1980 Week: The Awakening

Lavishly produced Egyptian-themed shocker The Awakening starts out well enough, with atmospheric scenes of a studly scientist named Matthew (Charlton Heston) tempting fate by exploring the tomb of an ancient Egyptian queen. Rocks slide, traps are sprung, and victims accumulate as the movie sets up the premise that centuries-dead “Kara” makes a magical connection with the child Matthew’s wife delivers while he’s tampering with Kara’s resting place. Throughout this very long prologue, The Awakening effectively blends old-school mummy mythology with modern evil-kid tropes along the lines of The Omen (1976). Then the picture cuts ahead 18 years. Matthew’s daughter, Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist), has become a young woman. Meanwhile, Matthew, long divorced from Margaret’s mother, has become obsessed with his greatest achievement, the discovery of the tomb. And then the story goes completely haywire, charting a downward spiral into nonsense as Kara’s spirit tries to possess Margaret’s body. Despite being adapted from a story by the venerable Bram Stoker, of Dracula fame, The Awakening is clunky and dull and episodic and ridiculous, so the moodiness the filmmakers generated during the opening scenes dissipates by the time the picture reaches its laughably over-the-top climax. Making matters worse, Heston is quite terrible here, overdoing everything except his pathetic attempt at an English accent. So even though The Awakening is a highly polished piece of work from a technical perspective, abysmal storytelling utterly neutralizes audience goodwill.

The Awakening: LAME

1980 Week: The Mountain Men

          A manly-man’s adventure flick filled with bloodshed, cartoonish characterizations, and playful vulgarity, The Mountain Men plays like a dumbed-down version of Jeremiah Johnson (1972), the soulful Robert Redford melodrama about an iconoclastic frontiersman. Whereas that picture tapped into mythic themes by depicting one individual’s desire to find meaning through connection with the wilderness, The Mountain Men is about crude rascals concerned only with profit and survival. This material doesn’t fit leading man Charlton Heston especially well, since the actor’s best roles positioned Heston as a voice of righteous indignation within society. Although he was always believable with heavily physical characterizations, his take on coarse manners and salty language feels artificial, giving the impression of a little boy playing dress-up. Conversely, costar Brian Keith seems totally comfortable in every scene, hitting a fine balance between generating larger-than-life entertainment and rendering a consistent portrayal.
          It’s not quite fair to say that this mediocre and unmemorable picture is worth watching solely because of Keith’s performance, but his work is certainly the film’s strongest element. Also praiseworthy are the film’s robust location photography and the general intensity of the action scenes, because what the film lacks in substance, it makes up for with pulpy excitement.

          The slender narrative has longtime friends Bill Tyler (Heston) and Henry Frapp (Keith) agreeing to guide inexperienced travelers through unsettled parts of Wyoming circa the 1830s. This contrivance is merely a weak engine for delivering the real focus of the story, Bill’s quest to find an elusive valley filled with beavers, the trapper’s equivalent of a gold mine. Unfortunately, neither of these elements gives the film much momentum, since the script by first-timer Fraser Clark Heston (the star’s son, later to become a middling director of theatrical features) is exceedingly episodic. That’s not to say, however, that all of the episodes are uninteresting. The film’s most exciting scene involves a run-in between the trappers and a band of Blackfoot Indians, culminating with the startling image of warriors scalping Henry. In a separate passage of the storyline, Bill ends up stuck in the wilderness, using his stamina and wits in order to survive without proper resources. Some of this stuff is fun to watch, and some of it isn’t. 

The Mountain Men: FUNKY

Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

          Though he probably thought of himself as an actor in the classical sense, Charlton Heston was inextricably linked with a florid performance style. Whether he was fighting postapocalpytic vampires, parting the Red Sea, or telling a damn dirty ape what to do with its stinking paws, Heston’s best lines were often screamed at ear-splitting volume. Like Spinal Tap’s customized amps, Heston went to 11. This preamble should calibrate expectations for Heston’s directorial debut, Antony and Cleopatra, adapted from Shakespeare’s immortal play. The movie doesn’t work, for myriad reasons, but it speaks to an interesting mixture of misguided artistic ambition and pure thespian ego. Watching the movie, one can actually feel how badly Heston wants everything to coalesce.

          Set in ancient Rome and Egypt, the story takes place after the death of Julius Caesar, and it depicts the tragic romance between Caesar’s second-in-command, Mark Antony (Heston), and Caesar’s former lover, Queen Cleopatra (Hildegard Neil). When the tale begins, Antony is part of the triumvirate ruling the Roman empire, but he becomes so obsessed with Cleopatra that he merges his armies with her forces in Egypt. War among former allies ensues, and the whole situation is complicated by Cleopatra’s caprice—although she betrays Antony’s trust more than once, he keeps returning to her. Quite literally, this is the stuff of legend, so Heston’s grandiose style isn’t inherently incompatible. Had an experienced filmmaker taken the reins and kept the star focused on acting, Heston’s interest in the material could have delivered stronger results.

          Alas, Heston the director is the worst enemy of Heston the leading man. In addition to silly indulgences, such as gigantic close-ups during macho speeches and a semi-nude scene showcasing the actor’s burly physique, Heston displays a stunning lack of visual imagination. Antony and Cleopatra is shot roughly in the style of the leaden ’50s Biblical epics that first made Heston a star, even though the flat lighting style and ultra-wide compositions of the ’50s had become boring clichés by the early ’70s. Additionally, Heston took erratic liberties with the text. (He’s credited as the principal screenwriter.) Heston excised a huge swath of the play’s opening passages, making it impossible to track how Antony and Cleopatra became involved—and yet he retained massive speeches that could easily have been trimmed, notably Cleopatra’s final monologue.

          And while Heston delivers basically competent results with intimate scenes, since the mostly British supporting cast is adept at handling Shakespeare’s language, the battle scenes are laughably disjointed and old-fashioned. Damning the whole enterprise to mediocrity is the casting of Neil as Cleopatra. While she’s attractive and skillful, she’s nowhere near magical enough to persuade viewers of her character’s power to change the course of history, and her pale English features seem ridiculous whenever she occupies the same frame as dark-skinned extras.

Antony and Cleopatra: FUNKY

Two-Minute Warning (1976)

          The premise of Two-Minute Warning couldn’t be more appealing for fans of cheesy ’70s blockbusters: A sniper takes a position in the clock tower of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during a crowded football game, so cops led by Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston) must take the sniper out. Chuck Heston versus a psycho against a backdrop of tragic melodrama—pass the popcorn! Unfortunately, the title of Two-Minute Warning is itself a warning (to viewers), since virtually nothing exciting happens until the last two minutes of the game that provides the film’s narrative structure. Most of the movie comprises a long slog of “character development” in the superficial disaster-movie style, meaning Two-Minute Warning is nearly all foreplay with very little payoff.

          That said, if you dive into the movie aware that it’s a slow burn, the combination of enterprising location photography and enthusiastic performances might be enough to keep you interested. The main relationship in the movie is between Captain Holly, who spends most of his time watching the sniper through a video feed originating in the Goodyear Blimp (!), and hotshot SWAT team commander Chris Button (John Cassavetes). Holly wants to remove the sniper without gunplay, whereas Button is itching for a shootout. Watching these alpha males clash provides a smidgen of macho entertainment, though one wishes the filmmakers had found a way to make their conflict more dynamic. The lack of strong leading characters lets supporting players run away with the picture. Brock Peters stands out as a Coliseum maintenance man who tries to be a hero, and Beau Bridges has some sorta-affecting moments as an unemployed dad fighting with his wife and kids in the stands, unaware of the danger lurking behind the end zone.

          Two-Minute Warning hews so closely to the disaster-movie paradigm that the story also includes an aging pickpocket (Walter Pidgeon), a football-loving priest (Mitchell Ryan), and a bickering couple (played by David Janssen and Gena Rowlands). Yes, it’s the old “Who’s going to live, who’s going to die?” drill. Director Larry Peerce rounded out the cast with his then-wife, Marilyn Hassett, the star of his maudlin The Other Side of the Mountain movies, although casting his missus appears to be as close as he got to emotionally investing in this trifling potboiler. Since the Coliseum figured prominently in ’70s pop culture (it was used for Heaven Can Wait, North Dallas Forty, and innumerable TV episodes), the venue provides as comforting a presence as any of the name-brand actors, and Peerce shoots the location well. Overall, however, Two-Minute Warning is a missed opportunity given all the possibilities suggested by the premise. Fumble!

Two-Minute Warning: FUNKY

Soylent Green (1973)

          Although the film’s storytelling is a bit on the turgid side, despite lantern-jawed leading man Charlton Heston adding his usual animalistic fervor, Soylent Green is among the most memorable of the myriad downbeat sci-fi dramas that proliferated during the ’70s. Much of the credit goes to the movie’s wild twist ending (rest assured, no spoilers here), but there’s more to the picture than its famous final moments: Soylent Green presents a grim view of a future Earth suffocated by overpopulation. In New York City, where the film is set, every square inch of available space is filled with desperate, hungry vagrants, so anyone with property is a target. Amid this deadly environment, tough-talking cop Robert Thorn (Heston) tries to keep order by bringing murderers to justice, although he’s not exactly noble.

          For instance, when Thorn struts around the apartment of a murder victim at the beginning of the picture, he helps himself to choice possessions even as he’s snooping for clues. Like everyone else in this bleak future, Thorn subsists mostly on Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, tiny nutrient tablets made by the Soylent Corporation. However, these products are so bland that when the company introduces the more flavorful Soylent Green, riots erupt among New Yorkers who crave the delicacy. At first, Thorn doesn’t make the connection between Soylent Green and his investigation into the death of a Soylent executive, but Thorn’s senior-citizen friend, Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson), detects a conspiracy. Sol spends his days poring over old books and records to find valuable information for Thorn, but Sol also realizes that he’s dead weight in an overcrowded city. Then, when Sol volunteers for government-sanctioned assisted suicide, Thorn tumbles into an existential crisis that leads him toward the shocking discovery at the center of the film’s ending.

          Adapted from a novel by Harry Harrison and directed with slick efficiency by Richard Fleischer, Soylent Green is longer on atmosphere than it is on action, since it falls somewhere between cerebral sci-fi and visceral sci-fi. Nonetheless, much of the picture is arresting, with Heston swaggering through his scenes while key supporting players add interesting textures. The beautiful Leigh Taylor-Young appears as a consort—referred to in future parlance as “furniture”—and the way she trades her body for survival accentuates the film’s theme about the cheapness of life in a mechanized world. Studio-era survivor Robinson, in his last screen role, lends a campy mix of pathos and whimsy, and his connection to an earlier time in cinema history helps tether this fantastical story to familiar reality. Thanks to all of these strengths, Soylent Green is hard to shake, even though it’s not by any means a great movie.

Soylent Green: GROOVY

Midway (1976)

          This old-fashioned combat flick picks up where the great 1944 war drama Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo left off—Midway dramatizes one of the many retaliatory air strikes the U.S. and Japan exchanged following Japan’s initial 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. When the story begins, the U.S. Navy is struggling to replace ships destroyed at Pearl Harbor. When an intelligence officer (Hal Holbrook) intercepts communications suggesting the Japanese are planning to attack U.S. ships stationed at Midway Island—potentially a devastating repeat of Pearl Harbor—various officers spring into action preparing defensive maneuvers. Like 1970’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, this picture cuts back and forth between American and Japanese strategy sessions. In addition to humanizing the enemy, this technique lets viewers see how luck and tactical errors have as much bearing on military success as heroism and leadership.

          For instance, some of the best scenes take place aboard a Japanese carrier, where Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (James Shigeta) wrangles with doubtful subordinates, resulting in indecisiveness. There’s some great stuff buried in Midway, but, unfortunately, lesser material is given the primary focus—the main storyline involves Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), a strong-willed junior officer whose role in the battle is relatively inconsequential. The filmmakers waste gobs of time, for instance, on the melodramatic romance between Garth’s son and a Japanese-American civilian, which leads to trite discussions about race relations. Plus, once the bludgeoning air/sea battle gets underway, the movie introduces so many characters that text appears onscreen to identify new people.

          Even with these visual aids, however, it’s hard to track which ships are where, whose plane took off from which airstrip, and, for that matter, which side is winning. Still, before things get too hectic, Midway lets a handful of charismatic actors shine in showcase moments. Holbrook is a hoot as the excitable code breaker; Henry Fonda lends authority as the top U.S. admiral; Glenn Ford is effectively stoic as a soft-spoken naval commander; and Robert Mitchum plays an enjoyable cameo as a cranky admiral consigned to bed rest. (Cinema legend Toshiro Mifune essays a small role as Fonda’s Japanese counterpart, but his lines were dubbed into English by actor Paul Frees, the voice of Rocky & Bullwinkle villain Boris Badenov.) While these virtues aren’t enough to lift Midway out of mediocrity, any American war picture that resists the temptation to demonize the opposing side is inherently admirable.

Midway: FUNKY

Gray Lady Down (1978)

The disaster genre was already starting to repeat itself by the late ’70s, so the only real novelty of Gray Lady Down is that it puts a military spin on the underwater tension that audiences enjoyed in The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Unfortunately, the military angle removes from the equation a key element to any successful disaster picture, which is overwrought melodrama. Specifically, since the characters in Gray Lady Down are trained to work together during crises, the only real conflict has to do with minor disagreements about strategy; thus, we’re deprived the cheesy fun of watching silly characters squabble during a catastrophe. Furthermore, the almost completely male cast ensures that Gray Lady Down is a monotonous onslaught of macho posturing. Atop all that, the movie’s simply not very good in terms of narrative execution—even with a solid cast for this sort of thing and the constant presence of life-or-death jeopardy, Gray Lady Down fails to generate memorably exciting moments. Charlton Heston, in extra-serious beardy mode, plays Captain Blanchard, skipper of the U.S. Navy submarine Neptune. One foggy night, the Neptune gets rammed by a freighter, then sinks to nearly 1,500 feet and gets lodged in an underwater canyon. Hard-driving but otherwise personality-free Captain Bennett (Stacy Keach) is sent to supervise the ensuing rescue effort, but when the Neptune sinks even further, additional manpower is required. Enter Captain Gates (David Carradine), the iconoclastic pilot of a small, experimental submersible called the Snark. Simply by dint of their watchable personalities, the scenes aboard the Snark between Carradine and Ned Beatty, who plays Carradine’s sidekick, have some life. And, of course, watching Heston tromp around the bridge of the Neptune while he barks orders through clenched teeth is campy and fun. Alas, most of Gray Lady Down is as bland as the color cited in its title, so what should have been a simple little thriller ends up being a chore to endure.

Gray Lady Down: LAME

Earthquake (1974)

          Pure junk that nonetheless provides abundant guilty pleasure, Earthquake was a pinnacle of sorts for the disaster-movie genre. Executive producer Jennings Lang was recruited by Universal Pictures to copy the formula that Poseidon Adventure mastermind Irwin Allen had perfected at rival studio 20th-Century Fox, so Lang commissioned a thrill-a-minute script (co-written by Mario Puzo) and hired a large ensemble of mid-level actors. The resulting movie, as produced and directed by fading studio-era helmer Mark Robson, is a cheesefest replete with bad acting, horrible clothes, and ridiculous storylines. However, since those are exactly the kitschy qualities that fans of the disaster genre dig, Earthquake became a major hit, earning nearly $80 million despite costing only $7 million. Therefore, Earthquake represents the disaster genre in full bloom.

          While there’s not much point in discussing the actual plot—there’s a giant earthquake in L.A., in case you haven’t guessed—listing a few of the characters should give the flavor of the piece. Leading man Charlton Heston plays Stewart Graff, a businessman whose rich father-in-law, Sam Royce (Lorne Greene), offers him a company presidency in exchange for staying married to shrewish Remy Royce-Graff (Ava Gardner); meanwhile, Stewart is screwing around with a younger woman, Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold). Bullish police offer Lou Slade (George Kennedy, of course) spends most of the movie watching out for Rosa (Victoria Principal), a busty young woman who wears her hair in some sort of Latina Afro, because she’s mixed up with a motorcycle-riding daredevil (Richard Roundtree) and a psychotic stalker (Marjoe Gortner). Oh, and Walter Matthau plays a bizarre cameo as a drunk dressed in head-to-toe polyester, complete with a flaming-red pimp hat.

          Virtually every melodramatic cliché from ’70s cinema is represented somewhere in Earthquake, which treats seismic activity as a cosmic metaphor for the uncertainty of life. And by “metaphor,” I really mean “narrative contrivance,” because the script for Earthquake exists far below the level of literary aspiration; this movie’s idea of storytelling is stirring up trite conflict before adding tremors that kill people in exciting ways. However, some of the big-budget effects scenes are enjoyable in a tacky sort of way, and the histrionic nature of Heston’s and Kennedy’s acting keeps their scenes jacked up to an appropriately goofy level of intensity. Plus, during its most outrageous scenes—picture Roundtree performing Evel Knievel-style motorcycle stunts as Principal cheers him while wearing an undersized T-shirt that displays his logo across her ample bosom—Earthquake embraces its low nature by providing shameless distraction.

Earthquake: FUNKY

The Hawaiians (1970)

          James Michener’s 1959 novel Hawaii was a major bestseller, but it was also a monster in terms of narrative scope: Sprawling over nearly 1,000 pages, the book traces centuries of history from the formation of the islands by geological forces to the present day at the time of the book’s publication. Therefore, even though Hollywood was eager to capitalize on the novel’s success, putting the entire story onscreen was impossible. Taking a creative approach to the challenge, producer Walter Mirisch decided to film the book as a pair of epic features, but the first picture to be filmed, Hawaii (1966), barely covered one chapter of Michener’s story. Hawaii did well enough that Mirisch pressed forward with the second film, which, given the nature of the source material, is less a continuation of the first picture’s story and more of a companion piece.

          Whereas Hawaii dramatizes early conflicts between European missionaries and Hawaiian natives, The Hawaiians takes place a generation later, when the son of the first movie’s protagonist has grown into a middle-aged bureaucrat named Micah Hale (Alec McCowen). Yet the real center of The Hawaiians is Hale’s cousin, sea captain Whip Hoxworth (Charlton Heston). When the story begins, Whip returns from the sea to accept an inheritance from his recently deceased grandfather. Unfortunately, the estate was left to Hale. Incensed, Whip starts a plantation on the meager stretch of uncultivated land he owns.

          His workers include a pair of impoverished Chinese immigrants, Mun Ki (Mako) and Wu Chow’s Auntie (Tina Chen). (The relationship between these characters is way too complicated to describe here.) To endow his plantation with a unique cash crop, Whip sails to French Guiana and steals pineapples, which are not yet being grown in Hawaii. Wu Chow’s Auntie proves adept at nurturing the plants, so Whip gives her some land to start a small farm of her own. Thus, the foundations of two parallel dynasties are formed. The movie tracks Whip’s ascension to supreme wealth as an agricultural tycoon, and the rise of Wu Chow’s Auntie as the matriarch of an expansive immigrant clan. The picture also features subplots about leprosy, mental illness, political unrest, and other intense subjects.

          The Hawaiians crams an enormous amount of narrative into 134 minutes, and much of what happens onscreen is interesting, like the arcane workings of the Chinese community in Hawaii. However, tackling so much material gives the picture a diffuse quality. Director Tom Gries handles individual scenes with workmanlike efficiency, but neither he nor screenwriter James R. Webb are able to forge a unified statement. One episode unfolds after another, time passes, and a resolution of sort arrives, but it’s all somewhat random.

          It doesn’t help that the film’s central performance is its least compelling, since Heston grimaces and growls in his usual blustery manner. Chen and Mako do much more nuanced work, although the age makeup applied to Chen in later scenes is unconvincing. (McCowen is too polite to make much of an impression.) The Hawaiian locations are, of course, quite beautiful, so the land itself becomes the most arresting character—it’s easy to see why generations of people battled for control over this vast paradise of adjoining islands. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Hawaiians: FUNKY

The Omega Man (1971)

          Apocalyptic storyline? Check. Macho hero with a big gun and an impregnable lair? Check. Pasty-faced undead cultists on a lethal rampage? Check and double-check. Yes, The Omega Man features an abundance of fantastical elements, so when these components are matched with a campy leading performance and a cheesy visual style that screams early 1970s, a good time is guaranteed for all.

          The Omega Man was adapted from Richard Matheson’s enduring 1954 novel I Am Legend, which depicts the travails of a survivor who believes he’s the last man on earth following a plague that turned everyone else into supernatural creatures. In Matheson’s ingenious story, Colonel Robert Neville builds a fortress around the lab in which he searches for a way to cure the worldwide affliction. Since the vampire-like monsters don’t come out until nighttime, Neville has the world to himself during daylight hours, and he uses these windows to gather supplies, survey enemy encampments, and troll for signs of normal life.

          Updating Matheson’s narrative for the ’70s, screenwriters John W. Corrington and Joyce H. Corrington, together with director Boris Sagal, crafted a pulpy thriller suited to star Charlton Heston’s oversized persona. Heston plays Neville as a bruised idealist appalled at what mankind has done to itself—the filmmakers deviated from Matheson’s novel by making biological warfare the culprit for humanity’s descent into barbarism—so watching The Omega Man is like watching Heston pick up where his tantrum during the finale of 1968’s Planet of the Apes ended.

          In Heston’s gritted-teeth portrayal, Neville isn’t just the Last Man on Earth, he’s the Last Man With Any Damned Sense In His Head. Strutting around with an air of messianic purpose suits Heston’s florid style, so when he’s blasting away at the hordes of monsters that attack his headquarters every night, it’s as if each bullet is a blow for God, America, and apple pie.

          Yet the whole business of Neville defending himself is only one thread of the movie, which also introduces a trés-’70s cult called “The Family,” comprising murderous albino mutants. Led by crazed Jonathan Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), the Family is devoted to killing Neville, even though they succumb to the usual B-movie folly of planning an elaborate death that leaves room for escape instead of simply whacking Neville when they have the opportunity.

          As the story progresses, Neville avoids the Family’s wrath with the aid of Lisa (Rosalind Cash) and Dutch (Paul Koslo), two unexpected fellow survivors. The attractive Lisa becomes Neville’s love interest, of course, which means it’s just a matter of time before the Family tries to nab her. This being ’70s sci-fi, you can see the bummer road this is heading down, and The Omega Man doesn’t disappoint in terms of third-act plot twists. Rest assured, however, that it takes more than a gang of albino mutants to stop Chuck Heston from getting what he wants.

The Omega Man: GROOVY

The Last Hard Men (1976)

          An enjoyable but forgettable Western thriller, The Last Hard Men combines a string of macho clichés. Circa the early 1900s, cold-blooded criminal Provo (James Coburn) is part of a prison labor crew until he stages a violent escape, enlisting several fellow convicts to form an outlaw gang. (Fans of cheesy TV will notice Larry Wilcox, later of CHiPs fame, as the youngest member of Provo’s gang.) Although Provo claims he wants to rob banks, his real motivation is hunting down the man who sent him to jail, square-jawed peacemaker Sam Burgade (Charlton Heston). Now a retired widower, Burgade is happily occupied with getting his beautiful daughter, Susan (Barbara Hershey), married off to her affectionate beau, Hal (Christopher Mitchum). Yet when Burgade learns about Provo’s escape and subsequent crime spree, he races to intercept the train on which Provo’s gang was spotted. Unfortunately, Provo arranged the train sighting as a decoy so he could kidnap Susan and draw Burgade out to the wilderness for a showdown. There’s a smidgen more to the story than this synopsis suggests, but The Last Hard Men is essentially a macho duel preceded by foreplay.
          Director Andrew V. McLaglen demonstrates his usual sure hand for this sort of material, keeping things moving at a steady pace and ensuring that the nastiest violence leaves a mark. However, at one point he awkwardly tries to channel Sam Peckinpah—late in the movie, as a means of provoking Burgade, Provo gives his thugs permission to rape Susan, and McLaglen stages the ensuing pursuit/assault in lurid slow-motion. Artsy flourishes don’t gel with McLaglen’s meat-and-potatoes style, so the scene feels weirdly dissonant and perverse. As for the movie’s acting, Coburn is genuinely frightening when his character gets crazed with bloodlust, but Heston is on autopilot. It doesn’t help that many of Heston’s scenes are designed to showcase supporting player Mitchum (son of Robert), whom various producers spent several years trying to transform into a star despite his lack of charisma. Hershey adds welcome toughness to an underwritten role, demonstrating how quickly she was outgrowing the ingénue style of her early-’70s performances.

The Last Hard Men: FUNKY

Julius Caesar (1970)

          Although the idea of Charlton Heston playing classical roles always inspires trepidation, Heston is quite potent as Marc Anthony in this lusty adaptation of the Shakespeare classic. Instead, it’s the usually impeccable Jason Robards, playing treacherous senator Brutus, who underwhelms. Whereas one might expect Heston’s distinctly American persona to be an impediment in this milieu, his flamboyance fits the grandeur of Shakespearean English; conversely, Robards’ internalized moodiness is too quiet for director Stuart Burge’s muscular approach to the text. Screenwriter Robert Furnival hacked a few passages from the play, shortening the running time and making room for flourishes like an elaborate battlefield finale, but the core of the piece is intact. In 44 B.C., Roman emperor Julius Caesar (John Gielgud) cements his power through military victories, sparking fears among senators like Brutus, Casca (Robert Vaughn), and Cassius (Richard Johnson) that Caesar will seize absolute control. Brutus and his fellow conspirators murder Caesar, triggering a civil war between the conspirators and forces led by Caesar’s best friend, Marc Anthony.

          Burge gives the picture a standard sword-and-sandals look, with extras in flowing robes flitting across soundstages crammed with columns and staircases, so the piece doesn’t really take flight until Burge moves onto location for the climactic battle. That said, he builds an insistent pace and employs enough movement in his blocking to avoid filling the screen with long stretches of static talking heads. Plus, with its scenes of assassination and civil unrest, it’s not as if Julius Caesar lacks for inherent drama. Among the supporting cast, the standouts are Geilgud, bitchy and grandiose as a leader drunk on adulation; Johnson and Vaughn, calculating and cruel as men whose ambition trumps their loyalty; and Diana Rigg, sexy and sly as Brutus’ wife. Ultimately, however, the movie hinges on the interplay between Brutus and Marc Anthony. Robards seems uninterested throughout most of the picture, though his performance gains vigor after the assassination, but Heston is on fire from beginning to end. Clearly relishing the chance to play one of the great roles, Heston attacks monologues with the same animalistic energy he usually brings to the physical aspect of his performances, so he’s magnetic even though his performance choices are obvious and simplistic.

Julius Caesar: FUNKY

The Call of the Wild (1972)

Although hampered by the bad dubbing found in so many European productions from the early ’70s, this grimy adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel has admirable qualities. The movie adheres to London’s narrative by making a dog the lead character, even though Charlton Heston gets top billing for playing a sled driver-turned-prospector who becomes the dog’s kindest owner. The picture unflinchingly depicts ugly episodes from London’s story, including scenes of animal abuse and frontier tragedy. Furthermore, the flick delivers a bummer ending instead of whitewashing the source material. Having said all that, there are several good reasons why this international co-production has a reputation that falls somewhere between ignominy and obscurity. For one thing, the (human) acting in the picture is almost wall-to-wall terrible. Heston snarls and struts in his usual manner, though enough of the picture involves physical action that his imposing frame lends a certain degree of credibility. The location work is strange, with European vistas standing in for the film’s North American settings. And then there’s the maudlin music, particularly an eerie love theme for the romance between Buck, the canine hero of the story, and the she-wolf who makes him howl. The story, which gets muddied by extraneous scenes featuring Heston’s character, begins when a domesticated dog is stolen and sold into service in the Yukon. John Thornton (Heston) buys Buck after the dog has suffered abuse by handlers, but John brings out Buck’s qualities as a born pack leader. Eventually, Buck gets separated from John and suffers more abuse, but John recovers the animal and nurses him to health. The man-dog love story ends badly, but the dog-wolf romance has a brighter denouement. Along the way, the movie presents a handful of exciting action scenes, and only the most hard-hearted viewer would fail to empathize with Buck’s plight. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Call of the Wild: FUNKY

Airport (1970) & Airport 1975 (1974) & Airport ’77 (1977) & The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979)

          It’s appropriate that the last movie bearing the Airport brand name begins with a balloon getting inflated, because this series is filled with nothing so much as hot air. Melodramatic, overlong, and trite, each of the four Airport flicks is a midair soap opera, with characterization and dialogue that would barely pass muster in the worst episodic television. If not for the innate allure of disaster stories and the presence of motley casts comprising former A-listers and permanent C-listers, these pictures would have vanished into obscurity immediately after they were made. However, one should never underestimate the public’s appetite for vapid escapism: The first picture was the biggest moneymaker of 1970 (out-earning M*A*S*H and Patton), and it somehow snared 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. As the people filling that balloon at the beginning of The Concorde: Airport ’79 know, hot air always rises.

          The first flick, simply titled Airport and adapted from Arthur Hailey’s bestselling novel of the same name, is lumbering and dull. An airport manager (Burt Lancaster) and a pilot (Dean Martin) face a crisis when a disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) sneaks a bomb onto a passenger jet. Contrived romantic subplots abound, as do goofy elements like a storyline about an elderly woman (Helen Hayes) who keeps sneaking onto flights as a stowaway. Shot in a flat, ugly style that reveals every location as part of a garishly lit soundstage, the talky movie grinds through so much nonsense that Martin’s plane doesn’t even take off until after the one-hour mark.

          Only about 30 minutes of the movie contain actual disaster-oriented action, so it’s notable that even though Airport was the first hit for the genre, the familiar victim-every-10-minutes formula wasn’t perfected until producer Irwin Allen (who had nothing to do with the Airport movies) made The Poseidon Adventure in 1972. About the only lively element of Airport is George Kennedy’s lusty supporting performance as airport engineer Joe Patroni, who spouts macho lines like, “I’ll have this mother outta here by midnight!” There’s also some mild interest in spotting moments that were later spoofed in Airplane! (1980), like the vignette of a stewardess slapping a hysterical passenger.

          For the imaginatively titled sequel Airport 1975, producer Jenning Lang took the franchise reins and shamelessly copied Irwin Allen’s style; Lang also hired square-jawed leading man Charlton Heston, who previously led the cast of Lang’s Allen-esque disaster flick Earthquake (1974). Although it’s just as insipid as the original film, Airport 1975 is more enjoyable, simply because it doesn’t take itself seriously; the movie is all about cheap thrills and over-the-top storytelling. In this one, a 747 is struck in mid-air by a tiny private plane, blowing out the cockpit and killing the flight crew. After the accident, a stewardess (Karen Black) has to keep the plane steady until her boyfriend (Heston) can reach the plane via helicopter, climb into the cockpit by rope ladder, and steer the jet to a safe landing. About the only thing more absurd than the plot is the cast, which also includes Linda Blair, Sid Caesar, Erik Estrada, Helen Reddy, and Gloria Swanson (as herself!). Kennedy reprises his Patroni role to mostly inconsequential effect.

          After this crescendo of craptastic cinema, the series fell to earth with Airport ’77, a boring thriller about a plane that gets hijacked over the Bermuda Triangle, and then plummets into the ocean. Instead of mid-air suspense, most of the picture delivers dull tight-quarters bickering set in the underwater jet, and everyone in the mixed-bag cast looks bored: Joseph Cotten, Lee Grant, Christopher Lee, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, and so on. (Kennedy’s back as Patroni, not that it makes much difference.) Airport ’77 is the nadir of a series whose quality level was never high.

          The final entry in the franchise is arguably the most enjoyable, at least from a bad-cinema perspective, because The Concorde: Airport ’79 is preposterous right from the first frames. Cinematic cheese is spread evenly across a ludicrous story, cringe-inducing dialogue, and a parade of laughable performances. In other words, Airport ’79 marks the moment the franchise officially became The Love Boat with explosions. Kennedy finally gets promoted to a leading role, co-piloting the famously sleek French jet of the title with a smooth Gallic flyer (Alain Delon). Meanwhile, an evil industrialist (Robert Wagner) wants to blow up the plane because one of the passengers is carrying evidence that incriminates him for dastardly deeds. Wagner tries to take out the Concorde with a robot drone, a manned fighter jet, and, finally, a bomb smuggled on board when the Concorde conveniently hits the tarmac long enough for sabotage. Several actors who should have known better got roped into acting in this drivel (Eddie Albert, Cicely Tyson, David Warner), but most of the screen time goes to ’70s also-rans like John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, and Jimmie J.J. Walker. Cementing the Love Boat parallel, Charo even shows up for a cameo.

Airport: LAME

Airport 1975: FUNKY

Airport ’77: SQUARE

The Concorde: Airport ’79: FUNKY

Skyjacked (1972)

          Perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve spent too many years exploring the dark recesses of ’70s cinema, but the only way I can classify Skyjacked is to label it the second-best ’70s movie about Charlton Heston rescuing an out-of-control airplane. For while Skyjacked has a few entertainingly campy scenes, the picture can’t hold a kitschy candle to the wonderfully awful Airport 1975. The fact that I can draw such distinctions should indicate how high my tolerance is for so-bad-it’s-good ’70s trash, and it should also tell you to avoid Skyjacked at all costs if your tolerance is lower than mine.

          As the title suggests, this flick is a numbingly simplistic thriller about a nutty Vietnam vet hijacking a passenger plane in a storyline that brainlessly follows the standard disaster-movie playbook. Square-jawed Heston stars as manly-man pilot Captain Henry “Hank” O’Hara, who has to protect his passengers from the heavily armed shenanigans of tweaked ex-soldier Jerome Weber (James Brolin). The hijacker’s motivation has something to do with wanting to defect to Russia, but it’s not as if one expects this movie to go deep into characterization. A typically random assortment of actors gets caught in the crossfire, including Claude Akins, Susan Dey, Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier, Mariette Hartley, Yvette Mimieux, Walter Pidgeon, and Leslie Uggams, none of whom should consider this a high point in their screen careers.

          Despite the presence of capable pulp director John Guillermin behind the camera, Skyjacked is so generic that it’s almost undistinguishable from several other made-for-TV and theatrical features about the same subject matter—in fact, it’s especially easy to get Skyjacked mixed up with the carbon-copy telefilm Mayday at 40,000 Feet (1976), featuring David Janssen’s clenched teeth in place of Heston’s rigidly hinged pearly whites. The problem is that instead of going overboard with ludicrous characters and situations, Skyjacked is quite dull for most of its running time. The movie doesn’t come alive until the silly climax, when Brolin and Heston physically fight for control of the plane; Brolin is so screamingly awful, and Heston so outrageously overwrought, that the movie briefly enters bad-movie bliss. But even with that fleeting moment of amusement, Skyjacked is merely a footnote to a subgenre that never produced much in the way of meritorious cinema.

Skyjacked: LAME

The Three Musketeers (1973) & The Four Musketeers (1974)

          Though previously known for the irreverence of, among other things, the invigorating movies he made with the Beatles, Richard Lester revealed great gifts as a director of adventure films with this epic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ deathless novel The Three Musketeers, which producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind divided into two movies (more on that in a moment). Depicting how enthusiastic bumpkin D’Artagnan (Michael York) finds his place amid a group of elite 17th-century swordsmen, then inadvertently helps spoil a conspiracy within the French ruling class, Lester’s sprawling project mixes lowbrow comedy and grandiose swashbuckling to great effect. The silly stuff includes lots of bedroom farce and pratfalls, while the derring-do material features everything from amusingly preposterous stunts to genuinely unnerving swordfights.
          Getting into the weeds of the dense storyline would require more space than is reasonable to allot here, but the yarn goes something like this. After befriending three musketeers in service to France’s King Louis XIII (Jean-Pierre Cassel, dubbed by Richard Briers), D’Artagnan discovers that Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) is conspiring to gain power by revealing that Louis’ bride, Queen Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), is having a secret affair with the Duke of Buckingham (Simon Ward). Caught in the middle of the intrigue is royal dressmaker Constance (Raquel Welch), with whom D’Artagnan falls in love. Also featured are two of the cardinal’s devious agents, formidable swordsman Rochefort (Christopher Lee) and vicious assassin Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway). This pulpy scenario begets a gleefully overstuffed cinematic experience.
          The project’s unusual tonal mix is exacerbated by sometimes jarring transitions between sequences—one gets the sense of filmmakers trying to put over an audacious contrivance by overwhelming viewers with a nonstop procession of spectacular moments. (Things get particularly dizzying in The Four Musketeers, which breezes past myriad glaring plot holes.) Still, Lester’s effervescent approach to staging, camerawork, and editing is almost as dazzling as the project’s sumptuous production design and costuming. Better still, both films overflow with entertaining performances.
          Playing the story’s romantic lead, York is appropriately overzealous and sincere. Conversely, top-billed Oliver Reed—as the leader of the musketeer band—imbues the narrative with a captivating blend of intensity and world-weariness. Few filmmakers captured Reed’s singular combination of poetry and savagery better than Lester does here. As for the project’s leading ladies, Welch gives an appealingly unaffected performance in a mostly comic role, Dunaway imbues a monstrous villain with icy elegance, and Geraldine Chaplin capably services a minor but important role as an adulterous royal. Heston gives a respectable faux-Shakespearean turn while Lee surprises by actually landing jokes in addition to providing the expected element of imposing menace. On the topic of comic relief, Roy Kinnear is delightfully silly as D’Artagnan’s long-suffering servant.
          While some viewers may justifiably resist Lester’s erratic dramaturgy, the herky-jerky alternation between schtick and melodrama keeps things lively. And even when the pace lags, the movies are treats for the eyes because of David Watkin’s wondrous cinematography. His lighting is so subtle that one is often hard-pressed to spot traces of artificial illumination; moreover, because Lester employs long lenses and loose framing, Watkin’s visual approach lends a naturalistic quality.
          Originally shot as one lengthy feature, the Musketeers saga was bifurcated by the Salkinds—providing an unpleasant surprise for the actors, who had been paid for just one movie. Considerable legal wrangling ensued. The Salkinds refined their strategy by shooting 1978’s Superman and 1980’s Superman II simultaneously with director Richard Donner, this time revealing to everyone beforehand that two movies were being made, but that didn’t work out perfectly, either; production of the second picture was halted partway through and then restarted, at a later date, with Lester replacing Donner. Lastly, although 1977 flop The 5th Musketeer is unrelated to the Salkind/Lester pictures, much of the original team regrouped for 1989’s flop threequel The Return of the Musketeers. The death during production of series comic foil Kinnear cast a pall over the piece and expedited Lester’s retirement from moviemaking.

The Three Musketeers: GROOVY

The Four Musketeers: GROOVY

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) & Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) & Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) & Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

          When Chuck Heston screamed at the half-buried Statue of Liberty during the conclusion of Planet of the Apes (1968), what seemed like one of the great twist endings in sci-fi history was actually the launching pad for an interesting but short-lived movie series, probably because producer Arthur P. Jacobs was eager to milk a hit after taking a bath on the notorious turkey Doctor Dolittle (1967). Demonstrating that a sequel was neither organic nor planned, Heston is a minor presence in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which strangely pushes the titular primates to the sidelines in favor of a cult of underground mutants worshipping an unexploded nuclear bomb; even more egregiously, Beneath is the only picture in the series that doesn’t feature Roddy McDowall in the cast. Nonetheless, Beneath has some memorable loose-nuke paranoia, and Chuck brightens the third act by showing up to flex his pecs and grit his teeth. If you go Beneath, by the way, stick through to the ending, which is spectacularly cynical.
          Jacobs more or less rebooted the series with Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which kinda ignores the previous film by reprising beloved ape characters Cornelius (McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter) from the original picture. The duo travels back in time from their ape-dominated future Earth to present-day 1970s Earth, where they’re perceived as a threat to man’s dominance of the planet. Escape is flat and talky compared to the rest of the series, but it introduces the entertaining human character Armando (Ricardo Montalban) and features a denouement that’s both exciting and depressing.
          The jewel in the crown of the ’70s Apes pictures is unquestionably Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which boasts a taut script about slavery and rebellion, zesty performances by McDowall and Montalban, and genuinely scary sequences of civil unrest that director J. Lee Thompson reportedly modeled after news footage of the 1965 Watts riots. McDowall actually plays the son of his character in the previous Apes pictures, and he brings previously unseen grit and rage to his portrayal of an, ahem, guerilla leader; he also benefits from a methodical story that believably evolves him from pacifist to revolutionary. Adding even more flava is the ingenious use of a then-new office plaza in what’s now known as Century City, California, for the primary location, because Fox audaciously transforms its corporate backyard into a futuristic battleground. Yet another virtue of the movie is a charismatic performance by journeyman African-American actor Hari Rhodes, of Daktari fame—he’s commanding and intense as the only human besides Armando to evade the apes’ wrath. FYI, the highly recommended extended cut of Conquest that debuted on Blu-Ray (and the Fox Movie Channel) in 2008 ups the violence quotient and deepens the movie’s theme of racial friction.
          Predictably, Battle for the Planet of the Apes is an anticlimax, mostly because it should have picked up exactly where Conquest ended. Instead, it takes place years later and features a long, slow buildup to a poorly staged fight between a nasty human armada and a fractious ape community. Seeing John Huston in primate drag at the beginning and end of the picture is a hoot, though (he speaks to the camera in wraparound bits). Oh, and don’t be fooled if you come across listings for Back to the Planet of the Apes or Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes (both 1974); they’re slapdash re-edits of scenes from the disposable Apes TV series that ran for one season.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes: FUNKY

Escape from the Planet of the Apes: FUNKY

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: GROOVY

Battle for the Planet of the Apes: LAME

Crossed Swords (1977)

After scoring with The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind tackled another classic novel with their lavish adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. And while Twain’s narrative has as much adventure and whimsy as Dumas’ Musketeers book, Crossed Swords (as the Salkind production of The Prince and the Pauper is more widely known) was handicapped by miscasting in front of and behind the camera. In the dual lead roles of an English prince and the lookalike street urchin with whom he trades places, Mark Lester is startlingly amateurish. Undoubtedly cast because he had played Oliver Twist in the Oscar-winning musical Oliver! (1967), Lester is gangly and stiff in Crossed Swords, forcing bug-eyed reaction shots and yelping whiny line deliveries. The inadequacies of his performance are exacerbated by the presence of flamboyant big-name actors who blow the young leading man off the screen. Even worse, journeyman director Richard Fleischer calls the shots instead of Richard Lester, whose light touch with action and comedy made the Musketeers movies memorable. Under Fleischer’s hand, Crossed Swords is quite severe, not exactly the right tonality for an escapist fable. But for viewers who can overlook shortcomings, the picture has buried treasures. The swordfight scenes are muscular, the production values are terrific from start to finish, and costar Oliver Reed gives one of his most entertaining performances as a nobleman robbed of his title. Once the film pits Reed against David Hemmings, playing the nobleman’s avaricious brother, Reed catches fire in a string of powerful scenes. The movie also boasts appearances by Ernest Borgnine, Rex Harrison, Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, and Raquel Welch, most of whom are miscast but all of whom periodically fill the entertainment gap created by the film’s unsatisfactory lead player.

Crossed Swords: FUNKY