The Greek Tycoon (1978)

          There are at least three ways to watch The Greek Tycoon, a fictionalized take on the marriage of presidential widow Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. (Well, four ways, if you count the option of skipping the movie altogether.) Firstly, you can watch the film in abject horror at the crass exploitation of human tragedy. Secondly, you can experience the movie as a campy jet-set melodrama. And thirdly, you can cut the filmmakers a whole lot of slack by enjoying the piece as the downbeat character study of a larger-than-life individual whose money bought him everything except lasting happiness and social respectability.
          Released in 1978, just three years after Onassis’ death, The Greek Tycoon is among the most shameless cinematic endeavors ever “ripped from the headlines.” Most of the sensational aspects of the Kennedy-Onassis relationship are replicated here—the assassination of a president, the arrangement of a multimillion-dollar marriage contract, the luxury of life on a giant yacht, the controversial business deals. And for everything the filmmakers subtract from the source material (notably absent are stand-ins for Kennedy’s children), the team behind The Greek Tycoon adds in something just as salacious, because the movie features a conniving brother, a suicidal ex-wife, and a tempestuous mistress. It’s all exactly as glamorously trashy as it sounds, right down to the quasi-lookalike casting of Jacqueline Bisset as Kennedy and Anthony Quinn as Onassis. (Perpetually tanned movie/TV hunk James Franciscus appears, somewhat inconsequentially, as The Greek Tycoon’s version of JFK.)
          In the film’s storyline, Theo Tomassis (Quinn) first meets Liz Cassidy (Bisset) and her husband, James Cassidy (Franciscus), while James is a Congressman prepping a presidential campaign. Later, after Liz suffers a miscarriage while living in the White House, she leaves D.C. for a recuperative vacation with Theo in Greece. Then, a year after an assassin shoots and kills James, Liz accepts Theo’s marriage proposal, but with a slew of conditions—such as agreeing to share Theo’s bed only 10 nights each month.

          The Greek Tycoon is a cartoonish riff on history, but the production values are pleasant—cinematographer Anthony Richmond shoots the hell out of the film’s gorgeous Greek locations—and Quinn overacts with his usual operatic verve. Conversely, Bisset and costars Edward Albert (as Theo’s son), Charles Durning (as a U.S. politician), and Raf Vallone (as Theo’s brother) play the material straight, which is unwise. Versatile helmer J. Lee Thompson, who years earlier directed Quinn in The Guns of Navarone (1961), orchestrates the whole silly/tacky endeavor with his usual impersonal proficiency.

The Greek Tycoon: FUNKY

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)

          Creepy, provocative, and sexy, this psychological thriller asks what might happen if a rational modern man began to suspect that he was the reincarnation of someone else—and then complicates that central question by implying that the soul haunting the modern man’s body came back to settle some nasty unfinished business. Michael Sarrazin, perfectly cast because his wide eyes and slim build give him an ethereal quality no matter the circumstances, stars as Peter Proud, a West Coast college professor whose life seems perfect. He’s happy, respected, successful, and romantically involved with a beautiful fellow teacher, Nora (Cornelia Sharpe). Yet when Peter starts experiencing disturbing nightmares and phantom pains that doctors can’t explain, he seeks out help from a paranormal researcher, Samuel (Paul Hecht). Samuel suggests that Peter may be reliving memories from a past life.

          Determined to resolve the situation, Peter tracks down the Massachusetts city in which his nightmares/memories take place. Finding the city confirms to Peter that the reincarnation is real. Next, Peter connects with Marcia (Margot Kidder), the widow of Peter’s prior incarnation, and Ann (Jennifer O’Neil), Marcia’s daughter. Peter doesn’t explain to either of these women why he’s in Massachusetts, partially because he doubts they’ll believe him and partially because in the recurring nightmares/memories, Marcia murders Peter’s prior incarnation. Obsessively investigating the past-life mystery damages Peter’s present-day life, because Nora bails on Peter when the going gets weird. Later, things get even worse when Peter’s relationships with Ann and Marcia gain Freudian dimensions.

          As helmed by J. Lee Thompson, who mixes carnality and savagery in this film much as he did in the great Cape Fear (1962), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is efficient, erotic, and evocative—an offbeat mixture of sleazy thrills and thought-provoking concepts. Although the film loses points for its troika of mediocre female performances (Kidder, O’Neill, and Sharpe are each gorgeous but amateurish), Sarrazin’s intensity keeps the piece on track. Written by Max Ehrlich, who adapted his novel of the same name, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud fits into the mid-’70s trend of sensationalistic pseudoscience in popular culture. Furthermore, the writer gives decent lip service to the philosophical and theological implications of Peter’s experience, because—as the story’s paranormal researcher says at one point—the revelation that reincarnation is real could permanently alter the human experience by erasing fear of death. No dummy, Ehrlich delivers all of this heady material in the form of a story filled with sex and violence.

         And while the film’s brutality is fairly minor, the film’s sexuality is quite intense. Both lurid aspects of the picture converge in a climactic scene (no pun intended) featuring Marcia masturbating in a bathtub while recalling the brutal affections of her late husband. This startling vignette was almost certainly the most graphic depiction of female self-pleasure in a mainstream movie until the release of Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). Yet the presence of such moments gets to the heart of why The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is so watchable. With strong elements ranging from the disturbing psychosexual connotations of the story to the unnerving score by the great Jerry Goldsmith (love those electronic accents!), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud engages the viewer on myriad levels simultaneously. It’s not high art, per se, but it’s definitely not low art, either.

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud: GROOVY

The Passage (1979)

          Yet another lurid adventure flick set in occupied Europe during World War II, The Passage is mildly fascinating for what it lacks—depth and restraint. The plot is so thin that it can be described in one sentence without excluding any significant details: Members of the French resistance ask a farmer living near the French-Spanish border to help an American scientist and his family reach safety while a psychotic SS officer chases after them. That’s the whole storyline, give or take a couple of incidental characters, and the preceding synopsis also describes nearly everything we learn about the characters. Especially considering that the script was written by a novelist adapting his own work—a gentleman named Bruce Nicolaysen—it’s astonishing to encounter a narrative this underdeveloped.

          Furthermore, director J. Lee Thompson, a veteran who by this point in his career seemed content cranking out mindless potboilers, lets actors do whatever the hell they want. In some cases, as with sexy supporting player Kay Lenz, this translates to bored non-acting, and in others, as with main villain Maclolm McDowell, the permissiveness results in outrageous over-acting. Alternating between bug-eyed malevolence and effeminate delicacy, McDowell presents something that’s not so much a performance as a compendium of bad-guy clichés; he’s entertaining in weird moments like his revelation of a swastika-festooned jockstrap, but it seems Thompson never asked McDowell to rein in his flamboyance.

          That said, The Passage is quite watchable if one accepts the movie on its trashy terms. The simplistic plot ensures clarity from beginning to end (notwithstanding the lack of a satisfactory explanation for the scientist’s importance), and Thompson fills the screen with energetic camerawork, nasty violence, and, thanks to Lenz, gratuitous nudity. It should also be noted that leading man Anthony Quinn, who plays the farmer, invests his scenes with macho angst, and that costar James Mason, as the scientist, elevates his scenes with crisp diction and plaintive facial expressions. (The cast also includes Christopher Lee, as a gypsy helping the fugitives, and Patricia Neal, as the scientist’s frail wife.) Even more noteworthy than any of the performances, however, is the gonzo finale, during which Thompson’s style briefly transforms from indifferent to insane—for a few strange moments, The Passage becomes a gory horror show. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Passage: FUNKY

St. Ives (1976)

          I’ve done a fair amount of digging over the years into the deepest, darkest corners of Charles Bronson’s ’70s filmography, not only because he was so damn prolific during that decade (23 movies between 1970 and 1979!), but because his projects were all over the map creatively, from his signature meat-and-potatoes action flicks to occasional character-driven thrillers. St. Ives straddles these extremes, so it would be heartening to report that it’s a lost gem. Alas, it is not. Bronson plays against type as Raymond St. Ives, a crime-book author who moonlights as a courier for assorted disreputable types; the character is a sophisticate instead of the usual Bronson savage. Unfortunately, Bronson doesn’t alter his style to suit the character, so his performance is ordinary at best, and the picture itself churns along strictly by the numbers, delivering one uninspired scene after another until tedium rules. Helmed by regular Bronson collaborator J. Lee Thompson, St. Ives had all sorts of potential to become a pithy mystery complete with a smart-ass hero and a smoldering femme fatale (Jacqueline Bissett). Because that potential is squandered, however, St. Ives is merely an action movie bogged down with ineffective dialogue scenes.
          The movie starts promisingly, layering on interesting character details about the protagonist (he used to be a crime reporter, justifying his nonplussed attitude toward crooks), but once the story gets humming, St. Ives gets stuck in the machinations of a confusing and uninteresting plot, endangering the lead character in ways that don’t have much credibility or impact. The story has something to do with St. Ives being hired by a nefarious figure (John Houseman) to recover stolen ledgers containing incriminating evidence, although the filmmakers never quite explain why the bad guys go to the trouble of hiring an outsider for a simple job. It’s novel for while to watch Bronson get into a different kind of trouble, but soon enough St. Ives falls into the actor’s usual violent groove. Worse, the movie completely falls apart when it tries to present a complex pattern of double-crosses that dull the drama and muddy the narrative. So even though the cast is filled to bursting with fun performers (in addition to the leads, the picture features Dana Elcar, Dick O’Neill, Maximillian Schell, even a young Robert Englund), and even though the fabulously dated jazz-disco score by Lalo Schifrin has spunk, St. Ives is a dud.

St. Ives: LAME

The White Buffalo (1977)

          The further producer Dino De Laurentiis stretched logic and taste in order to emulate the monster-on-the-loose success of Jaws (1975), the more demented his copycat movies became. The producer’s 1976 remake of King Kong made sense because it built upon an established brand and because special-effects technology had evolved since the release of the original Kong four decades previous; similarly, the producer’s 1977 killer-whale thriller Orca made sense because it was about a big fish with big jaws. But The White Buffalo, which is about exactly what the title suggests, is weird as hell from start to finish, not least because it’s hard to imagine De Laurentiis believing that audiences would be terrified by the prospect of a melanin-deficient grazing animal.
          The wackadoodle plot involves Wild Bill Hickcock (Charles Bronson) teaming up with Crazy Horse (Will Sampson)—no, really!—to pursue the demonic white buffalo that haunts Hickock’s dreams. Written by Richard Sale, who adapted his own novel, the story portrays Hickock (traveling under the alias James Otis) as a haunted man who spends much of his time hiding behind wrap-around sunglasses. Many nights, he wakes screaming and sweating because he envisions a white buffalo charging at him, so Hickock travels to the Black Hills on a visionquest. Along the way, he runs into a crusty prospector pal (Jack Warden), who claims to have seen the last living white buffalo and offers to guide Hickock toward the bleached beastie. Once these two venture into the wilderness, they cross paths with Crazy Horse, who has his own reasons for chasing the critter: The buffalo ravaged his village and killed his daughter, so Crazy Horse must kill the monster in order to set his daughter’s soul free.
          None of this makes much sense—especially since director J. Lee Thompson moves the story along so fast that plot twists stack up like the layers of a fever dream—but for aficionados of peculiar ’70s cinema, what really matters is the bizarre texture of this eminently watchable movie. Most of the monster scenes were shot on soundstages, leading to surreal nighttime sequences set in fake snowy forests, and the FX shots of the buffalo are so brazenly fake that they take on a kind of dreamlike power. (The gory sequence in which Crazy Horse’s village gets trampled is particularly disorienting.) Yet the creepiest element of the movie is unquestionably John Barry’s menacing score: As he did with De Laurentiis’ Kong remake, Barry uses sweeping string arrangements and bold horns to give a silly story gravitas. When the movie is really cooking, Barry’s rattling music and Thompson’s swerving camera moves add up to something quite potent. That said, it’s a shame the middle of the picture gets bogged down in subplots, with the titular terror kept offscreen for far too long until resurfacing during the epic climax.
          The oddness of The White Buffalo is accentuated by all-over-the-map acting: Bronson is characteristically grim; Sampson offers as dignified a performance as he can given the circumstances; and supporting players including John Carradine, Kim Novak, Slim Pickens, and Clint Walker contribute salty flavor. Thrown together, the disparate elements equal a truly strange film, even by the high weirdness standards of De Laurentiis’ other ’70s monster mashes. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The White Buffalo: FREAKY