Tag Archives: Karen Black

Martin’s Day (1985)

Posted on April 10, 2024 | 1 comment

martinsday

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Escaped convict kidnaps boy.

Martin Steckert (Richard Harris) breaks out of jail and disguises himself as a policeman while also absconding with a squad car. Soon some other cops notice the stolen car, which has a broken rear window, and begin to inspect it while Martin is buying groceries. When Martin returns he sees the cops inside the car, but notices their vehicle, which has caught the attention of some neighborhood boys, is sitting idle. He decides to use that car to getaway, but just as he tries to get inside it the other cops take out their guns and point them at him. In a desperate move Martin grabs one of the kids and threatens to kill him, which forces the officers to put down their weapons and let him get away. During the subsequent road trip the two get to know each other and he learns that the kid’s name is also Martin (Justin Henry). A unique bond is created, but the Canadian police force, lead by Lt. Lardner (James Coburn), is hot-on-their-trail.

Richard Harris is fantastic as usual, but the majority of the film is too intent on being a family-friendly movie that it ends up having no edge. The Canadian landscape, shot in September of 1983 in the province of Ontario, is nice and gives one a good feel of rural Canada, but everything else comes-off as trite and predictable though the eclectic supporting cast allows for some added interest.

I especially got a kick out of Lindsay Wagner playing the prison psychiatrist, who tries to replicate the Canadian accent by adding an ‘eh’ at the end of her sentences. I was surprised though that James Coburn, who was still considered a quality leading man at the time, was relegated to such a small role and only seen sporadically. Karen Black does a fine job as Harris’ former lover, but she’s in it for only about 5-minutes and they should’ve had her go along on the trip with the other two, which would’ve added some much needed energy and even a little spice.

The story itself is weak mainly because it telegraphs everything out and there’s absolutely no surprises. It’s clear right from the start, that Harris, while in jail, is a nice guy with a few anger issues, but then when he kidnaps the kid we know upfront that he isn’t going to hurt him. A more intriguing way to have done it, which would’ve allowed for some genuine tension, was to have shown him getting into angry confrontations with his cellmate and possibly even his therapist, so when the kid and him are alone you start to worry how he’ll behave and then during the course of the movie he could learn to be more calm and sympathetic. Even having him threatening the kid versus telling him upfront he’s not going to hurt him, would’ve upped the dramatic ante and allowed for a wider character arch.

I also couldn’t understand why the kid wouldn’t want to go back to his parents and start missing his home life at some point. The movie portrays his mom and dad, whom we never see, as being ‘strict’, but the rules that they had for him, like not eating candy on weekdays and only on weekends, didn’t seem all that outrageous. Had the film shown some scenes at the beginning where his folks were abusive towards him then his ‘escape’ with Harris might’ve made more sense, but as it gets done here the concept becomes highly strained.

Also, for a film aimed at a younger audience the segment where Harris intentionally sets himself on fire while inside his cell was quite graphic and could disturb a lot of children viewers. The scene where Harris backs the squad car that he’s just stolen into the front wall of the policeman’s house gets botched when I noticed that the backend of the vehicle remains completely intact and with no signs of damage, which just painfully illustrates that a breakaway wall was used and not a real one. Another logistical lapse comes when Harris and the kid park their pick-up on the train tracks, which forces the locomotive to stop and allows them to holed-up the train while the kid gets trained by the engineer on how to work it. Then in the next shot we see the train starting down the tracks with the kid now at the helm, but with the pick-up on the side of the tracks and no longer on them, but  it’s never shown how did the pick-up got moved.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 22, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Alan Gibson

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: DVD (Region 2), Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Road Movies

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The Last Word (1979)

Posted on August 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

lastword1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: He won’t move out.

Danny (Richard Harris) is a stubborn and eccentric man who refuses to move out of an apartment building that has been marked for demolition. After his attempts to get a lawyer and also collect welfare prove futile he decides to kidnap the Marshal (Jorge Cervera) who comes to his apartment to serve him his eviction notice. He chains the Marshal to a pipe in his bathroom and then barricades himself and his three children inside. A TV news reporter (Karen Black) feels this will be a juicy story and gets permission to go up to Danny’s place in order to interview him live on the air while the police captain (Martin Landau), who was at one time an old friend to Danny, plots on a way to get him out even if it means deadly force.

This stale drama borrows on a lot elements that have been done before and fails to add anything interesting to the mix. The chief flaw is that there isn’t any explanation for why Danny won’t move out when everyone else in the building does. The apartment itself is quite cramped and nothing special and chances are he could’ve found something bigger, or just as adequate. Without proper motivation the protagonist’s quandry becomes rather irrelevant and even selfish as his stubbornness puts the rest of his family through a lot of needless stress and trauma and having the character be someone who is old and on a fixed income with nowhere else to turn, as much of a caricature as this is, would’ve at least gotten more emotional appeal from the viewer, which with the way it gets done here you really don’t get.

Harris execellent acting helps, but all his inventions start to become a bit cheesy especially his ‘gas masks’ which is nothing more than paper folded around the face with a Campbell’s soup can taped to the bottom, which apparently should be ‘sufficient’ to breath through if under attack, but look laughable and most likely the gas vapors would seep through the paper and thus making them a poor defense. Black, who would co-star with Harris 6 years later in Martin’s Day, plays a serious career driven woman, which is a nice variation from her usual flaky, ditzy types, but her character is unlikable, who initially tries to exploit Danny’s situation for her own gain and having her ‘come around’ at the end to be on his side isn’t enough to make up for it and she should’ve been portrayed as being more emphatic from the beginning.

His three children, played by Penelope Milford, Dennis Christopher, and Natasha Ryan all display the same type of personality and thus become indistinguishable and boring. They all seem to love their father quite a bit and are very loyal and yet refer to him as Danny instead of Dad, which is a bit weird. Landau displays a nice acerbic quality, and the first film where his hair begins to show a few spots of gray, but his character should’ve been the one to go up to the apartment and break into it, especially since he and Danny had a history together, versus having him remain on the ground while his men did the task, which loses out on what could’ve had more dramatic impact.

Spoiler Alert!

The first act is a strain to sit through and is approached in a way that would’ve made it better served as a TV-movie. The second act gets a little more tense when he barricades himself into the apartment and the way he uses all of his different inventions to stop the cops from getting inside is marginally entertaining, but the film leaves way too many things open ended. He eventually gets cuffed and arrested, but no closure as to what happens to him after that. Does he go to trial and win his case? Does he and his family get a new place, or does the building get saved and what happens to the Governor (Biff McGuire) who was exposed as being corrupt? None of this gets answered, which makes the ending like the rest of the film quite unsatisfying.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ray Boulting

Studio: Variety International

Available: None

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Obscure Movies

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Cisco Pike (1971)

Posted on November 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Blackmailed into dealing drugs.

Cisco Pike (Kris Kristofferson) is a down-on-his-luck singer who once was playing to sell-out crowds, but finds his popularity declining and resorting to selling drugs to maintain a living, but under pressure from his girlfriend Sue (Karen Black) has stopped. Leo Holland (Gene Hackman) is a police detective looking to retire and needing enough money to do so. He steals a sizeable quantity of high-grade marijuana from a gang leader and then tells Cisco he must sell it within 59 hours while giving Leo $10,000 of the profits and Cisco can keep anything that he makes beyond that. At first Cisco resists knowing it will interfere with his relationship with Sue, but eventually gives in when Leo threatens to kill him unless he complies.

While this film has achieved a cult status in recent years critics at the time of its release were not kind. Many felt it promoted drug use just as the nation was starting its war on drugs, which caused the film to get a limited release and eventually bombed at the box office. Personally I found it to be a riveting look at the drug dealing culture and a fabulous directorial/screenwriting debut for Bill L. Norton the son of William W. Norton who was also a successful screenwriter.

What I liked most was the cinema vertite style that made it seem almost like a documentary. I enjoyed the camera following Cisco around in a non-stagy way and revealing the variety of people that he sold to with not all of them being hippies either, but also middle-aged suburbanites and even business executives. The film nicely shows how some of the encounters would be non-eventful while others could ended up being a trap and eventual police chase. The unpredictable quality of the transactions replicated the anxiety the dealers would face and how hyper observant they needed to be to the immediate environment around them.

Many films try to recreate things that the filmmakers themselves haven’t gone through, but here I got the feeling that the director and much of the cast had experienced the same situations as the characters which in-turn makes the viewer feel, when it’s over, that they’ve lived it too. The dialogue is excellent as well with a conversational style that doesn’t overexplain things and allows the viewer to read in a bit to what the characters are saying.

Kristofferson, who had been a singer up to that point, makes an outstanding acting debut and all the more impressive when you realize that he had no acting training before he was given the part. Many of his friends advised him not to take the role fearing his lack of experience would hurt the movie and cause him not to be given any more roles, but after reading the script he felt he could relate to the character by simply being honest with his emotions, which he does splendidly and it’s nice too seeing him in a rare appearance without any beard or mustache.

Hackman is excellent as well playing a character that was not in the original treatment, but added in later by Robert Towne when he wrote the revision. It’s unusual seeing him in such a relatively small part with large chunks of time, especially during the second act, where he’s not seen at all, but when he is onscreen he’s effective. It was fortunate that this was filmed just before he won the Academy Award for The French Connection as that turned him into leading man material and it’s unlikely that he would’ve accepted this part had it been produced any later.

Black is interesting, she usually always is, despite, like with Hackman, not having all that much screen time, but she makes the most of what she has particularly her physical reactions to Hackman when he invites himself into her apartment late at night and begins rambling on about his heart condition. Honorable mention too needs to go to Joy Bang, an attractive supporting actress during the early 70’s who later retired from show business to get into nursing. Her toothy smile always looks sexy, at least to me, and I loved when she gives her female companion, played by Viva, an open-mouth kiss while riding in a car and then turns around and gives Kristofferson, who is sitting on her other side, the same treatment.

Harry Dean Stanton, as an aging musician, doesn’t appear until near the end, but has some of the movie’s most profound moments particularly his exchange with Kristofferson were he laments about no longer being sexy enough for the stage while Kristofferson reminds him that it’s not his body that the music business wants, but his soul instead.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: November 2, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bill L. Norton

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Drama, Movies with Nudity

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It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)

Posted on October 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer babies shipped away.

Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty) is the father to one of the mutant babies who agrees to have his child shipped away under a court order to a deserted island where it can live freely among the other mutant babies while no longer being a threat to the rest of society. 5 years later Stephen is then asked to join in on an expedition by a group of doctors who want to go to the island to monitor the growth of the children, but when they arrive the children overpower them and force Stephen to return to the mainland in order to meet-up with Stephen’s wife Ellen (Karen Black) who gave birth to one of them years earlier.

Larry Cohen has stated that he wanted to take the theme to its logical conclusion and see what the babies would become like when they grew older, but it was the killer baby plot-line that is what made it so unique and by his point it no longer represents what it initially did. Now they look like overweight versions of the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the setting like a whacked-out revision of The Island of Dr. Moreau and instead of being a horror film it’s more like a sci-fi flick and not a particularly good one at that.

It’s only mildly interesting when it’s on island anyways, but surprisingly the story doesn’t remain there and the  ill-advised humor that gets thrown in does nothing but make this already silly idea seem even sillier. We do however get to see more of the babies than in the first two installments, but this doesn’t help because they end up resembling second-rate clay animation figures, which looks tacky as hell.

Moriarty elevates it with a much needed edge and the fact that he’s staunchly pro-life in real-life gives the part an added layer of genuineness.  The only problem is that the character has the same arch as the father’s in the first two films had, which makes it redundant.

Black isn’t in it much, but manages to come on strong at the finish. I was perplexed however as to why in all three films it was the father who went on a crusading mission to save the babies and never the mother. Why couldn’t the wives/mothers have worked with their husbands as a team on this endeavor and the fact that they don’t seems sexist.

Per Leonard Maltin’s review there’s some ‘serious comments’ here on many modern-day social issues, but when it’s as cheaply made as this you really don’t care. There’s also too many tangents including a poorly staged street gang fight that is unconvincing. The first film was a novelty with a few redeeming qualities, but the  sequels do nothing but drive that original idea into the ground and turn the entire concept into a laughable, forgettable grade-Z farce.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 15, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Offbeat, Sequels

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Out of the Dark (1989)

Posted on October 19, 2018 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Stalking phone sex operators.

Women working at a phone sex hotline known as Sweet Nothings suddenly find themselves menaced by a strange killer wearing a clown mask. One-by-one they start turning up dead and suspicions fall on a regular caller named Bobo, but the police have a hard time tracking him down, so the remaining women take matters into their own hands.

The film starts out with potential particularly the recreation of the call center that was completely on-target and had the film remained exclusively in this setting it could’ve been engaging. I wished though that the operators hadn’t all been single as it would’ve been interesting seeing a married woman working there and how her husband adjusted to it. I also wanted to see some character arcs especially from Camille (Star Andreef) who plays a ‘newbie’ starting out in the business. It would’ve been fun having her reserved and shy at the start and then eventually gotten into it after a few days as opposed to her diving into the unique job demands without hesitation right from the start.

Karen Black as the manager of the place is good and I liked how the film analyzes her different life roles from being a single parent raising a daughter to an amusing moment where she jumps on the phone to help out another operator by playing the part of a ‘three-way’ during a sexual fantasy. Unfortunately her presence is sporadic and the film fails to have any consistent protagonist only to eventually settle on two who are so incredibly dull and generic that is just makes things worse.

Tracy Walters is boring as the detective in a tired caricature of a gruff/crude policeman that doesn’t work at all. Divine plays his male rival, but is only seen briefly during the film’s final 30 minutes when he should’ve been given the lead and if he had the movie might’ve been an interesting curio worth catching, which at this point it’s not.

The killer like everyone else in this failed experiment of a movie has no pizazz despite his creepy mask and the comical comments that he makes after he kills each of his victims are annoying. I realize a lot of slasher flicks were having their killers do this at the time, which was all the more reason why this film should’ve avoided it. Finding out his true identity is a big letdown too and there’s never any explanation as to how he’s able to be at two different places at once particularly during the scene where he is shown talking on a pay phone to one of the sex operators and then almost simultaneously appears at her home where he then strangles are.

Initially it seemed, especially with its eclectic cast, that this was going to be a horror parody and that’s how it starts out, but after the first 10 minutes it careens downhill and never recovers. Instead of being a step above the usual horror flick it actually ends up being even worse and don’t let the cast of cult stars fool you either as this is not worth catching for any reason.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: May 5, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Schroeder

Studio: Cinetel Films

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Mystery

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Born to Win (1971)

Posted on August 27, 2018 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Junkie needs his fix.

J.J. (George Segal) is a former hairdresser now residing on the streets due to his heroin addiction. To help pay for his expensive habits he agrees to transport drugs for Vivian ( Hector Elizondo) which gets him into deeper trouble with the criminal underworld. Eventually two cops (Ed Madsen, Robert De Niro) catch up with him and agree to strike a deal, which will allow him to avoid jail time if he agrees to turn Vivian and his cohorts in. J.J. though is more concerned with getting his next fix and nothing else matters not even the hot young chick Parm (Karen Black) who he has just moved in with.

There were many 70’s films, some might say too many, dealing with the drug addiction theme. Some were quite compelling while most of the others were highly clichéd. This one though takes a slightly different angle by injecting comedy into the proceedings and surprisingly it works. J.J.’s conversation with an older woman cashier (Sylvia Syms) about enemas, which he does in order to distract her from seeing his buddies stealing the company’s safe, is quite amusing. The best part though is when J.J. is stripped naked and forced to wear nothing but a woman’s bathrobe and then when he’s held prisoner in an apartment bedroom he flashes a young woman from across the street in order to get her attention to call the cops, but instead she proceeds to just flash him back, which is a laugh-out-loud moment especially when the viewer later gets to see Segal running down the city’s streets in the pink bathrobe with startled pedestrians looking on.

The film though fails when it tries to get serious. The dramatic moment where J.J.’s friend Billy (Jay Fletcher) takes some corrupted heroin and it kills him gets botched. Maybe it’s just me as I’ve seen many movies, but I could tell where this scene was headed right from the start and the intended ‘shock’ and ‘surprise’ of it instead becomes boring and overly played-out.

Karen Black’s presence helps. Her character is quite goofy to the point that she gets turned-on by J.J. when she catches him trying to steal her car and even invites him back to her place afterwards. Normally this behavior would be considered too wacky to be believable, but Black’s ability to channel her inner freak gives the whole thing an authentic feel and her later conversations dealing with how many men she has slept with is a gem as well.

Segal’s performance is solid, but we never effectively get inside his character’s head. The film would’ve been far stronger had we seen what his life was like before he became an addict and the jarring contrast in his lifestyles could’ve made for a powerful statement, which unfortunately is lacking. We also never get to see him actually putting the needle into his arm. We see at one point the needle marks in his skin, but seeing him taking the drug would’ve hit the message home visually.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is frustrating as he is given a bag of heroin that he knows may be tainted and ultimately will kill him if he takes it and yet it is left wide open as to whether he tries it or not. The idea that someone would be so strung out to get a high that they would knowingly take something that they knew could instantly kill them is an intriguing quandary that needed to be answered and the fact that it doesn’t is why this film despite a few good moments ultimately misses-the-mark.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ivan Passer

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

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The Day of the Locust (1975)

Posted on July 23, 2018 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Desperate people in Hollywood.

During the depression a young artist named Tod Hackett (William Atherton) comes to Hollywood to help design the set for a new movie. While there he meets a wide assortment of people, who seek fame and fortune, but find heartbreak and rejection instead. Tod falls for Faye (Karen Black) a woman striving to become the next big Hollywood starlet despite lacking any talent while her father Harry (Burgess Meredith) is on the opposite end of the spectrum. At one time he was a vaudeville comedian, but now with his failing health is relegated to selling health tonics door-to-door.

This film is the last great effort of director John Schlesinger whose films after this lacked the same visual style that made Midnight Cowboy and Far From the Madding Crowd cinematic masterpieces. From a visual standpoint it hits all the right chords and is filled with many memorable segments. The best ones include the scene where a group of bourgeoisie guests who come to Natalie Schafer’s home (she was best known for playing Mrs. Howell on ‘Gilligan’s Island’) to watch porn movies There’s also the scene where an entire film set comes crashing down and injuring the entire crew as well as the climactic moment where a large crowd waiting outside to see the premiere of The Buccaneer turn into a violent, bloodthirsty mob.

The acting is first-rate particularly Black who portrays her desperate character to a perfect tee. Meredith, who was nominated for a supporting Oscar, gives a vivid portrayal of her equally desperate father making his scenes quite entertaining. Donald Sutherland is also solid as a likable, but socially awkward outsider, which best suits his acting persona.

The script though by Waldo Salt, which is based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Nathanael West, misses out on a lot of the book’s subtext. In the movie Tod tries to rape Faye while at a party, but this eruption of his seems to come out of nowhere while in the book it gets better explained by showing how Tod continually harbors rape fantasies for Faye and makes these fantasies a running part of the story.

Donald Sutherland’s character, the aptly named Homer Simpson, which supposedly was the inspiration for Matt Groenig’s character in his famous comic strip, is a confusing enigma. In the book he is given a better backstory and revealed to be a man struggling with a lot of inner turmoil while here he’s seems more like a strange, naïve mope from another planet.

There’s also no explanation in the movie for why the word Locust is in the title, which is in reference to the Bible and the plague of locusts that descended onto the fields of Egypt. Tod symbolizes the locust in the novel’s version of the story while in the movie his character is more of an outsider observing the ugliness, but not having a hand at creating it

The biggest issue though is the film’s underperformance at the box office, which helped relegate both Black and Atherton, who at the time were considered up-and-coming stars, to supporting roles afterwards. I believe part of the reason for this is because none of the characters are likable. It’s fine showing humanity’s bad side as long as the audience doesn’t feel beaten-over-the-head with it, but the film wallows so much in the darkness that it overwhelms the viewer. Having a character that was slightly removed from the madness and not as flawed might’ve helped to balance things and make everything else that goes on more tolerable.

Overall though it’s a great film, but the statement it’s trying to make remains murky. Better efforts should’ve been made to tie it to the disillusionment of the American Dream, which is what the book does and not seemed so much like just a glimpse into a freak show of a bygone era like it ends up doing here.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 7, 1975

Runtime: 2Hours 24Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Schlesinger

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Airport 1975 (1974)

Posted on March 24, 2018 | 6 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Stewardess pilots the plane.

A businesses man (Dana Andrews) suffers a fatal heart attack while piloting his private plane causing his aircraft to fly directly into the cockpit of a Boeing 747, which kills the co-pilot (Roy Thinnes), the navigator (Erik Estrada) and seriously injures the pilot (Efrem Zimbalist Jr).  This forces the plane’s head stewardess (Karen Black) to take control of the plane even though she has no experience. Those at the control tower try to direct her via a headset on what to do, which helps steady the jet while they devise a way to get a professional pilot onto the craft in order to land it.

Compared to Airport this is a real letdown. In the first film the individual passengers came off like real people all suffering from their own personal dilemmas, but here they’re more like cardboard caricatures that barely have any speaking lines and there only to show panicked expressions and not much else.

The dialogue and ‘drama’ quickly becomes inadvertently campy. Linda Blair plays a Pollyanna-like girl suffering from an undisclosed illness who befriends a nun (Helen Reddy) who breaks out into an impromptu song on a guitar that would have most passengers complaining of noise pollution. Playing herself is aging silent film actress Gloria Swanson who dictates her autobiography into a tape recorder as she is on the plane, which seems dumb because it allows the other passengers to overhear it although at least for their benefit it will allow them to avoid having to buy the book once it’s published since they will know all about the juicy details already. The only entertaining passenger is Myrna Loy as a tipsy old lady who enjoys drinking boilermakers.

The plane’s excessively wide interior and its large seats make it seem more like the inside of a luxury train. The plane even has a winding stairwell at the center of it for people to walk up. I’ve flown on many jets in my life and have never seen one with an upstairs/downstairs. If you’ve been on a plane that has had one then please let me know. (Note since this review was written one of the followers to this blog, Rob, has supplied us with pics of an actual 747 from that era and proves that indeed these things described above did exist at one time in a plane, so please be sure to check-out his links to pics in the comments section.)

The special effects get badly botched. The sequence involving the small engine plane crashing into the jet looks fake as the plane gets shown through the cockpit window and is quite obviously matted in on a bluescreen. You can clearly tell too that an inflatable dummy was used as the co-pilot when he gets sucked out through the hole that is formed from the crash. The scene where the replacement pilot (Ed Nelson), who tries to board the plane to help land it, is killed when his release cord becomes caught in the jagged metal, comes-off as unintentionally  funny instead of horrific.

The outdoor aerial footage shot over the Wasatch Mountains is the film’s one redeeming element. I also enjoyed Karen Black in what is likely her definitive role. She has played so many kooky, offbeat characters that it’s interesting seeing her portray a normal one. I just wished that she would’ve piloted the plane the whole way through and even landed it. Having Charlton Heston, as a professional pilot, literally ‘drop-in’ and takeover is far less compelling. It also seems quite sexist by intimating that women aren’t capable of taking on challenges to their completion and at some point a man must step-in even when the women seem to be handling the situation quite well without them.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 18, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 47Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jack Smight

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Disaster Flicks, Sequels

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The Pyx (1973)

Posted on October 29, 2017 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Religious cult wants prostitute.

A woman is seen falling from a high-rise tenant building to her death and Police Sergeant Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer) is assigned to the case. When he inspects the body he finds that in her right hand she is holding a crucifix and in her left one is a small metal container known as a pyx. The victim is later identified as being Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black) a heroin addict who works as a prostitute. The film then cuts back and forth between showing Elizabeth when she was still alive and the circumstances that lead to her death as well as Jim’s dogged search to find her killer, which may be connected to an underground religious cult.

The film, which is based on the novel of the same title by John Buell and shot entirely on-location in Montreal, has a nice eerie atmosphere.  The cutting back and forth between the two linear stories is interesting and this is the type of mystery that is complex, but not too much. There are just enough clues given to keep it intriguing without so much thrown in that it becomes convoluted. The slow pacing is okay because it keeps things on a realistic level and everything remains plausible and gritty.

Unfortunately the story has no payoff. The slow reveal of the religious cult offers nothing new or exciting and seems to be borrowing elements from other horror flicks that have dealt with the same theme. Except for a few brief moments the film is devoid of any action and the shootout on a yacht is edited in such a quick way that it’s hard to follow what happened. The overuse of nighttime shots gives the film a grainy appearance that looks more like it was a victim of a low budget and poor lighting.

The two leads give good performances and Plummer looks almost unrecognizable with a bowl haircut and appearing almost 20 years younger than he already was. The music was composed by Harry Freedman and star Black does the vocals, which is distinctive and gets the viewer into a spiritual mood, but there aren’t any frights and it’s hard to put this thing into any type of category as it’s really not a horror film at all.

Even as a standard mystery it’s only average and just enough to hold your interest. Ultimately it goes down a familiar path that we’ve seen too many times before and is devoid of any true shock or surprises.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 13, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Harvey Hart

Studio: Cinerama Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Police Drama, Spiritual Movies

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Family Plot (1976)

Posted on September 28, 2017 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Alfred Hitchcock’s last movie.

Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is a phony psychic whose client, the rich heiress Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) offers her a reward of $10,000 if she can use her ‘psychic abilities’ to find Julia’s long-lost nephew who was given up for adoption years earlier. Blanche employs her boyfriend George (Bruce Dern) who works as a cabbie in-between acting gigs, to find the man. George ends up stumbling upon someone who he thinks may be him, Arthur Adamnson (William Devane), but ends up getting in-over-his-head when Arthur proves to have ulterior motives.

The film’s claim-to-fame is that it was the last one directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which is probably the only good thing to say about it. Technically it’s not bad, but it’s not terribly interesting either. Everything that gets done here has been done before in other films with more interesting results. This includes a sequence where Blanche and George’s car goes careening down a mountain highway with no breaks, which isn’t exciting at all and looks clearly shot in front of a green screen.

After completing the far edgier Frenzy I was expecting Hitch to try and push the envelope even more, but instead he draws back with a pedestrian story that’s full-of-holes.  It was based on the novel ‘The Rainbird Pattern’ written by Victor Canning, which had a darker tone. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman wanted to capture that same tone here, but Hitch pushed him instead for a lighter quality that borders on camp, but ultimately comes off as gimmicky. The ending is particularly limp and for someone once dubbed the ‘Master of Suspense’ there is very little of it here.

The only moment that stuck out for me is where Blanche and George sit down to eat hamburgers. Normally actors in films rarely eat the food that they’re served and will usually either take small nibbles, or simply leave it on the plate without taking a single bite, but here both Dern and Harris take big bites from their burgers while continuing to talk. At one point a piece of burger spits out of Dern’s mouth as he speaks and he instinctually holds up his hand in front of his mouth in an embarrassment, which was strangely left in. Most directors would’ve quickly stopped the scene and reshot it, but instead Hitch decided to let it continue, which adds an odd realism probably not seen anywhere else.

The casting is the only real bright spot especially Devane, who normally played good guys, but takes a turn as a villain here and does quite well. In fact it’s the best performance of his career. Unfortunately the two women (Harris and Karen Black who plays Devane’s girlfriend) are wasted and for the most part have very little to do. Black’s role could’ve been cut out completely in a film that especially when compared to the director’s earlier works is a huge disappointment.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 9, 1976

Runtime: 2 Hours 1 Minute

Rated PG

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels

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