The Class of Miss MacMichael (1978)

          Offering a seriocomic look at troubles plaguing a British school for maladjusted students, The Class of Miss MacMichael touches on issues to which viewers anywhere can relate, such as the challenges of working for autocrats and the difficulty of inserting individualism into inflexible institutions. Glenda Jackson, all fire and idealism, plays Conor MacMichael, one of the school’s teachers. She’s a caring educator who embraces the radical idea that treating young people with respect might compel them to work hard, so her natural enemy is Terence Sutton (Oliver Reed), the school’s unfeeling headmaster. He views students as little more than discipline problems, so he uses intimidation and punishment to quell rebelliousness. There’s never much doubt where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie, and Reed plays his role in such a flamboyant style that the headmaster is too cartoonish to take seriously. Given this imbalance, The Class of Miss MacMichael doesn’t offer many real insights or surprises. It’s a position paper with a few jokes and some melodrama. That said, Jackson, as always, is a commanding screen presence, so she imbues the movie with humor, ferocity, and passion.

         As for the plot, don’t expect much, since The Class of Miss MacMichael has an episodic structure. Conor bonds with her students, counseling a promiscuous girl about sex and trying to keep a mentally challenged boy out of trouble, even as the headmaster imposes strict rules and threatens Conor’s job security. Meanwhile, Conor blends her personal and professional lives by involving her American boyfriend, Martin (Michael Murphy), in activities with her students. Among Conor’s few allies at work is Una (Rosalind Cash), an American teacher with a knack for managing the mentally challenged boy’s periodic meltdowns. Although The Class of Miss MacMichael feels longer than its 94 minutes thanks to the lack of a compelling overarching storyline, most of the film’s vignettes are interesting. Scenes with Jackson overseeing controlled chaos feel credible, and Murphy’s affability adds a pleasant color whenever he’s onscreen. Reed, however, seems as if he’s in a different movie, though he shares blame for his over-the-top performance with director Silvio Narizzano, who should have recognized that Reed’s campy style clashes with the straightforward work of the other actors. In one scene, for instance, Reed’s character literally knocks the heads of two students together.

The Class of Miss MacMichael: FUNKY

Melinda (1972)

          Something of a blaxploitation sampler platter, the overlong, over-plotted, and overwrought Melinda combines conspiracies, crime, martial arts, romance, revenge, and a whole lot of jive-talkin’, the latter element mostly issuing from the mouth of protagonist Frankie J. Parker, an arrogant Los Angeles DJ. The picture is fairly entertaining on a scene-to-scene basis, and it contains some respectable acting by costars Rosalind Cash and Paul Stevens, among others. Moreover, the sheer excess of the movie is beguiling, simply because Melinda wends through so many different genres during its 109 eventful (and frequently violent) minutes. The film doesn’t hang together, of course, and very little of what happens feels credible from either an emotional or a logical perspective. Nonetheless, copping the right attitude often helps put even the slightest blaxploitation flick over, and every so often Melinda hits a pleasing stance. Even when it doesn’t, the disconnect between leading man Calvin Lockhart’s uptight screen person and the movie’s down-and-dirty milieu is weirdly fascinating.

          When the story begins, Frankie (Lockhart) seems like a man in full. In addition to his successful career as a DJ, he struts around town wooding ladies and spends his free time perfecting his martial-arts skills under the tutelage of an instructor named Charles (played by future chop-socky-cinema star Jim Kelly in his big-screen debut). Frankie meets his match in Melinda (Vonetta McGee), a beautiful woman who’s just as self-assured as Frankie. They become lovers, much to the consternation of Frankie’s ex, the mob-connected Terry (Cash). Then things get complicated (to say nothing of contrived and convoluted). It seems Melinda knows the whereabouts of an audio recording that incriminates big-time gangster Mitch (Stevens), so she and Frankie become embroiled in a bloody adventure.

          Melinda hits some strange notes along the way. During the lengthy scene of Frankie and Melinda having sex for the first time, director Hugh A. Robertson repeatedly cuts to a thug standing in the hall outside Frankie’s apartment, masturbating while he listens to the couple’s carnal bliss. In a nasty flashback scene, Mitch sits and laughs while his underlings gang-bang his girlfriend. And in the very first scene, Frankie lays down goofy trash talk while coaxing Charles into a sparring session: “I’m ever-ready for some lightweight shit, but you better come with somethin’ heavy—I’m packed with dynamite!” Whatever you say, man.

Melinda: FUNKY

Uptown Saturday Night (1974) & Let’s Do It Again (1975) & A Piece of the Action (1977)

          Though he’s best known for his ultra-serious onscreen persona, Sidney Poitier not only starred in but also directed the hit comedy Uptown Saturday Night, the first of three Poitier-helmed ’70s pictures in which the actor shares the screen with funnyman Bill Cosby. The movies are not a series, since neither characters nor storylines recur from film to film. However, the movies all boast impressive casts, slick production values, and a certain kind of moral integrity, since they emulate the blaxpoitation aesthetic without perpetuating blaxploitation stereotypes. They’re celebratory movies designed to entertain and inspire African-American audiences.

          Uptown Saturday Night is the weakest of the trio, partially because of an episodic story structure and partially because Poitier and his collaborators let scenes drag on to excessive lengths. Another issue, which troubles the entire series, is that Cosby rarely gets to embark on comedic flights of fancy. Whenever he does, the movies receive a huge uplift, which means that any time he’s stuck delivering exposition or playing bland dramatic scene, the series’ best resource is untapped. Uptown Saturday Night stars Poitier as Steve, a steelworker, and Cosby as Wardell, a cab driver. One evening, Wardell persuades Steve to visit an expensive brothel/gambling joint/nightclub called Madam Zenobia’s. The blue-collar guys pay dearly for visiting the high-roller establishment, because robbers invade the club and steal personal items from everyone in attendance. The next day, Wendell realizes that his wallet, which was taken by the crooks, contains a winning lottery ticket worth $50,000.

          In order to find the stolen goods, the friends infiltrate the local underworld, which puts them in the middle of a war between gangsters Geechie Dan (Harry Belafonte) and Silky Slim (Calvin Lockhart). Culture-clash gags ensue, climaxing in a goofy finale that involves a car chase, cross-dressing, and a funkadelic picnic. While Poitier displays almost zero control over pacing and tone, the movie features excellent supporting turns by Roscoe Lee Browne and Rosalind Cash. (The less said about Belafonte’s embarrassing Marlon Brando imitation, complete with cotton-stuffed cheeks, the better.) By far, the best scene in Uptown Saturday Night is Richard Pryor’s extended cameo as a nervous con man, because he explodes with the edge and energy the rest of the film sorely needs.

          Poitier and his collaborators righted the ship for Let’s Do It Again, the best of the trio. A straight-up caper comedy filled with colorful characters and crazy schemes, the movie works fairly well almost from start to finish, though it should’ve been 15 minutes shorter. This time, Billy (Cosby) and Clyde (Poitier) are blue-collar types who run a con in order to raise money for their fraternal lodge, a vital community hub. Traveling to New Orleans with their wives—and $18,000 in purloined lodge money—the boys secretly hypnotize prizefighter Bootney Farnsworth (Jimmie Walker), then place huge bets on Bootney before a title match. Scenes of Billy and Clyde dressing like pimps while they pretend to be players are cheerfully outlandish. Predictably, fixing fights gets our heroes into hot water with two New Orleans gangsters, Biggie Smalls (Lockhart) and Kansas City Mack (John Amos). Once again, high jinks ensue.

          Some of the material is wheezy, like the bit of escaping a hotel room with tied-up bedsheets, but most of the scenes are inventive and lively. Cosby also gets to do more pure shtick this time around, and the tunes on the soundtrack are fantastic—soul-music legend Curtis Mayfield composed the score as well as several original songs, recruiting the Staple Singers to perform the songs. Let’s Do It Again has many famous admirers, including the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., who borrowed his nickname “Biggie Smalls” from the movie.

          The quasi-series took a strange turn with the final entry, A Piece of the Action, which is a social-issue drama disguised as a comedy. Running an exhausting 135 minutes, the movie opens with three vibrant heist sequences. The robbers are Dave (Cosby) and Manny (Poitier), who neither know each other nor work together. Enter Detective Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones), a recently retired cop who summons the crooks to a hotel room and blackmails them. In exchange for sitting on evidence that could put them in jail for years, Joshua forces the thieves to volunteer at a community center for at-risk youth. Once this plot twist kicks in, the movie becomes a riff on Poitier’s hit To Sir, With Love (1967). While Dave tries to find jobs for the youths at the community center, Manny becomes the kids’ teacher, giving tough-love lessons about dignity and responsibility.

          Many scenes in A Piece of the Action are downright heavy, such as a fierce showdown during which brash student Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) drives idealistic teacher Sarah (Hope Clarke) to tears by characterizing her as a dilettante exploiting poor African-Americans. Later still, the movie becomes a sort of thriller, because thugs from the heroes’ pasts show up for revenge. Despite featuring strong performances and sincere rhetoric, A Piece of the Action is awkward and unwieldy. Therefore, while it’s easily the most edifying of the three pictures, it might also be the least entertaining. Worse, the movie features Cosby delivering a crass rape joke that now has unwanted associations.

          Rumors have swirled for years that one or all of the Cosby/Poitier pictures would be remade, with Will Smith’s name perpetually floated as a likely participant.

Uptown Saturday Night: FUNKY

Let’s Do It Again: GROOVY

A Piece of the Action: FUNKY

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

          While it’s far from the worst blaxploitation horror flick—compared to Blackenstein (1973), anything is a masterpiece—this Afrocentric riff on Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not good. Lots of interesting ideas bubble under the surface, notably the concept of a serum altering a man’s race, but Lawrence Woolner’s atrocious script bungles everything from character motivations to simple continuity. Even the basic premise of the picture, the specific nature of how a man transforms into a monster, is fuzzy. The first time the main character injects himself with the serum that releases his inner beast, he becomes an animalistic killer who can barely utter monosyllables. Later, however, he retains his hyper-educated speech patterns after transforming. Furthermore, in his first outing as a monster, the main character flinches from a small knife wound, but later he shrugs off bullets.

          Alas, the inability to properly track sci-fi “rules” is ultimately the least of the picture’s problems. Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is the sort of discombobulated mess in which characters come and go based on what’s convenient for any given scene, so, for instance, the main character never seems to share the same space with his coworker/girlfriend outside of the lab they share. Huh? Bernie Casey stars as Dr. Henry Pryde, a scientist developing a means of regenerating liver tissue because his mother died of liver disease. He works alongside Dr. Billie Worth (Rosalind Cash), and he volunteers at a free clinic where one of his patients is a prostitute named Linda (Marie O’Henry). Eager to test his theories, Henry injects himself and becomes a quasi-albino killer who gets mistaken for a white man while he rampages through Watts, accruing a body count of street people. Cops investigate the murders, but Linda, the booker, figures out the culprit’s identity first and confronts Henry. A lengthy chase featuring a King Kong-style climb of the Watts Towers concludes the film.

          Director William Crain, who previously helmed the enjoyable Blacula (1972), suffers badly for association with inferior material. He stages a few decent action beats, and the intimate scenes between Casey and Cash—as well as those between Casey and O’Henry—have real warmth. Crain also coaxes humor from the banter between black cop Jackson (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) and white cop O’Connor (Milt Kogan); Jackson delivers the amusing line, “Brother man, this situation is rapidly becoming insalubrious—meanin’ we about to stomp a mud hole in yo’ ass.” In other words, this unholy mess of a picture isn’t without its enjoyable moments, but the crappy storytelling and deadly pacing are as murderous to enjoyment as the half-assed monster makeup created by FX icon Stan Winston.

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde: LAME

Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975)

          Tackling the hot-button issue of racial profiling by police officers, and also dramatizing the social ill of cops closing ranks at the expense of morality, Cornbread, Earl and Me adds an interesting panel to the quilt of ’70s African-American cinema. Dramatic, heartfelt, and impassioned, the movie aspires to be deeply moving, but the filmmakers’ shortcomings limit the heights to which the film ascends. Ultimately, Cornbread, Earl and Me is more respectable than wonderful. Nonetheless, seeing as how it was made at a time when most Hollywood films about the black experience were presented through the demeaning stereotypes of blaxploitation, Cornbread, Earl and Me deserves credit for approaching its subject matter with compassion and respect.

          The title refers to three friends living in the inner city. Nathaniel “Cornbread” Hamilton (Jamaal Wilkes) is an award-winning high-school basketball player who’s about to leave for college and, presumably, a glorious career in the NBA. Two of Cornbread’s biggest fans are neighborhood youths Earl Carter (Tierre Turner) and Wilford Robinson (Larry Fishburne). One tragic day, Cornbread inadvertently runs into the path of two policemen, Atkins (Bernie Casey) and Golich (Vince Martorano), who are pursuing a black suspect. Mistaking Cornbread for the suspect, the cops shoot the basketball player to death. In the aftermath, Cornbread’s hardworking parents, Sam (Stack Pierce) and Leona (Madge Sinclair), hire attorney Benjamin Blackwell (Moses Gunn) to sue the city for wrongful death. The police department responds with intimidation and threats. At one point, thuggish Sgt. Danaher (Stefan Gierasch) actually hits young Wilford, who saw the event happen, and warns Wilford’s mom, Sarah (Rosalind Cash), that her welfare checks will be suspended if Wilford testifies against the police. Caught in the middle of the crisis is Atkins, a black cop who grew up in the same neighborhood where Cornbread was killed.

          Although the plot, which was extrapolated from a novel by Ronald Fair, is quite schematic, Cornbread, Earl and Me works fairly well as a narrative. Atkins and Cornbread represent different pathways for escaping poverty, so the various compromises associated with racial assimilation are addressed. Similarly, Wilford’s family represents the pressures felt by those who need government support to survive, yet must occasionally bite the hand that feeds. Overall, the film effectively illustrates the mixture of deprivation, fear, hope, and sacrifice that permeates the existence of inner-city residents who try to live honorably in a world filled with dishonorable people. And if the ending is a bit tidy, offering something closer to wish-fulfillment than to reality, then it’s possible to look at Cornbread, Earl and Me as a hopeful urban fable. The picture also benefits from strong work by such veterans as Cash, Gunn, and Sinclair—as well as an endearing performance by relative newcomer Fishburne, who was in his early teens when he shot the picture.

Cornbread, Earl and Me: GROOVY

The New Centurions (1972)

          This erratic but nervy film was released at a time when popular portrayals of policemen were mostly limited to extremes—the sanitized, such as the 1968-1975 TV series Adam-12, and the scandalous, such as the 1971 feature Dirty Harry. Based on the first novel by real-life former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh, The New Centurions occupies an unsettling place between these approaches. Characterizing policemen as victims of physical and psychological violence who are lucky to reach retirement alive—and sane—the movie is melodramatic and occasionally overwrought. Yet, when viewed as either an intense character drama or as a historical corrective to one-sided narratives about law enforcement, The New Centurions gains a certain degree of validity. It’s also quite well made, with excellent long-lens photography by Ralph Woolsey capturing the soulless textures of Los Angeles in a way that accentuates the desensitizing grind of police patrols.

          Furthermore, the movie contains a handful of vivid performances, from the showy leading turns by Stacy Keach and George C. Scott to colorful bit parts played by an eclectic roster of actors including William Atherton, Erik Estrada, Clifton James, Ed Lauter, Roger E. Mosley, Pepe Serna, James B. Sikking, and Dolph Sweet. And then there are the actors whose significant supporting turns complement the rhythms of Keach’s and Scott’s work—Jane Alexander, Rosalind Cash, and Scott Wilson, all three of whom deliver performances filled with palpable emotion. So even if screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and director Richard Fleischer let the story run amok at times, The New Centurions contains dozens of moments that connect.

          Although it’s essentially an ensemble piece, the movie focuses on Roy Fehler (Keach), a rookie cop who hits the streets right after the opening credits and is partnered with veteran Sergeant Kilvinski (Scott). At first, Fehler is a soft-spoken married man working his way through law school. As the movie progresses, he becomes a cynical adrenaline junkie who tanks his marriage with a combination of alcoholism and recklessness. Meanwhile, Kilvinski ages out of the force and confronts the depressing truth that he’s lost without a badge. This psychoanalytic approach to police drama is commonplace today, but it was innovative in 1972, which is why it’s easy forgive the filmmakers—and Wambaugh—for the excesses of the story, all of which serve useful metaphorical purposes. Every death in The New Centurions adds to the overall theme of the price that brave, crazy, and/or naïve men pay for doing a dangerous job.

          After all, who could be expected to keep their wits when faced with an endless cycle of new crooks and recidivists? “There’s always another asshole on the street,” Kilvinski says at one point. “You can’t stop ’em all.” And, as Fehler remarks in another scene, it’s not as if the public’s support for cops is overwhelming, because the film is set in a time when street justice was complicated by the rise of the suspect-rights movement: “Last year, everybody was screaming about the lack of freedom—this year, everybody’s screaming about the lack of control.” In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The New Centurions: GROOVY

The Monkey Hu$tle (1976)

There’s an interesting and offbeat blaxploitation movie buried somewhere inside The Monkey Hu$tle, but the film’s meritorious elements are suffocated by an incoherent script and half-assed postproduction. For fans of actor Yaphet Kotto, the movie is worth a look because he gives a charming performance as a flim-flam man with funky jargon and a natty wardrobe; Kotto even seems like a credible romantic lead in his too-brief scenes with underused costar Rosalnd Cash. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t primarily about Kotto’s character—instead, The Monkey Hu$tle has about five different characters jockeying for pole position, just like the movie has about five different storylines competing for attention. As a result, the picture is a discombobulated mess, a problem made worse by lazy scoring that features the same enervated funk jams over and over again. Set in Chicago, the movie begins with Daddy Foxx (Kotto), a con man who enlists local youths as accomplices/apprentices. Daddy Foxx’s newest aide is Baby ’D (Kirk Calloway), much to the chagrin of the boy’s older brother, Win (Randy Brooks), a musician who’s had troubles with the law. Each of these three characters has a romantic partner, and the movie also presents Goldie (Rudy Rae Moore), a hustler who’s alternately Daddy Foxx’s friend and rival, plus other subplots including the threat to a black neighborhood posed by impending construction of a freeway. Amid all of this, the single thread that receives the most screen time, inexplicably, relates to Win securing a set of drums. Although The Monkey Hu$tle is so shapeless that it feels like the movie’s still just getting started by the time it’s over, some of the acting is fairly good and the production values are excellent; as a travelogue depicting inner-city Chicago circa the mid-’70s, the movie has value. However, the realism of the settings is undercut whenever the ridiculous Moore comes onscreen, with his atrocious acting and his costumes that seem like leftovers from a Commodores show. Had producer/director Arthur Marks built a solid film around Kotto’s endearing characterization, he might have had something. Instead, The Monkey Hu$tle merely contains glimmers of a legitimate movie.

The Monkey HuStle: LAME

Amazing Grace (1974)

An interesting mini-trend during the ’70s involved the resurgence of stars from yesteryear, with young-at-heart rascals George Burns and Ruth Gordon among the beneficiaries of unique projects catered to aged actors. Yet some performers from earlier generations returned to less laudatory effect, as in the awful comedy Amazing Grace, which features iconic “chitlin circuit” comedienne Jackie “Moms” Mabley. Despite having found the energy for career-revitalizing appearances on the TV show Laugh-In during the late ’60s, by the time she made Amazing Grace, Mabley was showing her years in the worst ways. It’s painful to watch her struggle through line readings and physical actions, so even though she basically delivers her characterization with the desired level of cartoonish sassiness, the sum effect is like watching your dotty grandmother tell an old story nobody wants to hear anymore. It’s a shame no one had the decency to pull the plug on this project once the lead actress’ limitations became apparent. Set in Baltimore and offering a silly, Capra-esque plot, Amazing Grace concerns busybody senior Grace (Mabley), who discovers that her next-door neighbor, mayoral candidate Welton J. Waters (Moses Gunn), is in the pocket of a rich (white) criminal named Annenberg (James Karen). Aided by her annoying friend, recently retired porter Forthwith Wilson (Slappy White), Grace sweet-talks Welton into the bosom of the lord, freeing him from corruption and even curing Welton’s wife (Rosalind Cash) of alcoholism. Each scene in Amazing Grace is more trite and vapid than the preceding, and the movie drags torturously as it stretches to include pointless cameos by old-time African-American performers Butterfly McQueen and Stepin Fetchit. Even if Mabley had been in better condition, Amazing Grace would still have been terrible—but given the condition of the leading actress, the movie is downright pathetic.

Amazing Grace: SQUARE

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