Chisum (1970)

          A textbook example of movie-star ego riding roughshod over a potentially engrossing storyline, this latter-day John Wayne Western puts the Duke’s character at the center of a notorious real-life feud that involved dueling ranchers, out-of-control capitalism, and frenemies Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Chisum has so many story elements that it feels like a highlight reel from a miniseries, but the centrality of a typical Wayne protagonist bludgeons interesting nuances, transforming Chisum into a flat story of he-man heroism. Making matters worse are such painfully old-fashioned flourishes as the corny songs that play over tedious montages. Chisum has many watchable passages, thanks to abundant action scenes, vibrantly colorful location photography, and zesty supporting performances, but the picture is something of a mess.

          Set in New Mexico circa the late 1870s, the movie revolves around a rivalry between noble cattleman John Chisum (Wayne) and his disreputable competitor, Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker). Chisum owns huge tracts of land but treats people fairly, whereas Murphy is an avaricious creep willing to cheat, lie, and steal in order to expand his holdings. As Murphy’s greed becomes more rapacious, Chisum gathers colleagues including crusty sidekick Pepper (Ben Johnson), fellow gentleman rancher Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowles), and principled nomad Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett). Also drawn into the good guys’ armada is semi-reformed outlaw William “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Geoffrey Dueul), who works for Tunstall but romances Chisum’s niece. Meanwhile, Murphy gathers a horde of snarling henchmen, played in cartoonish fashion by lively actors including Robert Donner, Christopher George, and Richard Jaeckel. The cast of Chisumis huge, and as a result, most of the actors get shortchanged in terms of character development and screen time.

          Written and produced by Andrew J. Fenady, Chisum attempts to tackle an epic story within the confines of a standard feature, which makes everything seem rushed and superficial. Plus, whenever the movie slows down for something pointless, such as Chisum’s meeting with an Indian chief—a scene that communicates nothing except the lead character’s principles, which have already been described ad nauseum—narrative momentum suffers. As for the performances, Wayne is Wayne, still quite virile and not yet inhabiting the late-life gravitas that made some of his subsequent ’70s Westerns elegiac, while old hands from Johnson to Tucker sprinkle their one-dimensional roles with charm. Unfortunately, the younger players incarnating the star-crossed lovers (any sensible viewer knows it won’t go well for Billy and Chisum’s niece) are bland, and the actors portraying secondary villains have nothing to do except strut around in filthy clothes and shoot likable people.

Chisum: FUNKY

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

Day of the Animals (1977)

          While it has a certain schlocky appeal, Day of the Animals is a significant comedown from director William Girdler’s previous critters-run-amok flick, Grizzly (1976). Whereas the earlier movie is a shameless Jawsrip-off, Day of the Animals is a mishmash of Hitchockian avian terror, eco-themed sci-fi, and generic “something is out there” spookiness. (The movie’s blunt alternate title? Something Is Out There.) The premise is that ultraviolet radiation released via ozone-layer depletion has transformed animals living at high altitudes into killers, which means a group of hikers on a remote mountaintop path become fodder for nature gone wild. The denizens of a town at the base of the mountain also fall prey to rampaging creatures. Day of the Animals features attacks by bears, birds, dogs, mountain lions, rats, snakes, and wolves, but these events are nonsensical—at some points, the picture suggests that animals have formed an army, and at other times, critters simply attack independent of each other. In other words, any old plot contrivance that helps endanger and/or kill a given character at a given time is acceptable to the filmmakers, who couldn’t care less about consistency.

          As with Grizzly, Girdler’s comin’-at-ya jolts and sturdy widescreen compositions ensure that Day of the Animals basically delivers the goods. Nonetheless, the movie runs out of gas far before its 97 minutes are through, although there are a few campy highlights. For instance, the bit in which rats leap from a turkey carcass like tiny acrobats is particularly goofy. The movie’s “best” moment, however, is the climax of Leslie Neilsen’s performance as one of the hikers—crazed with fear and hunger, Neilsen strips to the waist, screams about how he’s the god of his own life, impales a fellow hiker with a walking stick, tries to rape another hiker, and wrestles a bear. Good times. Christopher George plays the rugged leader of the hikers, and his gritted-teeth performance is entertainingly cheesy, while Richard Jaeckel plays it straight as a professor. Also present are B-movie fave Michael Ansara (playing the movie’s resident Native American) and actress/animal handler Susan Backlinie, best known as the skinny dipper in the opening sequence of Jaws.

Day of the Animals: FUNKY

I Escaped from Devil’s Island (1973)

Produced by Roger Corman to piggyback on the release of Papillon(1973), a big-budget drama about the inhuman conditions on the French penal colony known as Devil’s Island, this colorful but dull exploitation flick features an eye-popping procession of abuse, murder, sex, sweat, and torture. Set in the early 20th century, the picture follows the attempts of a violent criminal named Le Bras (Jim Brown) to flee the seemingly inescapable Devil’s Island, which is run by sadistic prison guards who whip inmates whenever the convicts aren’t being worked to death. Le Bras recruits unlikely accomplices in political prisoner Davert (Christopher George), who initially shuns violence, and Jo-Jo (Richard Ely), a “fancy boy”—or, in the less delicate terminology of today’s prison pictures, a “bitch.” The movie trudges through several repetitive and ugly scenes of these and other inmates getting beaten by guards until the “heroes” build a raft and flee, only to suffer a series of melodramatic crises. Their raft falls apart, they’re attacked by sharks while adrift on the ocean, they stumble into a leper colony once returning to shore on a remote part of the island, they’re captured by bloodthirsty natives, and so on. Director William Witney, a veteran of ’30s serials and Golden Age television, was near the end of an epic career when he helmed this pedestrian flick, and while he seems perfectly efficient at organizing crowd scenes and simulating violence, the film’s storytelling is enervated in the extreme. Brown occasionally livens up the proceedings with a sly line delivery or a charming smile, but since he’s mostly tasked with looking impressive while parading around shirtless, it’s not as if there’s much room for him to shape a persona. As for George, a limited actor with a campy sort of appeal, he spends most of his time gritting his teeth and snarling. Plus, while some of the production values are impressive-ish, notably crowd scenes during the climax, the film’s reliance on unvarnished exterior locations and tacky stock footage is unhelpful. Worse, the movie’s plot is so turgid the flick feels like it’s three hours long even though it’s only 89 minutes.

I Escaped from Devil’s Island: LAME