Hardcase (1972)

          In the great 1966 Western The Professionals, mercenaries enter Mexico to rescue an American’s wife, who was supposedly kidnapped by a revolutionary, only to discover the wife has become romantically involved with the revolutionary. A twist on that premise drives the agreeable made-for-TV Western Hardcase, starring former Cheyenne star Clint Walker and Stefanie Powers. Ex-soldier Jack (Walker) returns from POW incarceration to discover that his wife, Roz (Powers), not only ran off with revolutionary Simon (Pedro Aremendáriz Jr.) but, thinking Jack dead, sold his ranch to buy supplies for Simon’s rebel band. Hardcase, titled for a nickname someone hangs on the stoic protagonist, dramatizes how Jack responds to this conundrum. This telefilm is so light on plot that it resembles an episode of some generic Western anthology; similarly, the piece has the over-lit aesthetic and unimaginative camerawork of vintage episodic television. Yet Hardcase boasts a reasonably intelligent script, by Hollywood veterans Harold Jack Bloom and Sam Rolfe, and the narrative successfully ensnares its protagonist in a fraught moral dilemma. As a result, the movie is simple without being wholly simplistic.
          Anyone who has encountered a Walker performance knows better than to expect nuance from his acting—his towering physicality and granite features lend so much visual impact that he if he aims in the general direction of a dramatic texture and doesn’t exert himself, he’s able to put across something adequate. Powers is similarly limited in her abilities. Perhaps that’s why they make a compatible duo in Hardcase—the boundaries of his skills suit a character who has difficulty expressing emotion, just as the boundaries of hers fit the character of a woman torn between conflicting loyalties. Meanwhile, Aremendáriz Jr. capably offers a frontier riff on the Paul Henreid role from Casablanca (1942) and former NFL player Alex Karras, in his first proper movie performance, lends a mix of amiability and grit. The dramatic beats these actors perform get plenty of screen time because the movie doesn’t have much action—or, for that matter, much tension. It’s tempting to guess that Hardcase is so gentle because it was the first live-action movie from kiddie-animation specialists Hanna-Barbera Productions. 

Hardcase: FUNKY

Killdozer (1974)

          Enjoyably stupid escapism with more than a tip of the hat to the iconic, Steven Spielberg-directed Duel (1971), this made-for-TV sci-fi thrilller is about exactly what its title suggests: a bulldozer that kills. The narrative justification for this premise is almost laughably lazy, because a meteor falls to earth, and when the blade of the bulldozer strikes the rock, a field of blue energy transfers from the meteor to the machine. Presto-chango, the heavy equipment is possessed! And that’s nearly all the story the film provides, notwithstanding some lip-service material about how the protagonist, a construction-crew foreman, puts efficiency over safety and therefore is slow to react once several mysterious deaths occur. (Well, mysterious to the characters, anyway—we, the viewers, see the Killdozer causing the deaths.) Fitting the lunkheaded nature of this movie, the leading man is 1950s TV star Clint Walker, an amiable man-mountain whom none would ever mistake for an avatar of dramatic nuance. Other members of the sausage-party cast include reliable tough guy Neville Brand and versatile TV thesp Robert Urich.

          As for the plot, it’s so thin as to barely merit description. Lloyd Kelly (Walker) supervises a small crew tasked with clearing land for an airstrip on a remote island in the Pacific. Naturally, this means the men are isolated between visits from supply boats, so once things get screwy, they’re on their own. After the aforementioned close encounter between the bulldozer and the meteor, the titular mechanical monster starts Killdozing, although the first few incidents take place while the victims are alone, hence the time it takes for survivors to correctly assign blame. After that happens, the Killdozer goes into full attack mode, destroying the work camp and with it the survivors’ supplies. Watching the film, it’s impossible not to wonder why the men don’t simply retreat to high ground and stay there until help arrives, but in the realm of dopey genre pictures, it’s better to go with the flow. Otherwise, the viewer would be denied the pleasure of watching survivors try to outwit the Killdozer. Chew on that one for a minute—and if you like the taste, then seek out Killdozer for 74 minutes of brain-cell-murdering silliness. If not, give this baby a wide berth.

Killdozer: FUNKY

Baker’s Hawk (1976)

          A family-friendly Western that delivers exactly what it promises, and not an iota more, Baker’s Hawk is cut from the same cloth as the 1977-1983 TV series Little House on the Prairie—it’s a wholesome homily, with all the negatives and positives that description implies. Based on a novel by Jack M. Bickham, the picture follows a teenaged farmboy named Billy (Lee H. Montgomery) as he learns about friendship, intolerance, mortality, and vigilantism. Schematic in the extreme, the narrative runs along two tracks. In the overarching storyline, Billy watches his small community succumb to mob rule as citizens form a “vigilance committee” and try to force principled individuals including Billy’s father, Dan (Clint Walter), to take up arms against unwanted outsiders. In the main subplot, Billy finds a weak young hawk left in the nest by its mother, and then nurses the hawk to full strength with the help of a kindly hermit, Mr. McGraw (Burl Ives). Inevitably, these story elements intersect because Billy’s sensitivity to outsiders makes him a target for bullies, which parallels the way his father’s resistance to vigilantism alienates him from small-minded neighbors. Baker’s Hawk is so full of Meaningful Life Lessons that flashing numbers should appear onscreen each time a new teachable moment occurs.

          Yet Baker’s Hawk isn’t quite as dry and trite as the preceding synopsis might suggest. The focus on animals means that every so often, the movie is elevated by something real—a shot of a hawk soaring through the sky, a vignette of a deer fawn frolicking in the woods. Additionally, the cast is sufficiently colorful to make all but the most sentimental scenes palatable. Montgomery, who played a number of kid roles in movies and TV shows throughout the ’70s, favors wide-eyed wonder over misty-eyed mawkishness, so he mostly steers clear of typical kid-actor excess. Walker, the towering he-man best known for the 1955-1963 Western series Cheyenne, renders a characterization best described as John Wayne Lite, and his dramatic limitations work well for the role of a simple man facing complex problems. Ives does what he can with the picture’s most clichéd character, his honeyed voice and seeming comfort with animals lending a smidgen of gravitas. The filmmakers would have been prudent to give leading lady Diane Baker, who plays Billy’s mother, a bit more screen time, just as they would have been prudent to give Partridge Family kid Danny Bonaduce, who plays a bully, a bit less. At least the hawk, who undoubtedly gives the film’s best performance, never disappoints.

Baker’s Hawk: FUNKY

The Phynx (1970)

          As did Otto Preminger’s disastrous Skidoo (1969), the musical comedy The Phynx charts the most batshit-crazy extremes of the Vietnam-era collision between Establishment values and youth-driven counterculture. A frenetically paced phantasmagoria filled with emptily groovy music, painfully unfunny jokes, pointless cameos by Hollywood stars from yesteryear, and enough sexual humor to make a horny 13-year-old boy blush, The Phynx is very much of the so-wrong-it’s-right variety. Taken at face value, the picture is a juvenile satire of the hysteria surrounding rock bands, fused to a bizarre story about celebrity kidnappings and global intrigue. It’s too hip for the geezers, too square for the kids, and too over-the-top stupid for anyone with a working cerebellum, even if by sheer statistical inevitability, one joke per thousand displays a glimmer of wit.

          Viewed ironically, however, The Phynx is priceless. With some bad movies, the lingering question afterward is why anybody saw value in the underlying premise. With The Phynx, it’s not just the premise that causes befuddlement—literally every single scene in the picture is a colossal misstep, from the puerile sequence about using X-ray specs to ogle ladies in their underwear to the insane finale during which a parade of vintage celebrities are introduced as they enter a room, like guests at some Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences retirement party.

          From start to finish, The Phynx is sure to leave even the most adventurous viewer aghast, flummoxed, and stupefied.

          The plot involves a scheme by a secret government agency to retrieve dozens of American celebrities who have been kidnapped by the communist government in Albania. Upon receiving orders from “Number One,” a version of President Nixon portrayed with a giant wooden block for a head and Rich Little’s voice emanating from within, the secret agency devices its master plan: create a rock band that becomes so popular the Albanian government will request a command performance, at which point the musicians can free the celebrities. Huh? After recruiting the would-be rock stars, the secret agency employs a strange group of people to train the youths. Actor Clint Walker, playing himself, serves as a drill sergeant. Harold Sakata, reprising his “Odd Job” character from Goldfinger (1964), teaches combat. Richard Pryor, playing himself, teaches the lads how to have soul. (Yes, atop everything else, The Phynx is stunningly racist.) Dick Clark, playing himself, appraises the lads’ ability to scale the pop charts. Ed Sullivan introduces the first performance of The Phynx, which is the name given to the group. There’s also a character named “Phil Groovy,” a record producer modeled on Phil Spector.

          Much of the film comprises the members of The Phynx tracking down a set of pretty girls, each of whom has part of an important map tattooed on her body. At one point, the musicians literally shack up in hotel rooms and have sex with 1,000 women in order to find the one with a map tattoo. (This should not be confused with the earlier scene containing the line, “Gentlemen, the United States government is pleased to announce an orgy!”) The madness concludes with an endless sequence during which the dictator of Albania presents his “guests,” the kidnapped celebrities: choreographer/director Busby Berkeley and the original “Gold Diggers” dancers, the Lone Ranger (John Hart) and Tonto (Jay Silverheels) from the old Lone Ranger TV show, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Johnny Weissmuller from the old Tarzan movies, and so on. After the celebrity parade, the Phynx plays a patriotic tune about how much America misses its stars (“The neck bone and the backbone of showbiz was gone, and it nearly blew my mind!”), and then the heroes help the celebrities attempt a mass escape.

          Amazingly, this overview of the film’s contents leaves out many gems, like the supercomputer called M.U.T.H.A., which is shaped like a woman and issues data cards from its nether regions. Clearly transmitted to our planet from some distant dimension, The Phynx is as weird as big-budget American cinema gets. Not surprisingly, the film had such a meager release that images of the original-release poster are hard to find, so I pulled screen grabs and made a collage hinting at the onscreen chaos. Wow.

The Phynx: FREAKY

Pancho Villa (1972)

To say this adventure about notorious Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa gets off to a strange start is an understatement: The first scene features an imprisoned Villa getting his head shaved by gringo jailors, after which Villa savors his newly bald pate. The problem? In real life, Villa had a healthy head of hair, so, apparently, the sole purpose of filming this scene was justifying the casting of Greek-descended New Yorker Telly Savalas in the lead role. It’s no surprise Savalas was unwilling to wear a wig for his performance, since he also chose to deliver lines with his customary dese-dem-dose inflection, to preen in dandyish clothes, and to periodically giggle with the same playful malice he once brought to his role as a Bond villain. Yet the strangeness of Pancho Villa doesn’t end with Savalas’ wildly inappropriate interpretation of the title character. Later, one of Villa’s gringo adversaries, a deranged U.S. soldier played by Chuck Connors, drives his men crazy with orders to shoot and kill a fly that’s buzzing around a mess hall—while comedic music straight out of a Mack Sennett one-reeler grinds on the soundtrack. Pancho Villa is peculiar from top to bottom, waffling back and forth between high-action scenes and idiotic comedy bits. The storyline has something to do with Villa committing crimes to raise money for his revolutionary endeavors, but Villa disappears for long stretches of the movie. During these bland sequences the movie focuses on Villa’s gringo lieutenant, Scotty, who is played by amiable giant Clint Walker, the six-foot-six TV and movie actor best known for the ’50s series Cheyenne. While some of the movie’s antics are funny, like the weird vignette in which Villa believes he’s having a heart attack until he realizes a small lizard has crept into his undershirt, the movie spends so much time meandering through inconsequential silliness that it’s impossible to detect any sense of drama or momentum.

Pancho Villa: LAME