The Happening

I worked for Marian/Polan talent agency. And I was an extra in this movie down in Miami. I had some car scenes during a chase. I met Milton Berle when I did the show girl scenes at the Fountain Blue hotel. I only met Anthony Quinn's double. I was chosen by Anthony Quinn to play the double for Faye Dunaway but my mother would not let me dye my hair blonde for the part. I am still upset over that. Working as an extra I learned that many scenes use doubles. http://www.flickr.com/photos/66013135@N00/3298029225/ Me at age 18.

I have the movie on tape. I thought it was quite a good action film. But it was not my favorite Anthony Quinn movie. It seemed too disjointed. I believe this was Faye Dunaway's second movie. In the same year she made Bonnie and Clyde which was a much better movie. I loved the scenery of Miami as I am a born native of Miami. The movie is a good look at Miami, the way it was before it was ruined.

I have confounded for a long time this film with another one, also starring Anthony Quinn - THE WILD PARTY - with more or less a close plot. A bunch of punks abduct - kidnap someone. In THE WILD PARTY, Anthony Quinn was a former football player and was one of the punks. Here, he is a mob boss who, this time, is abducted and by hippies. So, you have understood that this movie is very typical from the late sixties and the peace and love generation - don't miss the first five or ten minutes. The tone is sometimes funny, in the total comedy mode, but not all the time. The overall result is however very light hearted, not a gritty movie. So, if you look for a harsh and tough crime flick, avoid this rare film from the director of CAT BALLOU and THE CAR; I nearly forgot A MAN CALLED HORSE.

I caught this movie on late-night TV one night when I had nothing better to do and I'm not sure I might have been better off just doing nothing. I have a weakness for these kind of swingin' sixties movies, but even I couldn't take this junk. The story is about four alleged hipsters who kidnap a Mafia kingpin just for kicks, but then it goes from hijinks to pathos rather suddenly when the don realizes he can't extract the ransom money from his so-called "friends". I guess this is Hollywood's interpretation of what constituted coolness and hip in the late 60s, but in a post-Manson world, I don't know that there's anything funny about any of this. The music, surprisingly for the time, is just dreadful. The Supremes theme song is all right, but the rest of the soundtrack is a lot of Herb Alpert-ish tripe.

As for the acting, Michael Parks and George Maharis turn in the usual rotten performances. The big stars in the movie have a few good moments- Milton Berle as a restaurant owner has a fairly hilarious scene where he tends to various guest complaints. And Anthony Quinn as the Mafia don has a beautiful scene outside, I guess, Dodger Stadium, when it finally hits him that everyone has turned their back on him for the ransom money, and he becomes disturbingly violent and on the edge of tears, and Faye Dunaway says to the others, "I don't want to play this game anymore", which is a genuinely moving episode. But that's part of the problem with the movie: it can't quite reconcile the comedy with the sadness and back to comedy again. It's generally a lousy movie, only significant that it was Faye Dunaway's first big-time movie role, and not significant in any other way. 1 1/2 * out of 4

Funny thing is I'm a child of the 60's & 70's. I remember seeing this when it was first released and I loved it! I saw it recently as an adult and it sucked the big one. Oh well. Pass on this film, It has nothing to say and just isn't funny. Unless you're 13. Put it in the same category as X Men. Good now, sucks later.

Elliot Silverstein goes crazy with the mod visuals while directing this bizarre '60s concoction, fashioning it as both a modern-day war satire and a juvenile delinquency drama. Retired Mafioso Anthony Quinn is kidnapped by a ragtag group of punks (Faye Dunaway among them!); unfortunately, Quinn can't get any of his acquaintances or loved ones to pay his ransom, thereby putting him in-cahoots with the misguided young people. Ronald Austin co-wrote the screenplay with help from James D. Buchanan and future director Frank Pierson, yet the cast looks mostly perplexed on-camera (and audiences will most likely join them). The Supremes got a #1 hit song out of the title track, yet their version was not present in the print that I saw. *1/2 from ****