and reappeared in 1977 on a Drive In Bill as a companion piece to Jackson’s Joey. It can be found on a public domain, transferred from VHS, DVD usually for around a dollar around the country.

Johnny Tough is a well meaning little film that has too many flaws to give a real recommendation to. Still, warts and all, fans of African American cinema in the seventies and admirers of Truffaut’s film in general shouldn’t miss it.

Far Out Films Of The Seventies: Inserts

2008-03-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

This article originally appeared at Moon In The Gutter.

While attending New York University in the sixties, writer and director John Byrum got a job as an intern with Jim Henson and the Muppets. Byrum's rather odd filmography after that includes writing, among other things, the Diana Ross vehicle, MAHOGANY (1975), the Bill Murray version of THE RAZOR'S EDGE(1984) and the Gwyneth Paltrow film DUETS (2000). All three are seemingly just connected by perhaps how undervalued they are, with each possessing something a little more special than anyone realized at the time.

Byrum's works as a director have been even more sporadic, but no less interesting. These include the Nick Nolte film, HEART BEAT (1980), the aforementioned THE RAZOR'S EDGE and some television work including some ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episodes. THE RAZOR'S EDGE is a particularly interesting film that showed Byrum as being a talent that was unjustly ignored in a period of American cinema when artists daring like him were most needed. As great as THE RAZOR'S EDGE is, Byrum was never more interesting, or controversial, though than we he wrote and directed a strange and fascinating little film from 1974 called INSERTS.

INSERTS details the professional and moral decay of a once big time silent film Hollywood director in the twenties who has turned to making stag films in his secluded Hollywood mansion. Known only as "Boy Wonder" the part is played by a wonderfully burned out Richard Dreyfuss, who is in nearly every frame of the film. The small cast also includes Bob Hoskins as the benefactor Big Mac, Veronica Cartwright as the fallen actress Harlene, Stephen Davies as the dim witted actor Rex and a striking young Jessica Harper as Cathy Cake.

INSERTS feels very much like a stage play, with its one location and small cast but Byrum's direction never feels stagy to me. In its near two hour running time the film manages to remain interesting through the sheer power of the performances, acidic writing and its audacious manner. Watching INSERTS today, it is hard to believe that a major Hollywood company would have released such a bitter and explicit film like this one.

Dreyfuss' Boy Wonder simply can't accept change. He is part of that old silent film guard that checked out once the talkies checked in. For him, sound equals death where as the small group that surrounds didn't necessarily have anything against the change, they just couldn't hack it. One of the early tag lines for INSERTS was "A degenerate film with integrity!" and that isn't a bad way to sum it up as INSERTS is just that and it is still fairly shocking to this day.

I remember the first time I saw the film, on an old worn out VHS copy, and I was floored by how explicit a couple of the shots were. The film's original X has since changed into the more friendly sounding NC17, but whatever the rating, this film wears its adult badge proudly.

The film's striking look, a boldly successful combination of the old Hollywood with the new guard of the seventies, was achieved by Cinematographer Denys N. Coop. Coop had started out as a camera operator in the forties and worked on such projects as Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN and Otto Preminger's SAINT JOAN. He became an in demand cinematographer in the early sixties with some of his most notable titles being Basil Dearden's THE MIND BENDERS, Lindsay Anderson's THIS SPORTING LIFE and John Schlesinger's BILLY LIAR. Starting with Preminger's BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING in 1965 Coop became more associated with thrillers and shot both Roy Ward Baker's ASYLUM as well as AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS before being hired for INSERTS. Coop's three vastly different experiences in classic British cinema, the early sixties Kitchen Sink Dramatic movement and the more fantasy oriented horror films would all combine to form INSERTS. The look of the film manages to be soft, sobering and strangely surrealistic. There is something hyper real to Coop's photography in INSERTS and even at the film's basest moments, there is an all together classical feeling about the film. Coop would unfortunately die just a few years after INSERTS and would make only one other film, Preminger's disappointing ROSEBUD.

The relatively music free INSERTS, only a haunting MOONGLOW is featured, can be a cold experience the first time through. It improves with each viewing though when one can really soak up Coop's work, listen for Byrum's sharp dialogue and just marvel at the intensity of each actor's performance. Dreyfuss is spectacularly amoral in the role as the fallen director. There is something really rotten and broken in this man and Dreyfuss plays it perfectly. It is easily one of his greatest performances in a career that has had many of them. Cartwright is also notable in how brave her work is in this film. She plays the ultimately sad Harlene as a woman who fitted the silents well but just came in a bit too late...it's a strong performance from the always reliable Cartwright. Hoskins and Davies are also good but the best supporting performance is given by the lovely 24 year old Harper.

INSERTS was Jessica Harper's feature film debut (even though it wasn't released until 1976) and her strange and effective turn as the manipulative Cathy Cake marked the arrival of a major American talent. Later that year she would also appear in Brian De Palma's dazzling PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and was of course just a few years away from her legendary turn as Suzy Bannion in Argento's peerless SUSPIRIA. Cathy Cake is a strangely ambiguous character who manages to chip away not only at Wonder Boy's already crumbling spiritual shell but finally her own. Harper is astonishing in this role and she remains one of the the great unheralded treasures that came out of the seventies.

INSERTS was a major critical and financial failure when it came out in 1976, nearly two years after it was completed. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at one of the first executive screenings of the film. I can imagine the shock the film might have caused any remaining older Hollywood studio heads and I am sure that is what caused the major delay in its release.

Critics for the most part savaged the brave INSERTS when it was released and it played in just a few markets before disappearing. It briefly appeared on home video in the eighties before slipping out of print only to be resurrected in a surprising DVD release a couple of years back. The bare bones dvd features a nice widescreen, uncut print and is the best way to see INSERTS at this point. It is a film that screams for a special edition but as neither audiences or critics have ever warmed to the film that will probably not happen.

INSERTS is a cynical little monster of a film and it is pretty hard to shake. As a vision of Hollywood as an almost apocalyptic wasteland of corruption, drug addiction and vacancy it is pretty untouchable. In a film filled with extremely shocking moments, the most shocking for me remains the final scene when the sun suddenly powers through Boy Wonder's window...for a character this far gone into darkness even a sun rise seems impossible to the audience at this point...and, I am willing to bet, even to him.

Far Out Films From The Seventies: Youngblood, 1978

2008-03-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

While mostly remembered today for its scorching soundtrack from legendary WAR, Noel Nosseck’s 1978 feature Youngblood is a film well worth tracking down as a sincere if minor look at the damaging effect of gang warfare in the late 1970’s.
Shot on location in Los Angeles in the early part of 1978, this American International Picture has mostly been under the radar since its brief theatrical release in the summer of 78. Starring young Bryan O’Dell, probably best known for his role as Marvin in What’s Happening!, and Freddie ‘Boom-Boom’ Washington himself, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Youngblood is an extremely well acted if ultimately not totally satisfying production that benefits greatly from the low key shooting style of Nosseck and its vivid on location setting.
Nosseck worked as an editor and writer on a variety of TV productions in the sixties before helming his first feature in 1975 with the exploitation picture, Best Friends. He followed that picture up with the sleazy but fun Stella Stevens film Las Vegas Lady (also 1975) but neither really helped propel his blossoming directorial career too far. Youngblood was a big switch from the exploitative tone of his first two films as it is at heart a very serious picture about a difficult subject.

The screenplay is credited to the playwright Paul Carter Harrison and I haven’t been able to locate too much on his film background. With only one other feature to his credit, 1975’s Lord Shango, he wasn’t exactly prolific in the film world but his script for Youngblood is pretty rich and it feels mostly authentic. The story, focusing on a talented young teenage athlete who joins a local gang, is an ambitious one that tackles not only gang problems but also drug issues, family situations and societal attitudes in general. Harrison’s dialogue is very crisp and if Youngblood finally does fall a little short, it isn’t for lack of conviction. There is a lot of heart in Harrison’s script and Nosseck’s direction.

Youngblood works its best in the scenes involving family as nearly all of the main characters in the film are driven to their destinies by problems at home. Jacobs is especially extraordinary in the scenes with his wife where he desperately attempts to explain his inability to separate from the gang mentality that has haunted him his whole life. It is in these moments where the film is at its most emotional and it is clear John Travolta shouldn’t have been the only Welcome Back Kotter veteran to find stardom and respect.
Young O’Dell is also extremely good in what is a very demanding roll. In the film in nearly every scene, O’Dell portrayal of youth just as it is getting lost is right on the money and like Jacobs it is a shame he didn’t come to more prominence in his career.

Filling out the cast are a variety of faces that fans of seventies cinema will find familiar, including Car Wash’s Len Woods and character actors Art Evans, Earl Billings and the late Lionel Mark Smith. The cast is quite a unit and everyone delivers consistently good work here.
The film was shot by Emmy winner Robbie Greenberg but it is a bit hard for me to comment on the photography as my copy came from a full frame and faded print. The film’s fast pace can be contributed partially to the expert cutting of future Oscar nominated editor Frank Morris who had just come off the extraordinary I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) for Robert Zemeckis.

Nosseck has a good eye for on location storytelling and it is the backstreets and alleys of Los Angeles itself that becomes perhaps the films most resounding character. An expertly handled riot sequence in the middle stands out especially as does the lonely rock mine closing of the film that almost makes it feel like it is taking place on another distant and deserted planet.
The film isn’t perfect by a longshot though. It feels a bit episodic and certain characters and storylines are brought up but are never fully realized, but still Youngblood is a good and well meaning film that deserves a larger audience.
The soundtrack by WAR is the most famous aspect of the production and it is, as previously mentioned, what most people remember. It is a great score, although truth be told, not one of WAR’S essential albums. Still, I promise that once the theme song gets in your head, it won’t leave anytime soon.

Nosseck has worked mostly in TV since with the odd theatrical feature thrown in. Youngblood is probably his most distinguished and fully realized production. The talented Jacobs continues to work steadily to this day but I must admit that it angers me that such a charismatic and good actor has never fully attained the status he deserves. O’Dell surprisingly never went on to do a lot more as he just has a dozen or so minor film and TV work to his credit after his strong performance here.
Youngblood didn’t make much of a splash in 1978 and it has virtually vanished since as it has never had a proper home video release. I would love to see a quality DVD of it in the future as it is a good if not great film well worth the time anyone might be willing to give it.

Far Out Films Of The Seventies: Little Darlings

2008-03-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

Truth be told, growing up on the seventies and eighties I always thought there was something incredibly special about Tatum O’Neal. What kid and teenager back in the day wasn’t overwhelmed by her first in Paper Moon (1973) and then especially in the original and only The Bad News Bears (1976). She was remarkable…a spirited and sad spoiled little rich girl that you just new would be your friend if you could ever be lucky enough to get close to her.
Tatum was 16 when she shot 1980’s Little Darlings, a remarkable little film in which she co-stars with Kristy McNichol, Armand Assante and Matt Dillon. Tatum had hit a dry spell after Nickelodeon (1976), International Velvet (1978) and Circle Of Two (1980) had failed to capture the public’s eye in the same way her earlier acclaimed and award-winning work had. Looking back on it today, Little Darlings is indeed the pivotal film in O’Neal’s career and its failure to find its audience pretty much ended her justified bid at adult stardom.

Little Darlings started out life as a coming of age story by co-screenwriter Kini Peck. Peck, who used some of her own memories of the hardships of being a teenage girl, was paired with TV writer Darlene Love by Paramount pictures in 1978 to flesh out her story into a full blown screenplay. The two would come up with an endearingly real work that would take the rather audacious step of centering a serious film on teenage sexuality with a near all female cast to portray it. Little Darlings, and its storyline centering on a group of teenage girls at camp betting on who can lose their virginity first, could have been a pandering and leering film (one can only shudder what the American Pie generation would have done to it) but instead the two female writers deliver an uncommonly good and sincere film filled with more heart and emotion than most films on teenage life can barely touch.

A big part of the credit to Little Darlings success must go to director Ronald F. Maxwell, a less than prolific filmmaker who is probably best known for Gods and Generals (2003). Maxwell’s subtle and un-showy style suits the coming of age story very well and Little Darlings is never less than expertly handled through his lens for its all too brief running time.
Joining Tatuam and the rather impressive cast I mentioned above is a young Cynthia Nixon, from future Sex and The City fame, as well as Krista Errickson who would find some success in film and television in the eighties and early nineties. Everyone in the rather large ensemble cast made up of girls ranging from ten to sixteen or so are completely believable, and Maxwell is a smart enough of a director to give a nice democracy of framing so the film never feels one-sided or less the sum of its parts.

The males in the film are basically just represented by the camp councilor that O’Neal falls for, played very well by the very handsome Assante and the local street kid that captures McNichol’s heart, the always excellent Matt Dillon seen here at the dawn of what has turned out to be one of the great modern careers. With the exception of a couple of other minor characters that is it for any male figures. Little Darlings is a defiantly female driven picture and as such it feels almost completely foreign to the typical male dominated gaze of the traditional teenage movie.

I must admit that watching the film all of these years later, I was most affected by McNichol’s very moving and heartfelt performance here. She was nominated for an Young Artist Award here and her work really shows someone that should have been given more attention at the time. She is particularly good in her scenes with Dillon where she is able to essay the rather hopelessly awkward feelings of young love perfectly.

The soundtrack of the film is also a key component (and is ironically part of what is keeping it off DVD) and features some expertly placed performances by Blondie, John Lennon and Rickie Lee Jones. The incidental music in the film is expertly handled by Academy Award nominee Charles Fox, who was coming off one of his most exceptional scores with 1978’s Foul Play.
The film falters a bit in some moments that venture over into a more ‘cutesy’ side, mostly involving the youngest girls in the camp. It is also way too short, as it ends in a rather cookie cutter manor just past the ninety minute mark, as if the studio suddenly lost their guts in looking to deliver an authentic and honest portrayal of young female sexuality and friendship.

Still, the film has a lot more going for it rather than against and it is a real shame that it didn’t perform better when it was released in 1980 to mixed reviews and a just okay performance at the box office. Rated R, mostly for language and some suggestive content, the film was butchered for television release later and many of the best songs were removed from the home video version. The film has, to my knowledge, never appeared on DVD anywhere.
Paramount never really knew what to do with the film and the poster and promotional material suggest an exploitation comedy along the lines of Porkys much more than the sensitive and serious film it actually is. Roger Ebert didn’t much care for the film but he did point out rather intelligently that Little Darlings, “earns the right to its subject matter - even though the movie's advertisements….unashamedly exploit the subject matter.” I agree and it is very unfortunate.

So what of Tatum O’Neal, the troubling figure who brought me to the film in the first place. She is quite amazing in it actually. While not on par with her work in Paper Moon and The Bad News Bears, her work in Little Darlings shows the young woman who should have become one of the key figures in modern cinema but unfortunately her own personal demons and many around her stopped that from happening. Still, I must admit, even after twenty five years of disappointing career choices, tabloid headlines, reality TV and a tragic tell-all book, I still find Tatum O’Neal as special as the first time I saw her nearly three decades ago. Little Darlings is a neat little capper to a remarkable trilogy of films that saw her capturing the imagination and hearts of a lot of young people in this country…myself included. Time or any other mistakes, on hers or our part, can’t take that away.

Far Out Films Of The Seventies: T.R. Baskin

2008-03-02T14:22:00.001-08:00

This article originally appeared here at Moon In The Gutter.

While she finally received justified acclaim as an actress and comedian, Candice Bergen's early film work was often savaged by critics and several of her films remain virtually unseen by modern audiences. One of the most overlooked is T.R. BASKIN.
I first saw Herbert Ross' 1971 feature T.R. BASKIN in my mid teens the way I saw lots of films, on late night commercial television. Arts and Entertainment used to run this Ross flick quite a bit in the late eighties and it was a film that came to mean a lot to me in that period. Ross has just come off the strange but effective OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT when he directed Bergen in BASKIN, the first script ever ever filmed of Peter Hyams. Hyams would later go onto to be a director himself and T.R. BASKIN does feel like a film made by two budding, and quite different, filmmakers.

T.R. BASKIN is a typical item from the early seventies centering on a young character attempting to find herself. Bergen, really lovely in this period, plays the just arrived in the big city Baskin who falls into the hazardous company of both James Caan and Peter Boyle. The film's Chicago locations is one of its biggest assets and for lovers of Chicago it is quite a treat. Going along with the many great location shots is a fabulous score by Jack Elliott. The film's soundtrack album is a great one to track down and if the film is at times falls a bit short, the marvelous lp companion doesn't.
It is great to see Caan and Boyle together here and their scenes provide many of the films best moments. Caan had been around since the early sixties but 1971 was a big year for him, with his performance in BRIAN'S SONG and getting cast as a guy named Sonny in a little seen film called THE GODFATHER.
The always magnificent Boyle had just achieved notoriety in the effective and disturbing JOE and was well on his way to becoming one of the great character actors of the seventies and eighties. While his role in BASKIN starts out a bit slimy, he later shares some of the tenderest scenes of his career with Bergen.

T.R. BASKIN was one of those films for years that had just remained in my memory, as my VHS copy from tv was accidentally erased in the early nineties. I caught up with it again late last year via Amazon's sometimes suspect downloading program. It remains the only time I have ever watched a film on my computer, and not something I am looking forward to doing again, but at this point it is the only way to see the mostly forgotten T.R. BASKIN.
Watching the film in my mid thirties was a very different experience than seeing it in my teens. Honestly, it didn't seem as meaningful to me...much of it felt too staged and contrived but there is still something about it that really affects me. I think most of that is due to Candice Bergen's performance.
Pauline Kael was particularly cruel to Bergen in her early career and I remember her review of T.R. BASKIN being particularly savage. Roger Ebert however, while not liking the film, saw something as well in Bergen's seemingly emotionless and at times uncomfortable performance. It is perhaps the kind of performance that a more experienced director would have re-shot but I find Bergen's off kilter and at times awkward line readings to be perfect for the confused and isolated Baskin.
Candice Bergen is fascinating in T.R. BASKIN and she exudes the same kind of intelligence in this role that had proved so effective in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE. I think hr performance here is one of her key works as it seemed to foreshadow all the great work that was to come from her in the future.

Perhaps T.R. BASKIN should have remained in my memories as re-watching it took away much its power for me, which isn't to say that I don't recommend it. It's well worth viewing if it ever does find its way to dvd. It is a flawed little film made by a group of really well meaning young artists which gives it a sincerity that is often missing from mainstream American cinema.

Far Out Films From The Seventies: Disco Godfather

2008-02-25T06:22:00.001-08:00

This Article Originally Appeared Here At Moon In The Gutter.

There are very few things in this world that give me more pleasure than the opening ten minutes of 1980's DISCO GODFATHER. I must admit to being a huge Rudy Ray Moore fan and my DOLEMITE box set is never too far away from my dvd player. I have noticed though, while I have watched all of the films multiple times, I often just return to particular sequences. From the, 'dance cracker dance' madness of the first film to the 'slow motion jump' in THE HUMAN TORNADO to the shot of Rudy Ray Moore dancing down the street with the Devil's cane in PETEY WHEATSTRAW, these films continually give me more sheer delight than most 'great' films coould ever hope to.
As awesome as any of those scenes are though none come even close to matching the joy that the opening shots of DISCO GODFATHER give me. A certain J. Robert Wagoner is credited as the director of DISCO GODFATHER but I have always suspected that Rudy Ray Moore himself probably had more to do with the production of the film than anyone else. A glance over at the IMDB listing for Wagoner shows DISCO GODFATHER as the only film he was ever attached to.
So onto the opening shot...As the great DISCO GODFATHER theme comes up and the opening credits literally burst out of the screen at us, we are treated to our first shots of the Blueberry Hill nightclub. People are dancing and having the kind of grand time that only 1979 could bring, strobe lights are flashing, drinks are being poured, cigarettes are being smoked and that great theme keeps pounding. People soon clear the dance floor though as the DJ announces the arrival of the one and only...you guessed it, The Disco Godfather!!! Just before we see the great man our propulsive theme takes on some vocals and the line "He's the Godfather of the disco" begins repeating like some sort of life altering mantra and then there he is in all of his blue sequined jump suited glory. Everything I love about Rudy Ray Moore comes out in this moment...with a huge smile on his face, shaking hips, those great head swivels and the kind of outfit that only Dolemite himself could get away with. The crowd applauds him and Rudy gets down on the dance floor. Of course Rudy Ray Moore's dance moves are a bit like his karate chops, one gets the impression that this guy is to cool to expel too much energy and slowness is one of his greatest weapons. Soon Rudy is at the head of the room commanding everybody to, "Put your weight on it" and the crowd goes crazy and the dancing begins again. These opening shots of Rudy have gotten me through many rough times and they remain a sure fire cure for even the toughest depressions.

DISCO GODFATHER is certainly very different from the three Dolemite films that proceeded it. The first three were all hard R's, actually if memory serves I believe the first DOLEMITE was actually an X, filled with as much violence, language and nudity that they could squeeze into them. DISCO GODFATHER is PG and I think that a lot of fans have ignored the film due to this, they view it a bit as Rudy going soft and I suppose in a way that is true...but for all of its camp value, cheap production and sheer cheesiness there is something extremely sincere about DISCO GODFATHER.
The plot of DISCO GODFATHER centers on nightclub owner, and former cop, Tucker Williams and his battle to get PCP off the streets and out of the hands of his cities kids. Played by Rudy, Tucker is a hard hitting, take no prisoner, dancing and crime stopping machine. Joining him is the lovely and always great to see Carol Speed, seen here in one of her last film roles. Returning from the first three Dolemite adventures are Jimmy Lynch, Jerry Jones and of course the unstoppable Lady Reed.
Tucker Williams thinks all is fine in the world until his hot shot basketball playing nephew has a total meltdown in his nightclub one evening and ends up in a mental hospital. As the ambulance is carrying his nephew away, Tucker delivers the legendary, "Doctor, what has he had?" line and it is explained that the dreaded angel dust has infested the town. "Haven't you heard Godfather, our kids are dying." is the the thought that really fires Tucker up and soon he is paying a visit to his old buddies at the police station to let them know he is going to single handily take care of the situation.

As I said there is something really sincere in Rudy Ray's performance in this film. No one would ever call the great Dolemite one of the world's best actors but throughout DISCO GODFATHER one really gets the feeling that this guy really means every word he is saying.
I won't give away any more of the film as I really just wanted to celebrate the opening sequence but it's a fun film and fans of seventies trash cinema and the blaxploitation genre should absolutely give it a look. I miss the kind of kinetic, devil many care attitude these films had. One rarely gets the excited feeling of , "Look, I can make my own movie and have a great time doing it" anymore but all of the DOLEMITE films, including the often overlooked DISCO GODFATHER, possess that.