Three Films Make A Post: Time Flies

The Adam Project (2022): If you ever feel the need to watch a film that’s perfectly neutral, never reaching heights you’d call good but never evoking so much negative emotion anyone could call it bad, this Shawn Levy science fiction/action/comedy joint starring Ryan Reynolds and child actor Walker Scobell, as well as Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner, Zoe Saldana and Catherine Keener has you covered.

As regular readers know, I’m not at all one to be screeching at blockbusters like this as the End of Cinema™, but this specific one’s as bland as certain critics pretend all movies of this kind are, never doing anything that could get anyone watching too excited or too emotionally involved, yet also never doing anything to annoy a viewer too much. This is the louder movie equivalent of wallpaper: it’s there while you watch it, but it never feels like an actual presence.

The Last Slumber Party (1988): This SOV slasher by Stephen Tyler is quite the thing, or rather, it’s quite the thing for people like me who have developed a tolerance for films/emanations like it. The normal viewer (welcome, stranger!) will most probably be bored out of their minds by it. If, one the other hand, you’re the type to be entertained by a mix of tedium, quotidian weirdness, and a final girl who breaks all the rules by most probably not being a virgin and uttering so many casually homophobically coloured slurs of the kind I alas remember from my youth, too, you might be entertained, diverted, and probably even enjoying yourself, while cringing more than just a little.

It just is that kind of a movie.

The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972): TV lifer Reza Badiyi directs this tale of the titular Charles Sand (Peter Haskell) inheriting The Sight, to be plagued by visions of the dead and the living, and other vaguely defined parapsychological powers. Our hero stumbles into a gaslighting plot full of bad melodramatic acting (oh, the screeching and the eye-bugging) that makes not a lick of sense. Hilarity and a surprising amount of boredom ensue.

There’s alas very little to this one. From time to time, Badiyi stumbles upon a creepy camera angle or directs a halfway mood scene, but mostly, he bets on his actors screeching through a very stupid plot, and they’re really not screeching well enough.

The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer (1974)

Clifford Swimmer (Peter Haskell in a wonderfully punchable performance) is the living embodiment of all the shittiest bits of 70s masculinity: he’s egotistical, self-serving, and much dumber than he clearly believes to be. He’s also emotionally abusive towards his wife Janet (Sheree North), undermining her wherever and however he can; obviously, his little stepson Todd (Lace Kerwin) does not fare any better. At least Cliff seems not to use physical violence on the both of them, for whatever that’s worth under the circumstances.

Despite his humongous ego and even bigger mouth, Swimmer is also a bit of a loser in his job, where his only real success seems to be that he’s having an affair with his assistant Madeline (Sharon Farrell). Though even she’s getting rather impatient with his unwillingness to commit. Why anyone would want to be chained to this asshole is anybody’s guess, there. Though, to be fair again, she is his chosen squeeze in his one day plan of just running away, buying a boat in the Caribbean and living the lazy life there, which is more thought than his family gets.

However, because it is the 70s, even macho shitheels like Swimmer go to a therapist. As it turns out, Dr Laszlo (Keene Curtis) moonlights as a mad scientist and thinks this particular patient is just the man he could use for an experiment in cloning, so Swimmer could run off and leave his family none the wiser with a clone taking his place. As it happens, the clone has parts of Swimmer’s memories and personality, but also shows all the kindness and sense the original must have lost ages ago, the kind of a guy a family could learn to love. Of course, continuing his shitty streak, Original Swimmer does leave his better version and family in debt to a loan shark he uses to actually finance his running away; and the Caribbean life doesn’t turn out to great either, because Swimmer’s taking himself with him wherever he goes.

This ABC TV movie was part of a late night series of cheaply produced films under the “The Wide World of Mystery” umbrella. The line was clearly budgeted quite a bit lower than your Movie of the Weeks at the time, and so TV cameras and a handful of studio sets is all the film at hand has to work with. Director Lela Swift does her best with what she’s got, but then, she directed quite a bit of TV in this budget bracket, like a lot of “Dark Shadows” episodes for Dan Curtis, so she was probably used to suffering, and had experience with making do, and so manages to make the film as visually appealing as she could under the circumstances.

So the film’s actual star has to be the script by George Lefferts. It’s a weird concoction, really, a mixture of an angry critique of a very specific type of 70s male shithead with a bit of low budget science fiction and a couple of noir tropes treated seriously. It’s not the most surprising thing you’ll ever encounter, but like Swift’s direction, Lefferts’ script is crafted well enough to work, particularly when the very decent acting ensemble get their fingers on it. Things are also just weird enough to be fun, elements like the wonderful dead pan junk science and the film’s non sequitur twist ending suggesting a certain degree of irony from the filmmakers that’s never getting in the way of the things they try to treat seriously, namely the portrait of a shitty man in decline.

In short: The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

A formerly famous big Hollywood studio (MGM moonlighting as something called Worldwide Studios for the film) is not bringing in the big bucks anymore, so its boss Roger Cross (Peter Lawford) is planning to sell its backlot to the devilproperty developers and is already auctioning off a treasure trove of props from various classics. However, someone – actually a guy played by Jack Cassidy in a dubious looking costume wielding a morning star – has started murdering and disappearing people on the back lot, be it developers, vandals, or eventually even some poor night watchman. Is he the rumoured Phantom of the Backlot? The police (Broderick Crawford and John Ireland) are certainly not capable to find out, and will indeed proceed to risk the death of innocents in the hope their prey is killed too (seriously), so it’s up to PR guy Ray Burns (Peter Haskell) to find out who is haunting the grounds. This matter will become particularly pressing to him once the Phantom – well -versed in Phantom of the Whatever genre traditions – absconds with Randy Cross (Skye Aubrey), Ray’s girlfriend and the boss’s daughter.

Going into The Phantom of Hollywood I was all pumped for a TV budget Hollywood version of the Phantom of the Opera. The film certainly starts out promising enough, making much of the melancholic ruin of the real MGM backlot in the late stages of decay (the best location for this imaginable, really), and integrating as much nostalgia for old Hollywood as possible. Alas, that’s basically all that’s remarkable here. Whenever he’s not lovingly going over the ruins, Gene Levitt’s direction is terminally bland, making murders and dialogue equally unexciting.

Apart from the old Hollywood guys and gals doing character parts, the acting’s just as bland, Aubrey and Haskell making the least interesting romantic leads anyone could have found at the time. Only Cassidy makes a bit out of the little the script gives him, but he can only fight the sheer boredom of Levitt’s direction so much. It’s a shame, really, for there were quite a few directors doing TV movies in the 70s who would have done wonders with the material.

As it stands, we’ll at least always have the ruins of MGM.