Deliver Us from Evil (1973)

A group of men – certainly acquainted for quite some time, though nobody watching their interactions would call them “friends” exactly unless that watcher is very cynical indeed – are on a hiking and camping trip through rather spectacular mountainous terrain. There’s experienced professional guide Dixie (Jim Davis), a guy who really takes his nickname of “Cowboy” rather too seriously (George Kennedy) with his bullshit macho behaviour and the gun worn outside his pants for all the honest world to feel, Arnold Fleming (Charles Aidman) and his son Nick (Jan-Michael Vincent), the latter under a pall of the divorce blues, Al Zabrocki (Jack Weston) who is not built for this sort of thing, and accountant Steven Dennis (Bradford Dillman). No idea why these guys are spending so much time together, it’s not that they seem to like one another much, nor do they know a lot about each other’s lives.

Be that as it may, when they hear on the radio that a guy we’re not going to call D.B. Cooper/Loki has parachuted earthwards with his ill-gotten skyjacking money, and then witness someone indeed dropping down via parachute, they decide to go on the hunt for him. Cowboy takes that rather seriously indeed, shooting the unarmed man in the back while he’s trying to escape, killing him. Most of the group seem rather more interested in the guy’s monetary plunder than the fine points of murder and self defence, and decide to grab the money and carry it to civilisation. Or they could just keep it? Well, Dixie as well as the audience, know quite well where this is going to go.

This ABC Movie of the Week directed by Boris Sagal looks rather on the costlier side of 70s TV movies. Shot on location in Oregon, the wilderness survival parts of the narrative look really rather impressive, as if at least the people behind the camera were relishing the opportunity to shoot some visual treats for once. In front of the camera, you can find some rather authentically exhausted looking men (no women in this movie at all), the mostly middle-aged plus cast clearly going through a pretty exhausting time.

That’s rather useful for the performances, adding some authenticity to solid 70s TV style performances by most and softening the problems of a script that does tend to the verbally didactic when it comes to the lure of money, even though even an early 70s TV audience would not have been surprised by the whole greed and barbarity angle and certainly needn’t be told quite this bluntly. There are, however, also quiet character moments which also help make up for the too loud moments and provide the actors with some room to do their thing more subtly.

The survival adventure moments don’t just look impressive for a TV movie (or really any low budget film) but are also staged with quite a bit of flair, adding a quality of actual physical danger that makes the very quick mental breakdown of the characters more plausible, and really turns Deliver Us from Evil into a film well worth watching, even if it feels the need to hit you over the head with its message.

Three Films Make A Post: Carrol Jo Hummer--A working man who's had enough!

White Line Fever (1975): I know that this film by Jonathan Kaplan about an independent trucker played by Jan-Michael Vincent taking on the long-haul version of The Man has quite a few admirers. However, for me, the mix of traditional trucker exploitation, hicksploitation humour and earnest working class “Organize!” doesn’t really quite come together. Taken alone, every given scene is a perfectly fine example of its given genre, together, they result in a film of wildly fluctuating tone and uneven pacing that really would have needed to decide where it wants to put its emphasis.

Kill Me Again (1989): This is the first of now quality TV director John Dahl’s neo noirs after his time as a music video director, a series of films that would lead to at least two absolute classics of the genre. For its first two acts, this is nearly on its way to that status as well. Dahl uses his slick and polished style and the desert sun to perfectly replace the play of shadow and light of the classical noir, letting his characters go through variations of classic tropes that get enough of a twist to feel new. Val Kilmer (before he apparently started to believe that the main job of an actor is to sabotage the movie he is in), his then wife Joanne Whalley and Michael Madsen fit into this surface bright noir world perfectly.

Alas, the film breaks down nearly completely in the final act, with too many implausibilities even for a noir, and a bad case of random plot twist syndrome.

The Dry (2020): While I respect it and its approach, I can’t say I really enjoyed Robert Connolly’s adaptation of Jane Harper’s novel as much as I’d have liked too. There’s certainly a great sense of the dry Australian outback it takes place in on display, and the film also makes the book’s flashback structure flow much more organically than its source.

But for my tastes, the film is a bit too distanced from the crime(s) and the people at its heart, using a clinical look on its characters and their travails that makes it difficult to empathise with them, packing little emotional heft despite being about things of great emotional weight.

In short: The Mechanic (1972)

Arthur Bishop (Charles Bronson) is working as a hitman for a large, secretive criminal organization. He is specialized in murders prepared and executed in complicated ways that make them look like accidents. Bishop clearly prides himself on being rather good at his job, yet his late middle age has brought him some existential discontent. It’s not just that he gets bad news from his physician, nor that his latest job was killing an old friend, Big Harry (Keenan Wynn), after he asked him for help, it’s something deeper, though we can be pretty sure it’s not a “conscience” or anything silly like that.

When Bishop meets Harry’s son Steve (Jan-Michael Vincent), it is very much love at first sight between the two, as if they had recognized each other as one of a kind at once. Steve, it turns out, is a sociopath and an asshole, and as such ideal for the profession of professional killer. Arthur decides to teach him his trade.

If you have any thoughts about Simon West’s remake of this one, just banish them at once. West’s movie leaves out everything that’s interesting about this Michael Winner film, leaving an empty husk of an action film where something much more thoughtful belongs. Yes, I’m surprised myself to use the term “thoughtful” to describe a Michael Winner film – or to actually like one so much I’m tempted to call it brilliant - but in The Mechanic, the old sleazebag managed to fuse his lurid tendencies and the required men’s adventure style violence with well-formed observations concerning the nature and character of his protagonist and his apprentice. Why, the longer the film goes on, the more it turns out to be deeply interested in questions of ethics, in the rules men of violence observe or not, and in exploring the conceptual borders between order and chaos. There’s also quite a bit about generational differences to be found here.

All that while his film also delivers on the fronts one typically would expect of a Winner/Bronson joint: there’s quite a bit of action, of course, though it is much less sloppily directed than typical of Winner. There are also some moments that made this viewer deeply uncomfortable – particularly the suicide sequence comes to mind – but for once, these moments are in a Winner movie for a thematic reason, making points about these men and their world where no woman even has an actual character name (the homosexual subtext hardly bothering with the sub at all). It’s not at all what I’ve come to expect of Winner.


Bronson and Vincent are perfect for their roles. Bronson uses his calm presence acting in the best way possible, applying nuances of posture and scowling in ways that often suggest much about the things his character would never be able to say to anyone. Vincent’s cocky smugness is terrifically on point here, suggesting that where Bishop has hidden depths and a hole he doesn’t know how to fill, Steve just has a hole that doesn’t need filling.

In short: Vigilante Force (1976)

Ever since the oil fields of South Californian Elk Mills have been reopened on account of the energy crisis, the small town’s standard of living has sunk rapidly despite money flowing in again. Gambling, prostitution and cases of bringing guns to a barroom brawl run rampant, and the more anarchic elements around don’t bring their guns only to the bar anymore.

The good people of the town decide they need some tougher law enforcement, so they send out straight-laced tractor mechanic and salesman Ben Arnold (Jan-Michael Vincent), to bring the town’s black sheep, his somewhat estranged brother, Vietnam veteran Aaron (Kris Kristofferson) back, so they can put him in a police uniform. Aaron agrees to the proposition and also brings in a bunch of friends – ex-cops or ex-soldiers all – for a bit of mercenary law enforcement.

At first, Aaron’s unconventional policing methods bring good results, but once the town is cleaned up, he brings in his own gambling, prostitution and protection rackets, killing whoever gets in his way. Obviously, this is the sort of thing only all-out war brother against brother will solve in the end.

The Gene Corman produced Vigilante Force certainly isn’t the high point in director George Armitage’s small but fine filmography. It’s a bit flabbier around the narrative middle than it strictly needs to be, and some of Armitage’s usual sly and sarcastic comments on the state of the USA feel more like time-filling digressions than actual parts of the narrative. I also think that Armitage’s script underplays the initial problems that lead to the brothers’ estrangement too much, so that the film loses quite a bit of potential emotional tension.

Vincent is terribly stiff as the Good Brother, and Kristofferson certainly has his patented charisma but lacks the technique to give his character the extra-dimension the script doesn’t provide either.

There is still a lot to like about Vigilante Force: while the Armitageisms aren’t organic, they are still very amusing; the director is also very good at turning the town into something that feels like an actual place with some broad yet effective brush strokes. There are also some thoughts about the way class works in the US Armitage’s later films will develop further, and an eye for a country blue collar aesthetic.

Last but not least, while much of the film’s action isn’t spectacular (but still effective), the grand finale pulls out all stops, dressing the participants into some seriously absurd costumes (if you ever wanted to see Kristofferson in a red marching band outfit taking part in a shoot-out, this is gonna be your day) and letting things explode with a vengeance. At this point, things border at the absurd yet never quite teeter into that particular abyss. There’s worse things to say about a film than that it really knows how to finish.

In short: Damnation Alley (1977)

It's the end of the world (again). After World War III (don't worry, Americans, the evil commies have shot first) has left most of the planet a radioactive (don't worry about that either, it's the kind of radioactivity that does not touch movie protagonists at all) wasteland, tilted the Earth's axis, and changed the surviving fauna in new and exciting ways.

After a porn-induced accident (seriously) has destroyed most of their base and killed all but four men (two of them the drop-outs of the facility), the survivors decide to pack their bags, throw them into an awesome ATV, and make their way to Albany in the hope of finding the source of some taped radio messages. Soon enough, the four are three, namely Major Denton (George Peppard), the kind of military hard-ass that doesn't even leave the service after the third World War, Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is some kind of rebel (but don't worry, not the kind of rebel who actually rebels), and Keegan (Paul Winfield), who is a) much too good for his role, and b) as the mandatory black character not long for this world. On their tour across the continent, the boring trio has to cope with all the vagaries of post-apocalyptic life like really bad weather, big damn scorpions, irradiated hillbillies and killer cockroaches (I repeat: killer cockroaches); but at least they also pick up a French woman named Janice (Dominique Sanda) and later on a stone-throwing teenager (Jackie Earle Haley quite some time before this city was afraid of him).

Director without a personality Jack Smight's Damnation Alley is based on one of the least loved books of US SF/F writer Roger Zelazny, and generally does not have much of a reputation either.

However, Damnation Alley is a film that can be quite a fun time when watched by a viewer with adequately adjusted expectations. If you go into the film expecting even halfway poignant scene of post-apocalyptic distress, or interest in the causes of all the destruction beyond thirty seconds of vague yet dignified sloganeering by Paul Winfield, or even just some character development and dramatic escalation, you will be sorely disappointed, for this is a film where even the death of a man's best friend isn't worth an emotional scene.

If, on the other hand, you are in for a one-damn-thing-after-the-other tale about people in a silly yet awesome ATV having stupid yet entertaining adventures while saying stuff like "Tanner, this is Denton! This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches! I repeat: killer cockroaches!", you might have stumbled upon a new favourite movie.

Beyond many moments of earnest silliness - which is always the best sort of silliness - the film also features a some excellent post-psychedelic skies and a use of colour-filters to intensify colours until the film's world really looks as strange and changed as it is supposed to be and which looks nearly hypnotic to eyes used to the desaturated look of all contemporary movies. Why, I might even say the sky and weather effects are the film's biggest selling point - even better than the irradiated hillbillies. Well, I would say that if not for Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic score that mixes typical Goldsmith-isms with bits of classic Hollywood scoring and weird noises that fit the films skies much better than its rather standard post-apocalyptic adventure plot does.

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