The Little Prince (1974)

          Although I managed to pass through childhood without any exposure to the story, I’ve learned that French author/aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fantastical novella The Little Prince is one of the most successful and widely read children’s stories of the 20th century. I mention this by way of stating that I approached this film adaptation without any feelings toward the source material, so others can hold forth on whether the picture does justice to de Saint-Exupéry’s writing. Watching the film of The Little Prince as its own entity, I found little to like despite the imaginative narrative and worthwhile themes. Director Stanley Donen, a giant of studio-era musical films whose career was winding down when he made The Little Prince, brings a fair amount of style in the form of clever fisheye-lens photography and general exuberance, but the combination of coldly professional acting by the leading players and distractingly artificial settings for many scenes makes the piece feel perfunctory rather than passionate.

          It’s also not a good sign that when famed choreographer-director Bob Fosse shows up in a rare acting role, he completely takes over the film for several minutes with his signature brand of cinematic and physical movement; although merely credited as choreographer for his own sequence, Fosse likely had a hand in the design of camera shots and editing, as well, and his bit is the liveliest stretch of the movie.

          Anyway, the story of The Little Prince must lose something in translation, because as presented onscreen, it’s insipid. When a character known only as the Pilot (Richard Kiley) lands his plane in the Sahara after experiencing engine trouble, he meets a strange young boy, the Little Prince (Steven Warner), who claims to have come from an asteroid in outer space. The Little Prince regales the Pilot with tales of his encounters with strange characters, including a friendly Fox (Gene Wilder), a demanding Rose (Donna McKechnie), and a pernicious Snake (Fosse). Each encounter taught the Little Prince a lesson, and so does his friendship with the Pilot.

          As communicated through twee songs by the famed duo of Alan Jay Lerner (who also wrote the screenplay) and Frederick Loewe (who also composed the score), the Little Prince’s adventure says something about the importance of retaining a child’s innocence even in adult life. Yet while the content is admirable, the execution is blah. Exterior daytime scenes in the desert are visually dull, nighttime exterior scenes shot on a soundstage are phony-looking, and the tricks Donen uses to simulate outer-space environments are gimmicky. Yet it’s ultimately the performances that keep The Little Princefrom achieving liftoff. Kiley, a lovely actor with a resonant voice, is too theatrical, and young Steven Warner comes across as an automaton doing what he’s told. So, even with Fosse’s dynamic dance sequence and Wilder’s touchy-feely extended cameo, there’s little heart in what should be a deeply moving parable.

The Little Prince: FUNKY

Death Race 2000 (1975)

           When is a bad movie a good movie? Death Race 2000 falls short of any serious standards, because it’s campy, cartoonish, and silly, with one-dimensional characters cavorting their way through absurd adventures. Yet the film’s exuberance and lack of pretention manifest as a crude sort of charm, which works in tandem with breakneck pacing—the movie’s like a piece of candy you don’t realize you shouldn’t be eating until it’s all gone. Science fiction delivered by way of black comedy, Death Race 2000 presents a future in which the United States has become the United Provinces. The supreme ruler of the United Provinces, Mr. President (Sandy McCallum), has eliminated many personal freedoms and keeps the population narcotized by presenting an annual blood-sport extravaganza called the Transcontinental Road Race. A small group of drivers, each of whom has an oversized persona and a colorful costume to match, competes not only by racing each other from one coast to the next but also by running over pedestrians for points. During this particular iteration of the race, however, leftist rebels subvert Mr. President’s authority by sabotaging the event.

          The main racers are Frankenstein (David Carradine), the reigning champion whose body comprises replacement parts after years of racing injuries; “Machine-Gun” Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), a gangster-styled competitor determined to replace Frankenstein as the crowd’s favorite; “Calamity” Jane Kelly (Mary Woronov), who works a Western-outlaw motif; Herman “The German” Boch (Fred Grandy), the league’s resident ersatz Nazi; and Ray “Nero the Hero” Lonagan (Martin Kove), a vainglorious putz with a Roman Empire shtick. Each racer is paired with a navigator, so most of the film comprises standoffs in which teams try to beat each other’s racing times and score points by nailing innocent victims. Also woven into the film are running gags related to announcers and fans. Plus, of course, the violence of the rebels.

          Based on a story by Ib Melchior, Death Race 2000was produced by Roger Corman and co-written by longtime Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith, whose sardonic touch is audible in the film’s playful dialogue. Director Paul Bartel, the avant-garde humorist who later made the cult-fave comedy Eating Raoul (1982), does a great job throughout Death Race 2000 of balancing goofy humor with sly social commentary—every gag is a nudge at consumerism, egotism, sensationalism, or something else of that nature. The movie is never laugh-out-loud funny, but the tone is consistent and the story (mostly) makes sense. Plus, this being a Corman production, there’s plenty of gore and nudity to keep l0w-minded fans happy. Carradine makes an appealing antihero, his casual cool suited to the role of a seasoned killer, and Stallone is amusing as his hotheaded rival. Meanwhile, Woronov lends a touch of heart, Don Steele (who plays the main announcer) sends up showbiz phoniness, and leading lady Simone Griffeth (who plays Frankenstein’s navigator) blends likeability with sexiness. Best of all, Death Race 2000 runs is course in 80 brisk minutes—all killer, no filler.

Death Race 2000: GROOVY

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

          Novelist Ira Levin came up with some of the kickiest thriller plots of his era, providing the source material for the films Rosemary’s Baby (1967) and The Stepford Wives(1972), as well as for this picture. Levin’s book The Boys from Brazil blended the sci-fi concept of human cloning with themes related to the World War II Holocaust into an entertainingly paranoid fantasy, and an impressive roster of actors and behind-the-camera talents translated the book into one of the great cinematic guilty pleasures of the late ’70s. The movie version of The Boys from Brazil is almost impossible to take seriously, especially because the leading performances are so over the top as to border on camp, but the picture unspools at a ferocious speed while stacking thrills atop thrills. It’s pure escapism. That is, so long as one sets aside the question of whether it was in good taste to predicate a popcorn movie on the murders of six million Jews. (Although, to be fair, The Boys from Brazil can be viewed as a revenge fantasy against one of the Third Reich’s worst real-life monsters.)

          Anyway, the story begins in Paraguay, where a resourceful young American Jew, Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg), tracks down several Nazi war criminals living in exile and stumbles across a conference during which infamous Nazi surgeon Joseph Mengele (Gregory Peck) outlines a plan to murder nearly 100 seemingly innocuous 65-year-old men living throughout the world. Barry transmits his initial findings to Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), an aging Nazi hunter based in Austria, who is initially skeptical. Meanwhile, Mengele discovers Barry’s spying and has the young man killed, initiating a cat-and-mouse game—can Mengele execute his evil scheme before Lieberman brings the notorious “Angel of Death” to justice? The Boys from Brazil is an old-fashioned potboiler with a modern-age twist, because it turns out Mengele’s scheme—stop if you don’t already know the details—involves “activating” dozens of clones made from Adolf Hitler’s DNA.

          As directed by Franklin J. Schaffner with his customary elegance, The Boys from Brazilis simultaneously goofier and smarter than the average thriller. The premise is outlandish and Levin’s plotting is mechanical, but individual scenes are sharp and the escalation of tension from start to finish is terrific. Regular Schaffner collaborator Jerry Goldmsith deserves ample credit for jacking up the excitement level with his vivacious music, and cinematographer Henri Decaé lends epic scope with evocative location photography from around the globe. Yet on many levels this one’s about the acting, because the star power in the leading roles is formidable.

          It’s a hoot to see Olivier play the inverse of his character in Marathon Man (1976), which featured the actor as an insane Nazi. Olivier’s acting is way too broad in The Boys from Brazil, from the thick accent to the comical eye rolls, but he’s inarguably fun to watch. Similarly, it’s wild to see beloved leading man Peck play an out-and-out monster. Peck succumbs to the same excesses as his co-star, employing an overdone accent and exaggerated facial expressions, but he too is highly entertaining. Supporting actors lend zest, from the exuberant Guttenberg to cameo players including Denholm Elliot, Bruno Ganz, Uta Hagen, and Rosemary Harris. Plus, the always-watchable James Mason has a tasty featured role as Mengele’s pissy colleague.

The Boys from Brazil: GROOVY

Message from Space (1978)

          If you’ve ever wondered what Star Wars (1977) would have been like if George Lucas had stimulated his imagination by consuming massive doses of hallucinogens, then you should definitely check out Message from Space. A Japanese production with some scenes performed in English by Hollywood actors, this effects-driven fantasy/sci-fi epic comprises 105 minutes of complete brain-blasting weirdness. Individual elements within the film are straight-up crazy, and Message from Space unfolds at a frenetic pace while juxtaposing incompatible images with stream-of-consciousness abandon.

          Things get surreal right from the start. Out in space, some bizarre planet inhabited by tree people (as in, leaves apparently growing out of their bodies) becomes imperiled by the evil designs of a wizard/king/robot/whatever, so the chief of the tree people sends glowing seeds into space to find saviors. A princess from the tree planet also joins the search, zooming through the stars in a tall ship complete with oars and sails. Eventually, the seeds (and the princess) gather a band of “heroes” including a recently discharged military officer (Vic Morrow), a gang of interstellar hot-rodders, and others. All of this is set to a hyperactive music score dominated by a motif that’s blatantly stolen from John Williams’ score for Star Wars.

          Director Kinji Fukasaku shoots nearly every scene with the kind of ADD camerawork you might normally expect to encounter in a skateboarding video, and the movie’s production design suffers from a major case of multiple personality disorder. Some costumes and sets seem germane to a hippy-dippy fairy tale, some seem yanked from a medieval drama, and others suggest a disco-era gay-culture fantasia—seriously, what’s with the dancers flitting around in spangly g-strings and rainbow-colored crystalline breastplates? Yet describing the picture’s look doesn’t begin to communicate the strangeness of Message from Space.

          Consider the scene of Meia (Peggy Lee Brennan), who’s some sort of groupie associated with the hot-rodders, floating around in open space—wearing no protective gear except a ventilator—so she can catch “fireflies” that turn to rocks when captured. Or consider the long sequence featuring a Disney-style wicked witch who poisons several of the “heroes” so she can force the princess to marry her son—a giant monster with a lizard head who perversely threatens the princess with a laser whip until bad-guy stormtroopers intervene. And we haven’t even gotten to the villain’s Lady Macbeth-style mommy—she’s a heavily made-up ghoul/witch/zombie thing who tools around in a wheelchair that looks like it’s built from human bones.

          Morrow, the only recognizable Hollywood actor in the picture, strolls through the whole crazy mess trying to cut a dashing figure as a gentleman soldier, but his straight-arrow routine belongs in a different movie. (It’s hard to take Morrow seriously when he shares scenes with a grade-Z C3P0 knockoff named “Beba-2,” who spews lines like, “No robot can forget your kindness to robotkind.”) It’s no wonder that Message from Space has built a minor cult following over the years, because watching the movie from an ironic perspective—or while stoned—probably makes for a better experience than trying to accept Message from Space at face value.

Message from Space: FREAKY

C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979)

A pathetic attempt by Hanna-Barbera Productions to mimic the Disney style of special-effects-driven family comedies, C.H.O.M.P.S.has nothing going for it except for glossy production values, a perky leading lady (Valerie Bertinelli), and a scruffy canine star. In fact, the only thing more dispiriting than the picture’s cliché-riddled storyline is the imbecilic dialogue. The plot cobbles together stock elements familiar to anyone who’s seen live-action Disney pictures from the ’70s. Successful entrepreneur Ralph Norton (Conrad Bain) owns a security company, and one of his employs is a ne’er-do-well inventor, Brian Foster (Wesley Eure), who is, of course, in love with Norton’s daughter, Casey (Bertinelli). After Brian gets fired, he shows Casey his new invention, C..H.O.M.P.S., a robot dog designed for home security. Complications of the dullest sort ensue when one of Norton’s competitors, Gibbs (Jim Backus), tries to steal C.H.O.M.P.S. before Norton recognizes the value of the invention. The movie also features inane subplots involving bumbling crooks (played by Red Buttons and Chuck McCann) and a mean neighborhood dog with whom C.H.O.M.P.S. tussles. C.H.O.M.P.S. is crammed with cloying music that erupts into disco jams during chase scenes, suggesting an unholy convergence of Carl Stalling and Giorgio Moroder, and the cast overplays cartoonishly, right down to Backus presenting a black-hat riff on his old Gilligan’s Islandcharacterization. The picture also presents gruesome images irresponsibly. This is the sort of movie where villains get caught in explosions but walk away with nothing but ash-covered faces and ripped clothing; similarly, the bit where Brian rips off his robot dog’s head to display the inner workings to Casey seems unnecessarily savage. Yet the weirdest element is the presence of minor, PG-rated vulgarity (which was excised from G-rated release prints). Monster, the nasty dog who fights with C.H.O.M.P.S., “speaks” in voiceover, saying things like “Up your poop, granny.” If one strained to find a single meritorious aspect of this misbegotten movie, it could be noted that Bertinelli was as the apex of her girl-next-door adorableness—but fans of the actress would do better to scratch that particular itch by watching a One Day at a Time rerun.

C.H.O.M.P.S.: LAME

Wizards (1977)

          The weirdest thing about Wizards is that the movie isn’t particularly weird. After all, the animated adventure was the first full-on fantasy film from maverick animator Ralph Bakshi, who made his mark with the X-rated cartoon feature Fritz the Cat (1972). Yet for this project, which is a hybrid of Tolkein-esque medieval/magic tropes and ecologically themed sci-fi, Bakshi mostly dialed back on the provocation and concentrated on spinning a yarn. Unfortunately, the yarn isn’t very good.

          In the distant future, after man has turned Earth into a wasteland, two sibling wizards—good Avatar (voiced by Bob Holt) and evil Blackwolf (voiced by Steve Gravers)—battle for control. Avatar’s all about nature, since he’s a mellow little dude who lives in a castle with a sexy faerie, whereas Blackwolf is a demonic-looking creature ruling an army of hell-spawned monsters, homicidal robots, and killer mutants. The bulk of the story depicts Avatar’s difficult trek from his castle to Blackwolf’s lair for a final standoff, and a major subplot involves Avatar’s conversion of one of Blackwolf’s assassins—a robot whom Avatar captures and renames “Peace” (voiced by David Proval)—into a soldier for good.

          This is all exactly as heavy-handed as it sounds, though the hipster prism through which Bakshi tells his tale makes the movie a bit more palatable than it might have otherwise. For instance, Avatar is prone to saying things like “this has been the biggest bummer trip I’ve ever been on.” He’s an appealing character, even though his attitude and lingo now seem dated.

          Bakshi employs the crude but innovative animation techniques that were his ’70s signature, occasionally sprucing up traditional cel-animation shots with trippy backgrounds that are generated by optical effects. He also spotlights herky-jerky images created by filming real actors and then tracing their basic shapes onto film frames to provide an effect akin to moving silhouettes. (During the picture’s climax, Bakshi takes the experiment further by integrating live-action footage, cutting to real shots of airplanes and tanks while Avatar’s army tangles with Blackwolf’s forces.) The oddest—and least effective—of Bakshi’s gimmicks involves cutting to montages of still drawings for transitional moments. As an uncredited Susan Tyrell soberly intones expositional voiceover, renderings by comic-book/magazine artist Mike Ploog depict scenes that Bakshi didn’t bother to animate. In addition to slowing down the action, these transitional moments make the rest of the movie look crappy by comparison, since Ploog’s drawings are beautifully detailed.

          Another significant problem with Wizards is that Bakshi, who also wrote and produced the film, can’t decide on a consistent tone—the movie lurches back and forth between action and slapstick and social commentary. In short, it’s a mess. Still, every so often Bakshi’s mad-scientist approach results in something exciting or funny or touching, and the one thing the movie can’t be said to lack is imagination.

Wizards: FUNKY

Salvage-1 (1979)

          Featuring one of the loopier premises in the history of primetime drama, this feature-length pilot movie launched a short-lived series, which has since become a minor cult favorite among sci-fi fans. Beloved TV icon Andy Griffith stars in the movie as a junkyard owner who builds his own private spaceship for a trip to the moon, where he plans to salvage abandoned NASA equipment and sell it to the highest bidder. Once the concept went to series, Griffth reprised his role, with his character piloting the spaceship for missions to remote locations around the globe; in the first regular episode, the goal was to retrieve monkeys for a zoo and to explore the possibility of bringing back an iceberg for a California community suffering from drought. Not hard to see why the series got canceled. Still, two things make the Salvage-1 pilot movie charming—Griffith’s affable persona and the lightness of the storytelling. Written by Mike Lloyd Ross, whose character development and dialogue are as clunky as his narrative concepts are wild, Salvage-1introduces Harry Broderick (Griffith) as an expert in repurposing junk—he buys a World War I biplane for a song, then guts the vehicle and sells parts to various buyers, making a $14,000 profit in the course of a morning’s work.

          Harry’s gotten hip to the multimillion-dollar value of tech that NASA left on the moon, and he’s identified an aeronautics expert with a theory that might facilitate inexpensive space travel. Harry hires the expert, ex-astronaut Skip Carmichael (Joel Higgins), who in turn enlists the aid of fuel specialist Melanie Slozar (Trish Stewart). Together with Harry’s regular employees—including a pair of former NASA ground-control techs—Harry cobbles together a spaceship called the Vulture. Meanwhile, uptight FBI agent Jack Klinger (Richard Jaeckel) sniffs around Harry’s junkyard because he senses something strange is happening. Salvage-1is predicated on an inordinate number of convenient plot twists, and Ross’ script is so upbeat that there’s never any real tension, but Salvage-1 is fun to watch simply because it’s such a lark. Even the laughably bad special effects featured during the Vulture’s moon shot aren’t enough to diffuse the good vibes. This is pure gee-whiz escapism, and the saving grace of the piece is that it never pretends to have meaning or substance. So, yes, the acting is hokey and the story is borderline stupid, but who cares? Fun is fun.

Salvage-1: GROOVY

Flesh Gordon (1974)

          Although it’s not the out-and-out porn film its reputation might suggest, Flesh Gordon is a cheerfully filthy spoof of the old Flash Gordon movie serials—the picture tries to blend satire with titillation by bombarding viewers with crude jokes, nudity, and sex scenes. The movie is quite awful, of course, but it moves along at a breakneck speed and, in its best moments, approaches an anything-goes party vibe that suggests a low-rent version of the comedy style perfected a few years later by the makers of Airplane!(1980). Obviously, the big difference is that the makers of Airplane! had real actors and a real budget, to say nothing of the fact that the Airplane!team didn’t have to interrupt their movie periodically for lingering close-ups of genitalia.

          The plot of Flesh Gordonis adapted from the first Flash Gordonserial, released in 1938 and starring Buster Crabbe. (Another version of the very same plot was employed for the big-budget Flash Gordon movie released in 1980.) When Earth is bombarded by a sex ray from outer space, which drives victims to uncontrolled lust, dashing adventurer Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams), his new girlfriend Dale Ardor (Suzanne Fields), and kooky scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins) fly into space to find the source of the sex ray and save the Earth. Arriving on the planet Porno, the heroes battle minions of evil Emperor Wang the Perverted (William Dennis Hunt), along the way encountering monsters and other fantastic creatures. This being a sex comedy, those fantastic creatures include the flamboyantly gay prince (Lance Larsen) of a men-in-tights troupe and the Amazonian leader (Candy Samples) of a lesbian cult.

          Ninety-nine percent of the jokes in Flesh Gordon are painfully stupid, the performances are terrible, and the editing is so choppy that some scenes appear as if from nowhere. However, writer/co-director Michael Benveniste and his collaborators cleverly shield themselves from legitimate criticism by framing the movie as a campy goof—the worse the acting gets, the better. Yet some aspects of the picture run perilously close to real filmmaking. For instance, the flick includes several elaborate scenes of stop-motion animation fused with live-action, leading to Harryhausen-style scenes of real actors fighting stop-motion monsters. This stuff is executed fairly well, given the budget constraints.

          That said, the way Flesh Gordon devotes long stretches of screen time to pure adventure would seem sure to infuriate the heavy-breathing crowd more interested in Flesh than Gordon. But then again, that’s why Flesh Gordon is so peculiar—it’s a kiddie movie for pervs. Consider this amusingly infantile chant, delivered by bottomless cheerleaders (!) in Wang’s palace: “Emperor Wang is the one for me—without him, the planet Porno would be ever so forlorn-o.” Or consider the very strange finale, which involves a giant, cloven-hooved monster who chases after the heroes while speaking in smooth, lounge-lizard patter. (Craig T. Nelson, the only familiar actor involved with the project, voices the monster in one of his earliest film performances, though he’s not credited.)

          FYI, there are two versions of Flesh Gordon in circulation. The original 78-minute version carried an X-rating, even though it’s not hardcore, and the 90-minute version available on home video is unrated. In the 90-minute version, the only full-on porn action involves a few extras making out on the periphery of crowd shots. Oh, and one more thing: Howard Ziehm, who co-directed and co-produced Flesh Gordon, resuscitated the character by directing a 1989 sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, with an almost entirely new cast. Suffice to say the picture was not well received.

Flesh Gordon: FREAKY

Idaho Transfer (1973)

          If you didn’t know that Peter Fonda once directed a sci-fi movie, you’re not alone, because Idaho Transfer is among the most obscure items in his filmography. Released to little fanfare in 1973 and subsequently relegated to the public-domain slag heap—most available prints of the movie are cruddy second-generation copies—the movie is little more than a footnote to the Easy Rider star’s career. And while it’s true that Idaho Transfer is not the sort of movie that generates much excitement on the part of the viewer, seeing as how the film is leisurely and meditative, the picture has some meritorious elements.
          The story revolves around Karen (Kelly Bohanon), a mixed-up young woman who joins her older sister, Isa (Caroline Hildebrand), at a remote research facility run by the girls’ father, George (Ted D’Arms). George has created time-travel technology and determined that the Earth is racing toward an ecological disaster, so he’s “transferring” young people back and forth to the future. In the future, the young people are laying the foundations for a settlement that can rebuild the human race after the apocalypse. Screenwriter Thomas Matthiesen adds all sorts of inventive flourishes to this wild premise; for instance, the notion that 20th-century environmental damage is destroying the kidneys of mature adults explains why persons past the age of 25 can’t participate in the time-travel experiment. Matthiesen also flips the story on its head partway through, when several young characters get trapped in the future and must fight for survival in a realm plagued by zombie-like radiation victims.
         Although this might sound like the setup for an action story, Fonda presents Idaho Transfer as a lyrical parable. Spotlighting inexperienced amateur actors and striving for a naturalistic feel, Fonda uses a supremely restrained approach—most scenes involve characters casually discussing their extraordinary circumstances. (Composer Bruce Langhorne’s plaintive score accentuates the unimaginable tragedy of outliving one’s own species.) This laid-back approach to sci-fi doesn’t really work, per se, since the movie could have used a lot more adrenaline, but Idaho Transferis an interesting counterpoint to the overwrought melodrama found in most movies exploring similar subject matter. After all, wouldn’t wandering mostly uninhabited wastelands be a quiet existence? Fonda’s cast generally underwhelms, though Bohanon seems comfortable onscreen and Keith Carradine pops up for a couple of scenes as a minor character. It’s easy to admire what Fonda set out to accomplish, and every so often his cerebral/spiritual take on the sci-fi genre connects in a moment of sad poetry.

Idaho Transfer: FUNKY

A Boy and His Dog (1975)

          Based on a story by revered sci-fi scribe Harlan Ellison, this cult-fave saga takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland—Ellison’s narrative contrives an alternate reality in which John F. Kennedy survived the events of November 22, 1963, with major ripple effects on history. In 2024, survivors wander the desolated Earth, struggling for food and water. The protagonist (not really a hero) is dim-witted teenager Vic (Don Johnson), who roams the American Southwest accompanied only by Blood, his genius-level telepathic pooch. Blood “speaks” via voiceover performed by actor Tim McIntire. Blood and Vic travel together because the boy’s physical strength and the dog’s mental abilities make them a formidable unit. As the weird story progresses, Blood and Vic end up in a subterranean community called Topeka, where Vic gets involved with Quilla (Suzanne Benton), the daughter of underground overlord Lou (Jason Robards), a boisterous megalomaniac.

          Even by comparison with earlier sequences that feature killer mutants and talking dogs, the underground bits in A Boy and His Dog are insane. Most of the Topeka residents wear garish mime makeup, and the culture beneath the Earth’s surface is built around sexless procreation. (Men get strapped to machines that extract sperm—fun!) Describing the full plot of A Boy and His Dog is more work than it’s worth, partly because the story is so complicated and partly because the mysteries of this unique film should not be revealed. Suffice to say,  A Boy and His Dog is not for every taste. Some viewers will find it too confusing, some will find it too odd, and some will find it too pretentiously allegorical. Furthermore, the film’s extremes are exacerbated by narrative and technical shortcomings.

          L.Q. Jones, a veteran character actor known mostly for Westerns (including Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 classic The Wild Bunch), directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the movie—one of only three completed projects he helmed—and he’s shaky behind the camera. The movie has visual flair, since bizarre post-apocalyptic environments are inherently interesting, but do the various elements hang together comfortably? Not really. The movie toggles between bleak drama, high comedy, and wicked satire, never settling on a consistent tone, and the final scene (which won’t be spoiled here) kicks the film into truly demented terrain. Plus, since Johnson is not a powerhouse actor, it’s odd that the most dynamic performance in the film is given by McIntire, who never appears onscreen; his impassioned vocal work, portraying every dimension of Blood’s perversely complicated personality, nearly pulls the picture together.

A Boy and His Dog: FREAKY

The Fury (1978)

          Apparently hopeful that lighting would strike twice in terms of creative inspiration and box-office returns, director Brian De Palma followed up his breakthrough movie, the 1976 supernatural shocker Carrie, with another horror flick about killer psychics. Yet while The Fury has bigger stars and glossier production values than its predecessor, it’s so far-fetched and gruesome that it lacks anything resembling the emotional gut-punch of Carrie. That’s not to say The Fury is devoid of entertainment value—it’s just that De Palma badly overreached in his attempt to blend elements of the conspiracy, horror, and supernatural genres into a sensationalistic new hybrid. Written for the screen by John Farris, who adapted his own novel, the convoluted movie pits former friends Ben (John Cassavetes) and Peter (Kirk Douglas) against each other. They’re both secret-agent types, and Ben is exploring the possible use of psychics as trained killers. One of Ben’s star pupils is Peter’s adult son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), although Ben expects even greater things from Gillian (Amy Irving), a gifted but troubled woman Robin’s age.
          You can probably guess where this goes—the young psychics fall in love even as they realize they’re being manipulated, Peter tries to rescue his son, and corpses hit the floor when the psychics get pushed too far.

          This being a De Palma picture, one is unwise to expect restraint on the part of the filmmaker, and, indeed, the movie’s finale involves a human body exploding. Moreover, despite the sophisticated contributions of cinematographer Richard H. Kline and composer John Williams, nearly every scene in The Fury ends with the cinematic equivalent of an exclamation point. Hell, the picture even features two performances (provided by Douglas and Stevens) distinguished by actors indicating intensity by flaring their nostrils. Regarding the other leads, Cassavetes sleepwalks through a paycheck gig as per the norm, and Irving elevates her scenes with the delicate sensitivity that distinguishes most of her work. None of the major performances is particularly good, per se, but each is lively in a different way, so at least De Palma achieves a certain overcaffeinated tonal consistency. Considering its assertive direction, colorful cast, and outlandish storyline, The Fury should be memorable in a comic-book sort of way, but ultimately, the picture is as anonymous as the silhouetted models featured on the poster—instead of delivering unique jolts, it’s Carrie Lite.

The Fury: FUNKY

Deathsport (1978)

The saving grace of Roger Corman’s cheapo productions is usually a sense of humor, and the importance of jokes to low-budget crap is obvious when watching the Corman turkey Deathsport, which is monotonously grim. A sci-fi thriller set in the same sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland seen in a gazillion other movies—gladiator contests organized by an authoritarian regime, radioactive mutants, and so on—Deathsportis so close to self-parody that it would have been easy to tip the thing into full-on satire. Instead, Deathsportis played straight, even though it’s filled with cartoonish costumes, over-the-top violence, and ridiculous dialogue. (In the finale, the hero announces, “Now we will have our duel,” and the villain replies, “I agree.”) David Carradine, seemingly unaware that he’s appearing in a piece of shit, lays on the gravitas to portray Kaz, a quasi-mystical warrior who roams the wasteland protecting common folk from overlords. He gets captured by bad guys who force Kaz and other warriors, including Deneer (Claudia Jennings), to participate in “Deathsport,” an open-field battle between warriors on foot and soldiers on motorcycles. During the game, Kaz and Deneer mount a rebellion/escape because they need to rescue a little girl from mutants. All of this is set to a chintzy synthesizer score that sounds as if it’s being played by a keyboardist whose day job is pounding away at a roller-rink pipe organ. Co-written and co-directed by Nicholas Niciphor (Corman and Allan Arkush also helped direct the picture), Deathsportis dull, grungy, and unpleasant, featuring not one but two scenes of nude women getting tortured in an electroshock chamber. Still, B-movie fans may enjoy the absurdly somber performances of Carradine and main villain Richard Lynch (a genre-flick favorite memorable for his badly scarred face). Furthermore, leading lady Jennings, a former Playboy model, is easy on the eyes whether dressed or (as if often the case here) not.

Deathsport: LAME

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971) & Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) & Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) & Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) & Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)

          The only artistically credible Godzilla movie is the Japanese-language original, Gojira (1954), a horrific atomic-age parable about a prehistoric monster drawn from the ocean’s depths by the use of nuclear weapons. The picture was sloppily recut for American audiences, with new scenes featuring U.S. actor Raymond Burr inserted, and given the new title Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956). And thus began the diminishing of the Big Green Guy, whom most viewers know only as a stunt player in a silly-looking monster suit, stomping his way through scale-model sets in a seemingly endless series of goofy children’s movies. The sequel cycle started with Godzilla Raids Again (1955), and then continued through the ’60s with such self-explanatory flicks as King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964). Cheaply made and juvenile, these pictures were distinguished by campy special effects, comic-book-style fighting scenes, wild soundtracks, and, for American viewers, badly dubbed English-language dialogue played over scenes of Japanese actors mouthing words in their native tongue. By the mid-’60s, Godzilla had transformed from rampaging beast to crusading hero, an all-purpose savior summoned whenever an even worse radioactive critter threatened Japan.

          The Big Green Guy entered the ’70s with Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, which is compelling simply because it’s top-to-bottom insane. Riding the then-current trend of eco-themed cautionary tales, this one pits the Big Green Guy against a giant pile of sludge that represents man’s abuse of the environment. Describing the story is pointless, of course, but the memorable bits include a sequence in which both Godzilla and Hedorah (aka the Smog Monster) learn to fly so they can fight in mid-air. Because, hey, why stop at fire-breathing dinosaurs and anthropomorphized detritus? Especially in its original Japanese version, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster is incredibly weird, featuring random bits ranging from musical numbers (I’m still humming the melody of “Save the Earth” decades later) to psychedelic sequences—and did I mention that Godzilla flies? Of all the Big Green Guy’s ’70s adventures, this is the by far the most mind-meltingly odd.

          Next up is Godzilla vs. Gigan. In this one, the Big Green Guy battles a favorite foe from his ’60s romps, the three-headed flying dragon creature King Ghidorah, who is sent by aliens to conquer Earth. Aiding Godzilla is Anguirus, some kind of giant thorny dinosaur/lizard/turtle thing that appears periodically in the series, and the “Gigan” of the title is King Ghidorah’s ally, a Godzilla-like upright lizard monster with a bird-like beak and giant tusks for hands. You get the idea—Godzilla vs. Gigan is basically an episode of WWE Monday Night Raw with giant creatures instead of human wrestlers, a lot of noisy fighting and property destruction without much of a recognizable plot. And, yeah, this is the movie in which Godzilla speaks. The mind reels.

          Godzilla vs. Megalon was the follow-up, and this one has many fans among former ’70s kids because Godzilla’s sidekick is a giant superhero robot called Jet Jaguar (more on him in a minute). The bad guy, Megalon, is another monster sent from outer space to conquer Earth, and he’s a lumbering Godzilla-like creature with an insect head and pointy drill-things for hands. Gigan returns, but this one’s all about Jet Jaguar. A silver-bodied robot with a pointed helmet and a splashy primary-colors costume, Jet Jaguar even has a theme song (which, appropriately enough for a Godzilla movie, is sung in a lounge-lizard style). The robot’s powers range from flying to magically transforming from human size to gigantic proportions. What’s not to like? Okay, don’t answer that one.

          The end of Godzilla’s original run came, appropriately enough, in a pair of films in which the Big Green Guy battled a mechanical version of himself—a sure sign the franchise’s creators had run out of ideas. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is yet another monster mash, with a combination of new characters and old ones—the fresh creatures include Mechagodzilla, who looks like Godzilla wearing silver battle armor, and the super-weird King Caesar, a dog/lion/reptile/whatever. The narrative of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzillais enervated even by the low standards of the series, and the trite doppelgänger device loses its novelty quickly. Inexplicably, the fake Godzilla returned in Terror of Mechagodzilla, which picks up where the previous film left off—not that continuity matters much in this series. Stomping through miniature cities along with the Godzillas is Titanosaurus, a giant red-and-blue dinosaur/fish/lizard beastie, who is—of course!—controlled by the same aliens who’ve been trying to conquer Earth for the last several movies. Can you say “running on fumes”?

          Thankfully, the Big Green Guy took a much-needed rest after the Mechagodzilla movies, reappearing a decade later in The Return of Godzilla(1984). Since the mid-’80s, the rompin’-stompin’ fire-breather has resurfaced many times, in cartoons, comic books, myriad Japanese films, and even a big-budget Hollywood release, the 1998 underperformer Godzilla, with Matthew Broderick. And chances are we haven’t heard the last of Godzilla’s signature blood-curdling roar, even though a Matrix­-flavored 2004 Japanese release—the 28th in the series!—was optimistically titled Godzilla: Final Wars.

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster: FREAKY

Godzilla vs. Gigan: FUNKY

Godzilla vs. Megalon: FUNKY

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla: LAME

Terror of Mechagodzilla: LAME

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

          A laughably silly horror movie, The Incredible Melting Man delivers exactly what the title promises—a grotesque character melts throughout the movie. Yes, this one’s about a monster who becomes less formidable with each passing scene. Or at least that’s the logical implication. To make the movie work, the filmmakers fudge the premise by giving the monster superhuman endurance, so he never loses any of his strength until the very last scene. Most beings run out of gas if they burn through too many calories, but somehow the "melting man" retains his vigor even as his body is disappearing. As such, the underlying notion of The Incredible Melting Man is so astoundingly stupid it’s impossible to take a single frame of the picture seriously. But then again, even though the movie is basically competent in its execution, every other aspect of the storyline is just as astoundingly stupid. The picture begins with U.S. astronauts in outer space, where they’re bombarded with radiation from a solar flare. Returning to earth, all of the astronauts die except Steve West (Alex Rebar), who wakes up in a hospital and discovers that he’s become the sludgy shuffler of the title. Cue murderous rampage.

          The movie is dominated by the work of make-up master Rick Baker, who later won multiple Oscars (beginning with his prize for 1982’s An American Werewolf in London); in addition to creating the grotesque applications for the title character, whose organs and skin drip and ooze in loving close-ups, Baker made props including a realistic-looking disembodied head. Yet it’s a measure of the picture’s schlocky nature that the head is featured in not one but twoslow-motion angles as it drifts down a lazy river—the money shot involves the head tumbling over a waterfall and then cracking open when it hits a rock at the base of the water, a geyser of crimson shooting forth. Perhaps offering a nod to The Incredible Shrinking Man(1957), writer-director William Sachs follows his narrative all the way to a depressing ending, so the movie has a certain kind of bummer integrity, but, still, it’s hard to heap too much praise on a dull gorefest about a glop of goo. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Incredible Melting Man: LAME

The Day of the Dolphin (1973)

          It’s easy to pick apart The Day of the Dolphin, not just because it’s an awkward hybrid of loopy ideas and straight drama, but also because it was such a bizarre career choice for screenwriter Buck Henry and director Mike Nichols, who previously collaborated on the social satire The Graduate (1967) and the surrealistic war movie Catch-22 (1970). Yet even though The Day of the Dolphin doesn’t bear obvious fingerprints from either Henry or Nichols, it subtly reflects both artists’ focus on meticulous character development and thought-provoking concepts. As to the larger question of whether the movie actually works, that’s entirely a matter of taste. Undoubtedly, many viewers will find the central premise too incredible (or even silly). As for me, I find the picture consistently interesting even when believability wavers.

          The plot revolves around Dr. Jake Terrell (George C. Scott), who operates a privately funded marine laboratory where he studies the communication behaviors of dolphins. Or at least that’s what he tells the public. In secret (known only to his staff), Terrell has trained two dolphins, Alpha and Beta, to speak and understand a handful of English words. Predictably, problems arise when Terrell shares this information with his chief benefactor, Harold DeMilo (Fritz Weaver). Shadowy forces learn about the dolphins and kidnap the animals for an evil purpose—the bad guys want to train the dolphins to assassinate the U.S. president by delivering underwater bombs to his yacht while the president is on vacation. (As noted earlier, the premise borders on silliness.)

          What makes The Day of the Dolphin watchable is how straight the material is played. During the movie’s most evocative scenes, Terrell bonds with Alpha and Beta through underwater play that’s scored to elegant music by composer Georges Delerue; for viewers willing to take the movie’s ride, it’s easy to develop a real emotional bond with the animals, and to sympathize with Terrell’s desire to protect them. In that context, the assassination conspiracy isn’t the driving force of the story so much as a complication that tests an unusual relationship.

          Obviously, having an actor of Scott’s power in the leading role makes all the difference. His gruff quality steers the animal scenes clear of Disney-esque sweetness, so when the movie finally goes for viewers’ heartstrings, the bittersweet crescendos of the story feel as earned as they possibly could. There’s not a lot of room for other characters to emerge as individuals, but Nichols stocks the movie with skilled actors who lend nuance where they can. Edward Herrmann and Paul Sorvino stand out as, respectively, one of Terrell’s aides and a mystery man who infiltrates Terrell’s laboratory. A key behind-the-scenes player worth mentioning is cinematographer William A. Fraker, who captures the beating sun and lapping waves of the film’s oceanside locations with crisp realism while also creating a magical world underwater.

The Day of the Dolphin: GROOVY