The War at Home (1979)

          A great example of the microcosm revealing the macrocosm, this insightful documentary examines antiwar demonstrations that erupted in and around the college town of Madison, Wisconsin, throughout the Vietnam War. In so doing, the film speaks to the larger issues that divided the entire nation during that fraught era. Filled with amazing archival footage—it seems as if every key event in the Madison peace movement was caught on camera—the picture is neatly divided into sections depicting specific years, so the narrative stretches from the earliest outcries in the mid-’60s to a violent revolt that shook the Madison community in the early ’70s. Right from the beginning of the picture, poignant moments abound. During a public hearing in the mid-’60s, for instance, a housewife named Louise Smalley testifies to local officials that she’s aghast by the notion of American troops dropping napalm on Vietnamese villages: “I try to teach my children the value of individual human worth, and I don’t want this destroyed by my country.”

          Just as that remark summarizes conscientious objections to the war, another comment symbolizes why so many college students mobilized—a student laments that the escalation of hostilities means middle-class kids will be subject to the draft, “not just poor kids.” Ouch. To the great credit of producers Glenn Silber (who also directed) and Barry Alexander Brown, The War at Home never seems judgmental of the implied elitist stance behind such remarks; rather, the film makes a compelling argument that the draft became a social equalizer, uniting potential draftees against the military-industrial complex. As a banner that’s shown onscreen reads, “To be against the war and do nothing is irresponsible.”

          It’s fascinating, then, to learn about the actions that people in Madison actually took. Some demonstrations seem pointless, almost to the extreme of being counter-productive, like heckling Teddy Kennedy during a 1966 campus appearance, while others are more purposeful, such as an SDS rally against Dow Chemical’s practice of on-campus recruiting. (Dow made napalm.) The filmmakers wisely keep their focus local, spreading the view to the larger national antiwar milieu only when appropriate—one bit describes how protesters from Wisconsin traveled to the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Similarly, the filmmakers largely eschew celebrities of the counterculture era. Even though the soundtrack features the requisite mix of Buffalo Springfield and Dylan, et cetera, hipster poet Allen Ginsberg is the only famous figure featured in an original interview. (Presidents Ford and Nixon, among other political notables, appear only in archival footage.)

          The War at Home culminates with vivid commentary from participants in a fatal campus bombing that represented a misguided attempt to derail on-campus military research. One of the convicted bombers, Karlton Armstrong, appears on-camera to explain his motivations, and then, in a bracing moment, Armstrong’s Greatest Generation father acknowledges how successfully antiwar activists were in bringing ugly realities to light. “They were telling the truth,” the father says. “We weren’t listening.”

The War at Home: RIGHT ON

Hearts and Minds (1974)

          Years before Michael Moore started using the documentary form to launch broadside attacks against the political right wing, lefty producer Bert Schneider backed the creation of Hearts and Minds, director Peter Davis’ scalding examination of the Vietnam War from a multiplicity of perspectives. The Academy Award-winning doc is unapologetically polemical, because even though supporters of America’s involvement in Vietnam are given room to speak in the movie, they damn themselves with the ignorance of their statements. For instance, the jaw-dropping climax of the picture features General William Westmoreland, supreme commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, claiming that “life is cheap” to Asians—even as Davis cuts to heartbreaking footage of the funeral for a South Vietnamese soldier. In unforgettable images, the soldier’s young son wails in agony while the soldier’s wife tries to climb into her husband’s grave.

          Obviously, Davis moves far beyond journalism with these types of rhetorical choices, so it’s best to approach Hearts and Minds not as an objective overview of the war but rather as an essential record of why so many people were against the war. Davis makes his points by presenting several distinctive individuals and then juxtaposing their perspectives. The first major player is Lt. George Coker, a clean-cut Jersey boy shown receiving a hero’s welcome after his release from a long internment as a P.O.W. During this opening scene (and elsewhere throughout the movie), Coker echoes Westmoreland’s dehumanizing attitude, referring to enemy combatants as “gooks.” Meanwhile, ex-pilot Capt. Randy Floyd, a wheelchair-bound longhair, openly weeps when trying to imagine how Vietnamese parents must have felt when the napalm bombs he dropped from his plane killed their children.

          Employing montage with great dexterity, Davis forms a collage of archival footage and new material, essentially distilling the debate about the war into an intense 112-minute discourse. On one extreme are former government officials and soldiers who rehash the old “domino theory” justifications; on the other extreme are anguished vets trying to grasp the severity of their deeds and their injuries. In between these extremes are key figures such as Daniel Ellsberg. The famed whistleblower whose illegal release of “The Pentagon Papers” radically changed the American public’s attitude toward the war, Ellsberg methodically explains how his discoveries changed hisattitudes. Like many others in the picture, he describes a gradual radicalization informed by mounting evidence that the war was not only unwinnable but fundamentally wrong—a political maneuver rather than a humanitarian intervention.
          One could argue that Davis overreaches during scenes in which he tries to identify the essential characteristics of the American soul that generate warmongering aggression; the merging of a rough high-school football game with a Lyndon Johnson speech about how Americans refuse to lose crosses the line into editorializing. But when Davis’ technique is true—which is the case throughout most of Hearts and Minds—he hits targets with incredible impact. The parade of interviews with physically and psychologically damaged veterans underscores how many young American lives were needlessly ruined by the war, and Davis’ footage of ordinary Vietnamese citizens describing how they ravaged by the war is enough to make any supporter of the conflict feel shameful. It’s probably impossible for contemporary viewers to imagine how powerful this material must have been during its original release, when all of these divisive issues were at the forefront of the national conversation, but Hearts and Minds has lost none of its ability to indict, inform, and infuriate.

Hearts and Minds: RIGHT ON

Directed by John Ford (1971)

          First off, this review is a bit of a cheat—I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing the original 1971 cut of Directed by John Ford, which has been replaced in the marketplace by a substantially re-edited 2006 version. That’s the cut I saw, and it’s something of a hybrid. Although the bones of the piece are the same as in the 1971 version, writer-director (and Ford acquaintance) Peter Bogdanovich not only excised some material and inserted replacement clips, but he also recorded brand-new interviews with contemporary Ford admirers including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Furthermore, Bodganovich conducted new interviews with still-living Ford collaborators and taped new onscreen remarks of his own. So, while the 2006 version of Directed by John Ford presumably represents the director’s fullest possible vision circa the time of its release, it’s a stretch to say that I’m actually reviewing the 1971 movie. Still, because the best parts of any version of Directed by John Ford are 1971 clips featuring Ford and his famous leading men—Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne—most of what makes the picture interesting has remained unchanged since the original release.

          Anyway, as the title suggests, Directed by John Ford is a product of Bogdanovich’s lifelong crusade to celebrate the contributions of cinema giants. Yet Bogdanovich’s interaction with Ford was complicated. A master of mythmaking onscreen and off, the man considered by many to be the greatest auteur of Western movies was born John Martin O’Feeney, but, to quote a famous line from his 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” In other words, the man whom Bodganovich encountered was deeply invested in protecting the reputation of macho filmmaker “John Ford.” Though obviously in physical decline and well into professional twilight—he’d already directed his last feature—Ford comes across as belligerent and virtually monosyllabic, as if discussing his own artistry is unmanly. Watching Bogdanovich tangle with Ford during their interview in Ford’s quintessential shooting location, Monument Valley, is the core of the picture.

          Elsewhere, during the interviews with Ford’s key actors, Bogdanovich asserts himself as much as he showcases his subjects. Taking the unusual approach of mounting his interview camera on a dolly track, Bogdanovich can be seen in many shots motioning for his cameraman to push in or pull back. Most of the star interviews feature puffery, because even when the actors describe Ford’s difficult personality, they’re burnishing his manly-man bona fides. And while the contemporary interviews with Ford-loving filmmakers lend scholarly weight to Directed by John Ford, it’s hard to say they’re essential. Beyond the footage Bogdanovich collected in the early ’70s, the components that really areessential are clips from Ford’s classics—The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath(1940), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), and more. In a profound way, Ford’s work speaks for itself, revealing a world of obsessions that that Ford never articulated for any interviewer. Therefore, Directed by John Ford is illuminating, though not necessarily in the manner that Bogdanovich intended.

Directed by John Ford: GROOVY

The Song Remains the Same (1976)

          With a few notable exceptions, the best rock-music movies are made from an outside-looking-in perspective—whether it’s Richard Lester capturing the buoyancy of the Beatles or Michael Wadleigh documenting the wonderment of Woodstock, the presence of an objective observer seems helpful for communicating what makes a rock experience interesting. Conversely, bad things seem to happen whenever rock musicians take control of cameras (again, with a few notable exceptins). From drug-addled stupidity to obnoxious ego-tripping, rock musicians have a bad habit of turning movies about themselves into indulgences that only hardcore fans can enjoy. The Led Zeppelin movie The Song Remains the Same is very much an example of the latter circumstance. The picture fits every adjective that’s ever been used to slag the band—bombastic, infantile, overwrought, self-important—and it conveys very little of the group’s legendary sonic attack. Furthermore, The Song Remains the Same is padded with stupid fantasy sequences, and it’s sprinkled with offstage bits that reveal more about the band’s thuggish manager, Peter Grant, than about the band itself. Worst of all, the live-concert scenes, which comprise most of the picture’s running time, are dull and unimaginative in terms of cinematic technique.
          Not surprisingly, the picture has a fraught backstory. After initial director Joe Masot shot Led Zep playing at Madison Square Garden in mid-1973, replacement helmer Peter Clifton was hired to fabricate new insert shots by filming the band in mid-1974 on a soundstage tricked up to resemble Madison Square Garden. That’s a lot of trouble for such unimpressive results. In the filmmakers’ defense, some challenges were inherent to the process of filming Led Zep. Singer Robert Plant’s effeminate stage persona clashes oddly with the macho swagger of his singing, so it’s distracting to watch his dainty hand gestures and girly half-shirt while he’s singing about giving “every inch of my love.” Guitarist Jimmy Page underwhelms in a different way. His fretwork feels half-hearted and sloppy, an impression exacerbated by his placid facial expressions; rightly or wrongly, one gets the sense of a working stiff marking time. The band’s set list includes a few uptempo numbers that surmount the drab filming (“Rock and Roll,” “The Song Remains the Same”), but turgid numbers drag on forever. “Dazed and Confused,” for instance, stretches for nearly half an hour, and even “Stairway to Heaven” lacks energy.
          Complementing the actual performance scenes, each member of the group (Grant included, bizarrely) contributes a fantasy sequence meant to offer personal revelation through metaphor. Grant’s bit is first, and he plays a pinstriped mobster slaughtering people with machine guns. Nice guy. The other vignettes are forgettable, with the exception of Plant’s unintentionally hilarious contribution. Plant portrays a brave knight rescuing a maiden from a castle, but with his fey body language and lustrous blonde mane, he seems as formidable as a little boy playing dress-up. Plant’s lyrics have always evinced a weakness for Renaissance Faire-type posturing, but his medieval romp in The Song Remains the Same is a self-aggrandizing embarrassment. Compounding all of these problems, The Song Remains the Same drags on for 137 lugubrious minutes, so whenever you think the damn thing is over, it’s not.

The Song Remains the Same: FUNKY

The American Dreamer (1971)

          At the historical moment when this lyrical and revealing documentary was made, Dennis Hopper seemed poised for elevation to godlike status in popular culture. Still riding high on the success of his directorial debut, Easy Rider (1969), Hopper had just completed shooting a bold new feature, The Last Movie, which he not-so-humbly envisioned as a revolutionary step forward in world cinema. The American Dreamer captures Hopper during the protracted editing process of The Last Movie, although filmmakers L. M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller are only peripherally interested in the actual method by which Hopper and his cutters assemble footage. Instead, the filmmakers seek to capture the soul of an artist at his creative peak.

          Therefore, much of the documentary comprises Hopper delivering improvised monologues about his aesthetic and spiritual philosophy. And while Hopper is insufferably contradictory and pretentious and self-aggrandizing, creating excuses for indulgent behavior by characterizing every action he takes as a manifestation of his rebellious creativity, the seemingly unrestricted access Carson and Schiller gained to Hopper’s life makes The American Dreamer important. The content of The American Dreamer’s best sequences is so interesting that the documentary’s excesses—not least of which is fawning hero worship—can’t diminish the project’s informational value.

          Set mostly around a home in Taos, New Mexico, where a bearded Hopper supervises editing whenever he’s not indulging in sexcapades with the myriad willing ladies who drift in and out of the place, The American Dreamer is almost equally divided between narrative scenes capturing action as it unfolds, and poetic passages juxtaposing Hopper’s voiceover with shots of the actor/director driving, walking, or, in some cases, pulling performance-art stunts like stripping off his clothes while he strolls through a suburb. (In some of the most bracing scenes, Hopper has group sex with various nubile women, although the doc stops short of depicting anything X-rated.)

          The through-line of The American Dreamer is Hopper’s stream-of-consciousness speechifying, and there’s no question he’s a compelling speaker even when his rhetoric gets ridiculous. In cogent moments, he invents hip slogans, e.g., “It’s very difficult at times if you believe in evolution not to believe in revolution.” Elsewhere, he spews drug-casualty non sequiturs, e.g., “Can you go in a corner and not think about a white bear for five minutes? Is that possible?” And this was beforeHopper reached rock bottom. Much of Hopper’s extemporizing seems consciously designed to burnish the myth of Hopper as a soldier for social change (one of Hopper’s real howlers: “Society’s made me a criminal”). Meanwhile, some of the actor/director’s chitty-chat comprises glorified pick-up lines, as when he explains to a Playboy Bunny that he’s so concerned about female orgasms he thinks of himself as a lesbian.

          At his worst, Hopper embarks on sky-high ego trips, referring to himself in the third person as “the artist” and equating his work to that of Orson Welles. (The filmmakers goose these delusions of grandeur by lacing the soundtrack with original folk songs about Hopper’s quest to reinvent cinema.) The deification gets a bit much, but nestled within The American Dreamer is a poignant portrait of a uniquely talented man testing the outer limits of his universe, thereby inadvertently arriving at the place where maverick artistry becomes megalomania.

The American Dreamer: GROOVY

The Secret Life of Plants (1979)

          For better or worse, the ’70s was the heyday of documentaries, nonfiction books, and TV specials based on pseudoscience, that hippy-dippy confluence of factoids, metaphysical musings, outright speculation, and sensationalistic bullshit. Think ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP, Stonehenge, and so on. It was a good time to be an open-minded searcher, and it was also a good time to be a pandering huckster; for every well-intentioned project grounded in sincere belief, it seems, there were a dozen snowjobs that sprang from sucker-born-every-minute cynicism. Where The Secret Life of Plants falls in that spectrum is, of course, a matter for individual viewers to decide, though one gets the strong impression that the filmmakers bought what they were selling—The Secret Life of Plants is lovingly crafted, even if the scientific principles underlying the piece are dubious at best. (The documentary was based on a 1973 nonfiction book by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird.)

          Although it features other concepts, the movie primarily focuses on the notion that plants have previously unknown levels of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sensitivity. Some phenomena offered as evidence are commonly held beliefs, such as the idea that plants respond to soothing tones of music and speech. Other ideas stretch credibility quite a bit further, such as the bold assertion from one documentary participant that plants are capable of receiving messages from outer space. About half of the film is devoted to straight reportage (with a smidgen of staging for dramatic effect), so these sequences feature scientists performing various experiments. In one bit, a lab worker chops a head of lettuce to see if an “emotional” reaction can be detected in a nearby houseplant that’s wired to electrodes; later, another scientist drops several living brine shrimp to their deaths in boiling water to see if a nearby plant responds to the loss of life. Unsurprisingly, in both cases, the experiments “prove” the sensitivity of plants thanks to computer readouts—after all, failed experiments wouldn’t validate the picture’s thesis.

          The documentary’s remaining screen time is devoted to impressionistic and lyrical passages, most of which are set to music by Stevie Wonder, who scored the film and wrote a handful of original songs for the project, including the hit ballad “Send One Your Love.” (In the final scene, Wonder appears onscreen to wander through fields of flowers, dense forests, and vibrant jungles as he lip-syncs the title track.) The most impressive passages in The Secret Life of Plants are the simplest, from the ominous creation-of-the-world montage that opens the picture to a lovely compilation of time-lapse flower-opening shots set to the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” In these gorgeously filmed and edited vignettes, the natural wonders of plants are placed in the forefront, so the musical sequences feel harmless and trippy. The straight-documentary bits are interesting, too, but it’s hard to go with the flow while stopping every few seconds for a skeptical eye-roll.
          FYI, the director of The Secret Life of Plants is the versatile Walon Green, best known as the screenwriter of The Wild Bunch (1969). Living up to his surname, Green has directed numerous nature-themed documentaries, providing an unexpected complement to his screenwriting work in features and episodic television.

The Secret Life of Plants: FUNKY

Lenny Bruce Without Tears (1972)

          On some level, it’s probably fitting that the first documentary about groundbreaking hipster comedian Lenny Bruce, released less than 10 years after his death, is a low-budget enterprise shot on grungy black-and-white film. After all, Bruce spent much of his career playing smoky jazz clubs, even though he briefly enjoyed success on national television. In other words, if Lenny Bruce Without Tears were a stronger film, it might feel like just the right lo-fi tribute to a controversial funnyman who brought uncomfortable truths into his routines. Unfortunately, the fact that writer/producer/director Fred Baker largely constructs the film from second-hand footage makes Lenny Bruce Without Tears little more than a fawning clip show. Further, Baker’s only original interviews are with tangential figures who rehash familiar lore about Bruce as a tragic trailblazer. Plus, on some level, the movie feels somewhat exploitive and opportunistic—Baker’s real-life friendship with Bruce was used as a marketing angle, and Baker’s inconsequential narration repeatedly states that the filmmaker and his late subject were pals. If this half-assed doc is the best thing Baker could put together, one gets the impression that Baker and Bruce were more like passing acquaintances than true comrades.

          Yet the documentary’s lack of substance isn’t its biggest flaw. Instead, what makes Lenny Bruce Without Tears genuinely awkward is Baker’s incomprehensible aesthetic choice to employ experimental-cinema montages beneath audio of Bruce’s recorded routines. For instance, one such montage collides such disassociated imagery as Boris Karloff mugging in an old horror movie, Lyndon Johnson giving a speech, a marching band in action, and a monkey typing (!), none of which has anything to do with what Bruce is saying on the soundtrack. Extended video clips of Bruce doing stand-up on The Steve Allen Show aren’t much more interesting; while the comedy bits themselves are worthwhile as entertainment and as history, Baker simply runs the clips start to finish, evincing a major absence of curatorial discretion. And in his most nonsensical flourish, Baker upends the whole hero-worship vibe of the doc by including shock-value footage and stills of Bruce’s naked corpse, captured shortly after the comedian died of a drug overdose. Not exactly the most respectful treatment of a “friend.”

Lenny Bruce Without Tears: FUNKY

Money Talks (1972)

Following the release of his sleazy feature debut, What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? (1970), producer/director/host Allen Funt made one more attempt at shifting his small-screen Candid Camerafranchise to the world’s cinemas. Alas, while Money Talks is less inherently exploitive than its predecessor, the rambling quasi-documentary offers only the slimmest of rewards for viewers who trudge through all 81 minutes. Even more so than the previous film, Money Talks is an extended Candid Camera episode, featuring hidden-camera footage, staged gags during which actors coached by Funt interact with unsuspecting passersby, and man-on-the-street interviews. All of the material concerns modern Americans’ relationship with money—those who crave it, those who shun it, and so on. This is a worthy topic for serious study, to be sure, but with Funt at the helm, serious study is not the order of the day. Rather, the film features gags such as an attractive woman standing on a New York City street with a dollar bill pinned to the seat of her jeans; Funt uses a hidden camera to see which people try to grab the cash, which people try to grab the girl, and which people kindly inform the young woman of her situation. The novelty of the bit lasts all of about 30 seconds, but the sequence drags on repetitiously for several minutes. And so it goes with other vignettes, like the set-up featuring Muhammad Ali pretending he’s too cheap to pay for a C.O.D. package, much to the consternation of folks tasked with delivering the item to the heavyweight champ. Probably the most interesting sequence involves Funt talking to hippies about their counterculture attitudes toward currency; it’s interesting to watch straight-laced Funt’s brain shut down when shaggy kids say naïvely idealistic things like, “I believe in working for mankind, to keep mankind going—I just believe in working on life.” Unfortunately, the film’s credible content is outweighed by crap including montages set to horrifically bad original songs. For instance, during a sequence for which Funt rigged a parking meter to spew coins in order to trigger reactions from pedestrians, a singer croons the following inanities on the soundtrack: “He hits the jackpot and nickels fall like rain/ He bends down to pick them up but his pants can’t stand the strain.” Any questions why there wasn’t another Candid Cameraflick after this one?

Money Talks: FUNKY

It’s Showtime (1976)

          After the success of That’s Entertainment! (1974), a slew of anthology films celebrating the Hollywood of yesteryear hit theaters, although few successors matched That’s Entertainment!for sheer ebullience and wow factor. Still, even a second-rate offering in this genre, such as It’s Showtime, has value. After all, where else can viewers survey scenes featuring many of Hollywood’s most famous animal performers, from Flipper to Rin Tin Tin, without having to watch entire movies featuring the performers? Because, let’s face it, after plowing through all 85 minutes of It’s Showtime, you’ll probably feel like you’ve seen enough Flipper and Rin Tin Tin to last the rest of your life. In addition to featuring marquee-name animal performers, It’s Showtime presents obscure bits culled from conventional features (meaning those starring human beings), as well as from shorts and special subjects. For instance, the anthology’s opening number features a chorus and orchestra of dogs performing a routine to “Singin’ in the Rain,” and then It’s Showtime shifts to such random sights as funnyman Joe E. Brown cavorting in an office with a lion; Roy Rogers and his trusty steed, Trigger, doing their thing; and a poodle undulating to the accompaniment of stripper music. Some of this stuff is fun, and a lot of it is odd. (In the case of the bumping-and-grinding poodle, “odd” gives way to “disturbing.”)
          Most of the picture comprises themed chapters grouping clips of particular types of animals (e.g. a section of horse scenes set to “The William Tell Overture,” etc.), but A-list critters including Asta (the Thin Man dog) and Francis the Talking Mule get their own stand-alone chapters. Writer Alan Myerson tries to give the clips some sort of narrative flow, starting with lighthearted comedy before moving into exciting action vignettes and finally tearjerker scenes, but even with this care given to the overall arrangement, the enterprise gets boring after a while. The problem isn’t the clips or the execution, per se, so much as the lack of any storyline. It’s Showtime is the sort of picture where the viewer can walk away from the screen for 10 or 15 minutes and miss absolutely nothing of importance. Aditionally, the tearjerker section gets tiresome thanks to the inclusion of overly long excerpts from Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet(1944). It must be said, however, that seeing highlights of Rin Tin Tin’s myriad screen adventures makes a strong case for the noble German Shepherd as one of the great action stars of the silent era. Watching Rin climb walls, knock bad guys off cliffs, leap off rooftops, and such actually generates real thrills.

It’s Showtime: FUNKY

The Devil’s Triangle (1974) & The Bermuda Triangle (1979)

          The Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious section of the Atlantic Ocean into which a vast number of boats and planes have inexplicably disappeared, enjoyed pop-culture prominence in the ’70s, when all things paranormal were grist for the infotainment mill. For instance, two feature-length documentaries were made about the Triangle. The first of the documentaries was a terrible hack job called The Devil’s Triangle, which would have been unwatchable had the filmmakers not hired horror-cinema legend Vincent Price to narrate. Featuring dull interview clips, utilitarian stock footage, and silly artistic renderings that look like courtroom sketches, The Devil’s Triangle offers nothing more than bland descriptions of mysterious events. (And if the promise of a score by prog-rock titans King Crimson gets your blood pumping, lower your expectations because the music is unmemorable.) Price, who does not appear on camera, does his best to infuse the florid script with creepy-crawly energy, but by the zillionth time he ends a sentence with “in the Devil’s Triangle,” the novelty has eroded. Additionally, director/co-writer Richard Winer doesn’t even bother to propose possible explanations for the Triangle phenomenon, instead forcing Price to croak cryptic crap: “What is this wrath-flinging, horrifying curse that prevails in the Devil’s Triangle? An affliction so incredible that even the United States Coast Guard is reluctant to make an observation on the matter?”

          For entertainingly outrageous answers to such questions, one must shift attention to a later film, The Bermuda Triangle, which was unleashed by the titans of fact-deficient “documentaries,” Sunn Classic Pictures. Hosted by bearish-looking Brad Crandall, who lent his melodious speaking voice and professorial visage to several Sunn Classic joints, The Bermuda Triangle is a smorgasbord of pseudoscience. In between vignettes of Crandall speaking while he walks around locations related to the Triangle mystery, like a now-closed U.S. airbase in Fort Lauderdale, the picture features re-enactments of Triangle incidents that are staged like scenes from low-budget horror movies. Flyers freak out when the sky turns green around their planes; sailors reel when ghost ships appear from strange mists; seadogs crumble when inexplicable forces cause them to shift in and out of tangible reality.

          Nearly every sensational theory about the Triangle that’s ever been put forth is depicted with the same degree of ominousness. Abandoned WWII mines destroying ships! Giant waterspouts rising from the ocean to engulf aircraft! Undersea earthquakes causing massive tidal waves! Viewers are even treated to the theory that the Triangle is related to the mythical lost kingdom of Atlantis—apparently, ancient Atlanteans created a “magnetic force crystal that harnessed the awesome power of the stars,” but the crystal’s energy activated volcanoes that consumed Atlantis; now, centuries later, the crystal rests at the bottom of the ocean, blasting laser beams that explode passing vessels. But wait—we haven’t even gotten to the part about UFOs traveling through the triangle via transdimensional gateways! Boasting better production values than most Sunn Classic cheapies (even though the special effects are laughably bad), The Bermuda Triangleis highly enjoyable by dint of sheer ridiculousness.

The Devil’s Triangle: LAME

The Bermuda Triangle: GROOVY

Let the Good Times Roll (1973)

          While many of the concert movies that followed in the wake of Woodstock(1970) spotlighted then-contemporary artists, Let the Good Times Roll took a different route by tapping into a vogue for ’50s nostalgia. The filmmakers shot color footage of oldies concerts in three locations, and then spliced the performances together to create the illusion of a single all-star show; additionally, the filmmakers created montages of ’50s signifiers by using stills and stock footage, and the montages play over selected songs. The movie is best when it keeps things simple, because dated tricks like prism filters and split screens make certain performance sequences feel gimmicky. Worse, the montages are aimless. For every smart juxtaposition (footage of Elvis Presley’s U.S. Army induction appears while the Shirelles perform “Soldier Boy”), there are a dozen instances of random imagery (the A-Bomb, The Mickey Mouse Show, etc.) needlessly distracting from onstage entertainment.

          The picture also suffers, through no real fault of the filmmakers, from wildly inconsistent musicality. Groups including the Coasters and the Five Satins deliver dull recitations of old-fashioned ballads, complete with tacky choreography and unconvincing declarations of love for the audience. Total Vegas cheese. Other performers, including Fats Domino and Bill Haley and the Comets, seem frozen in time, essentially replicating their younger selves in robotic fashion. But three particular performers sizzle, and their work makes the picture worth watching for serious music fans.

          Bo Diddley offers up a long, sloppy set filled with squawking guitar figures and vivid stage moves; he represents the bridge joining the blues to rock. Chuck Berry slays in his uniquely cynical fashion. Still in amazing shape physically and vocally, Berry struts and sways and sweats through a powerhouse set punctuated by the filthy verses of “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” his audaciousness undiminished. It’s also a treat to watch Berry and Diddley duet, especially when they perform a sort of duck-walking duel across the stage.

          Yet the undeniable center of Let the Good Times Roll is Little Richard, who comes off as well and truly insane during his mesmerizingly weird appearance. Powerfully built but slathered with makeup, he’s a sexually ambiguous figure from the time he engages in preposterous diva antics backstage to the time he tears up the joint with a wild run of showboating stagecraft and wicked warbling. At one point, Richard climbs onto a stack of speakers and strips to the waist, tearing his shirt and throwing shreds into the audience—all while displaying a crazed gleam in his eye, as if goading an audience drives him to ecstasy. What this riveting material has to do with the squeaky-clean filler that comprises most of Let the Good Times Roll, however, is anyone’s guess.

Let the Good Times Roll: FUNKY

a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970)

The beginning of the ’70s was an ideal time to make a documentary about heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, who by that point had discarded his “slave name” Cassius Clay and become a controversial activist. When a.k.a. Cassius Clay was made, the fighter was in the midst of battles with sports authorities and the U.S. government to get his boxing license reinstated and to have his refusal to serve in the military on religious grounds validated. He was also pursuing so many alternate income sources that the documentary opens with footage of Ali’s failed attempt to star in a race-themed Broadway musical. Yet while the subject matter is fascinating and the timing is great, the film itself is a bore. In addition to being padded with clips of Ali’s legendary ’60s fights, the rambling a.k.a. Cassius Clay stumbles through such contrived episodes as Ali chatting with famed boxing trainer Cus D’Amato while they review newsreels of past fighting legends, such as Joe Louis, and discuss whether Ali could have beaten these fighters had their careers coincided. (Predictably, Ali claims he could beat any heavyweight who ever lived.) Easily half of the film’s running time comprises recycled footage, and the fresh stuff is weak. Worse, the whole picture is scored with cheesy funk music straight out of a ’70s porno, and narrator Richard Kiley (who periodically appears onscreen, speaking directly to the camera), repeatedly refers to Ali as “boy” (as in, “the promoters knew they had their boy”), which makes the project feel like a relic from a racially insensitive era. Plus, anyone even slightly familiar with Ali already knows every major fact this documentary presents. So, while a.k.a. Cassius Clay is not awful, per se—it’s basically accurate and basically coherent—the film is among the least inspired recitations of a great American tale.

a.k.a. Cassius Clay: LAME

That’s Entertainment! (1974) & That’s Entertainment, Part II (1976)

          Made to commemorate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 50th anniversary, That’s Entertainment!is a documentary in name only, since the picture comprises clips from old movies that are introduced—through new, scripted footage—by a group of movie actors closely associated with the MGM studio. Anyone looking for behind-the-scenes gossip or insight will be disappointed, but, as the film’s title suggests, providing information isn’t the point. Rather, That’s Entertainment! offers a massive array of show-stopping musical numbers, including such classic moments as Fred Astaire’s graceful dance duet with Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon (1953), Judy Garland’s plaintive rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gene Kelly’s exuberant performance of the title song in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), and dozens more. The picture also spotlights rarely scene clips, including Clark Gable performing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in Idiot’s Delight (1939), and features montages celebrating the work of such Golden Age stars as Lena Horne, Ann Miller, and Esther Williams.

          The clips are nearly all dazzling, running the gamut from outrageous Busby Berkeley-directed spectacles to simple vocal performances, and the film’s seven editors did a remarkable job of organizing the material into logical sections while also creating a smooth flow. Writer-producer-director Jack Haley Jr.’s use of MGM stars as hosts works, too, because their participation validates the piece; furthermore, seeing the passage of time through their aging faces and physiques amplifies the nostalgia of recalling a magical era from the past. (Accentuating this effect, many of the hosts are shot walking through decrepit sections of the long-unused MGM backlot.)

          The impressive roster of hosts includes Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Peter Lawford, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, and the late Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, who presents a sweet segment about “Mama.” Each host offers a canned anecdote or two, and then narrates a few minutes of clips, so Haley creates the illusion of old friends sharing memories at a reunion. That’s Entertainment! is total fluff, but it lives up to its title and, in a cheerfully superficial sort of way, provides a history lesson simply by cataloguing the best output from one studio.

          Alas, the film’s first sequel, That’s Entertainment, Part II, is not nearly as charming. Kelly took over the directing chores, and he co-hosts the entire film exclusively with fellow song-and-dance legend Astaire. (Songwriter Sammy Cahn makes an ineffectual appearance during one quick bit.) Kelly and his team cast a wider net for different types of clips, since most of MGM’s best musical numbers were used in the previous film. As a result, this picture features random montages about great movie lines, plus such extended comedy bits as the Marx Brothers’ classic “stateroom” scene from A Night at the Opera (1935). Combined with the lack of organization—the movie jumps around between eras and genres—the inclusion of nonmusical scenes makes That’s Entertainment, Part IIconfusing and unfocused. Worse, Kelly stages all of the hosting bits as musical numbers. While it’s fun to see Astaire and Kelly hoofing together, their age and a general lack of inspiration makes these original production numbers seem second-rate when juxtaposed with classic clips. Nonetheless, the franchise soldiered on with a quasi-official follow-up called That’s Dancing In 1985 and then an official, made-for-TV threequel called That’s Entertainment III in 1994.

That’s Entertainment!: GROOVY

That’s Entertainment, Part II: FUNKY

Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970) & Elvis on Tour (1972) & Elvis (1979)

          By the late ’60s, rock legend Elvis Presley’s long run as a movie star seemed like it was over, but his home studio, MGM, wasn’t about to give up a valuable commodity without a fight. So instead of following the flop musical comedy Change of Habit (1969) with another fictional feature, MGM commissioned a documentary about Presley’s return to live performance after a seven-year hiatus. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Denis Sanders, Elvis: That’s the Way It Is captures the King at the beginning of his self-parody period, introducing such tropes as the sequined jump suit, the exuberant karate moves, and the cheesy onstage patter (“Thank you, thankyouverymuch”). Yet for every example of excess—bloated arrangements, syrupy ballads—there’s something redeeming, like a flash of Presley’s thunderous vocal power every now and then. Therefore, this record of the King’s blockbuster residency at the International Hotel in Las Vegas is consistently compelling.

          In the best sequence (Presley rehearsing with his band), the singer is loose and playful, digging into killer grooves like a version of “Little Sister” that segues into a cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.” And while there’s plenty of bad-Elvis sludge in That’s the Way It Is—Presley does a half-assed version of “Love Me Tender” as he trolls the lip of the stage and kisses female audience members—the film is a fascinating artifact. This is especially true of the re-edited version that premiered on Turner Classic Movies in 2000. Sanders’ original cut was derided for including pointless secondary material, such as interviews with fans and hotel workers. The 2000 version excludes the superfluous material, features a slightly different song list, and offers stronger momentum during the second and third acts, which simulate one full concert even though footage was cobbled together from six different evenings. Both cuts of That’s the Way It Is benefit from crisp, dramatic concert photography by the great cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who shot The Wild Bunch (1969) and other classics.

          After That’s the Way It Is did well, MGM commissioned a second concert documentary two years later. Elvis on Tour records Presley’s first concert trek in a decade. Although the movie drags at times—partially because Presley’s starting to look bored, heavy, and silly onstage, and partially because the filmmakers include drab offstage bits like shots of roadies moving cases around empty amphitheaters—Elvis on Tour has incredible moments. For instance, the movie shows Presley singing his last significant single, “Burning Love,” a song so new he reads lyrics off a sheet of paper. It’s striking to see an artist crafting a fresh hit almost 20 years after his first Number One song. Elvis on Tour also features a terrific gospel-music jam session between Elvis and his backup singers. This sequence lets viewers watch Presley enjoy his talent in a private way. Elvis on Tourlacks the dramatic build of That’s the Way It Is, particularly since Presley’s climactic cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” appears too early, but it’s worth watching all the way through just to hear these immortal words: “Elvis has left the building.” Elvis on Tour was the last film of Presley’s career, and though he enjoyed one more showbiz triumph afterward—the famous TV concert Aloha from Hawaii (1973)—health problems took the King’s life in 1977.

          Inevitably, a TV movie dramatizing Presley’s eventful existence emerged not long afterward. In February 1979, ABC broadcast Elvis, starring former Disney child star Kurt Russell and directed by, of all people, John Carpenter, who had just made the horror smash Halloween(1978). A sanitized overview of the title character’s life through 1969, when a burgeoning comeback was underway, Elvisdoesn’t reveal much that casual fans don’t already know about the subject matter—Elvis was sweet on his mama, Gladys (Shelley Winters), and he gave his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Pat Hingle), way too much leeway—but the story unfolds smoothly. Though ordinary in many respects, the movie boasts a terrific performance by Russell, whose boyish persona captures young Elvis’ aw-shucks appeal. Furthermore, Carpenter’s minimalistic shooting style bolsters the drama when he uses lengthy master shots that maintain the flow of actors’ performances. As for the film’s accuracy, Presley’s widow, Priscilla, reportedly vetted the script, so the picture is little more than a hero-overcomes-adversity hagiography, punctuated by competently re-created musical numbers. (Singer Ronnie McDowell’s voice is heard on the soundtrack whenever Russell lip-syncs.) That said, it’s interesting to watch Elvis and realize how quickly Carpenter and Russell locked into each other’s frequencies, because just a short time later they embarked on a great run with Escape from New York (1981), The Thing(1982), and Big Trouble in Little China(1986).

Elvis: That’s the Way It Is: GROOVY

Elvis on Tour: FUNKY

Elvis: GROOVY

The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena (1976)

          More entertaining “nonfiction” silliness from the folks at Sunn Classic Pictures, The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomenais a journalistically dubious survey of various mental powers that people have claimed to possess throughout history. You name it, it’s in here: astral projection, precognition, spirits, telekinesis, and so on. Actor Raymond Burr, summoning all of his Ironside-era gravitas, hosts and narrates the picture, which comprises archival footage, dramatic re-enactments, interview snippets, and cheesy vignettes of Burr “participating” in staged experiments. This is the Sunn Classics formula in full bloom, with a barrage of unsubstantiated facts and figures thrown at the audience alongside creepy dramatic scenes right out of a low-budget horror movie.

          For example, one early scene features a woman piloting a small plane until she receives a telepathic “distress call,” at which point she diverts her plane to a highway 70 miles distant and rescues her mother from a flaming car crash. Later in the movie, a woman and her young child freak out during the seeming visit of an apparition to their home—the duo watches, terrified, as their front door appears to undulate in tune with a mysterious breathing sound. Fantastic claims are presented without skepticism, as are guest stars including famed ’70s Israeli mentalist Uri Geller (who does his signature routine of bending spoons with his mind).

          It’s hard to differentiate the genuinely unsettling exhibitions from the outright nonsense, because everything is explored with the same degree of wide-eyed intensity. At its worst, the movie features laughably loose logic. “If we continue to exist after our physical bodies die,” Burr asks at one point, “is it possible to communicate from one world to the another? One way of communicating between these two worlds is with the help of a medium, at what is popularly known as a séance.” Notice the quick shift from speculating about alternate dimensions to treating them as documented reality. Or consider this howler of a voiceover line: “The best evidence for the existence of spirits is that presented by the owners of haunted houses.” Because, of course, haunted houses are indisputably real.

          Still, as with all of Sunn Classic Pictures’ wonderfully irresponsible documentaries, the goal of The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomenais simply to catalog creepy-crawly maybes on the fringes of the known world. So, by the time the movie barrels through things like Kirlian photographs and mentalists who “psychometrize” the identities of murderers by studying objects found at murder scenes, it’s easier to go with the entertaining flow than to worry about veracity.

The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena: FUNKY