Catch My Soul (1974)

          Mixing folk songs, religious allegories, Shakespeare, and show tunes, the unique musical Catch My Soul is an interesting attempt at . . . something. Originally presented on the London stage by writer/producer Jack Good, Catch My Soul was billed as “the rock Othello.”  Once Good and producer Richard M. Rosenbloom set out to make a film version, they hired folksinger Richie Havens to play the leading role, while retaining Lance LeGault from the original stage cast to portray the scheming Iago. Film actors Season Hubley and Susan Tyrrell were added to the mix, along with singers Bonnie and Delaney Bramlett and Tony Joe White. Overseeing this eclectic cast was director Patrick McGoohan, better known as an actor in such projects as the 1960s TV series The Prisoner. This was his only feature as a director.

          Set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the picture depicts the travails of an evangelist named Othello (Havens). While living with a commune alongside the demonic Iago, Othello falls in love with and marries the angelic Desdemona (Hubley). Iago, whom the film portrays as a manifestation of Lucifer, foments strife by making Othello believe that Desdemona has been unfaithful with Othello’s friend, Cassio (White). Betrayals, lies, recriminations, and tragedy ensue.

          Alternately titled Santa Fe Satan, this picture suffers from an overabundance of thematic ambition and a shortage of credibility. Jumping onto the ’60s/’70s bandwagon of meshing counterculture imagery with religious parables makes Catch My Soul feel heavy-handed from the first frame to the last, which neutralizes most of the subtleties of the underlying text. At the same time, the storytelling is fragmented, as if McGoohan was unable or unwilling to shoot scenes in proper continuity, and the acting is wildly uneven. Havens, appearing in his first dramatic role, has a quietly authoritative presence but seems awkward while delivering dialogue. Hubley and White barely register, and Tyrrell lends her signature eccentricity to a role that ultimately feels inconsequential. (In making room for tunes, the filmmakers gutted Shakespeare’s text.) The film’s standout performance comes from the man who acclimated to his role onstage. For those who only know LeGault from his villainous role in the ’80s TV series The A-Team, watching him in Catch My Soul is startling. Not only can he sing, with a voice as low and dark as an icy wind howling through a cavern, but he’s lithe and loose, and his sleepy eyelids give his visage an otherworldly quality.

          Whereas the film’s tunes are forgettable—though each hits roughly the correct note of menace or longing or wonderment—the picture’s visual component is not. Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall, a three-time Oscar winner, shoots the hell out of Catch My Soul, whether he’s infusing desert scenes with scorching color or sculpting eerie nighttime images from creative juxtapositions of hot accent lights and ink-deep shadows. Although Catch My Soul doesn’t consistently command or reward the viewer’s attention, the virtues of certain elements ensure that every so often, something dynamic happens.

Catch My Soul: FUNKY

The Moonshine War (1970)

          Among the many reasons why fans of the pithy novelist Elmore Leonard celebrated the wonderful ’90s movies adapted from his books—Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, and so on—is the fact that Leonard had been poorly served by Hollywood in previous decades. Consider The Moonshine War, for which Leonard received screen credit as the adapter of his own novel. Whether because of studio interference, weak direction, or other unknown factors, the movie that reached theaters bears little of Leonard’s distinctive stamp. Some of the characterizations are colorful and some of the dialogue is tasty, but otherwise the movie is murky and tepid, unremittingly artificial, and weighed down by colossal miscasting. (Playing the film’s principal Kentucky rednecks are a pair of corn-fed Midwesterners and a pair of urbane New Yorkers.) While The Moonshine War is basically tolerable, not a single frame of the film can be taken seriously.

          Set during Prohibition, the convoluted plot begins with federal agent Frank Long (Patrick McGoohan) arriving in Kentucky to visit an old Army buddy, Son Martin (Alan Alda). Son is a successful moonshiner, and Frank reveals an audacious scheme to extort money from Son in exchange for keeping Son’s operation secret from the government. Son, backed by an army of hillbilly goons including the cheerfully corrupt Sheriff Baylor (Will Geer), refuses Frank’s overture. Then Frank calls in the heavy artillery—a psychotic former dentist named Dr. Taulbee (Richard Widmark), who travels with a trigger-happy sidekick. Frank wages war against Son’s people until tragedies reveal to Frank that he’s gone too far. Directed without any comprehension or flair by journeyman Richard Quine, The Moonshine War is as hard to follow as it is to believe. For the first hour of the movie, it’s unclear whether Frank is the hero or the villain, and because he never clearly articulates his agenda to anyone, it’s hard to shake the sense that maybe he’s running some elaborate sting on behalf of the government. The movie’s buttery-soft Metrocolor look is a problem, too, since bright lighting and eye-popping colors make most of the film’s scenes feel as sprightly as musical numbers. Together, the problems of look and tone make it difficult to discern whether The Moonshine War is supposed to be a comedy or a drama or both.

          Yet it’s bad casting that ultimately dooms The Moonshine War. McGoohan, with his crisp diction and snobbish demeanor, is absurdly out of place in every single scene, to say nothing of the fact that he seems cold and cruel. Alda, such a fine interpreter of the Sensitive American Man, does his best to sell an illusion of illiteracy and primal emotion, but he, too, is not where he belongs. Widmark fares slightly better as a smiling psycho, perhaps because he played versions of the same role for decades, and Geer seems perfectly at home chugging white lightning from Mason jars and spewing down-home aphorisms. It’s also worth noting the random folks who play small roles, including Harry Carey Jr., Teri Garr, Bo Hopkins, John Schuck, Tom Skerritt, and jazz singer Joe Williams.

The Moonshine War: FUNKY

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

          The final collaboration between director Don Siegel and his superstar protégé, Clint Eastwood, Escape from Alcatraz is a smart thriller about exactly what the title suggests—the only known successful escape from the titular prison, a fortress-like structure built on a small island in the San Francisco Bay. For three decades, from 1933 to 1963, “The Rock” was considered one of the most secure federal prisons in the U.S., and the real-life jailbreak that inspired this movie occurred in 1962, just one year prior to the prison’s closure. (J. Campbell Bruce wrote a nonfiction book about the incident shortly afterward, and screenwriter Richard Tuggle adapted the book.) Although Eastwood and Siegel reportedly had a tense relationship on the project—it’s rumored that Eastwood directed much of the picture because his aging friend was losing his touch—the film is as smooth as anything either man made during this era.

          Siegel’s storied efficiency is visible in the minimalistic storytelling, while Eastwood’s penchant for gloomy lighting and leisurely pacing adds a meditative quality. It helps, tremendously, that the material plays to the strengths of both men. Portraying a career criminal obsessed with breaking out of an “escape-proof” prison, Eastwood seethes as only he can, forming a community of like-minded inmates while enduring the cruel machinations of a nameless warden (Patrick McGoohan). Siegel meticulously depicts every step along the would-be escapees’ dangerous path, from carving a secret tunnel to preparing for a brazen leap into the choppy waters surrounding the prison. Some of the story mechanics feel like standard prison-picture stuff, like the development of a sympathetic geezer (Roberts Blossom) whom we can sense from his first appearance will not breathe free air, but the use of stock characters suits the milieu. Similarly, loading the cast with workaday character actors—Eastwood and McGoohan notwithstanding—helps accentuate the idea of prison as an equalizing environment.

          More than anything, however, Escape from Alcatraz works as a mood piece, building ambience and tension as we, the viewers, become more and more invested in seeing the “heroes” succeed. (Regular Eastwood collaborators including composer Jerry Fielding and cinematographer Bruce Surtees contribute immeasurably to the film’s menacing quality.) Escape from Alcatraz may not be about much, beyond the usual pap about man’s inhumanity to man and the sweet nectar of freedom, but it’s an offbeat action picture in that many of the thrills stem from characters scheming in private; rather than building toward confrontations, it’s a movie about characters avoiding confrontations.

Escape from Alcatraz: GROOVY

Brass Target (1978)

          Crammed with big-name actors, colorful locations, and complex schemes, Brass Target should be a rousing thriller. Unfortunately, the team behind the picture tried to do too many things, and the starring role was unwisely given to John Cassavettes—who by this point in his career preferred directing low-budget films to acting in Hollywood flicks—so the combination of a confusing script and a phoned-in leading performance makes it difficult to appreciate the picture’s many admirable qualities. Set in 1945 Europe, just after the defeat of the Nazis, Brass Target begins with an exciting robbery: Mysterious criminals attack an Allied train and steal a fortune in Nazi gold. The theft divides Allied powers, because Russians blame Americans for the loss, so belligerent U.S. General George S. Patton (George Kennedy) vows to recover the gold and prove his country’s innocence. And then the movie veers off-course.

          Instead of focusing on Patton and the conspirators who want to impede his investigation, the picture shifts to an Army detective, Major Joe De Lucca (Cassavettes), who digs into the robbery while dealing with myriad personal melodramas. Among other things, he’s got a fractious friendship with Col. Mike McCauley (Patrick McGoohan), a schemer who trades in stolen war loot, and both men love Mara (Sophia Loren), a European who survived the war by sleeping her way to safety. The movie’s plot gets even more complicated when the conspirators—primarily Col. Donald Rogers (Robert Vaughn) and Col. Walter Gilchrist (Edward Herrmann)—hire an enigmatic European assassin (Max Von Sydow) to kill Patton lest the general discover their crime.

          Any one of these storylines would have been enough for a satisfying movie, so Brass Target ends up giving each of its component elements short shrift. More damningly, the best scenes, which depict the assassin’s meticulous planning of an attempt on Patton’s life, feel like repeats of similar scenes in the acclaimed thriller The Day of the Jackal (1973). Nonetheless, Von Sydow gives the picture’s best performance, especially since the other acting in the movie is highly erratic.

          Cassavettes preens and scowls like some sort of irritable peacock; Loren looks lost, which is understandable seeing as how her character is anemically underdeveloped; Kennedy plays Patton as a foul-mouthed bully, his acting inevitably suffering by comparison to George C. Scott’s Oscar-winning turn in Patton (1970); and McGoohan is terrible, his accent shifting inexplicably from one line to the next. Still, Brass Target has tremendous production values, and the milieu of the story—postwar Europe as a lawless frontier—is fascinating. Plus, the central gimmick of the narrative, a conspiracy-theory explanation for the real Patton’s death in 1945, is imaginative. One suspects, however, that the premise was explored to stronger effect in the Frederick Nolan novel from which this film was adapted. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Brass Target: FUNKY

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

          A dense historical drama bursting with sex, treachery, and violence, Mary, Queen of Scots features enough narrative for a miniseries, so viewers not already versed in the backstory of the British royal family (myself included) might have difficulty grasping all of the picture’s nuances. That said, the broad strokes are (relatively) simple. In the year 1560, 18-year-old Mary Stuart (Vanessa Redgrave) ascends to the French throne after the death of her husband, the Gallic monarch. Stuart is also, by birthright, the queen of Scotland. Advisors send Mary to Scotland as a means of ensuring her security (female leaders were perpetually under threat in Mary’s era), but Mary’s return to Scotland alarms her cousin, England’s Queen Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson).

          A fervent Protestant, Elizabeth recognizes that Mary’s potential claim to the English throne could make her a rallying point for Catholic factions looking to reclaim power over the British Empire. Before long, the respective queens are locked in mortal battle. Others caught in the palace intrigue include Mary’s ambitious brother, James Stuart (Patrick McGoohan), who believes he can manipulate his sister and claim Scotland for himself; David Riccio (Ian Holm), a clever representative of the Vatican who aids Mary; and Lord Damley (Timothy Dalton), an aristocrat sent by Elizabeth to tempt Mary into a marriage with political advantages for Elizabeth.

          It’s quite a lot to follow, though the principal focus is the contrast between the two queens: Elizabeth is a master strategist who remains unwed lest a husband diminish her stature, whereas Mary is a naïve optimist who tumbles into impetuous romances until time and tragedy make her wise.

          The leading performances are impeccable. Jackson rips through dialogue with wicked glee, adroitly illustrating how Elizabeth had to be smarter than every man around her simply to survive, and yet Jackson also shows intense undercurrents of longing and rage; though onscreen for less time than Redgrave, Jackson commands the picture with a deeply textured performance. Redgrave gradually introduces layers of complexity behind her luminous beauty, succinctly demonstrating the maturation of a woman in impossible circumstances. As for the men surrounding these powerful actresses, they’re a mixed bag. Dalton and Holm play their arch roles well, though each succumbs to florid excesses. McGoohan is quietly insistent in his vaguely villainous role, and Nigel Davenport (as Mary’s protector, Lord Bothwell) gives a virile turn marked by equal amounts of bluster and bravery.
          The film looks fantastic, with immaculate costumes and sets creating a vivid sense of the story’s 16th-century milieu, and composer John Barry anchors key moments with a typically lush musical score. Mary, Queen of Scots may be too arcane for casual viewers—it’s not as accessible, for instance, as the ’60s royal dramas The Lion in Winter and A Man for All Seasons—and clarity suffers because the movie barrels through so many eventful decades. But as a showcase for great acting and as an introduction to an amazing historical figure, it’s well worth examining.

Mary, Queen of Scots: GROOVY

Silver Streak (1976)

          A box-office hit that gave birth to the on-again/off-again screen duo of funnymen Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Silver Streak is impossible to take seriously for the same reason it’s impossible to dislike: The movie forgoes credibility in order to entertain viewers by any means possible. Essentially a Hitchcock-type thriller played for laughs, the movie follows an unassuming book editor (Wilder) during a cross-country train trip filled with unexpected danger, intrigue, and romance. As the tale grows more and more absurd, George stumbles into a dalliance with a sexy secretary (Jill Clayburgh), gets caught in the crosshairs of an evil conspirator (Patrick McGoohan), befriends a jive-talkin’ thief (Pryor), and survives accidents and near-misses in airplanes, cars, and trains. He gets arrested, chased, framed, shot at, thrown off a moving train, and targeted for murder, and yet he displays great moral character by striving to save his new lover and triumph over the bad guys.

          It’s all very silly, especially with the contrived McGuffin plot device relating to priceless letters written by Rembrant, but everyone involved in Silver Streak approaches their work with the same lighthearted attitude. Director Arthur Hiller keeps things moving briskly, creating comfortable spaces in which his actors can showcase their likeable personalities, and writer-producer Colin Higgins, whose gift for character-driven comedy distinguished ’70s movies like the great Harold and Maude (1971) and the effervescent Foul Play (1978), pumps the movie full of amusing one-liners. So, even though the picture drags on far too long and gets mired in bland action sequences like the elaborate shootout during the climax, Silver Streak is consistently watchable.

          Much of the credit goes to Wilder, who mostly eschews his signature hysterics while playing a straightforward romantic lead; he’s surprisingly believable as a dashing man of the world sharing flirtatious banter with Clayburgh, and his reaction shots whenever things get wild are priceless. Clayburgh is appealing in her mostly decorative role, while Pryor slides into an easy buddy-movie rapport with Wilder. Their obvious shtick, predicated on the differences between a streetwise African-American and an uptight honky, is epitomized in the famous scene of Pryor covering Wilder’s face with shoe polish and teaching Wilder to act like a “brother.” There’s no denying the humor of Wilder emulating urban swagger, but there’s also no denying the way the scene perpetuates demeaning stereotypes. Still, Silver Streak is too milquetoast to seem offensive: The racially insensitive gags are just tools the movie uses to elicit cheap laughs, and it’s hard to get angry at a picture whose only goal is making viewers happy.

Silver Streak: GROOVY