Rabbit, Run (1970)

          Adapted from John Updike’s celebrated 1960 novel about an American everyman whose existential crisis leads him to flee the confines of an unsatisfactory domestic situation, Rabbit, Run is undoubtedly an example of how things get lost in translation when a project leaps from one medium to another. The filmmakers depict the protagonist’s irresponsible behavior without clearly articulating the reasons why he can’t build lasting connections with other people. (One presumes that Updike’s novel was more successful than the film at delineating the leading character’s psyche.) When the movie begins, Harry “Rabbit” Engstrom (James Caan) reaches a breaking point in his marriage to alcoholic Janice (Carrie Snodgress), even though the couple has one child and another is on the way. Following an argument, Harry leaves home and tracks down his former coach, Marty (Jack Albertson), who is now a sad old drunk. Marty introduces Harry to a hooker, Ruth (Anjanette Comer), with whom Harry falls in love. Meanwhile, an overbearing priest, Rev. Eccles (Arthur Hill), encourages Harry to return home. (Meandering subplots involve Harry’s golf games with the priest, as well as Harry’s sexual tension with the priest’s alluring wife.) Betrayals, tragedies, and twists ensue. By the end of it all, Harry’s the same perplexed individual he was at the beginning of the story, even though he’s caused and suffered a lot of pain.

          Caan’s casting is a major detriment. Although he looks the part of a former athlete and unquestionably possess formidable dramatic abilities, his innately macho quality clashes with the role of a sensitive character who is intimidated by life’s petty humiliations. Caan excels at playing men who fight, which means that seeing him portray a man who runs strikes a false chord. In fact, “false” is a suitable adjective for most of this film’s content. From the stilted dialogue to the weird sex scenes (in which footage is optically rocked back and forth while fuzzy guitars and pounding drums reverberate on the soundtrack), nearly all of the stylistic touches that producer/screenwriter Howard B. Kreitsek and director Jack Smight employ are contrived and ineffective. Other than implying that men are entitled to pursue anything they want in life, no matter the circumstances, and that women who fail at motherhood are loathsome, it’s hard to know what the filmmakers meant to say here. Worse, the way they chose to put across their murky thematic statements isn’t especially compelling to watch.

Rabbit, Run: FUNKY

Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)

          This little-known adaptation of Mary Shelley’s eternally popular horror story is a peculiar hybrid. The title implies that the made-for-television project is a faithful adaptation of Shelley’s original 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, but Frankenstein: The True Story takes as many liberties with the narrative as any other adaptation. (Never mind that the use of the word “true” with relation to any version of a wholly fictional story is bizarre.) That said, the story contrived by co-writers Dan Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood (the famous novelist whose work inspired the Cabaret stage shows and film) is filled with ambiguity, imagination, and pathos. Some basic elements, of course, remain the same. The protagonist is Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Leonard Whiting), a brilliant surgeon driven to reckless extremes by grief. He builds a creature from the stolen body parts of corpses, but the creature becomes a murderer whose actions destroy Victor’s life, leading to a climactic showdown.

          The Bachardy-Isherwood script adds and alters details at every stage, for instance transforming the relationship between Victor and his friend, Dr. Henry Clerval (David McCallum), so that Clerval is complicit in making the monster. Furthermore, Bachardy and Isherwood interject a major new character, Dr. Polidori (James Mason), and they offer a creepy new spin on the idea of a monster’s mate through the disturbing character of Prima (Jane Seymour). Both of these characters are riffs on embellishments that Universal Studios created for the classic 1931 horror movie The Bride of Frankenstein. By mixing and matching elements from Shelley’s novel with pieces borrowed from subsequent adaptations and sequels—in a sense, mimicking Victor’s unholy process—the writers contrive a three-hour epic that concludes, as Shelley’s novel does, in the North Pole. Most of Frankenstein: The True Story works on a story level, even though some of the acting (especially by Whiting) is quite flat, and even though Jack Smight’s direction is often perfunctory. (In his defense, the movie’s budget was clearly stretched quite thin by the abundance of costumes and locations.) Perhaps the most interesting addition to the Frankenstein mythos this project offers is the notion of the creature beginning his “life” as an example of physical perfection, only to suffer decay later as his body parts revert to their unnatural state.

          Casting actor Michael Sarrazin as the creature was quite clever, not only because his looks are somewhat otherworldly but also because his signature as an actor was gentle sensitivity; the scenes where he demonstrates savagery are therefore especially harsh and surprising. Similarly, the gorgeous Seymour makes a fascinating Prima because the actress seems to relish contrasting her looks with Prima’s feral nature. Since Whiting is vapid at best, the more colorful actors McCallum and Mason dominate laboratory scenes (of which there are many), and Mason in particular renders many memorable moments because his character does so many grotesque things. Speaking of grotesque things, Frankenstein: The True Story features some of the ugliest events in all of ’70s TV—there’s a beheading, lots of dismemberment, and such—so even though it’s not especially gory, the film doesn’t shy away from horror.

Frankenstein: The True Story: GROOVY

The Traveling Executioner (1970)

          The New Hollywood era was probably the only time The Traveling Executioner could have been made by a major studio, because the film is so dark and weird that at any other point in history, studios would have shunned the project like it was infected with a contagious disease. The movie is about exactly what the title suggests, an entrepreneur who owns an electric chair and shuttles between various Southern jails sending condemned killers to their final destinations. Imaginatively written by one Garrie Bateson (whose only other credits are a pair of early-’70s TV episodes), the picture doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its outlandish premise, but if only for its spectacular opening and closing scenes, it’s worth a look for adventurous viewers.

          Stacy Keach plays the wonderfully named Jonas Candide, a executioner working the Southern U.S. jail circuit in 1918. He’s perfected a colorful routine: As he straps terrified convicts into his chair, which he calls “Reliable” and treats as tenderly as a woman, he gives a spellbinding speech about how one of the men he killed contacted him through a medium and described “the fields of ambrosia” to which he was delivered after death. One warden chides Jonas for making the afterlife sound so appealing that guards are ready to line up for execution after hearing Jonas’ spiel.

          Our hero’s lifestyle gets derailed when he meets Gundred Herzallerliebst (Marianna Hill), the first woman scheduled for a rendezvous with Reliable. Gundred is persistent and slick, working the court system to obtain a series of stays on her execution, and she’s also a beauty willing to use her formidable wiles. Once Gundred gets Jonas in her sights, he’s a goner. She seduces him into feigning maintenance problems with Reliable, and then convinces him to bust her out of prison.

          The movie goes off-track at this point, getting lost in subplots about Jonas raising money for an elaborate breakout scheme, and the movie also loses its tonal focus; composer Jerry Goldsmith scores scenes in the middle of the picture like high comedy, as if the sequence of Jonas establishing a temporary brothel inside a prison is the height of hilarity. This discursion into ineffective black comedy is a shame, because the really interesting potential of the movie resides in elements like Jonas’ training of an apprentice (Bud Cort) and Jonas’ complex friendship with an amiable warden (M. Emmet Walsh). More damningly, the movie lets Jonas’ dynamic with Gundred slip into the cliché of black widow snaring a man with sex, when something more emotional would have had greater impact.

          Still, Keach is on fire throughout the movie, showing off his physical grace and his silky vocal delivery; the scene of him trying to sweet-talk a bank manager into providing a loan by pandering to the man’s patriotism is terrific. Even better, the dark turn the movie takes in its last act is simultaneously poetic and tragic, so by the end of the picture, Jonas’ peculiar identity as an evangelist for the afterlife has returned to the fore. This strange little picture also looks great, with journeyman director Jack Smight and veteran cinematographer Philip Lathrop assembling a series of stark widescreen frames that alternate between the shadowy spaces of prisons and dusty panoramas that make the picture feel like a deranged Western. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Traveling Executioner: FREAKY