Tag Archives: Robert Vaughn

S.O.B. (1981)

Posted on March 8, 2017 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: His wife goes topless.

Movie producer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) is suffering from what they call in Hollywood as Standard Operating Bullshit. His recent film, a family oriented musical that starred his wife Sally (Julie Andrews) and was titled ‘Night Wind’ is a box office flop. Now no one wants to work with him and the studio tries to reedit the film in an attempt to ‘save it’. All of which sends Felix on verge of suicide until he gets the idea of turning the movie into a soft core porn flick and having  Sally bare her breasts in it.

The film is loosely based on experiences that writer/director Blake Edwards had along with his real-life wife actress Julie Andrews during the early ‘70s when their project Darling Lilli did not do well financially and his next several films after that met with lots of studio interference before he was finally able to rebound by resurrecting the Pink Panther franchise.

The satirical jabs are obvious but amusing and the real problems come more with the shallow/jaded characters. Even the wholesome Sally comes off as cold with her rather ambivalent reaction to her husband’s depression/suicide attempt. There is also a running gag dealing with a man (Herb Tanney) who has heart attack at the beach while jogging and his loyal dog stays by his side even though no one else pays attention to it, which starts out as darkly amusing, but eventually gets cruelly overplayed.

Mulligan makes a flat impression as the star to the point of being almost transparent. For the first half he doesn’t say a single word while behaving in an overly exaggerated despondent way. When he finally snaps out of this he then eagerly tries to sell-out on his own film vision simply so it can make a buck, which makes him no better than the rest of the scummy Hollywood elites that he is supposedly trying to fight. Andrews is boring too and her brief topless scene comes off as exploitive and ill-advised.

The best bits come from its supporting cast. Robert Preston as the perpetually inebriated doctor has a few great lines and Robert Webber does well as a very nervous, high-strung press agent. Loretta Swit is hilarious as a bitchy, cantankerous gossip columnist who gets cooped up in a hospital after an accident and an almost unrecognizable Larry Storch hams it up under heavy make-up as a spiritual guru. There is also Robert Vaughn wearing high heels and women’s clothing.

I enjoyed the film within a film approach and the tawdry dream-like sequence scene, but the story suffers from adding in too much slapstick including a drawn-out car chase that seems suited for a completely different type of movie. For mild comedy it is okay, but as satire it fails to make any strong or impactful statement.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 1, 1981

Runtime: 2Hours 1Minute

Rated R

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: Paramount

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

3 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies with Nudity, Musical, Satire

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Demon Seed (1977)

Posted on August 13, 2016 | 1 comment

demon seed 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Computer impregnates a human.

Based on an early Dean R. Koontz novel the story centers on Susan Harris (Julie Christie) who is married to Alex (Fritz Weaver) a man who has created a giant artificially intelligent computer named Proteus (voice of Robert Vaughn) as well as installing a computer inside their own home, which does all of their household chores and is fully automated via voice command.  Things seem to be going fine until Proteus starts to question the assignments that he has been given and his unhappiness with being ‘trapped inside a box’. To remedy the situation he decides to use the computer terminal inside the Harris’s home, so that he can overtake the house through his electronic commands and then impregnate Susan to have his child and therefore experience life as a person instead of a machine.

One of the things that got on my nerves right away was the way the film immediately telegraphs where it is going and reeks with ‘70s paranoia about computers ‘overtaking the world’, which was a prevalent fear during that era as computers were just in their infancy and their ultimate place in human society still not fully understood.

The Alex character is too ambivalent towards the warning signs and comes off like the clichéd super scientist with a child-like enthusiasm about his ‘creation’ and not the slightest concern for what might happen if things go wrong and the way he becomes so quickly shocked when the computer does start to behave in a way he had not considered seems almost laughable. Real-life scientists would most assuredly have considered these issues and had safeguards already put in place and the fact that the characters here don’t just doesn’t seem believable.

When the Proteus computer takes over Susan’s home I didn’t find it frightening, but more unintentionally funny for many of the same reasons. I don’t think that I myself could ever get used to a computer running everything for me and doing whatever I said at the sound of my voice. In the back of my mind, and in any sane person’s mind for that matter, I would be worrying about it malfunctioning and the consequences that it would entail, so when things finally do go wrong I found it laughable because anyone could have clearly seen it coming from the start. In fact the only thing that saves this thing from a being a complete dud is Christie’s brilliant performance and the fact that she gets you to see her character as a real human being and someone you care for and want to see rescued.

Spoiler Alert!

The script suffers from a myriad of other logical loopholes as well. One of them is the whole basic premise of how a computer can somehow manipulate human DNA in order to get supposedly his ‘genes’ into the child, so that it fully has his own traits and even his own voice. There is also no suitable explanation for how he was able to speed-up the gestation period from the 9 months to just 28 days. I was also surprised that the husband never bothers to call his wife during that 28-day period. Yes, I realize that they had just separated, but it was a very amicable one and I would still have thought he would’ve called-in at some point simply to check-in. There is also another character played by Gerrit Graham who comes into the house and tries to shut down the computer and is killed in the process making me believe that his disappearance would’ve caused suspicion and others would’ve come looking for him. There is also the issue of her mail, which I’m sure would’ve been piling up at her front door and causing both the mail carrier and neighbors to take notice.

End of Spoiler Alert!

The film is full of many colorful graphics and effects although they may no longer be considered as state-of-the-art as they once were. The idea is an intriguing one and Robert Vaughn gives the Proteus character a lot of menace with his voice, but he is still no HAL. The ending is really over-the-top, but in a wildly interesting sort of way even though it does nothing but create more questions than answers.

demon seed 3

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 8, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Rated R

Director: Donald Cammell

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD (Warner Archive)

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sci-Fi, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Caretakers (1963)

Posted on February 17, 2013 | 4 comments

the caretakers 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Doctors with opposing viewpoints.

Two doctors working at a psychiatric hospital come at odds with each other over how to treat their patients. Dr. Donovan MacLeod (Robert Stack) believes in a more humanistic approach in treating mental illness including group therapy and more patient freedoms. Dr. Lucretia Terry (Joan Crawford) is hard-lined and exacts rules on her patients that have severe penalties if broken. The film examines their infighting and how it affects their patients.

Director Hall Bartlett has a nice cinema-verte style to the material that manages to avoid being ‘Hollywoodnized’ or overtly sanitized. The subject is approached in a matter of fact way and the patients are not portrayed as ‘crazy’ or ‘scary’, but instead as sick people looking to get well and learning how to do it. The opening sequence done over the credits and featuring all sorts of moody artsy drawings have an excellent avant-garde flair.

Polly Bergen is effective as Lorna a middle-aged mother and housewife who suffers a nervous breakdown and begrudgingly becomes a member of Dr. MacLeod’s therapy group. Some of her acting particularly when she is having her breakdown is theatrical and over-the-top, but I did like the way Bartlett shows things from her perspective allowing the viewer in a visual sense to feel what she is going through and makes one compassionate and sensitive to her condition.

It is great to see Crawford as always and the scene showing her in a leotard and teaching the other nurses judo lessons is a gem and much too brief. I was hoping to have her play up the part of the heavy more making her almost like a Nurse Ratched, which she could have easily done to perfection, but unfortunately the script doesn’t take advantage of it. I was also disappointed that we never see Crawford ever dealing directly with her patients, which seemed to me should have been necessary.

Stack in the lead is terrible and completely wrong for the part. The role required a man with a more youthful appeal instead of the middle-aged Stack who never displays the kind of sensitivity and compassion that his character supposedly has. Instead he delivers his lines in a stiff and monotone fashion and comes off like he came from the old school of acting.

The scene where his character allows the patients to go to an outdoor park for a picnic and mingle with the staff unsupervised seemed to be pushing the plausibility meter to the extreme. It also makes him look like a complete schmuck who should have known better especially when one of his patients leaves the picnic and runs away while he chases after her in a panic.

The supporting cast is outstanding showcasing many up and coming stars and is one of the major highlights for watching the film. Barbara Barrie is great as the silent and troubled Edna. Janis Paige is excellent as the brassy prostitute Marion. Susan Oliver gives one of her best performances as a young nurse who is just learning how to deal with those with mental illness and Robert Vaughn is also effective as Lorna’s long suffering and confused husband. This is also a great chance to see a young Van Williams before he starred as the Green Hornet as well as the beautiful Sharon Hugueny whose promising acting career was cut short when she was hit years later by a speeding police car.

If you come to this film looking for genuine insight into the illness you will be disappointed as it goes only to the most elementary level into the area of psychiatry. MacLeod’s speeches about how his group therapy can be a ‘cure’ to mental illness are shallow and almost laughable. However, for the era the film manages to be gritty and slick enough to pass as entertainment.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 21, 1963

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Hal Bartlett

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

4 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hospital setting, Psychological

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