Creature from Black Lake (1976)

          Another swampy story about a backwoods monster with similarities to Sasquatch, Creature from Black Lake plods through a simplistic and somewhat uneventful storyline until climaxing with a passable action/suspense sequence. For devotees of Bigfoot cinema, one decent vignette of a hairy biped laying siege to a college student in a panel van might be worth the price of admission, especially since the sequence, which is set at night, has a measure of creepy atmosphere. For other viewers, watching the rest of the movie just to enjoy a few low-grade thrills won’t seem like a fair trade. In other words, proceed with caution. The picture begins well, with Joe Canton (Jack Elam) and his redneck buddy steering a canoe through a swamp until they glimpse a bizarre creature and flee, only to have the creature emerge suddenly from the water and pull Joe’s buddy below the surface. Then things slow down. In Chicago, students Pahoo (Dennis Fimple) and Rives (John David Carson) hear rumors about the monster menacing a community in Louisiana, so they embark on a research trip.

          While trying to find the much-discussed Joe Canton, the boys clash with a sheriff who doesn’t want his citizens riled up by rumors. Later, they hook up with two local girls and go camping with the girls in the hopes of getting lucky—only to endure an attack by the very monster they’re researching. Lest this give the impression the storyline is picking up speed, however, the whole business with the panel van happens during a subsequent confrontation. Although Creature from Black Lake is mostly drab from a cinematic perspective, cinematographer Dean Cundey—later to break big with Halloween (1978)—lends moodiness to nighttime scenes. The picture also benefits from the presence of familiar character actors Elam and Dub Taylor. Elam gets the meatiest bits, including a monologue about encountering boars slain by the creature, but there’s only so much one can do with dialogue along these lines: ‘If I hadn’t been drinkin’, I’d have blown his butt off!” Taylor does his usual angry-old-coot routine. As for the leads, they’re competent but milquetoast. All in all, this isn’t the worst guy-in-a-suit creature feature you’ll ever encounter, but it’s far from the best.

Creature from Black Lake: FUNKY

Country Blue (1973)

The lovers-0n-the-run saga Country Blue has abundant local flavor, immersing viewers in the sweaty everyday reality of life among poor folks in rural Georgia, but that’s the only kind thing one can say about the picture. Amateurish and boring, Country Blue tracks the exploits of a young man who is unwilling to work for a living and angry that the world demands he must do so. Further aggrieved by having served time in prison after committing a crime, the young man rails against the constraints of small-town life even though a crusty old mechanic provides employment and the mechanic’s pretty daughter provides companionship. In sum, Country Blue is the character study of an asshole. Had a dangerously charming actor been cast in the starring role, the desired illusion of a romantic rebel might have been put across, but leading man Jack Conrad—who also cowrote, produced, directed, and edited this film, earning his only credits in many of these craft areas—is a hopelessly generic screen presence. With his lackadaisical manner and his quiet drawl, he seems like some random dude who wandered in front of the camera, not a professional actor. Viewers are likely to be just as disappointed by Conrad’s costar, Rita George; she adds nothing to her generic girlfriend role, essaying a character so passive that watching her drift indecisively through scenes quickly becomes irritating. The film’s top-billed actor is reliable big-screen coot Dub Taylor, playing the aforementioned mechanic. Watching Taylor chortle and scowl his way through scenes, wearing an undersized ballcap and sweat-stained T-shirts while casually spewing epithets about blacks and gays, one can only marvel at the effortlessness of Taylor’s acting, even if a little of his cantankerous shtick goes a long way.

Country Blue: LAME

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)

          Viewed from a rational perspective, the hard-to-classify exploitation flick Poor Pretty Eddie is pure trash, combining showbiz ennui with murder, rape, and stereotypes. Viewed from a more adventurous perspective, watching Poor Pretty Eddie is like patronizing an all-you-can-eat buffet with nothing but junk food—everything might seem tasty at first, but indigestion is sure to follow. The loopy plot begins with African-American pop singer Liz Wetherly (Leslie Uggams) taking a break from the celebrity grind. Unwisely venturing alone into the Deep South, Liz experiences car failure near a roadside motel/restaurant, so she walks onto the property—even though it looks like a junkyard—to seek help. First Liz meets hulking handyman Keno (Ted Cassidy). Then she meets handsome but smarmy Eddie (Michael Christian), the kept man of the facility's owner, Bertha (Shelley Winters). Despite many red flags, Liz sees no choice but to stay until Eddie and Keno fix her car. This draws her into a sordid situation.

          Aging and overweight, Bertha runs her place like a fiefdom and builds her life around Eddie, even though she doubts his loyalty. Sure enough, Eddie lusts after Liz and rapes her the first night she's in the motel. Liz confronts Bertha with this information the next morning. That’s when things get really ugly: Bertha’s okay with Eddie using Liz as a plaything so long as that keeps him docile. When Liz seeks help from local authorities—grotesque rednecks played by Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens—her nightmare escalates.

          Even with this potboiler of a plot, Poor Pretty Eddie wanders into tangential weirdness at regular intervals, notably Eddie’s inept, Elvis-inflected performance of a country song. Furthermore, certain scenes include trippy intercutting and superimpositions, vignettes of gruesome violence are rendered in loving slow-motion, and the overarching aesthetic is surpassingly vulgar. In the most extreme sequence, shots of Eddie raping Liz are intercut with shots of rednecks forcing pigs to have sex, all to the accompaniment of a folksy love song. Oddly, the film’s performances are not as gonzo as the storytelling. Winters does her usual share of screaming, but she also imbues her pathetic characterization with a measure of pathos. Similarly, Christian’s portrayal of Eddie has a disquieting little-boy-lost element even though Eddie is unquestionably a monster. As for Uggams, she works a straightforward exploitation-flick groove while tracking a victim-turns-violent arc, lending Poor Pretty Eddie a touch of blaxploitation attitude.

          All of this makes for a strange vibe, and not a pleasant one; Poor Pretty Eddie is fascinating in that old can't-look-away-from-a-traffic-accident sort of way. Weirder still? The film’s producers, capping what appears to have been a wild production experience, released Poor Pretty Eddie in several different versions under multiple titles, including an almost completely re-conceived and re-edited cut bearing the name Heartbreak Motel. After all, it’s better to recycle trash than to simply throw the stuff away, right?

Poor Pretty Eddie: FREAKY

The Winds of Autumn (1976)

          One of low-budget auteur Charles B. Pierce’s most frustrating movies, The Winds of Autumn demonstrates how Pierce was simultaneously his own secret weapon and his own worst enemy. A revenge-themed Western with an offbeat angle, inasmuch as the character seeking revenge is an 11-year-old boy from a Quaker community, the picture has Pierce’s usual slick widescreen look, and yet it also has Pierce’s usual enervated storyline. The movie begins when young Joel (played by the director’s son, Chuck Pierce Jr.) observes a band of thugs approaching his family’s homestead. Joel’s parents ignore the boy’s warnings, believing God will protect them. He doesn’t. After the inevitable massacre, Joel is offered refuge by neighbor Mr. Pepperdine (played by the film’s cowriter, Earl E. Smith). Hungry for vengeance, Joel steals guns from Mr. Pepperdine’s stash—turns out the fellow used to be a gunfighter—and starts tracking the thugs. Soon afterward, Mr. Pepperdine arms himself and pursues Joel, hoping to prevent further tragedy.

          Scenes of Joel trekking through the wilderness are picturesque but repetitive and sluggish, so the picture’s limited entertainment value stems from the presence of actors seasoned in playing rural varmints. Jack Elam plays the main heavy, and the always-colorful Dub Taylor plays a snake-oil salesman who is moderately important to the plot. Every scene follows predictable rhythms, from the friction between the villains to the incredible resolve of the virtuous characters. On the plus side, the movie has a couple of so-so shootouts, and there’s a whorehouse scene featuring several attractive starlets—however, because The Winds of Autumn is a family picture, neither of those scenes has much bite. Nor, in fact, does the movie overall. Getting back to the secret weapon/worst enemy notion, Pierce, a set dresser by trade, always makes his pictures look more expensive than they are, but he’s perpetually incapable of embellishing narrative concepts with similar flair.

The Winds of Autumn: LAME

Flash and the Firecat (1976)

          Enterprising low-budget filmmakers Beverly and Ferd Sebastian cranked out a handful of zesty drive-in pictures during the ’70s, including this vapid lovers-on-the-run romp, which feels very much like myriad Roger Corman productions featuring the same basic storyline—think Moving Violation (1976), Thunder and Lighting (1977), and so on. With their rascally heroes, scantily clad heroines, and tiresome car-chase scenes, these pictures are all basically interchangeable. That said, Flash and the Firecat has some pleasant passages thanks to lively leading actors and the use of dune buggies instead of conventional vehicles, though it won’t meet anyone’s criteria for quality cinema. In fact, it won’t even meet anyone’s criteria for exploitation cinema, since the Sebastians offer such a tame presentation of kidnapping, prostitution, and other crimes that the movie is rated PG. 

          Flash and the Firecat starts out well enough. Leggy blonde Flash (Tricia Sembera) and her crafty boyfriend, Firecat (Roger Davis), spend their time making out and riding dune buggies, since they’re apparently averse to working for a living. Eager to score cash, they contrive a ballsy scheme. Flash uses her looks to coax a 13-year-old boy into her dune buggy while Firecat visits the boy’s father, a bank manager. Claiming that his partner has kidnapped the boy—and using a carefully timed phone call to sell the illusion—Firecat nabs ransom money and flees. Then Flash releases the boy unharmed. Soon, the bank manager tells local top cop Sheriff Thurston (Dub Taylor) what happened, so Thurston puts his incompetent deputies on the case. Next, an operative of the bank’s insurance company, towering Milo Pewitt (Richard Kiel), shows up to help recover the bank’s money. Thereafter, Firecat and Flash zoom around the boonies, hiding at places including a whorehouse, while being chased by bumbling cops and the relentless Milo.

          Leading man Davis has an amiable quality, emulating Paul Newman’s mischievous screen persona, and leading lady Sembera is competent and sexy. Taylor, always a hoot, energizes his scenes with southern-fried lunacy, at one point barking to the very tall Kiel: “You can kiss my ass if you can bend down that far!” Kiel, best known as “Jaws” from the James Bond blockbuster The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), is looser than usual, though he’s saddled with a trite characterization. Even at a scant 84 minutes, Flash and the Firecat eventually wears out its welcome. When Corman’s people made movies like this one, they knew that eventually some sort of emotional hit was required to give all the mayhem meaning. Conversely, the Sebastians’ brisk little movie runs on fumes.

Flash and the Firecat: FUNKY

This Is a Hijack (1973)

          Executed with as little originality and subtlety as its hilariously bland title might suggest, This Is a Hijack is best described as “undemanding.” Produced on a low budget and shot without any attempt at visual flair, the picture cycles through generic scenes as it moves steadily toward a predictable climax. Every so often, a glimmer of individuality shines through the workmanlike storytelling—for instance, one of the hijackers makes his prisoners shout animal noises like a farmland chorus—but director Barry Pollack and his collaborators mostly demonstrate an impressive skill for determining the minimum effort required for manufacturing filmic elements, from composition to performance to editing. This Is a Hijack isn’t even lurid enough to qualify as proper drive-in fare, so it’s basically the equivalent of a forgettable TV movie, except with a couple of feature-film actors and slightly more elaborate production values.

          Set in L.A., the movie begins when Mike (Adam Roarke), an inveterate gambler, is hustled out of bed by lackeys in the employ of a gangster to whom Mike owes a considerable sum of cash. Told he must pay his debts immediately, or else, Mike contrives a scheme to hijack the private jet owned by his boss, Simon (Jay Robinson), a rich entertainer who treats everyone around him like garbage. Assigned to watch over Mike is Dominic (Neville Brand), a psychotic thug who works for the gangster. Once the hijackers have taken control of the aircraft, Mike discovers that Dominic would be perfectly happy killing everyone aboard just for the thrill—he’s the one who makes people yell animal sounds—so Mike must tap his shallow reserve of bravery in order to prevent a catastrophe. Meanwhile, in a subplot so anemic it barely merits inclusion in the film, a small-town sheriff (Dub Taylor) coordinates with the FBI on a plan to seize control of the plane when it lands.

          Brand, Roarke, and Taylor provide most of the watchable moments. Brand does his patented happy-maniac bit, Roarke broods with the same charismatic intensity he brought to ’60s B-movies, and Taylor provides his signature crazy-old-coot shtick. (The climax of the movie involves Taylor running around an airport while wearing nothing but boots, a cowboy hat, and boxer shorts.) This Is a Hijack runs out of gas toward the end, with characters overcoming problems after exerting only a modicum of effort, and it’s not as if there’s any visual spectacle on display. For the most part, however, the picture delivers exactly what it promises—which isn’t much.

This Is a Hijack: FUNKY

Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)

          Recognizing that there was still an audience for the brand of smart-alecky Old West humor he perfected on the 1957–1962 TV series Maverick, leading man James Garner dove back into cowboy comedy with Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), a harmless romp about an opportunistic quick-draw artist who becomes the lawman in a frontier town, despite his frequent claims that he’s just passing through. The movie didn’t leave much room for a sequel, since the final scene explained how the characters’ lives turned out, so Garner (whose company produced Sheriff and its sequel) took a novel route—he commissioned an entirely new story, with a fresh set of characters, but then used a similar title and much of the original film’s supporting cast, thereby promising audiences they’d get more of the same. This type of quasi-continuation was not unprecedented, particularly in family movies, because Disney used this technique to elongate several of its live-action franchises, and, indeed, Support Your Local Gunfighter is a G-rated trifle in the Disney vein (although it was a United Artists release).

          Garner plays Latigo Smith, a gambler on the run from a romantic entanglement with an overbearing madam. Hiding out in a mining town, Latigo runs various schemes—e.g., posing as the business representative for a gunfighter (Jack Elam) who isn’t really a gunfighter—but mostly he gets into harmless high jinks with colorful locals. The picture is chipper and fast-paced, with wall-to-wall cartoony music, and veteran character players including Henry Jones, Harry Morgan, and Dub Taylor ensure that everything feels safe and predictable. James Edward Grant’s script has a few witty lines, but the jokes are mostly of the painfully obvious variety. Case in point: The local vet (Taylor) indicates that his current patients are donkeys and says, “You got a pain in the ass, you come see Doc Schultz!” Leading lady Suzanne Pleshette grumbles her way through a drab performance as a tomboy, and Elam’s comedy chops mollify the fact that he’s playing yet another amiable cow-town grotesque. As for the star, Garner’s charm is peerless as always. Unfortunately, there’s not much difference between this picture and an average Maverick episode.

Support Your Local Gunfighter: FUNKY

The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970)

          The last movie directed by the great William Wyler, The Liberation of L.B. Jones is one of several nervy race-relations pictures made in the wake of In the Heat of the Night (1967). Like that Oscar-winning film, L.B. Jones is s a thriller exploring the dangers of a black man seeking justice in the South, only this time the protagonist is not a cop or even a lawyer, but rather an undertaker. In a small Tennessee community, L.B. Jones (Roscoe Lee Browne) is the most affluent black citizen, which generates grudging respect from well-to-do whites and seething resentment among poor whites. When Jones discovers that his years-younger wife, Emma (Lola Falana), is sleeping with a white cop, simple-minded redneck Willie Joe (Anthony Zerbe), Jones’ attempt to amicably dissolve his marriage unexpectedly triggers a fusillade of horrific violence.

          Based on a novel by Jesse Hill Ford, who co-wrote the script, the picture’s tricky plot weaves together nearly a dozen major characters, each of whom reflects a facet of racism or its impact. The formidable Lee J. Cobb plays Oman Hedgepath, the white lawyer Jones hires to handle the divorce; Hedgepath tries to resolve the matter outside of court by working angles with Willie Joe and the town’s do-nothing mayor (Dub Taylor), but he only makes matters worse. Lee Majors, of all people, plays Oman’s idealistic nephew, a clean-cut voice of reason whose words are drowned out by pervasive prejudice. And in the picture’s linchpin role, a very young Yaphet Kotto plays Sonny Boy, an angry young black man who has returned to his hometown after a long absence because he wants revenge against the racist white who beat him as a child. Barbara Hershey pops up in a tiny role as Majors’ wife, and dancer Fayard Nicholas, of the famed Nicholas Brothers, appears as well, in his only dramatic performance.

          Amazingly, The Liberation of L.B. Jones doesn’t feel overstuffed, although some actors are left gasping for screen time; the clockwork script allocates time wisely, sketching characters just well enough for viewers to understand why people choose their paths. Wyler orchestrates the various elements so that when things get ugly, horrible events explode like the stages of carefully coordinated fireworks display. Not everything that happens in the picture is credible, and the material portraying Emma as a capricious nymphomaniac is stereotypical, but The Liberation of L.B. Jones is filled with memorable nuances. It’s also filled with memorable acting, because the film’s cast offers a spectrum of performance styles. Browne is elegant and nuanced; Cobb is fiery and intense; Zerbe is wonderfully squirrely and perverse; and Kotto bounces between sweet and menacing, effectively portraying the wounded boy within the dangerous man. As for Falana, she’s so sexy that it’s easy to see why the men in her life are driven to distraction. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

The Liberation of L.B. Jones: GROOVY

The Great Smokey Roadblock (1976)

          From the title and packaging, you’d think this was a brainless boobs-and-beer action flick, but buried amid the usual scenes of amiable prostitutes and crooked redneck cops is a poignant story about a dying man struggling for dignity. However, if you think 18-wheelers, hookers, and mortality seem like incompatible story elements, you’re absolutely right, based on the evidence of this incredibly erratic movie. Working from a novel titled The Last of the Cowboys (which was also this film’s original title), writer-director John Leone unsuccessfully attempts to cushion the melancholy main storyline with outrageous high jinks, and both elements suffer: The drama feels diminished by the sleazy context, and the comedy feels superfluous.

          At the center of the narrative is “Elegant” John (Henry Fonda), a trucker whose rig was repossessed while he was hospitalized and unable to pay his bills. John busts out of the hospital and steals his rig, heading down the highway to hook up with his paramour, a salty madam named Penelope (Eileen Brennan). Along the way, John picks up a Bible-quoting hitchhiker (Robert Englund) and tries to steer clear of an unscrupulous hustler (Gary Sandy) who wants to sell the stolen truck for illicit cash. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, Penelope and her girls move into John’s trailer, turning the fugitive’s semi into a brothel on wheels–and for reasons that are even less clear, one of the prostitutes (Susan Sarandon) falls in love with the pious hitchhiker.

          Suffice it to say that the main storyline of John seeking one last adventure before death gets lost in the shuffle, despite Fonda’s valiant attempts to sell crying scenes and testy dialogue exchanges. At one low point, a redneck sheriff (Dub Taylor, of course) arrests John and the women, so the prostitutes claim their cell is too hot and strip, angling to “barter” with the corrupt lawman and his deputy. Taylor cheerfully accepts their proposal, and trust me when I say that you’ll have trouble erasing the image of grizzled old coot Taylor wearing just boxer shorts while he hops up and down and yells, “Where’s that thermostat?!!” Yet a moment later, Taylor delivers genuinely tasty dialogue: When his deputy expresses guilt over having availed himself of the women’s services, Taylor crows, “If that’s the worst thing that ever happens to you in your life, junior, then I’m gonna follow you to the ends of the world, because you’re gonna have remarkable passage.”

          It’s hard to completely dislike any movie containing chatter that colorful, to say nothing of such a robust cast, but there’s a reason this mess of a flick sat on a shelf for two years prior to its release.

The Great Smokey Roadblock: FUNKY

Man and Boy (1971)

          After scoring in the ’60s as a comedian and TV star, Bill Cosby tried expanding his popularity to movies in the early ’70s, beginning with this Western about a former cavalryman who embarks on a dangerous quest with his young son. Perhaps because the movie cast Cosby in a purely dramatic role, Man and Boy failed to connect with audiences, but it’s actually a fairly strong piece of work, blending life lessons with violent action and rich characterizations. As the title suggests, the story is shot through with themes of male identity, and specifically African-American male identity; throughout the movie, the protagonist uses deeds instead of words to convey notions of duty, honor, integrity, and loyalty in a world that expects black men to behave like second-class citizens. As directed by journeyman TV helmer E.W. Swwckhamer, Man and Boy makes the most of a thin budget by employing vivid locations and a lively supporting cast. Reliable players including Yaphet Kotto, Dub Taylor, and Henry Silva enliven small roles, while young George Spell, who plays the protagonist’s son, effectively conveys the experience of a youth discovering the troubling complexities of the adult world.

         In the first act, we meet Caleb Revers (Cosby), a proud man struggling to make his small farm viable, despite meager resources and pressure from racist neighbors. Through a fortunate circumstance, Caleb comes into possession of a fine horse, which aggravates whites who resent blacks becoming property owners. One day, because of carelessness on the part of Caleb’s son, Billy (Spell), the horse is stolen, so Caleb takes Billy on a trek to recover the animal. Most of the film depicts their adventures out on the frontier. An encounter with an old enemy of Caleb’s turns violent, forcing Billy to grapple with the idea of standing up to thugs, and a visit with a lonely widow who comes on to Caleb stretches Billy’s understanding of the way men and women relate to each other. During the picture’s final act, the travelers cross paths with a black outlaw named Lee Christmas (Douglas Turner Ward), giving Billy a harsh view of life outside the law.

          In some ways, Man and Boy is obvious and schematic, as if the filmmakers made a list of lessons they wanted George to experience, then contrived a narrative situation for each lesson. And, indeed, the storytelling hits a few bumps as the storytellers move too conveniently from one episode to the next. But because screenwriters Harry Essex and Oscar Saul avoid easy sentimental payoffs, the picture feels relatively credible and tough all the way through. Cosby’s performance helps create the desired illusion. Imbuing his portrayal with equal parts idealism and world-weariness, Cosby creates a portrait of a man with one foot in the cold truths of everyday reality and another foot in the empowering possibilities of dreams. Regrettably, Cosby’s next attempts at drama netted similarly middling results, though he’s excellent in the TV movie To All My Friends on Shore (1972) and intriguing in the theatrical action picture Hickey & Boggs (also 1972), so he mostly ditched serious acting once he returned to comedy in the mid-’70s. It would have been interesting to see how his dramatic chops evolved.

Man and Boy: GROOVY

. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . (1970)

Gotta love a Southern racial-tension flick that begins on a day hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement—as shown by an egg actually frying on the pavement. That opening scene perfectly captures the pulpy entertainment value of this drama starring Jim Brown, George Kennedy, and Fredric March. Brown plays Jimmy Price, the first black man elected sheriff of a small Deep South community, and Kennedy plays John Little, the white predecessor who angrily surrenders his badge. Camping it up with amusing details like taped-together cigars and a Colonel Sanders string tie, Hollywood veteran March is along for the ride as the mayor who tries to keep his town from exploding after Price’s polarizing election. The plotting is arch (Price alienates half the town by arresting a white man, and the other half by arresting a black man), but the pacing is swift and the performances seethe with sweaty intensity. Brown’s low-key persona and Kennedy’s combustive style make for a fun combination, and they’re surrounded by vibrant personalities: Clifton James plays a strutting redneck who grows a conscience, Bernie Casey plays a hot-headed townie resentful of Price, and veteran varmints Anthony James and Dub Taylor lurk around the periphery of scenes, adding Southern-fried flavor. The movie’s wildly inappropriate music adds to the overripe appeal, like the random use of “Gentle on My Mind” during a scene of Price chasing down a drunk who killed a six-year-old girl in a traffic accident. Oddly pitched ’70s cinema doesn’t get much better than that, except perhaps when Brown forces a straight face for lines like, “I’m the sheriff. Not the white sheriff, not the black sheriff, not the soul sheriff, but the sheriff.” (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

. . . tick . . . tick  . . . tick . . . : FUNKY