Cry for Me, Billy (1972)

          Many familiar ’70s-cinema textures converge in the bleak Western Cry for Me, Billy, which boasts a handful of riveting scenes but underwhelms overall. The film’s biggest problem is a predictable storyline, so director William A. Graham’s leisurely approach exacerbates inherent sluggishness. Additionally, leading man Cliff Potts, a workaday actor in films and television from the late ’60s to the late ’90s (notwithstanding minor recent appearances), wasn’t up to the task of carrying a movie. Oh, and it should also be noted that despite his prominent billing, the great Harry Dean Stanton only appears in about 10 minutes of the movie, mostly in the beginning and then again toward the end.

          Gun-toting drifter Billy (Potts) wanders into a tiny town, where he observes several Cavalry soldiers withholding water from a group of thirsty Indian prisoners. Incensed, Billy gives water to the prisoners, but later, when several prisoners escape, Billy watches helplessly while the soldiers kill the remaining Indians. Then Billy leaves town and encounters Little Sparrow (Maria Yolanda Aguayo), one of the escapees. She’s a beautiful young woman who for some reason is completely nude until Billy gives her a blanket. Despite a language barrier (the only word she ever speaks in the movie is Billy’s name), the two fall in love. Then, of course, the soldiers return to spoil their idyll, and bloodshed ensues.

          Given the trite narrative, Cry for Me, Billy should be interminable, but several elements redeem the movie. Markson’s dialogue is excellent, and he does a terrific job sketching the minor characters whom Billy and Little Sparrow encounter. Better still, the cinematography by Jorden Cronenweth is gorgeous; in scene after scene, Cronenweth finds clever ways to put the sun behind actors, creating beautiful pictorial depth. Also priaseworthy are brief but effective turns by Stanton, James Gammon, Don Wilbanks, and others. Alas, the main story, though presented with great care, underwhelms until the grim final act. FYI, Aguayo, who later married her costar Potts, was originally billed as “Xochitl,” an Aztec word for “flower,” hence some online sources giving that word as the name of her character. The alias represented a failed attempt to give her screen debut a bit of intrigue.

Cry for Me, Billy: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Black Marble

          After a great run in the ’70s, during which his books and scripts were adapted into several movies and a pair of TV series, cop-turned-writer Joseph Wambaugh took a stab at romantic comedy with The Black Marble. Directed by Harold Becker, who helmed the Wambaugh-derived The Onion Field (1979), this picture applies the writer’s familiar absurdist prism to a depiction of cops and criminals. Specifically, the movie tracks an alcoholic detective’s inept efforts to rescue a kidnapped dog. Shot at various offbeat locations in Los Angeles, the movie has a fantastic widescreen look and a host of unusual characters, to say nothing of skillful comedic performances by stars Robert Foxworth, Paula Prentiss, and Harry Dean Stanton. However, the individual whose contributions prevent the movie from realizing its ambitious goals is Wambaugh. For all his quirky details and surprising twists, he can’t quite get a handle on the picture’s tone, and he frequently depicts people behaving in ways that are opposite to their established characterizations. The Black Marble is humane and strange, but it’s frustrating because it’s so badly in need of a heavy rewrite.

          Foxworth stars as Sgt. Alex Valnikov, a perpetually besotted veteran cop traumatized by a series of child murders he once investigated. Kicked off the LAPD’s homicide division and reassigned to the robbery squad in the Hollywood precinct, Valnikov gets partnered with high-strung Sgt. Natalie Zimmerman (Prentiss), who resents being made caretaker for a has-been. They’re assigned to help Madeline Whitfield (Barbara Babcock) recover her dog after a mystery man demands a huge ransom for the dog’s return. In separate scenes, the filmmakers explore the kidnapper’s pathetic life. He’s Philo Skinner (Stanton), a sleazy dog groomer overwhelmed by gambling debts. As the story progresses, Natalie discovers Valnikov’s endearing traits, even as Philo’s actions become more and more desperate. Giving away more would do a disservice to the picture.

          Foxworth, usually cast as a hunk, relishes his opportunity to play a fully textured character, and he has some moderately effective moments as well as a few comic highlights. Yet the script does not serve him well, especially when Valnikov suddenly transforms from a suicidal alcoholic to a wounded romantic. Similarly, Prentisss’ sharp comic timing helps mask bumpy shifts in her characterization. Stanton fares best, and the scene of him threatening to slice off the kidnapped dog’s ear is simultaneously grotesque and poignant.

The Black Marble: FUNKY

The Rebel Rousers (1970)

Filmed in 1967 but shelved until 1970, The Rebel Rousers is a bland biker flick distinguished only by the presence of several actors who became famous after the picture was shot: Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton. Nicholson is barely in the picture, Stanton has a couple of amusing throwaway bits, and Ladd mostly shrieks or whimpers while playing a pregnant woman terrorized by bikers. Of the bunch, only Dern gets a part with dimension and size, though there’s not much he can do with the brainless material. He plays the chief of a scooter gang whose jackets bear Confederate flags (though none of the bikers sounds Southern). Yet his character’s behavior is befuddling, and one gets the sense of a rushed production inhibiting Dern’s ability to contribute his signature idiosyncratic flourishes—virtually every shot feels like a first rehearsal, or even a loose run-through, rather than a recording of fully developed performance. The threadbare plot revolves around portly architect Paul (Cameron Mitchell), who rolls into a dusty town and, by coincidence, encounters high-school buddy J.J. (Dern). Paul traveled to the town in search of his runaway girlfriend, Karen (Ladd), who fled during a rough patch in their relationship. Eventually, Paul’s car breaks down near a beach, at which point J.J.’s biker buddies menace Paul and Karen. J.J. tries to intervene, leading to power struggles within the gang. All of this is exceptionally boring to watch, especially when the plot degrades into a repetitive pattern of motorcycle races up and down the shoreline. There’s also a huge charisma gap separating Dern’s earnest performance and Mitchell’s drab work.

The Rebel Rousers: LAME

Renaldo and Clara (1978)

          Surveying online remarks about Renaldo and Clara, the first (and, to date, last) fictional feature written and directed by legendary folk-rocker Bob Dylan, provides a sharp lesson in the cult of personality. Had this amorphous epic been created by some anonymous indie artiste, Renaldo and Clara would have been relegated to the slag heap of obscurity. Because it was made by Dylan, the picture is taken very seriously in some quarters, with advocates noting the influence of Cubist art as well as parallels to the 1945 art-house classic Les enfants du paradis. Whatever. Running nearly four hours in its original form and comprising a pretentious amalgam of concert footage, sloppy documentary snippets, and weakly rendered dramatic scenes, Renaldo and Clara is the epitome of self-indulgence. Dylan and his famous pals may have had fun shooting the picture, but the enjoyment does not extend to viewers, except during purely musical sequences.

          To be fair, devoted fans who have spent decades parsing the mysteries of Dylan’s lyrics will undoubtedly find much to analyze here—Dylan appears as himself during performance scenes; plays a character named “Renaldo” in fictional bits while his real-life wife at the time, Sara Dylan, plays his love interest, “Clara”; and rock musician Ronnie Hawkins plays a character named “Bob Dylan” in vignettes with actress Ronee Blakeley as “Mrs. Dylan.” Also featured are the peculiar affectations of the Rolling Thunder Revue, the notorious Dylan tour that’s featured in concert scenes, so whenever Dylan sings tunes including “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” he wears either masks or white face paint. Because, like, you know, man, the Dylan onstage is not the Dylan offstage, but even, like, you know, man, the Dylan offstage isn’t the real Dylan, you dig? To note that Dylan’s rumination on the complexities of public identity could have been articulated more succinctly is to offer a profound understatement. Except for those who are heavy into Dylan’s mythmaking, Renaldo and Clara will seem utterly interminable. Nonmusical scenes ramble on forever without any sense of purpose, Dylan and his musical friends deliver lifeless performances, and the real actors sprinkled through the piece—including Sam Shepard, credited with cowriting the script, and Harry Dean Stanton—struggle through uninteresting scenes that seem at least partially improvised. The only saving grace of the movie, unsurprisingly, is the power of music. Dylan is in great form, as are Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, and others. (The less said about Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s musical contributions, the better.)

          Renaldo and Clara was brutalized by critics during its initial release, causing Dylan to largely withhold the film from subsequent public exhibition, with the exception of a re-release showcasing a two-hour edit that dumped most of the dramatic scenes. On some level, the movie is harmless in that it represents a boundlessly creative artist trying something new and asking his fans to come along for the ride. And yet on another level, one fears that Dylan envisioned himself as a naturally gifted filmmaker—because, let’s face it, he was asking for trouble by opening the movie with the song “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” Points for self-confidence!

Renaldo and Clara: LAME

Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975)

          Along with the conspiracy thriller and the downbeat character study, the road movie is among the genres that are most crucial to the story of American cinema during the ’70s. The concept of rootless nobodies forming surrogate families while traveling through the heartland says volumes about disaffected national identity in the era of Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate. That’s why it’s tempting to cut a lot of slack for a picture along the lines of Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, even though the most objective critical assessment reveals Rafferty to be a travelogue of uninteresting people doing uninteresting things. The dignity and novelty of Rafferty and pieces of the same ilk can be found in the humdrum foibles of the unsophisticated characters. After all, some of the best New Hollywood movies broke new ground by giving voices to the voiceless. In other words, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins contains many small pleasures for fans of a certain type of scruffy ’70s movie—while those seeking big laughs, heroic characters, and a memorable storyline should look elsewhere.

          Alan Arkin, working at the apex of his chilly oddness, stars as Rafferty, a former USMC gunnery sergeant now working a pointless job at a DMV office in Hollywood. Drinking heavily, living in squalor, treating his job contemptuously, and wallowing in regret after years of being a passenger in his own life, Rafferty is ready for a change. While on a lunch break one afternoon, he’s kidnapped at gunpoint by two drifters—grown-up Mac (Sally Kellerman) and teenaged Frisbee (Mackenzie Phillips). The ladies demand that Rafferty drive them to New Orleans. Rafferty manages to escape, but he soon realizes that he doesn’t want to resume his old life, so he rejoins the women as a willing traveling companion. Escapades ensue. Most of what happens in Rafferty is contrived in the extreme, even though some moments of gentle character work reflect sensitivity and thoughtfulness on the part of the filmmakers. A long sequence set in Mac’s hometown, for instance, feels credible thanks to the parade of rural dreamers and schemers who interact with the protagonists.

          Unfortunately, Arkin’s character never quite clicks as a believable human being, while Kellerman’s drifts in and out of realistic behavior. Grotesques played by Alex Rocco, Charles Martin Smith, and Harry Dean Stanton (who is especially wonderful here) resonate more strongly, perhaps because the filmmakers simply parachute into the lives of these low-rent fools for quick, purposeful vignettes. As for Phillips’ character, picture a second-rate version of the many precocious girls Jodie Foster played in ’70s movies, and you’re almost there—Phillips plays a one-note role well. From start to finish, writer John Kaye and director Dick Richards struggle to fill the movie’s slight 91-minute running time with a sufficient number of events, occasionally resorting to such filler as a chase scene and a musical number. Like the precious powder in its title, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins is so wispy that it’s forever at risk of blowing away.

Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins: FUNKY

Where the Lilies Bloom (1974)

          Representing a rare theatrical effort by prolific TV writer Earl Hamner, Jr., creator of the wholesome TV series The Waltons (1971-1981), this gentle family drama concerns four children who struggle to preserve their tenuous lifestyle in the Great Smokey Mountains after becoming orphans. While the picture suffers from problems that bedevil many family films, such as contrived comic-relief sequences and a kid-gloves approach to interpersonal conflict, the movie benefits from rich atmosphere and unquestionable sincerity. Shot on location and infused with local color (Carolina schoolchildren served as extras), the movie builds on strengths including Urs Furrer’s painterly cinematography and the persuasive rhythms of Hamner’s dialogue. (In voiceover, the 14-year-old protagonist laments that stress has transformed her into a “pinched-faced crone,” then observes that “something had flown out of my brothers and sisters” after a tragedy.) In its best moments, Where the Lilies Bloom—which was based on a novel by Bill and Vera Cleaver—approaches the sort of poetic Americana that permeates good country songs. The pleasures of the film are small, to be sure, but they feel genuine.

          When Where the Lilies Bloom begins, middle-aged widower Roy Luther (Rance Howard) tries to provide for his four children even though he’s rapidly dying from a respiratory ailment. Sensing the end is near, Roy Luther entrusts his second-oldest daughter, Mary Call (Julie Gholson), with taking charge of the family. Roy Luther’s oldest child, Devola (Jan Smithers), is deemed inappropriate for the job because she’s a daydreamer and because she has romantic designs on Roy Luther’s mortal enemy, Kiser Pease (Harry Dean Stanton). A redneck schemer whose family is closer to middle class than Roy Luther’s dirt-poor clan, Kiser seized ownership of Roy Luther’s land by paying back taxes. Worse, he wants to marry the pretty Devola. But since Roy Luther forbids that from happening, Mary Call feels obligated to block the union even after Roy Luther’s death.

          The middle of the picture, during which the family tries to hide the fact of their father’s passing from prying neighbors, covers fairly standard family-movie terrain. Similarly, comedic sequences involving a runaway car and the use of cooked onions as a cure for pneumonia lose their novelty quickly. Nonetheless, endearing performances and the dense textures of the location photography offer ample compensation. Gholson is believably tough and vulnerable, anchoring the film well, and Stanton makes a strong opposite number as a varmint who slowly reveals aspects of decency. And if Smithers (who later found fame on WKRP in Cincinnati) doesn’t make much of an impression, she’s cast effectively for physical type—as are Matthew Burill and Helen Harmon, who play Mary Call’s other siblings. (Howard, who plays Roy Luther, is the real-life father of actor-director Ron Howard.) Perhaps the strongest element of Where the Lilies Bloom is the heartfelt and unsentimental ending, which complicates the protagonist’s viewpoint in a meaningful fashion.

Where the Lilies Bloom: GROOVY

1980 Week: Death Watch

          Toward the end of the meditative sci-fi drama Death Watch, Max Von Sydow shows up for an extended cameo as a professor who has rediscovered an obscure medieval composition by Robert de Bauleac. Later, when the piece’s jagged strains accompany scenes of characters battling over a dying woman’s right to privacy, the juxtaposition is weirdly perfect. This fusion of image and music becomes even more fitting when one discovers that neither Robert de Bauleac for his composition ever existed—the man was an invention of cowriter/director Bertrand Tavernier’s creative team, and the music was generated by the film’s, composer, Antoine Duhamel. Such elaborate flourishes explain why Death Watch is so interesting, even though the film is strange and undisciplined.

          In the near future, when death by disease has become rare, a young woman named Katherine (Romy Schneider) gets a terminal diagnosis from her doctor. Soon, callous TV executive Vincent (Harry Dean Stanton) contrives to film Katherine’s last days for a nonfiction series called Death Watch. In order to secure intimate footage without Katherine’s knowledge, Vincent persuades a cameraman, Roddy (Harvey Keitel), to have his eyes replaced with cameras. Roddy insinuates himself into Katherine’s life and surreptitiously records their road trip across the European countryside. Based on a novel by David Compton, the story of Death Watch is riddled with logical inconsistencies. For instance, since Katherine signs a contract with Vincent to participate in Death Watch, why is secret filming necessary? Furthermore, at 128 leisurely minutes, Death Watch is way too long.
          Nonetheless, the movie is compelling, prescient, and surprising. Rather than simply condemning crass consumerism, Tavernier’s movie asks questions about the individual’s right to live and die according to principles. Katherine spends the whole movie extricating herself from people who want her to be someone other than herself, in essence choosing authenticity over fakery even as she sells authenticity to create fakery. So, even though Tavernier ultimately fails to unify the provocative elements of Death Watch into a clear statement, he raises enough interesting issues to make the experience worthwhile.

          It helps that Death Watch is a beautiful-looking movie, with cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn capturing grim vistas of burned-out cities, elegant tableaux of Old World interiors, and painterly panoramas of verdant landscapes. (The picture was shot entirely in Scotland.) The leading performances are a mixed bag, with Schneider inhibited by sketchy English and Keitel caught between awkward attempts at romantic-lead charm and clumsy Method-style freakouts. Supporting players fare better, notably Stanton, who is effective as a soulless corporate weasel, and Von Sydow, who steals the picture with his commanding presence. Death Watch is an odd movie filled with superfluous scenes, but the narrative bloat gives Tavernier time to cast a hypnotic spell.

Death Watch: GROOVY

Rancho Deluxe (1975)

          Because novelist/screenwriter Thomas McGuane’s literary voice was such an enjoyably eccentric component of ’70s cinema (his big-screen work tapered off in subsequent decades), it doesn’t really matter that ’70s films bearing his name have weak stories. What the pictures lack in narrative momentum, they make up for in personality. Rancho Deluxe, written by McGuane and directed by the adventurous Frank Perry, is an offbeat modern Western that’s a comedy by default—which is to say that while the movie has amusing elements, it’s primarily a character study. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston play Jack and Cecil, low-rent cattle rustlers plaguing a ranch owned by the vituperative John Brown (Clifton James). Eventually, John gets fed up with losing livestock and hires thugs to apprehend the rustlers. First come inept ranch hands Burt (Richard Bright) and Curt (Harry Dean Stanton), both of whom are too horny and lackadaisical to devote much energy toward criminal investigation. Then John brings in a thief-turned-detective, Henry (Slim Pickens), whose idiosyncratic approach mostly involves setting traps and waiting for the rustlers to stumble across his path. Also thrown into the mix are John’s short-tempered wife, Cora (Elizabeth Ashley), and Henry’s hot-to-trot daughter, Laura (Charlene Dallas).

          McGuane mostly eschews dramatic tension, opting instead for closely observed scenes of quirky characters behaving in ways that reveal their nature. There’s a great bit, for instance, when Jack and Cecil kidnap a car and shoot it full of holes, partially to make a point and partially to pass the time. In moments like this, McGuane’s script captures the slow rhythms of rural life, as well as the bedrock Western virtue of rugged individualism. In scene after scene, McGuane ensures that his characters evince surprising dimensions. Consider party girl Mary (Maggie Wellman), who reveals unexpected cultural sophistication with her comment about a dinner spread: “This is a weird mixture of yin and yang—so many animal karmas have bit the dust here.” Elsewhere, Stanton’s character tries to look macho while standing outside John’s mansion and running a vacuum over an Indian rug per instructions from the lady of the house. Virtually every minute of Rancho Deluxe is interesting in some way or another, but that’s not quite enough to compensate for the generally aimless feel of the piece. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to enjoy thanks to McGuane’s quirky writing and the generally lively performances. Pickens and Stanton are the standouts, with Pickens’ down-home bluster and Stanton’s laconic vibe suiting the material especially well, though Bridges, James, and Waterston each provide likeable characterizations.

Rancho Deluxe: FUNKY

Wise Blood (1979)

          By the end of the ’70s, veteran director John Huston had amply demonstrated his ability to change with the times, making a series of hip oddities that stood in sharp contrast to the stuffy museum pieces created by many of his chronological peers during the ‘70s. Of these offbeat pictures, Wise Blood is perhaps the strangest, not only because the underlying material is peculiar but also because Huston presents the story as if it is high comedy—even though the narrative of Wise Blood is a grim compendium of episodes featuring characters gripped by criminal, delusional, self-destructive, and sociopathic impulses. It’s clear that the intent of the picture was to offer broad satire about certain cultural extremes prevalent in America’s Deep South, but it’s difficult to laugh when characters deeply in need of psychiatric intervention court oblivion.

          Based on Flannery O’Connor’s 1962 novel of the same name, the picture follows the exploits of Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif), a Georgia native who returns home from military service in Vietnam to find that his old life has disappeared—his family skipped town, leaving their home an empty wreck. Unexpectedly adrift, Hazel relocates to the city of Macon and builds relationships with a group of eccentrics living on the fringes of society. Hazel’s new acquaintances include Enoch (Dan Shor), an exuberant young simpleton; Asa (Harry Dean Stanton), a fire-and-brimstone street preacher; and Sabbath (Amy Wright), Asa’s twitchy daughter. Eventually, Hazel decides to start his own religion, which isn’t actually a religion, so he ends up preaching against Jesus on the same street corners where Asa sings the gospels. Meanwhile, an edgy romance between Hazel and Sabbath takes shape, and Enoch follows Hazel around like a puppy. It all gets very bizarre—one of the subplots involves stealing a shrunken corpse from a museum—and the great Ned Beatty joins the story midway through as an opportunistic guitarist/preacher/swindler.

          Although Huston films the story with his customary elegance, blending evocative production design and subtle camerawork to create a vivid sense of place, the arch nature of the characterizations makes it difficult to buy into Wise Blood’s illusions. Dourif seems like a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic in nearly every scene, rendering audience empathy nearly impossible; his performance is unquestionably committed and intense, but it’s a drag to watch. Meanwhile, Shor and Wright incarnate ignorance with painful believably. Only Beatty and Stanton strike a palatable balance between the lightheartedness of Huston’s storytelling and the ugliness of O’Connor’s story. Wise Blood would have been a unique film no matter who sat behind the camera, so it’s doubly impressive that a veteran of Huston’s caliber tackled such challenging material. Alas, novelty alone isn’t enough to make for a rewarding viewing experience.

Wise Blood: FUNKY

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers (1979)

To avoid any confusion later, it must be stated up front that the TV movie Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers is exactly as awful as its title suggests, though not in the expected way—instead of being lurid or sleazy, the picture is merely dull and insipid. So why note its existence? Well, a number of notable people worked on the project, and in the case of supporting actor Harry Dean Stanton, there’s a minor connection between Flatbed Annie and a famous project that came later. Plus, Flatbed Annie features the one and only acting performance by Billy Carter (pictured), U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s beer-swilling brother. Based on the scant evidence of his one scene, Billy Carter did not miss his calling. To get the synopsis out of the way, Sweetiepie (Kim Darby) is the wife of long-haul trucker Jack (Fred Willard), who gets laid up after an accident and falls behind on truck payments. Sweetiepie decides she needs to deliver a load in Jack’s rig so she can earn money to keep the truck out of hock. In order to achieve this goal, she enlists the aid of Flatbed Annie (Annie Potts), a tough-talking driver. Meanwhile, conniving entrepreneur C.W. Douglas (Stanton) buys Jack’s loan and then tries every angle he can to repossess Jack’s truck so he can sell the rig for cash. That’s the Stanton connection, such as it is—the actor plays a repo man just a few years before portraying another character with the same job in the cult favorite Repo Man (1983). Stanton is the best thing in this terrible movie, whether he’s giving deadpan line deliveries or, in one scene, singing. It’s also (somewhat) interesting to note that Flatbed Annie was directed by Robert Greenwald, whose other accomplishments in fiction films range from the impressive (the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed) to the mortifying (the 1980 musical flop Xanadu); today, Greenwald is known for his low-budget liberal-fringe documentaries, such as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005) and Koch Brothers Exposed (2012). As for the leading actors, neither Darby nor Potts benefits from her encounter with this material. Both are abysmal. Darby seems distracted and incompetent, while Potts’ weird performance would only make sense if it were revealed that her character was a drug casualty. Summing up, Flatbed Annie is to be avoided at all costs—except by the morbidly curious.

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers: LAME

Cisco Pike (1972)

          During the early ’70s, one of the most happening scenes in the music business revolved around the Troubadour club in West Hollywood, the watering hole of choice for folks like Jackson Browne, the Eagles, and Linda Ronstadt. Perhaps no single narrative movie captures the texture of this scene better than Cisco Pike, which tells the story of a rock star who turns to dealing grass when his career goes cold. Starring singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson in his first acting role, Cisco Pike exudes atmosphere and authenticity as the storyline winds through nightclubs, recording studios, and the streets of Los Angeles—at its best, the movie almost feels like a documentary capturing what it was like to be high on tunes (and weed) in the City of Angels during a transitional moment between the idealism of the late ’60s and the decadence of the late ’70s.

          The weird part, though, is that Cisco Pike isn’t really a story about the music business. It’s a crime thriller exploring what happens when the title character gets into a hassle with a whacked-out cop who’s playing both sides of the law. The basic story involves an LAPD psycho named Leo Holland (Gene Hackman) forcing rocker-turned-recidivist Cisco (Kristofferson) to sell a huge trove of pot that’s fallen into Holland’s hands. In shaking down his old music-industry contacts for cash, Cisco finds out which friends have integrity and thereby arrives at a new but unsettling understanding of his place in the world. Thanks to this offbeat storyline, viewers can consume Cisco Pike several different ways. For instance, it’s possible to groove on the picture as a nostalgia trip, and it’s also possible to enjoy the narrative’s mild suspense.

          What makes film so rich, besides the colorful details woven into writer-director Bill L. Norton’s script and the extensive location photography, is the lively cast. Beyond Kristofferson, who exudes such powerful natural charisma that he subsequently became a movie star, Cisco Pike benefits from Hackman giving an energetically weird performance as the dirty cop, as well as Harry Dean Stanton blending humor and pathos as the title character’s once-and-future singing partner. The picture also features ’70s stalwarts Allan Arbus, Karen Black, Roscoe Lee Browne, Antonio Fargas, Howard Hesseman, and Severn Darden. For some fans, however, the highlight is a cameo by real-life rocker Doug Sahm, who plays a campy riff on himself—rhapsodizing about the virtues of great ganja and spewing subliterate hipster jive about music, he epitomizes the far-out vibe of stoned ’70s rock.

          It’s easy to find flaws with Cisco Pike, because the movie’s energy is fairly low and because Norton’s filmmaking style is way more conventional than, say, Dennis Hopper’s mind-bending approach, which might have suited this milieu better. But considering how many interesting things Cisco Pike presents in its 95 minutes, complaining that it could have been a stronger picture seems petty.

Cisco Pike: GROOVY

The Missouri Breaks (1976)

          When it’s referred to at all, The Missouri Breaks is generally cited as the movie that derailed Marlon Brando’s ’70s comeback, because after reclaiming prominence with the 1972 double-whammy of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris, Brando confounded supporters by delivering such a campy performance in The Missouri Breaks that he entered the realm of self-parody. Ironically, however, Brando isn’t even the star of this offbeat Western, despite his top billing. The Missouri Breaks is a Jack Nicholson vehicle. But such is the power of Brando’s myth that he dominates the picture—and the picture’s reputation. On one level, it’s a shame the good things in The Missouri Breaks were overshadowed by Brando’s self-indulgence, since the movie’s dialogue has loads of frontier-varmint flavor and the location photography is elegant. Plus, writer Thomas McGuane’s characteristically eccentric storyline takes a fresh approach to ancient themes of revenge and vigilantism. But on another level, Brando’s silly performance is exactly what The Missouri Breaks deserves, since the film is unnecessarily languid and turgid; perhaps a stronger storyline might have motivated Brando to furnish a more streamlined characterization.

          In any event, Nicholson stars as Tom Logan, leader of a grubby band of cattle rustlers operating in Montana. When one of Tom’s accomplices is killed by order of a rural judge named David Braxton (John McLian), Tom purchases a ranch near David’s property with the intention of tormenting his enemy. Meanwhile, David hires a mercenary named Robert E. Lee Clayton (Brando) to smoke out local rustlers. (David is, of course, unaware of Tom’s true identity.) Further complicating matters, Tom courts David’s lonely, willful daughter, Jane (Kathleen Lloyd). The story has a few layers too many, its sprawling flow more suited to a novel than a movie, and McGuane’s script often gets lost in thickets of flavorful chitty-chat; to use a musical analogy, The Missouri Breaks is like a jam in search of a melody.

          Director Arthur Penn, whose previous films Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Little Big Man (1970) so cleverly undercut genre expectations, veers too far (and too inconsistently) away from the mainstream with The Missouri Breaks—the movie toggles between insouciant tomfoolery and numbingly serious drama. In fact, the film is at its best when nothing much is happening onscreen, because simple scenes allow McGuane and Penn to focus on believably mundane rhythms of behavior and characterization. Supporting player Harry Dean Stanton shines in many of these throwaway scenes with his innately laconic vibe. Nicholson’s at a bit of a loss from start to finish, grasping for a central theme around which to build his sloppily rendered character, and Brando—well, it says everything that the actor performs one of his climactic scenes in drag, for no apparent reason. Whether he’s chirping a comical Irish accent, peering around his horse from odd angles, or sulking in a bubble bath, Brando presents a series of goofy sketches in lieu of a proper characterization.

The Missouri Breaks: FUNKY

Cockfighter (1974)

          The strangest thing about Cockfighter is simply that it exists. A meditative character piece about a Southern drifter who makes his life training chickens for death matches with other chickens—and who, for most of the movie, refuses to speak—Cockfighter is daring even by the standards of offbeat ’70s American cinema, if only by dint of the storyline’s inherent ugliness. Did anyone involved in the picture believe that broad audiences would be able to sympathize with a protagonist who leads animals to slaughter for sport and profit? But that’s the ’70s for you, a wild time when brash young filmmakers somehow got funding to put the inner lives of society’s freaks onto the screen. And, indeed, the inner life of Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates) is very much the subject of Cockfighter, which was adapted by Charles Willeford from his novel of the same name. Frank is a self-destructive iconoclast who takes such crazy pride in his skills that he bets all his assets on his feathered killers, then suffers in silence when things don’t go his way.

          At the beginning of the picture, Frank is partway through a long, grueling odyssey to regain his pride. We learn, via flashbacks and narration, that after Frank lost a crucial match some time ago, he swore himself to silence unless he won the Cockfighter of the Year medal. In the grungy universe of this movie, Frank and his colleagues work an underground circuit of formal and informal matches, all of which are governed by an unyielding code of honor. So, just as we see Frank earn the respect of his peers by taking losses gracefully, we see minor characters excoriated for defying accepted methods. In one gruesome scene, for instance, a redneck trainer named Junior (Steve Railsback) gets disqualified for agitating a bird by inserting his (Junior’s) fingers into the bird’s anus. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie—sort of.

          While the content of Cockfighter is frequently repulsive, the actual images are artful, except, of course, during the actual fighting scenes (many of which are filmed in horrific slow-motion). As directed by Monte Hellman, who earned a cult following in the ’70s for his heavily metaphorical character studies, Cockfighter is memorable but undisciplined. Some episodes in the story feel germane while others feel superfluous. Additionally, the portrayal of women in Frank’s life is confounding, since it’s hard to tell whether Frank’s a romantic or a son of a bitch. Further, the movie’s occasional leaps into redneck humor feel out of step with the overall lyrical vibe. Yet Oates is a fascinating presence, as always, his hangdog features perfectly suited for an outsider character with a savage streak, and the invaluable Harry Dean Stanton enlivens several scenes as Frank’s preening, scheming pal. Cockfighter is an odd beast for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that the movie is both simplistic and complex—on one level, it’s a superficial exploitation flick, and on another, it’s a ballad of loneliness. With a lot of foul-tempered fowl.

Cockfighter: FREAKY

Straight Time (1978)

          After the flurry of activity that followed his star-making performance in The Graduate (1967), Dustin Hoffman became incredibly selective in the ’70s and ’80s, sometimes letting years pass between projects. Not coincidentally, his commitment to the parts he actually took was incredible, manifesting as deep involvement with story development and meticulous research into the lifestyles of his characters. The excellent drama Straight Time is rooted in this uncompromising craftsmanship: Hoffman’s character appears in virtually every scene, so his performance shapes the film.

          Hoffman stars as Max Dembo, a small-time crook recently released from six years in prison. After a few halting attempts at living within the law, Max drifts back to criminality in part because his hard-driving parole officer, Earl Frank (M. Emmett Walsh), finds drug residue left in Max’s dingy apartment by Max’s useless friend, fellow ex-con Willy Darin (Gary Busey). Feeling like he’s damned to incarceration whether he commits crimes or not, Max starts executing risky robberies despite the promise of his new romance with Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell), a sweet young woman he met at an employment agency.

          The intense drama of Straight Time stems from an exploration of whether Max ever really has the opportunity to go straight. In a way, the picture is an indictment of the social structures that ensure a lifetime of punishment for any significant infraction. Based on a novel by real-life criminal Edward Bunker and directed by Ulu Grosbard, all of whose films are distinguished by extraordinary acting, Straight Time has authenticity to burn. It’s uncomfortable watching Max gauge the reactions of people who discover the truth about his past, and excruciating to see him tossed back in the slammer on the mere suspicion of a parole violation.

          The genius of Hoffman’s performance is that he plays Max as an addict: Whenever Max gets his teeth into a promising score, he loses the ability to perceive anything except the loot in front of him, so he frequently overstays his welcome at crime sites, endangering himself and his accomplices. Therefore, the movie provides a resonant portrait of a career criminal, someone who, accurately or not, believes no other options exist.

          The performers supporting Hoffman are terrific, with Busey and a young Kathy Bates playing an impoverished couple trying to steer clear of trouble despite the Busey character’s many weaknesses. Harry Dean Stanton essays a frightening professional crook whose ruthless discipline makes him a public menace. Russell is credible and sensitive in one of her first roles, and Walsh does wonders with the movie’s thinnest characterization. Although a slew of writers worked on the script (including A-listers Michael Mann and Alvin Sargent), it’s to Grosbard’s and Hoffman’s credit that the film comes together as smoothly as it does: Straight Time is essentially a character study, but the movie also works, at least in moments, as a gripping thriller. More importantly, it resonates.

Straight Time: RIGHT ON

92 in the Shade (1975)

          Eccentric and flavorful, the sole directorial effort by novelist/screenwriter Thomas McGuane is slight on story but long an atmosphere. The sweaty tale of a conflict between two guide-boat captains in Key West, 92 in the Shade has a quintessentially ’70s cast filled with actors who nail McGuane’s weird dialogue, plus realistic locations that lend credibility. Peter Fonda stars as Tom Skelton, an easygoing young man who decides to become a guide-boat captain squiring tourists around the Everglades. This antagonizes Nichol Dance (Warren Oates), a hair-triggered boat captain working the same area. Undaunted, Tom opens for business. However, because McGuane is more interested in the subtle nuances of offbeat behavior than the predictable rhythms of macho brutality, 92 in the Shade depicts adversaries who don’t really want to hurt each other. As a result, many scenes feature the funny/sad subtext of Nichol begging Tom to back off so things won’t spiral into violence.

          McGuane also devotes lots of screen time to tasty subplots, like the domestic travails of another boat captain, Carter (Harry Dean Stanton), and his frustrated wife, Jeannie (Elizabeth Ashley); Carter’s a working slob trying to pay the bills, but Jeannie’s a former majorette eager to enjoy the lifestyle to which she anticipates becoming accustomed. Another thread involves Tom’s ailing father (William Hickey), who sits outdoors in a mosquito net while he bickers with Tom’s grandfather (Burgess Meredith), a lawyer who relishes his small amount of regional influence. As Hickey whines in a typically ornate McGuane turn of phrase, “Your grandfather’s Huey Long complex has finally put him beyond communication.”

          In fact, McGuane’s dialogue is the best reason to watch the movie. Oates gets to spew some of the most peculiar lines, whether explaining his fantasy of becoming Arnold Palmer’s caddy or issuing confounding declarations like, “I’m the kinda guy who’d fuck a brush pile if I thought there was a snake in there.” Whether the line actually means anything is beside the point, because Oates is so good at incarnating rural misfits that the medium becomes the message. The only cast member who isn’t given interesting material is leading lady Margot Kidder, but one suspects she wasn’t hired for her acting chops, since she spends the movie strutting around in miniscule tops that—well, let’s just say Kidder had ample ventilation while shooting in humid locations. 92 in the Shade has more texture than substance, but for those who dig this particular period in character-driven cinema, it’s an enjoyable lark filled with enthusiastic performances.

92 in the Shade: GROOVY

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

          Highly regarded as one of the most faithful adaptations of a Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell, My Lovely is an oddity among the films that comprised the noir boom of the mid-’70s. Unlike, say, Chinatown (1974), which placed a contemporary cast in a period milieu to achieve a postmodern effect, Farewell, My Lovely stars an actor who appeared in several classics of the original late ’40s noir cycle: Robert Mitchum. And while Mitchum’s advanced age creates some storytelling hiccups, like the idea that his character is sexual catnip for a young beauty, his deep association with the genre and the hangdog quality that made him a good fit for vintage noir are used to great effect; Mitchum lumbers around Farewell, My Lovely like he’s the same poor bastard he played in Out of the Past (1947) after another 30 years of rough road.

          In addition to its well-cast leading man, the picture boasts a smooth script by David Zelag Goodman. The screenplay retains Chandler’s pithiest observations (via Mitchum’s world-weary voiceover) and lets the story spiral off into all the right murky tangents without losing narrative coherence. Describing a Chandler plot in the abstract does nothing to capture the story’s appeal, but the broad strokes are that a muscle-bound crook named Moose Malloy (Jack O’Halloran) hires private dick Philip Marlowe (Mitchum) to track down his long-lost girlfriend. This draws Marlowe into a web of hoodlums, politicians, and whores, so before long Marlowe’s been beaten, shot at, shot up, and generally put through the wringer. Along the way, he commences a torrid romance with a powerful judge’s fag-hag trophy wife, Helen Grayle (Charlotte Rampling). The movie gets seedier as it progresses, with Marlowe serving as the audience’s tour guide through the underworld.

          Director Dick Richards gets preoccupied with aping the visual style of classic noir flicks (lotsa neon and venetian blinds), so the more amateurish actors in the cast don’t get the attention they need, and Richards is pretty inept handling the sequence of Marlowe getting hopped up on dope. Nonetheless, the story is compelling—in Chandler’s universe, bad situations always get worse—and the supporting cast is colorful. John Ireland stands out as Marlowe’s policeman pal, the stalwart Detective Nulty, and Sylvia Miles received an Oscar nomination for her grotesque turn as a boozy ex-showgirl. Harry Dean Stanton, Joe Spinell, and Anthony Zerbe show up at regular intervals, and there’s even a brief appearance by a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. Farewell, My Lovely is uneven, but its virtues are plentiful.

Farewell, My Lovely: GROOVY

Zandy’s Bride (1974)

          Of the many peculiar ’70s subgenres for which I have undying fondness, the revisionist Western is perhaps the most rewarding. Filmmakers in the ’70s went nuts overturning the tropes of a beloved Hollywood genre, using gritty realism to transform Westerns into social commentary. Those highfalutin ambitions go a long way toward explaining Zandy’s Bride, the story of a grudging romance that develops between a son-of-a-bitch rancher and his mail-order bride. While the underlying story is familiar, the sort of thing John Wayne might have made in the ’40s or ’50s, the execution is unsentimental. It’s hard to envision Wayne proclaiming, as the lead character in this film does, that he doesn’t need his wife for sex, because he’s content with “the five sisters,” meaning the fingers of his right hand. Similarly, it’s difficult to picture the Duke ditching his long-suffering spouse every time the local tramp comes sniffing around. None of this should create the illusion that Zandy’s Bride fully overcomes the trite rhythms of its storyline. Rather, these remarks should contextualize Zandy’s Bride as a nasty ride through terrain that, seen previously, might have seemed idyllic.

          Gene Hackman, adding yet another scowling meanie to his gallery of cinematic pricks, is frightening as reclusive rancher Zandy Allen. Eking out a rugged existence on his small California homestead, he sends away for a spouse, expecting nothing more than someone to share his workload and spew children. Matching Hackman’s energy is the formidable Swedish actress Liv Ullmann, who plays Hannah Lund, the woman who accepts Zandy’s overture. She alienates Zandy the moment she arrives, because she’s in her 30s and not the dewy young thing he expected. Having left her old life behind, so she has no choice but to endure his abuse for as long as she can. Once the couple experiences assorted frontier travails together, they fight burgeoning affection, as if warmth is a sign of weakness. Yet the more they fortify their respective emotional boundaries, the more they realize they’re compatible enough to coexist.

          The picture’s evocative portrayal of the natural world makes sense, seeing as how director Jan Troell previously made the acclaimed foreign films The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972), which dramatized the experiences of Swedish people relocating to the American frontier. The film’s dour portrait of life for women in the Wild West also rings true, and vivid characterizations by supporting players Frank Cady, Eileen Heckart, Harry Dean Stanton, and especially Susan Tyrell add to the effect. Though Zandy’s Bride is too long at 116 minutes, the ending pays things off nicely, and the picture is replete with gorgeous images: Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth creates the palpable sense of a frontier that’s simultaneously liberating and oppressive.

Zandy’s Bride: GROOVY