Mitchell (1975)

One of the least interesting entries in the ’70s cycle of action movies about cops behaving as lawlessly as the criminals they pursue, Mitchell features a disjointed storyline, lackluster action scenes, and perfunctory acting. The movie is more or less coherent, but it’s also boring, clichéd, and stupid. Hulking B-movie star Joe Don Baker plays the title character, a dim-bulb detective who gets mixed up with sophisticated crooks, so the bulk of the story involves Baker’s character trying to outwit people whose intellects greatly surpass his own. This sort of premise worked well in a zillion other movies; for instance, Baker offered an entertaining, Southern-fried spin on similar material in Walking Tall (1973). Yet everything about Mitchell feels half-assed. Baker isn’t the right casting for a tough city cop, since he’s unmistakably a good ol’ boy from Texas, and he plays nearly every scene like light comedy, even though death and destruction follow in his wake. As directed by the normally reliable Andrew V. McLaglen, Mitchell wobbles between escapism and seriousness, so it seems likely that many of the film’s tonal problems emerged during postproduction. After all, there’s no excuse for the inclusion of cornpone country singer Hoyt Axton’s lackadaisical theme song during a lengthy love scene between Baker and leading lady Linda Evans—for several excruciating minutes, Mitchell becomes the equivalent of the worst type of Burt Reynolds romp. Future Dallas star Evans is as forgettable as always, while the actors playing the villains—the great Martin Balsam and the emphatic John Saxon—are wasted in one-dimensional roles. (Saxon’s big scene is a silly chase involving dune buggies.) Virtually nothing in Mitchell works, and the climax is beyond ludicrous. Baker’s character commandeers a helicopter to chase after bad guys who are in a boat, transfers from the helicopter to the boat, and takes out a henchman with a metal hook. All the while, the main villain simply stands at the boat’s controls, waiting to get shot instead of taking defensive action. But then again, seeing as how he’s stuck in an awful movie, can you blame him?

Mitchell: LAME

Fools’ Parade (1971)

          A weird adventure story depicting the exploits of three ex-cons traveling through Depression-era West Virginia, Fools’ Parade features such a delicate combination of eccentric characterizations and literary contrivances that it would have taken a director of tremendous artistry to pull the pieces together into a coherent whole. Alas, Andrew V. McLaglen is not such a director. Because he presents the story with the same brisk, unvarnished style with which he made several entertaining action films, the peculiar nuances of Fools’ Parade end up feeling completely false. So while the movie is watchable thanks to the novelty of familiar actors playing offbeat scenes, Fools’ Parade isn’t satisfying—the execution is too straight for fans of idiosyncratic cinema, and the storyline is unlikely to thrill people who prefer conventional narratives.

          Jimmy Stewart stars as Mattie Appleyard, a recently paroled inmate who accrued $25,000 in back pay through 40 years of hard labor behind bars. Mattie has gathered a surrogate family of fellow ex-cons, including Lee Cottrill (Strother Martin), a nervous would-be storekeeper, and Johnny Jesus (Kurt Russell), a naïve youth. The trio’s goal of starting a business together hits a roadblock when they realize their former jailor, a psycho named “Doc” Council (George Kennedy), has conspired to prevent Mattie from safely cashing his $25,000 check. This circumstance precipitates a battle of wills between the ex-cons and their once and future oppressor, who chases after them with gun-toting henchmen. There’s also a subplot involving a blowsy madam (Anne Baxter) and a reluctant prostitute (Kathy Cannon), plus another subplot involving a corrupt banker (David Huddleston) who’s in cahoots with Council.

          Fools’ Parade was based on a book by Davis Grubb, who also wrote the source material for the 1955 cult classic The Night of the Hunter. This is arch material, but McLaglen plays the story straight, missing opportunities for irony, satire, and whimsy. Only the action scenes really work, at least in the conventional sense. Another issue is the clunky dialogue by screenwriter James Lee Barrett, much of which the normally excellent Huddleston is forced to deliver; Huddleston is little more than an exposition machine here.

          Despite these fatal flaws, Fools’ Parade is mildly arresting. Watching Stewart play a stately crook who does things like yank his glass eye from his skull in order to tell fortunes is bracing. Martin squirms through one of his signature performances as a Southern-fried oddball. And Russell plays every moment with the same gee-whiz sincerity he brought to myriad Disney flicks in the early ’70s. Yet Kennedy delivers the movie’s most extravagant performance. Wearing grime over his teeth and wire-rimmed glasses over his face, the bulky actor hunches over like a troglodyte and drags out utterances in the vocal style a tweaked country preacher. His acting is spectacularly bad. (Baxter almost matches him for over-the-top stagecraft, especially since she wears garish whore makeup.) It’s hard to imagine how or why Fools’ Paradegot made, since it must have been nearly as strange on paper as it is on screen. After all, the climax features a sight gag involving a lovable dog fetching a stick of lit dynamite. However, these bizarre flourishes make Fools’ Parade a curio—one can only marvel that the movie exists.

Fools’ Parade: FREAKY