99 and 44/100% Dead (1974)

          On paper, this action thriller about a hit man drawn into a web of underworld intrigue is completely pedestrian—the story features standard tropes like an antihero rescuing his innocent girlfriend from a fellow hit man in the employ of a mobster whom the antihero has alienated. However, simply describing the plot of 99 and 44/100% Dead doesn’t account for the batshit-crazy storytelling style that director John Frankenheimer uses from start to finish, or the surreal nature of the picture’s awkward attempts at black comedy. On some level, this movie aspires to blend elements of comic books, film noir, and satire into a singular approach—but since the elements clash with each other, and since the movie compounds this problem with dissonant flavors like amateurish supporting players and goofy music, the end result is an odyssey into inexplicable weirdness.

          Richard Harris, adorned with a strange Prince Valiant haircut and gigantic eyeglasses, plays Harry Crown, a hit man hired by gangster Uncle Frank Kelly (Edmund O’Brien) to settle a turf war in some unnamed American city. Uncle Frank wants Harry to rub out goons in the employ of Uncle Frank’s rival, Big Eddie (Bradford Dillman). Meanwhile, Harry is trying to build a life with saintly schoolteacher Buffy (played by vapid model-turned-actress Ann Turkel, Harris’ real-life companion at the time). Also mixed into the storyline are Tony (David Hall), a junior-level crook whom Harry adopts as a sort of apprentice, and Baby (Kathy Baumann), Tony’s voluptuous young girlfriend.

          Frankenheimer treats the whole movie like a comic strip, so gangsters wear stylized outfits—think pinstriped suits and wide-brimmed hats—while Harry brandishes a pair of matching pistols with pearl handles. The setting is a city seemingly populated only by warring gangsters, so gunfights and murders take place in plain sight, and violent scenes are “ironically” scored with upbeat music and cheerful whistling. Everything in 99 and 44/100% Dead is overwrought in the clumsiest way, so the tone of the picture is captured by a scene in which Harry’s arch-enemy torments Baby.

          The villain of the piece is hit man Marvin “Claw” Zuckerman (Chuck Connors), who is missing a hand and therefore carries around a briefcase filled with bizarre prosthetic attachments. Arriving in town and demanding a sexual plaything, Marvin is furnished with Baby, who wears a barely-there yellow dress so sheer her nipples seem as if they’re trying to achieve liftoff. While Baby watches, Marvin affixes whips and other prosthetics to his stump, scowling and threatening Baby with cartoonish dialogue. And so it goes from there—take the standard elements of a crime film, jack them up on crank, and you’ve got this very strange moment in the career of one of action cinema’s greatest directors. 99 and 44/100% Dead isn’t Frankenheimer’s oddest film—that honor belongs to 1996’s insane The Island of Dr. Moreau—but it’s close.

99 and 44/100% Dead: FREAKY

Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)

The premise of this drive-in flick sounds like the kind of hypothetical inquiry jacked-up dudes might debate in a bar: “Who’d win in a fight, bikers or Green Berets?” Dramatizing a battle between these unlikely adversaries ensures that Chrome and Hot Leather has plenty of hand-to-hand combat, macho swaggering, and vehicular mayhem. It’s all a bit outlandish and silly, to be sure, and the plot is simultaneously lame-brained and overwrought, but there are enough biceps, chains, guns, machines, and weapons in this movie to keep any fan of tough-guy cinema happy. What’s more, the picture is decorated with a coterie of attractive ’70s starlets and a steady onslaught of hard rock. Things get started when wholesome teenagers Helen (Ann Marie) and Kathy (a young Cheryl Ladd, billed as “Cheryl Moor”), unluckily end up on a country highway at the same time as a motorcycle gang called the Devils. One of the bikers whacks the girls’ car with a chain, spooking the girls and causing them to fatally drive off a cliff. Afterward, Kathy’s fiancé, Vietnam vet Mitch (Tony Young), finds out what happened and determines to track down the gang. To aid his quest, Mitch recruits his Army buddies (one of whom is played, without much flair, by R&B legend Marvin Gaye), and the soldiers go undercover as a biker gang. Eventually, Mitch targets the Devils’ muscle-bound leader, T.J. (William Smith), gaining information about him by seducing T.J.’s main squeeze, the nubile Susan (Kathy Baumann). And so it goes—Chrome and Hot Leather never escapes the familiar routine of bar brawls, meaningless sex, and open-road riding, but the picture is so jam-packed with lurid sensations that it moves along nicely. Smith, as always, cuts a formidable figure, so he blows nearly everyone else off the screen—not the biggest accomplishment—although Baumann’s considerable physical charms make an impression. This is awfully low-rent stuff, but since that’s the point, Chrome and Hot Leather must be considered a grimy sort of success.

Chrome and Hot Leather: FUNKY

Sunburst (1975)

Even by the low standards of evil-redneck flicks, Sunburst is atrocious. Dull, terribly acted, and tonally schizophrenic, the picture is more than halfway over before anything of significance happens, and even the introduction of an actual plot is insufficient to generate interest. The picture begins on a college campus, where wholesome coed Jenny (Kathy Baumann) hooks up with sensitive stud Robert (Peter Hooten). The couple travels to the mountains to visit a pal, Michael, who quit school for a simpler life in the wilderness. And that, more or less, is the first 40 minutes of the movie, which comprises one uneventful scene after another, interspersed with montages set to fruity ballads. (And let’s not forget the pointless sequence featuring ’30s crooner Rudy Vallee as a shopkeeper whom the young lovers encounter.) Eventually, while Jenny and Robert take a romantic skinny-dip in a mountaintop lake, they’re spotted by a pair of mouth-breathers (played by James Keach and David Pritchard) who speak to Jenny and Robert and strongly imply threats of sexual violence. Demonstrating spectacular stupidity, the heroes head to Michael’s seemingly abandoned cabin, rather than fleeing to someplace safe, and spend the night screwing. Sure enough, the rednecks show up with knives to beat the crap out of Robert and rape Jenny. The next morning, Michael (played by a very young Robert Englund) finally appears. The future Freddy Krueger must summon a straight face for insipid speeches like this one, appraising Jenny’s post-assault mood: “She’s doing the right thing. She’s putting it together for herself without words. She’s just into herself.” Yeesh. Onetime Miss Ohio Baumann is sexy but vapid, Hooten’s spacey look makes him seem detached, and Keach and Pritchard deliver cartoonish performances. (Sample Keach dialogue: “I suggest that you go right over there in those bushes and wizzle your lizard!”) Whether in its original form or its ’80s video incarnation (bearing the alternate title Slashed Dreams), this flick is to be avoided at all costs.

Sunburst: SQUARE