Magic (1978)

          After the success of Marathon Man (1976), the whiz-bang thriller that screenwriter William Goldman adapted from his own novel, it was only a matter of time before Goldman was tapped to bring another of his escapist books to the screen. Hence Magic, which employs the disquieting premise of a ventriloquist gone mad. Benefiting from an amazing performance by star Anthony Hopkins, Magic commands attention from start to finish even though some of the plot twists are highly dubious. Lest we forget, few screenwriters are better at generating pure entertainment than Goldman, so the fun factor mostly trumps logic hiccups. Furthermore, director Richard Attenborough—with whom Goldman previously worked on the World War II epic A Bridge Too Far(1977)—wisely lets the material take the lead, rather than submerging it beneath stylistic flourishes. Magicmight strike some modern viewers as quaint, since what passed for shock value in a 1978 popcorn movie now seems restrained, and the love story at the center of the picture never quite works. Nonetheless, there’s a great deal here to enjoy.

          Hopkins plays Corky Withers, a gifted magician who lacks stage presence until he adds a gimmick to his act—Fats, a foul-mouthed dummy that functions as Corky’s onstage comedy partner. Fats’ notoriety earns Corky representation from William Morris agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith), who arranges for Corky to shoot a TV pilot. When the network insists on a medical exam, however, Corky balks, and Ben rightly worries that Corky is concealing latent mental illness. Corky leaves New York for his boyhood hometown in the Catskills, where he reconnects with Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret), the girl he was too shy to ask out during high school. Now trapped in a loveless marriage to the brutish Duke (Ed Lauter), Peggy reveals she always liked Corky, so they begin an illicit romance. Goldman then builds suspense around the question of whether Fats—who has become a focal point for the demons in Corky’s soul—will intrude on Corky’s happiness. Cue scenes of mayhem and murder.

          While the picture’s character-driven approach is commendable, Goldman and Attenborough fail to calibrate supporting characters correctly. The Corky character works, and so does Ben Greene, but Peggy’s identity wobbles from scene to scene based on what’s convenient for the story, and Duke feels like a one-note contrivance. Plus, nearly half the movie elapses before the really creepy stuff starts. That said, Magic contains several terrific suspense scenes, most of which are driven by Hopkins’ meticulous depiction of Corky’s doomed attempts to keep his rage in check—watching the actor teeter on the brink of homicidal fury is completely absorbing. The movie also has flashes of Goldman’s signature wiseass humor, and Attenborough prudently borrows tricks from the Hitchcock playbook. It should also be mentioned, of course, that the scare-factor potential of a dead-eyed doll with homicidal intentions is fully exploited—the crude and vicious Fats, whose abrasive voice is provided by Hopkins, emerges as a memorable screen villain.

Magic: GROOVY

The Train Robbers (1973)

Quite possibly John Wayne’s least distinguished ’70s Western, The Train Robbersis so enervated that easily one-quarter of the film’s brisk running time is consumed by aimless montages of posses riding across rough terrain. These sequences of horses and riders plodding across deserts or pounding through rivers are pleasant enough, with composer Dominic Frontiere’s lively music complementing lyrical imagery, but after a while it becomes apparent that writer-director Burt Kennedy failed to generate enough plot to sustain a feature film. The overall narrative of the picture is okay, a standard-issue quest involving rough men hired by a lady to recover stolen gold, and there are enough flashes of action and character interplay to more or less justify the movie’s existence. Yet it’s a measure of The Train Robbers’ shortcomings that the closest thing the picture has to a villain is poor Ricardo Montalban, who shows up every 20 minutes or so to glower at Wayne’s gang from a distance, puff on a cigar, and stand still while the image dissolves to another scene; Montalban doesn’t even speak until the very end of the movie. Equally malnourished is the flick’s love-story component, and not just because the gigantic, aging Wayne looks ridiculous when sharing the frame with tiny, young Ann-Margret. The flirtation between the leads comprises the Duke admiring Ann-Margret’s figure and spitfire personality (which is discussed but never really demonstrated) and Ann-Margret, in turn, batting her eyelashes during cringe-inducing interludes such as an unconvincing drunk scene. But, as with so many latter-day Wayne movies, The Train Robbers is really about mythologizing the Wayne persona. In one laughable moment, ornery sidekick Calhoun (Christopher George) is asked what’s wrong with Wayne’s character: Calhoun’s response, delivered with vaguely homoerotic glee? “Not a damn thing!” Alas, such a kind appraisal cannot be made of The Train Robbers, which, it should be noted, never actually features a train robbery. Even the presence of reliable cowboy-movie player Ben Johnson in a supporting role isn’t sufficient to make this one memorable.

The Train Robbers: FUNKY

Tommy (1975)

          Interesting as case study in what happens when two artists from different mediums bring their equally strong visions to bear on the same project, Tommyis eccentric British filmmaker Ken Russell’s visualization of the Who’s famous “rock opera” LP, which is arguably the crowning achievement of Who songwriter Pete Townshend’s career. Townshend’s ambitious musical cycle uses rock songs to tell a complete narrative, and the strain of this massive storytelling effort shows in the record’s inconsistency; for every incisive moment like “The Acid Queen,” sung from the perspective of a drug-peddling prostitute, there are clumsily literal tunes along the lines of the paired set “Go to the Mirror!” and “Smash the Mirror.” It’s commendable that Townshend maintained his aesthetic focus, but not every song is a winner. Furthermore, the narrative is ludicrous: After a young man is rendered blind, deaf, and dumb through melodramatic circumstances, he becomes a pinball champion and then a messiah for young followers who are inspired by his surmounting of physical challenges and his eventual recovery of his senses.
          Predictably, the storyline is even sillier in filmic form, because Russell illustrates many of Townshend’s overwrought images literally—and when Russell takes liberties, he adds childish flourishes like the scene in which Tommy’s mother (Ann-Margaret) gets hosed down with geysers of baked beans while writhing in sexual delight. Plus, the less said about Russell’s infatuation with oversized props and phallic symbols, the better. In fact, Russell’s apparent desire to live up to his reputation for outrageousness is Tommy’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness—adapted by a less whimsical director, Tommy might have become unrelentingly grim, but at the same time, Russell’s excess makes it impossible to take the movie seriously, because it’s all way too camp.

          Still, Russell creates a handful of memorable scenes, and the combination of lively music, offbeat casting, and speedy pacing keeps Tommymoving along. Who singer Roger Daltrey plays Tommy as an adult, relying on commitment and intensity instead of dramatic skill, and the other members of the Who lurk on the movie’s periphery, with the exception of madman drummer Keith Moon, who plays Tommy’s pedophile uncle. Ann-Margret is quite terrible as Tommy’s mother, overacting ridiculously and warbling her songs, though Oliver Reed gives an effectively seedy performance a Tommy’s scumbag stepfather. Jack Nicholson’s brief appearance as a doctor seeking to treat Tommy’s afflictions represents pointless stunt casting, but fellow guest stars Elton John and Tina Turner make important contributions in their supporting roles.

          John, of course, sings Tommy’s most famous song, “Pinball Wizard,” so effectively that John’s cover of the tune became a chart hit; similarly, his onscreen appearance in a cartoonish costume echoes the performer’s over-the-top ’70s stage persona. Turner, despite being photographed grotesquely with fisheye lenses and such, rips the screen apart with her wailing, wild number as the Acid Queen, providing a go-for-broke energy the rest of the movie fails to match.

Tommy: FUNKY

C.C. and Company (1970)

          So it’s the late ’60s and you’re Roger Smith, a former leading man now sidelined by various health problems but happily preoccupied with a new marriage to stage-and-screen sex kitten Ann-Margret. Your bride has entrusted you with the management of her career, and you already have a track record of producing (for instance, a coming-of-age feature with Jacqueline Bisset) and writing (including several episodes of the TV show on which you starred, 77 Sunset Strip). The next logical step is creating a vehicle for your titian-haired missus, right? Well, sort of. C.C. and Company is a showcase for Ann-Margret, to be sure, providing her with intense dramatic scenes and sexy peekaboo moments. But it’s a biker flick, and it’s also the first movie in which football star Joe Namath plays a leading role. So you’re Roger Smith, and your best plan for boosting your wife’s stardom is relegating her to a supporting role in the Joe Namath motorcycle picture that you’re writing and producing? Ours is not to judge, and it should be noted that as of this writing, Ann-Margret and Smith are still married after more than 40 years, so C.C. and Company must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

          And, indeed, though it’s awful in terms of dramatic credibility, C.C. and Company is enjoyable as a collection of glossy surfaces. The plot, no surprise, is pedestrian: Hog-riding outlaw C.C. Ryder (Namath) runs with a nasty gang until he falls for fashion writer Ann McCalley (Ann-Margret), but when C.C. tries to break from the gang for a new life with his lady, the gang’s leader, Moon (William Smith), kidnaps Ann to force a showdown. The movie’s visuals, courtesy of director Seymour Robbie and his team, are kicky and vivid—biker fights, fashion shows, romantic interludes, and so on. Namath’s couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude makes him watchable even though he can’t act, and Ann-Margret’s flamboyant vamping is a hoot. Naturally, her beauty is spotlighted at every opportunity, since Roger Smith knew what he was selling. Adding the X-factor that makes C.C. and Company a full-on guilty pleasure is biker-movie regular William Smith (no relation to the producer-director), as the villainous Moon. With his enormous biceps, handlebar moustache, and wicked line deliveries, he’s a great comic-book baddie, ably abetted by supporting thugs including fellow B-movie stalwart Sid Haig.

C.C. and Company: FUNKY

The Outside Man (1972)

          Although technically a French film (original title: Un homme est mort), the contemplative thriller The Outside Man was shot in America with most of the dialogue spoken in English, and several Hollywood stars appear in the cast, so it plays like a U.S. film with Gallic flair. The picture begins with French hit man Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant) arriving in L.A. to kill a mobster. Bellon performs his task efficiently, but then things get strange when it becomes apparent that an American assassin, Lenny (Roy Scheider), has been hired to whack Bellon. Instead of fleeing back to his homeland, Bellon lingers in California—realizing he’s been used as a pawn in a larger game, Bellon is determined to take out his enemies lest he remain a perpetual target.

          Since the French gave us the word ennui, and since that anguished state was the dominant flavor in so many ’70s movies about people searching for meaning in a turbulent world, it’s fitting that a French filmmaker came to America to make a crime picture as cynical as anything from William Friedkin or Walter Hill or Sam Peckinpah. Veteran director Jacques Deray shoots The Outside Man in a minimalistic style, positioning Bellon as a cold-blooded cipher who functions perfectly in an amoral universe so long as his criminal counterparts behave predictably—thus, when his lawless world is jostled, he’s as adrift as everyone else in the topsy-turvy ’70s, desperately grasping for the terra firma of a lost reality that will never return.

          If all of this sounds a bit lofty for a hit-man thriller, rest assured that Deray’s thematic implications live mostly in the film’s subtext, since The Outside Mancomprises brisk, exciting scenes of Bellon avoiding danger and forming peculiar allegiances. The Gallic gunman’s main crony is a gangland moll named Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret), who provides information and shelter, although Deray accentuates Nancy’s initial reluctance to get pulled into Bellon’s crisis. The movie also features a witty subplot involving a single mother (Georgia Engel) whom Bellon abducts—on top of never demonstrating the hysterics one might expect from someone in her situation, she eventually becomes titillated by the proximity to death, a sly commentary on how starved for excitement “average Americans” can become.

          Deray guides his actors toward restrained work that speaks to his theme of people deadened by life’s repetitive rhythms, so the diverse cast feels unified. Trintignant is lethal in a gentlemanly sort of way, Ann-Margret is amiably jaded (and sizzling, thanks to her cleavage-baring dresses), Scheider is elegantly savage, and Engel is subtly funny. (Other featured players include Angie Dickinson, as the murdered gangster’s wife, and a very young Jackie Earle Haley, as the son of Engel’s character.) The Outside Man is saturated with dense ’70s texture, from the brooding funk/jazz score by Michel Legrand to the extensive location photography that captures early-’70s L.A. in all of its sun-baked seediness. This is crime cinema at its most nihilistic, but there’s also a surprising current of human connection running through the story. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Outside Man: RIGHT ON

The Cheap Detective (1978)

          Yet another of the myriad film-noir spoofs that proliferated during the ’70s, The Cheap Detective is surprisingly underwhelming given its all-star cast and brand-name writer. Neil Simon, opting for broad farce instead of his usual domestic dramedy, weaves together storylines and stylistic tropes from assorted ’40s detective movies, mostly those starring Humphrey Bogart. Peter Falk stars as Lou Peckinpaugh, a San Francisco private eye who gets embroiled in a plot that’s a little bit Casablanca, a little bit Maltese Falcon, and a little bit of everything else. His partner gets killed, villains search for a cache of super-sized diamonds, and Lou juggles romantic intrigue with several dizzy dames. The movie’s gags are so silly that characters have names like Betty DeBoop, Jasper Blubber, and Jezebel Dezire.

          Based on this movie and Neil Simon’s other noir spoof from the same era starring Peter Falk, 1976’s Murder by Death, one gets the impression that Simon was trying to outdo Mel Brooks at the anything-goes approach to lampooning movie genres, but Simon simply couldn’t match the inspired lunacy that made Brooks’ spoofs so delirious. By trying to keep dialogue crisp and plotting rational, Simon’s attempt at this style falls somewhere between the extremes of proper storytelling and wild abandon. Thus, The Cheap Detective is fluffy without being truly irreverent and goofy without being truly insane—it’s like a second-rate Carol Burnett Show sketch, needlessly extended to feature length. What’s more, the movie is hurt by flat direction, as TV-trained helmer Robert Moore lacks the ability to generate exciting visuals.

          Yet another problem is the all-over-the-map acting. The most enjoyable performances, by Falk and supporting players Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, Madeline Kahn, and Fernando Lamas, wink at the audience without tipping into Borscht Belt excess. The most tiresome turns, by players including Ann-Margret, James Coco, Dom DeLuise, and Marsha Mason, fall into exactly that trap. (Though it must be said that Sid Caesar kills during one of the movie’s dumbest scenes, thanks to his legendary comic timing.) Some actors, however, seem completely adrift: Louise Fletcher, John Houseman, and Nicol Williamson strive to find consistent tonalities for their work, apparently receiving little guidance from Moore or the slapdash script. With this much talent involved, The Cheap Detective has a few bright spots, but the total package is quite blah.

The Cheap Detective: FUNKY

Carnal Knowledge (1971)

          A dark and strange exploration of male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge sprang from the bitter pen of playwright/satirist Jules Feiffer, with the sophisticated social observer Mike Nichols serving as director. The story begins in the ’50s, when college roommates Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) fumble their way through early sexual encounters with coeds. Jonathan’s an unapologetic horndog who soothes his insecurities through physical conquest, and, at least in his early days, Sandy is a romantic trying to balance libidinous urges with respect for women. The boys form a triangle with worldly coed Susan (Candice Bergen), who is drawn to Sandy’s sweetness but can’t resist Jonathan’s confidence. After this triangle runs its painful course, the movie skips forward and eventually lands in late-’60s New York City.

          Jonathan, who has grown into a deeply angry adult, gets involved with Bobbie (Ann-Margret), an older woman whose va-va-voom figure drives him wild. Unfortunately for him, she comes complete with emotional needs that he’s incapable of meeting, so their romance devolves into a regular schedule of screeching arguments. Meanwhile, Sandy becomes a seeker of sorts, bouncing from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next, and Jonathan makes wildly inappropriate passes at Sandy’s girlfriends.

          Much of the picture’s nonstop dialogue is sharp, capturing the extremes of emotionally crippled individuals. In one harrowing moment, for instance, Jonathan screams to Bobbie, “For God’s sake, I’d almost marry you if you’d leave me!” Nonetheless, the wall-to-wall dysfunction is a bit much. Since Feiffer and Nichols populate the movie exclusively with characters who are horrible or weak, if not both, their implied statement about the inability of men and women to coexist seems arch, forced, and unpersuasive. It’s also unclear whether Carnal Knowledge is meant to be drama or satire—is watching these sad people destroy each other supposed to be funny?

          Nonetheless, the film garnered considerable praise during its initial release, with Ann-Margret winning a Golden Globe and Feiffer earning a Writers Guild Award nomination. Furthermore, the film’s craftsmanship is impeccable. Nichols employs a restrained visual style, putting the focus on potent acting. The four lead actors are quite good, with Ann-Margret surpassing the low expectations established by her long string of shallow sex-kitten roles prior to this movie. Bergen conveys an alluring brand of icy intelligence, while ’60s pop icon Garfunkel, giving his first major dramatic performance, presents a unique sort of natural twitchiness. As for Nicholson, he’s hamstrung by a severe characterization, since Jonathan is more a compendium of compulsions than a genuine individual. Nicholson’s performance is creepily intense, but not realistic.

Carnal Knowledge: FUNKY