Robert Forster: An Interview

Although he often refers to his career as a "five-year surge" followed by a "25-year downhill slide," actor Robert Forster has been appearing steadily in television and motion pictures since the late 1960s, when he made his film debut opposite Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE. After a few promising follow-ups, Forster disappeared from mainstream features for constant work in television, including the title roles in the TV series "Banyon" and "Nakia," and low-budget exploitation. Films like ALLIGATOR, VIGILANTE, HOLLYWOOD HARRY and STUNTS may be unfamiliar to general audiences, but Forster became a genre fan favorite for his consistently solid performances, often containing brooding heroics and a wise-guy blue-collar sense of humor, in films that were often not worthy of his presence. The pendulum clicked back the opposite direction in 1997, however, when Quentin Tarantino cast Forster in the role of lonely bail bondsman Max Cherry in JACKIE BROWN, which earned Forster an Academy Award nomination. Since then, Forster has worked almost non-stop in a great number of films, ranging from major studio pictures like SUPERNOVA and ME, MYSELF & IRENE to indie fare such as OUTSIDE OZONA and DIAMOND MEN.

In April 2002, Forster appeared at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where Ebert was introducing DIAMOND MEN, an outstanding drama co-starring Donnie Wahlberg (TV's "Blue Bloods") and directed by Daniel Cohen. As an occasional freelance writer for a local zine called Micro-Film, I sought out Forster for an interview. Because Micro-Film's emphasis is on independent film, most of our half-hour together consisted of talk about DIAMOND MEN and HOLLYWOOD HARRY, an oddball comedy produced and directed by Forster in the mid-1980s, although we did touch on a few other subjects as well.

I certainly wish I had more time with the man. In person, Forster seems to be a genuinely nice guy, appreciative of his fan base, politely signing autographs, shaking hands and even asking the names of everyone who stopped by to say "hello" or "I loved you in JACKIE BROWN." Whatever good things are happening to him personally and professionally these days couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow.


Marty McKee: How did you get involved with DIAMOND MEN? You seem to be doing a lot of studio pictures and then small pictures.

Robert Forster: Well, not that many studio pictures. Studio pictures are really hard to break into, so most of the things I've been doing are independent. I did ME, MYSELF & IRENE (with Jim Carrey), SUPERNOVA (a notorious SF flop released by MGM that was directed by Walter Hill, who took his name off of it, and re-edited by Francis Ford Coppola), and maybe one other picture, but most everything since JACKIE BROWN has been an independent start. Dan Cohen was a first-time writer/director who approached us with this script. I read it and my daughter (Kate) read it and my lawyer read it and everybody liked it. We were trying at that point to find pictures where there was at least a small paycheck. This was a "no paycheck," so basically we fit this in between paying jobs and made it work. It took several months. We wanted to do it in the late summer or fall (1998) and I wasn't available, so we waited until spring.

What drew you to this particular story? Because I know you get a lot of scripts.

The writing was good. And I understood the character. That's the first thing — you gotta understand what you're doing. If you understand it, then it's like falling off a log. I understood JACKIE BROWN. I understood the character of Max Cherry, so it was a cinch to do. I understood this guy (his DIAMOND MEN character). My father was an old salesman. He'd been selling for 30-something years. He sold to bakers. I'd been on the road with him once or twice. He wanted me to meet his customers, so occasionally I'd go out with him, and I got a feel for what he and his life was like on the road. We liked the story and decided to do it. As I say, we slipped it in between two paying jobs. However, this, among all of them, has really risen to the top. It's little, but nice.

Did you do much research? You seem like an expert on diamonds.

Dan Cohen, whose family are diamond salesmen, gave Donnie Wahlberg and me a course. We spent several days visiting where they process them and where they set them and where they grade them. We actually took a diamond course — an abbreviated one, of course — but we learned a few things about diamonds. For instance, I remember the Four Cs: Clarity, Cut, Carat and Color. You can tell from the picture that we had enough conversation on the subject to feel confident discussing it.

You were an executive producer on DIAMOND MEN. Were you involved in Donnie Wahlberg's casting? He's very good, but he wouldn't have been my first choice for the role.

He was wonderful, and, no, I had no part in his casting. Dan Cohen did the casting. I consider that to have been one of his brilliant jobs. He cast this thing beautifully. The only reason I'm on as an executive producer is because they had no dough. So they give you a title instead.

Someone else I was so happy to see was Bess Armstrong.

She's great.

The best smile in Hollywood.

She knew what that job required. Keeping the audience unaware of her real convictions until late in the picture. To make sure the audience did not know whether she was trying to exploit my character or whether she was honest.

I know that you know a little more about independent filmmaking because you made your own, HOLLYWOOD HARRY.

The only picture I ever "made." I worked with the writer (Curt Allen) …

Who is Curt Allen?

He is a guy who wrote WALKING THE EDGE. I had worked on that picture a year or two before, and I said, "Y'know, Curt Allen is a guy who could probably help me out here," and I told him I wanted to do a picture …I'll tell you what I started with, I started with the "Banyon" suit. The chalk-stripe "Banyon" suit.

There's a photo from "Banyon" in the film, right? A publicity still?

Yep. And I said to him, "I want to do a story playing a modern detective. A broken-down detective in Hollywood who doesn't want to fall in love anymore and who's got a kid. A 12-year-old." By the time we made the picture, she was 14, but basically my daughter Kate played the kid. She told me years before this that she wanted to work (as an actress), and I said, "Honey, if I ever get an opportunity, I will put you to work."

When she was 12, I went to Cannes (with director William Lustig and co-star Fred Williamson to promote VIGILANTE at the famous Cannes Film Festival) and I realized how they made independent movies. How they sold movies and what B.S. artists they were. Very often, they just created a one-sheet poster with the title. They sell (the film on the basis of) the poster, and with the sales of the poster, they made the movie.

So I said, "I can do that. How hard could that be?" It was much harder than I imagined and I haven't produced and directed another picture since. All I can tell you is that being an actor is much, much easier. Being a producer is …augh …it's so rough. Being a director, you gotta constantly be asking yourself how to present the material. The actor has to ask himself, "What does the material mean? How will I make the audience understand it?" A director, on the other hand, has to be thinking about how to present it and the shots and so forth. I don't find that to be my strength. Dealmaking as a producer is too rough. Asking people to do for you things that you don't have enough money to pay them for. Begging people to do things for you. Making deals and a lot of paperwork and I figure, "That's not for me." So one and one only: HOLLYWOOD HARRY. Not much, but not junk.

No, it's not junk. It's a fun movie. It's also got a different Robert Forster, one we've not seen before, sort of a loosey-goosey Forster.

Yes, thank you, loosey-goosey, that's exactly correct.

I haven't seen you play much comedy.

OK, well, I did a picture called RAT IN A CAN last year. And it's now called something else. It's now called STRANGE HEARTS.

You played "Jack."

That's correct. It's as close to loosey-goosey as I have gotten in bigger pictures.

Do you still dance?

Of course!

HOLLYWOOD HARRY must have been a great labor of love. Your daughter's in the picture. Your good friend Joe Spinell …tell me about Joe.

Joe Spinell has, in the history of his career, been used as a good guy only once — in HOLLYWOOD HARRY. He has otherwise played a greasy, rotten bastard. And I knew this guy — he was a good guy. He never swore in movies, are you aware of that? You look at his old movies, and I don't think you'll ever find that he swears in movies. He always said, "No, no, you're not supposed to do that." He played rotten characters, but he never wanted to swear. He said his mother might see the picture.

You also worked with Joe in VIGILANTE, which is a good picture.

I like VIGILANTE. (Director) Bill Lustig kept me alive! He brought me to Cannes. They ran out of money while we were shooting the picture. I borrowed some money, a hundred-and-some thousand dollars, and we finished the picture. For that, they brought me to Cannes, and that's where I got my first look at how they sold movies.

Tell me about the "Hammer," Fred Williamson (Forster's co-star in VIGILANTE), whom I interviewed years ago. A colorful guy.

He is a colorful guy, and I'll tell you what. He makes (Williamson still produces and directs movies through his Po' Boy company) low-budget pictures. He makes them out of the spur of the moment real, real cheap. Every time a new actor comes, on the first day, he gives them this speech: "Now, look," he tells the new actor, "this is a low-budget production. We don't shoot a lot of takes. If it's good on the first take, we print it and move on. So just you remember this — if you do bad on that first take, you're gonna look bad in the movie." That focuses an actor's attention, I promise you.

What kind of budget and schedule did you have on HOLLYWOOD HARRY?

I did everything one step at a time. First of all, I picked an arbitrary number: $500,000. I said, "For $500,000, I can make this picture." And, of course, you can. But I didn't know where to get $500,000. I kept trying to sell the idea to prospective producers, and, finally, a couple of exhibitors — these guys had exhibited ALLIGATOR (in which Forster starred for director Lewis Teague) and made money with it in Europe — said, "Yeah, we'll work with you. What's the budget?" "$500,000," I told 'em. They said, "You come up with a third. We'll come up with two-thirds." And we made a deal.

I sold the only investment I had — the only thing I owned — which was some investment I had made some years before. I got $150,000 for it. I called these guys up in England, and I said, "OK, guys, I got my money, it's in the bank," and they didn't return my phone call. Ohhhhhh, one of those absolutely typical stories. You think you got a deal and you trust somebody and they did not come through with it. So I made HOLLYWOOD HARRY with $125,000 of that $150,000 — I had to have some money to live on. I borrowed another $10,000 from my cousin and another $25,000 from a friend, and we finished up a rough cut for approximately $160,000. Later, I had to borrow even more money to post-produce.

Each step of the way, I said, "OK, what do you do now?" By the time we got to a finished picture, I knew that I had to get it to a salesman. We got it to Cannes the following year. We sold to about five small territories. That was 1985. Later that summer, I went to work for Menahem Golan in THE DELTA FORCE (Forster played an Arab terrorist in this Chuck Norris/Lee Marvin action flick for Cannon). While we were working on DELTA FORCE, Menahem, who I had run into in Cannes, asked, "How did you do with that little picture of yours?" I said, "Oh, we sold Australia and Denmark and …" He said, "I will buy the rest of the world." This guy got me out! We sold Golan the picture. Now comes Christmas time …

How much did you sell it for?

Wait, I'll tell ya. They originally offered me $400,000. I figured, OK, that's about $75,000 profit. When I first started making this picture, I thought it was going to get me a house on the beach in Malibu. At best, I wound up with a condo in West Hollywood. I figured I was gonna grab 75-Gs on this picture for my efforts. And that was a two-year effort. Eventually, I went in to Cannon to sign the deal. By then, they kept "grinding" the deal. They take a little bit here, they take a little bit there. Finally, they found out exactly how much money I had in the picture, which was roughly $325,000. And that's exactly and only what they would give me. I had no choice. Now I was working for nothing, but at least I was gonna pay off everybody. I went in around Christmas time to sign the paperwork, and as I was signing, Golan's partner, Yoram Globus, said, "We changed the name of your picture." "Changed the name of my picture? From HOLLYWOOD HARRY to what? And why?" "Well, we had to change the name of your picture." "But why? To what?" "We're going to change it to HARRY'S MACHINE." I said, "Wait a minute, why do that? This is a beautiful title — HOLLYWOOD HARRY. It said something. And my titles (opening credit sequence) are animated. You can't change the name of the picture." He said, "Yes, well, we're going to change the name of the picture."

I was heartbroken. I was devastated. I'm signing the paperwork, I have no choice, I gotta get the $25,000 they're giving me as an advance, I had no Christmas money, I was dead broke. I'm signing the thing, I think, "Oh, God, this is what happens when you make a little movie." Later on, I discovered that Cannon had sold a package of about twenty movies, one of which was titled HARRY'S MACHINE, but they had never made it. So they bought my picture to substitute for a picture they had already sold called HARRY'S MACHINE! Wow!

I'm sure it's out of print now, but the videocassette I have is HOLLYWOOD HARRY. I think Media Home Entertainment put it out.

Yes, yes, you never saw HARRY'S MACHINE. It's HARRY'S MACHINE only in a descriptive list of the pictures that they sold. They never touched it.

Who owns HOLLYWOOD HARRY now?

I don't know who owns it now. All I know is it sold 26,000 units (videocassettes) its first quarter. That's a lot of units for a little, tiny picture.

It really is a lot of fun.

I agree.

I also want to ask you about "Banyon." Everyone I've ever spoken to about "Banyon" has fond memories of that show. Did you think that was going to be big?

I don't know. I had no idea. All I know is I loved doing it.

Joan Blondell was on that show.

Yes, indeed. She played the operator of a secretarial school, and she would give me a free secretary every week. So I always had a free, new secretary that I had to break in every week.

But it only lasted, what, thirteen weeks?

Fifteen shows. Half a season. The guy who wrote and produced and created it, Ed Adamson, died while we were shooting our first order. The show just did not survive his death.

Then a couple of years later, you played a Native American detective.

"Nakia." Good guy. Indian. Deputy sheriff. New Mexico. Contemporary. Cops-and-robbers in the desert. And the thing about that was the pilot to that was (very similar to) BILLY JACK. As is obvious. When the pilot went on the air … by then, we had already gotten an order for thirteen (hour-long episodes), and we were getting ready to shoot them. The day after the pilot showed, Tom Laughlin (the producer, writer, director and star of BILLY JACK) sued Columbia for never having purchased the rights to BILLY JACK. Whoops. What did I know?

There's another pilot you did called "The City" with Don Johnson, which looked like it could have been a pretty decent show.

Not a bad show …and it didn't go.

Do you know why it didn't work?

Ah, you never know why.

A Quinn Martin production, right? Did you ever work with Quinn Martin before?

Oh, yes, Quinn Martin produced "Banyon." He was the executive producer. He picked it up after it had been a pilot, but before it got its order. He was the one that got it its 15 episodes. Quinn Martin was a very good guy. He always overpaid his actors.

I've heard that's why he was always able to attract such extraordinary casts, including guest stars.

He always exceeded the going rate for guest actors. I don't think he paid many actors scale. He bumped it up just a little.

In THE DARKER SIDE OF TERROR, you played two roles. You played a scientist and you were cloned.

Ah, THE CLONE! It was originally called THE CLONE. It's a picture about a guy who is a scientist and Ray Milland is another scientist and he takes a bit of my blood and clones me. And now the little clone is growing up inside a tank of fluid, and when the clone is exactly my age, height and weight, somebody breaks the tank, and I come flowing out. Now there's two of me, and they dress me up the same. This is the big gimmick at the end — I am presented to the faculty. Two of us, both dressed the same. Then there is a fight and a fire in which one of us killed the other, but the audience doesn't know which one survives, and the surviving one gets in bed with the wife (Adrienne Barbeau) and she doesn't know which one survived. And I'm telling you, for many months after that was shown, people would come up to me and ask me which one survived. And I would try and explain that the actor's job is to create a possibility on both sides of that balance without tipping the action. So after I would give them this explanation about "an actor's not supposed to … " they would say (in a whispered tone), "Yeah, yeah, I know, but who really survived?"

It's an actor's dream to play two roles, isn't it?

Well, in this one, I got the opportunity to fool the audience and they were fooled.

MEDIUM COOL. Was it as adventurous for you guys to make as it looks like on-screen?

It was for me. I had no idea they asked actors to say things that weren't on the script. In this picture, there was a great deal of improvisation. Lots of scenes were improvised. So I got the realization that the actor was not only responsible for the words on the page, but for bringing a frame of reference to his material and embodying the character he's playing, so that, if necessary, you can enter any circumstance and be that character. I also realized that being yourself is oh so much easier than putting a veneer over yourself and trying to be somebody else.

At Paramount, did they bury it or did they just not get behind it or …?

Later they put it out on video. They also put it out on DVD. So it's become a little cult classic as maybe the only example of film vérité in American cinema. I can tell you one other thing about this picture, and that is that the phrase, "The whole world is watching," was coined exactly at that instant that is presented in the picture. They say, "Don't leave us! Don't leave us! The world is watching! The whole world is watching!" and it became a chant. That phrase had a lot of use during the '60s and '70s, and it was coined right then and there.

And your first nude scene in MEDIUM COOL … how many times have you performed nude?

(Laughing) I apologize …

HOLLYWOOD HARRY has one too.

HOLLYWOOD HARRY?

You've got a butt shot in HOLLYWOOD HARRY.

Yeah, well, uh …(laughing) … well, all I know is that when I first saw in REFLECTIONS OF A GOLDEN EYE (Forster's first film), a guy rides a horse naked.

Oh, that's right, I forgot that one.

I said to myself, "God, I wonder how they do that?" Probably trick photography or something. When I got out there on the set, I saw an Italian extra riding around on the horse, and I thought, "God, I don't want that guy to do it. That's my shot! I wanna be doing it." I said to (REFLECTIONS director) John Huston, "I can do that." He says (Huston impression), "Could ya, Bobby?" I said, "Yeah!" I hadn't ridden a horse, you know, not since ten-cents-a-turn around the circle when I was a kid. I'd never really ridden a horse, but I said, "I could do that." Next thing I know, the wardrobe department hands me a little cup from a jockstrap and a roll of tape. That was for my modesty. After two or three takes on that sweaty horse, the cup was gone and I stopped worrying about it. I figured if you're gonna do something like that, you just gotta do it, no reservations. If you go do it scared, you'll never, never do it right.

Action Jackson

Finally, a movie where Craig T. Nelson has a karate fight with Apollo Creed. I’m still sad we didn’t get, like, nine Action Jackson movies. Carl Weathers (ROCKY) plays Jackson like Fred Williamson Meets Apollo Creed and definitely worthy of the nickname “Action.” Somehow, ACTION JACKSON was not a hit, and Weathers ended up in television.

So, yeah, Jericho Jackson. Track star. Harvard Law grad. The Detroit Police Department busted him back down to sergeant after he tore off a pervert’s arm. Evil auto manufacturer Peter Dellaplane, portrayed deliciously by a bleached-blond Nelson (COACH), hates Jackson, because his son was the pervert.

Dellaplane wants to be the puppetmaster of the next U.S. President, so he engineers the murders of big-time union officials. Sure, that could work. He has a sexy wife, Patrice (Sharon Stone), and an even sexier mistress, a junkie nightclub singer named Sydney (Vanity, way too sexy to play junkie roles). Life is pretty good for Peter Dellaplane, the kind of rich asshole who breaks his karate teacher’s arm just for laughs.

The feature directing debut of ace stuntman Craig R. Baxley, ACTION JACKSON is farfetched, slick, often hilarious, and populated by ace character actors who bring a lot of color to their roles, such as Ed O’Ross (RED HEAT), Robert Davi (LICENSE TO KILL), Thomas F. Wilson (BACK TO THE FUTURE), and Bill Duke (PREDATOR). This movie may hold the record for macho ball-busting. A running gag is a young purse snatcher who keeps fainting in fear of the badass Action Jackson.

The performers help ground the nonsense in Robert Reneau’s (DEMOLITION MAN) screenplay in some sort of reality. Everyone plays it with the right amount of tongue in cheek, so when Weathers leaps over a speeding taxicab or swaps karate blows with Nelson after driving a sports car into his house and up the stairs to the second floor, it seems like, well, of course that’s what would happen. Joel Silver produced, which explains the constant quipping and huge explosions. Baxley blew up a lot more cars in I COME IN PEACE and STONE COLD, as perfect a trifecta of badass action flicks as any director can boast.

Messenger Of Death

Charles Bronson worked with director J. Lee Thompson (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE) nine times, and MESSENGER OF DEATH may be the least of the lot. It was Bronson’s next-to-last collaboration with both Thompson and Cannon Films, which opened it in just 450 theaters to moribund business.

Nine women and children from the same Mormon family are murdered by a shotgun-wielding assassin. The lone surviving family member, husband and father Orville Beecham (Charles “Flat Nose Curry” Dierkop), refuses to identify the killer. Bronson plays Garrett Smith, a Denver newspaper reporter investigating the massacre, whose path leads to Orville’s father Willis (Jeff Corey) and Willis’ brother Zenas (John Ireland).

Both men hate each other passionately and blame the other for the murders. As the intrafamilial blood feud boils over into violence, Smith becomes a target for murder by mysterious employees of the Colorado Water Company, a corporation owned by one of Denver’s richest and most respected families, one with little connection, it would seem, to the wild-eyed Beecham clan.

An unusual action vehicle for Bronson, MESSENGER OF DEATH casts the stone-faced icon as a passive observer, fighting only when attacked. He doesn’t fire a gun at anyone, nor does he have much to do with identifying and apprehending the killers. In his most notable setpiece, he battles a trio of water trucks, but even there, Bronson plays the victim.

Though it’s more of a mystery thriller than action flick, MESSENGER OF DEATH is solid enough with an unusual setting and interesting supporting cast, but it doesn’t quite come together satisfactorily. Thompson and Cannon cinematographer Gideon Porath (AVENGING FORCE) do an outstanding job staging the opening massacre with dread and stark menace, using the Colorado scenery to creepy advantage.

As well, Robert O. Ragland’s score adds novelty, but MESSENGER OF DEATH is barely distinguishable from Bronson’s other Cannon pictures, except it’s classier. The screenplay by Paul Jarrico (TOM, DICK AND HARRY) holds little water, and the climax plays like MURDER, SHE WROTE with a line of red herrings gathered in a parlor waiting to be identified by a convenient witness. Themes of religious persecution and revenge add some flavor to the mystery.

Trish Van Devere (THE HEARSE), Marilyn Hassett (THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN), Laurence Luckinbill (STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER), Daniel Benzali (MURDER ONE), Gene Davis (10 TO MIDNIGHT), and Penny Peyser (THE IN-LAWS) fill out the cast. Jarrico was blacklisted during the 1950s and ended up writing spaghetti westerns in Europe, making him perhaps the perfect scribe for a tale about persecution.

Halloween (2018)

There is a good movie to be made about a Laurie Strode who survived the attack on her and her friends on Halloween night of 1978 and used it to grow into a strong, positive adult who refused to let that night forever define her. Hollywood has never wanted to make that movie. Every time Jamie Lee Curtis has returned to play Laurie, the character is a “basket case” (as she calls herself in HALLOWEEN 2018 or H40) who has never been able to escape her past.

So it goes with H40, from PINEAPPLE EXPRESS director David Gordon Green and VICE PRINCIPALS writers Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, which ignores every other HALLOWEEN sequel. Exactly forty years after Michael Myers went on a killing spree in little Haddonfield, Illinois, he escapes custody during a prison transfer and — inexplicably — returns to Haddonfield to finish the job. Laurie is a paranoid, alcoholic, twice-divorced agoraphobe who has somehow gotten herself together well enough to construct a $10 million compound in the woods (no explanation is given as to how she accomplished this, nor how her high-security complex is so easy to infiltrate in the climax).

Laurie is estranged from her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who lives a normal middle-class life with her nice husband Ray (a welcome Toby Huss) and their daughter — Laurie’s granddaughter — Allyson (Matichak). Other characters include Dr. Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), Michael’s new shrink after the death of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence died in 1995); British podcasters Dana Haines (Rhian Rees) and Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall), doing a story on Myers; deputy Hawkins (Will Patton), who reveals he was there the night Myers was first arrested (a potentially intriguing character point muffed by director Green); and various cannon fodder that includes Allyson’s high school friends. Few of these characters will survive to the closing crawl.

Which is another problem with H40 and probably its biggest: it isn’t scary. Though Green and his special effects crew have figured out how to mangle the human body — Michael has grown more creative as he has reached his 60s — the killings seem perfunctory with little suspense. A couple of sequences work, one of them a lengthy tracking shot that follows Michael into a house and back onto the sidewalk, leaving death in his wake. Most of the kill scenes are predictable, including the climax set inside Laurie’s House of Booby Traps that would leave Maxwell Smart salivating.

What’s good? Most of the acting, particularly Curtis, who embraces the badass gramma role and sells her obsession with Michael, even though the Green/Fradley/McBride script leaves her hanging. As well, Greer and Matichak are believable as Curtis’ relatives, though Karen’s impatience with her mother is also underwritten. John Carpenter, of all people, agreed to score the film, collaborating with his son (with Adrienne Barbeau) Cody and his godson Daniel Davies on a familiar soundscape that fails to paper over the egregious lapses in screenplay logic and lack of suspense in Green’s direction.

While H40 succeeds in leavening the shocks with dollops of intentional humor (the little toenail-clipping boy played by Jibrail Nantambu should star in the next sequel), the film is ultimately a depressing exercise undertaken by filmmakers who don’t understand the allure of Michael Myers or, even worse, the power of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.

Taking A Break...But Come See Me At Letterboxd

Hello, all.

Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot has been in service since the end of 2004, first on Tripod, then here at Blogger. Originally I blogged about a variety of subjects, including politics and events in my own life. The blog eventually shifted to books/television/film, but over the past couple of years, it has been strictly film, for the most part.

Because I post regular reviews over at Letterboxed, it has seemed like an extra burden to post both there and here, particularly since I update this blog much less frequently.

So for now, I'm going to take a break from Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot. Whether it ever resumes, I just can't say right now. I will leave it standing, in case you'd like to find any old writings. But if you are interested in my film reviews, please see me over at Letterboxd, where I post something about at least 95% of the movies that I see. You don't have to "join" Letterboxd to follow me, and you can easily add my Letterboxd RSS feed to your reader.

Thank all of your for reading and commenting over the years. I hope to see you again soon.

Night Slaves

Robert Specht (THE IMMORTAL) and Everett Chambers (COLUMBO) adapted Jerry Sohl’s 1965 Gold Medal novel NIGHT SLAVES, which was marketed as science fiction, but really isn’t. Specht and Chambers wisely dumped Sohl’s frustrating ending, but otherwise left the main plot intact. Clay (James Franciscus) and Marjorie (Lee Grant) Howard are an estranged married couple on vacation while Clay recuperates from a serious auto accident.

They visit a sleepy little town that seems normal enough. By day, at least, everybody is abnormally exhausted. At night, everyone turns into a zombie, files into trucks, and heads out of town. They always return by daylight, and nobody has any memory of the night before. Only Clay is unaffected, and nobody — especially Marjorie, who thinks the accident has scrambled Clay’s brain — believes his story.

Director Ted Post’s TWILIGHT ZONE experience came in handy when presenting NIGHT SLAVES’ off-kilter scenario of paranoia and the fear of losing one’s identity. Is Clay slipping into madness, as his wife fears, or is something spooky — and possibly otherworldly — happening in little Eldrid, California? Franciscus’ nicely modulated performance makes Clay a relatable protagonist, though the love story between Clay and a mysterious young woman played by Tisha Sterling (COOGAN’S BLUFF) is unbelievable with a treacly wrap-up (I didn’t buy it in the book either).

Sohl had no problem with the changed ending and spoke highly of the film in interviews. Shooting on the Warners backlot gives NIGHT SLAVES an artificiality that harms the story. Clay’s fear is based on not knowing what is real, but in an obviously fake western town, nothing is real. However, Post’s thoughtful unraveling of the mystery and Franciscus’ sympathetic performance work well enough to get NIGHT SLAVES past its shortcomings.

Jagged Edge

Columbia released this solid courtroom thriller written by Joe Eszterhas, who was coming off hits FLASHDANCE and BLUE THUNDER (which he script-doctored without credit), and directed by Richard Marquand, who was still hot off RETURN OF THE JEDI. It opened at #2 at the box office (behind COMMANDO!), but stayed steady near the top of the charts for several weeks. It may be best remembered today for its surprise ending, which confused so many viewers that SISKEL & EBERT did a separate episode several weeks after their initial review in which Gene and Roger explained the killer’s reveal to their audience.

San Francisco publishing magnate Jack Forrester (Jeff Bridges) stands accused of slashing his wife to death in their bedroom and spelling “BITCH” on the wall in her blood. In fact, district attorney Krasny (Peter Coyote) and investigator Martin (Lance Henriksen) make no effort to look for another suspect. Forrester, of course, proclaims his innocence, and when he is arrested and formally charged, he appeals to defense attorney Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) to defend him in court.

Forrester is wealthy, charming, handsome — hell, he’s Jeff Bridges, right? — and the divorced Teddy finds herself doing with him things no attorney should be doing with her client. And she hates the sketchy Krasny, for whom she used to work and whose ethics-skating routine she knows well. Robert Loggia (BIG) earned an Academy Award nomination for playing Sam Ransom, Teddy’s crusty investigator (what other kind is there?) with an expletive for every sentence.

What worked in a courtroom thriller in 1985 doesn’t always hold water decades later, simply because we know more about the legal process and procedures. For the most part, JAGGED EDGE’s court shenanigans lack bite. Ransom is Teddy’s detective, but he doesn’t do a helluva lot of detecting. And, frankly, Teddy is kinda dumb, rarely missing an opportunity to violate common sense. Of course, Eszterhas (who went on to BASIC INSTINCT) and Marquand are manipulating their audience to deliver thrills — that’s their job — but by stacking the deck in their favor, they make it difficult to play along with them.

Ghost Story (1981)

Universal shelled out $225,000 for the rights to Peter Straub’s 1979 best seller. With the casting of four Golden Age movie stars in central roles, GHOST STORY must have freaked out geezers who paid to see a Fred Astaire movie and were inundated with R-rated gore and nudity (male and female). It did pretty good business, though, for a thoughtful, slow-burning horror movie released at the height of the slasher craze.

Craig Wasson (BODY DOUBLE) plays a young college professor who returns to his snowy New England hometown to attend the funeral of his twin brother, who fell naked from a window and splatted on the ground many floors below. Wasson’s father is the mayor (Douglas Fairbanks Jr., LITTLE CAESAR), who meets with his childhood friends Melvyn Douglas (NINOTCHKA), John Houseman (THE PAPER CHASE), and Fred Astaire (THE BAND WAGON) regularly to drink brandy and tell ghost stories.

All four have recently been suffering from nightmares, and Wasson comes to suspect it has something to do with a trauma they experienced together fifty years earlier. By the climax of the story adapted by CARRIE’s Lawrence D. Cohen and directed by John Irvin (THE DOGS OF WAR), only one of the old men is left alive to face the terror that has taken the lives of his three friends.

Stealing the picture from the veterans, which ain’t easy, is an ethereal and erotic performance by Alice Krige (in CHARIOTS OF FIRE the same year) in two roles that turn out to be more closely related than the characters realize until too late. While not a total success, due partially to limp pacing and subpar visual effects (though horror makeup by THE EXORCIST’s Dick Smith is superb), GHOST STORY capably sends an occasional shudder. Moody photography by the pioneering Jack Cardiff (SONS AND LOVERS) sets the proper atmosphere, aided by Philippe Sarde’s (TESS) score and one of Astaire’s finest non-musical performances.

Patricia Neal (HUD) co-stars as Astaire’s wife, and Jacqueline Brookes (LAST EMBRACE) is Douglas’ wife. Astaire, Douglas, and Fairbanks never appeared in another feature, and Douglas, who looks frail, died before the film was released in December 1981.

It's Alive (1974)

Upon its initial 1974 release, IT’S ALIVE was a box office flop, due to what director/producer/writer Larry Cohen believed to be poor marketing. It made money overseas, however, and Cohen convinced new management at Warner Brothers to re-release the film in 1977 with a new campaign. Cohen was right, as IT’S ALIVE went on to gross millions against its original $500,000 budget. Two sequels followed, both directed by Cohen (BLACK CAESAR), and a 2008 remake, which nobody gives a damn about.

Unique and in questionable taste, IT’S ALIVE is certainly the best horror movie ever made about a mutant baby who crawls about killing people. Like FRANKENSTEIN and KING KONG, the monster is humanized in the storytelling and presented with sympathy, even while it’s slaughtering.

Intelligent screenwriting presents two sides of the issue. One faction, including Los Angeles law enforcement and the baby’s father (John P. Ryan with a strong dialed-down performance), wants to destroy the killer infant. Another, led by curious scientists (including LANCER patriarch Andrew Duggan) who want to study the phenomenon, wants the baby captured alive. So does its mother (Sharon Farrell), who doesn’t see her son as a monster, but merely a confused child looking for love from its creator, just like Frankenstein’s monster.

While the concept is campy on the surface, Cohen directs his actors to play it straight, resulting in genuine chills and thought-provoking themes of intolerance, ecology, and the power of the family unit. Opening scenes are filmed in a realistic documentary style. Perhaps that was done to help the audience accept not only the outlandish concept, but also the characters’ acceptance — nobody ever questions that a mutant baby killed a whole operating room of medical personnel.

Both Ryan (DEATH WISH 4) and Farrell (LONE WOLF MCQUADE) tended to ham performances, but are properly restrained here, which helps sell the premise (give Ryan extra credit for a hell of a Walter Brennan impression). Rick Baker (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) created the monster child, which is shown infrequently (probably a wise decision on Cohen’s part, though frustrating for the viewer), and Bernard Herrmann (PSYCHO) composed the score. Ryan, Duggan, and Cohen regular James Dixon as a cop returned for the sequel, titled — what else — IT LIVES AGAIN.

10

Enormously popular (the seventh biggest hit of 1979, snuggled between ALIEN and THE JERK) and influential (a lot of white ladies sported cornrows for awhile), the touching farce 10 boosted the career of star Dudley Moore (FOUL PLAY) and made leading lady Bo Derek (TARZAN THE APE MAN) an international superstar. The title refers to Derek’s beauty on scale of one to 10, and writer/director Blake Edwards didn’t have to work too hard to convince audiences it was true.

Moore, who replaced George Segal during shooting, is George Webber, a successful Hollywood songwriter having a midlife crisis at age 42. He spots a breathtakingly gorgeous woman (Derek, natch) and becomes so obsessed with her that he follows her on her Acapulco honeymoon just to be near her.

As played by Moore and written by Edwards (DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES), Webber’s emotional ennui is deeper than just a crush on a sexy young woman. Despite a steady partner, Sam Taylor, who is successful, talented, intelligent, and attractive (as is Julie Andrews, who plays Sam), not to mention his wealth and his four Academy Awards, George is unhappy, and his depression manifests as an obsession with sex.

But let’s not get too deep. 10 is also a film with a lot of trademark Edwards slapstick, played by Moore as well as Peter Sellers ever did, and silliness. Moore even drinks funny. One of the film’s most uproarious scenes finds an awkward Moore cringing through a terrible song (intentionally composed that way by Henry Mancini) performed by reverend Max Showalter (NIAGARA), while a doddering old blind woman shuffles around the room (and into a wall). One hilarious running gag has Moore constantly spying on his neighbor (Don Calfa) with a telescope, only to be frustrated by all the kinky sex going on over there.

The acting is terrific across the board. Moore is playing a basically unsympathetic character, but you can understand why a great woman like Sam would love him (Andrews’ performance helps in this regard as well). Robert Webber (S.O.B.) scores as George’s gay songwriting partner. Dee Wallace (CUJO) is poignant as George’s unsuccessful Mexican fling. Brian Dennehy (FIRST BLOOD) practically steals the picture as a sympathetic bartender (“I’m 37. But I look 40.”).

And then there’s Bo, who certainly was no great shakes as an actress, but in the hands of a talented director, comes across very well. It’s tough to play, in effect, the sexiest woman in the world, someone so beautiful that it drives George almost literally mad with desire. 10 is probably the only time the young Bo Derek doesn’t come across as vapid (she once admitted to David Letterman she didn’t remember the name of her high school). But then she never worked with a director like Blake Edwards either.

The Fly (1958)

There’s something both quaint and thrilling about such a title — THE FLY. James Clavell (SHOGUN) rewrote a prize-winning short story by George Langelaan into one of the 1950s’ most familiar and most popular science fiction movies. At least two of its moments — the revelation of the monster and the chilling wrap-up (“Heelllllppp meeeeee”) — are indelibly imprinted on the brains of every fan of creature features. As directed by Kurt Neumann (ROCKETSHIP X-M) and shot by Karl Struss (KRONOS) in CinemaScope and DeLuxe color, THE FLY made so much money for 20th Century Fox that two sequels followed, as well as a 1986 remake directed by David Cronenberg (SCANNERS) and a sequel to the remake.

Al Hedison is the star in a role originally created for Michael Rennie (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) and Rick Jason (later to star in COMBAT!). After THE FLY, Hedison changed his first name to David and became a household name backing up Richard Basehart for four seasons on VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. Playing a scientist named Andre Delambre, Hedison is unconvincing as a French Canadian, but, more importantly, he is believable selling Clavell’s (and Langelaan’s) basic premise, which is ridiculous. For the audience to become absorbed in the drama, they have to believe in Delambre, and Fox contract player Hedison succeeds.

Andre’s wife Helene (Patricia Owens) tells the story in flashback after confessing to Andre’s brother Francois (Vincent Price) and police inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall) to killing her husband with a hydraulic press. Andre had invented a “disintegrator/reintegrator” that scrambles atoms and reassembles them elsewhere. When he tried it on himself, a common housefly was trapped inside the chamber with him, resulting in Andre being reassembled in human form, but with a fly’s head and arm!

Though a more imaginative director than Neumann could have milked the story for more suspense, the decision that the actors play the material straight maximizes the horror. Never before has the simple act of writing on a blackboard been so heartbreaking. Even though Hedison’s face is masked by a black hood, it’s his strongest dramatic moment in THE FLY. Price returned for the first sequel, RETURN OF THE FLY, with Brett Halsey playing Andre’s son.

Night Moves (1975)

Alan Sharp (ULZANA’S RAID), appropriately enough, wrote this sharp crime movie that ranks among the best private eye films of the 1970s. Sharp’s plot is fuzzy, but he and director Arthur Penn (BONNIE AND CLYDE) are concerned with mood and characterization and playing around with the standard tropes of the detective genre. Actors in every important role receive something meaty to play, all the way down to Anthony Costello’s (WILL PENNY) snickering stuntman and the film director played by Edward Binns (12 ANGRY MEN), who has a great bar scene.

Director of photography Bruce Surtees (DIRTY HARRY) helps Penn establish the film’s grim tone, and, for character, who better than Gene Hackman to inhabit the burned-out soul of an idiosyncratic Los Angeles P.I. Comparisons to the works of novelist Ross Macdonald are accurate with Hackman’s Harry Moseby a close approximation of the weary Lew Archer — certainly more so than Paul Newman’s Archer (renamed Harper for two films).

Hackman’s wife Susan Clark (COOGAN’S BLUFF) is having an affair with crippled Harris Yulin (SCARFACE). Past-her-prime movie actress Janet Ward (THE ANDERSON TAPES) hires Hackman to go to the Florida Keys and fetch her runaway daughter, played by 16-year-old Melanie Griffith (WORKING GIRL). He finds her living with her former stepfather John Crawford (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) and Crawford’s earthy lady friend Jennifer Warren (THE INTRUDER WITHIN), to whom Hackman is instantly attracted.

It wouldn’t be a private eye yarn without a murder or two, and it wouldn’t be a Seventies thriller without an emotionally taxing climax and downbeat ending. Hackman is brilliant (what else is new) in this underrated picture that was mostly ignored by audiences during its original release. A young James Woods is strong as a Hollywood mechanic, and Ward — not a major name — lays it all out for the camera in a surprisingly humble performance.

Westworld (1972)

WESTWORLD, the first feature directed by novelist, screenwriter, and medical doctor Michael Crichton, was a smash hit for MGM, its biggest of the year. It spawned a good sequel, FUTUREWORLD; the shortlived CBS television series BEYOND WESTWORLD (three episodes and cancelled); and an HBO series more than forty years later. Clearly, Crichton’s basic concept (he also penned WESTWORLD’s screenplay) of an amusement park where one is free to act upon his or her basest desires among a population of non-feeling, non-judgemental robots resonates still today.

In Westworld, created by the Delos Corporation, paying clients dress up in western wear and interact with incredibly realistic robot bartenders, cowboys, and, yes, saloon girls. The robots, which are monitored by Delos employees stationed underground, are programmed to serve the customers’ every whim. But nobody told the black-clad robot gunfighter that looks a lot like the bald guy from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, which goes haywire and begins shooting real bullets at the Everyman best pals played by Richard Benjamin (LOVE AT FIRST BITE) and James Brolin (THE CAR). Yul Brynner plays The Gunfighter as one of western cinema’s great villains — a silent, unstoppable killing machine that actually seems amused by his murderous pursuit.

Keep in mind you have to swallow a lot to buying into the concept. Imagine an amusement park that hands out real bullets to its $1000-per-day clientele trying to get insured or warding off a million lawsuits. Crichton feeds some bull about the pistols being designed to lock when aimed at a warm body, and I guess that’s good enough. But how would you know the jasper you’re punching in a barroom brawl is a robot and not a guy who thinks you’re a robot? And why would the robots’ guns be loaded with real bullets?

The film takes its time world-building, giving us not only a good look at Westworld and the technicians who keep it running, but also Delos’ companion parks Romanworld and Medievalworld (played by Harold Lloyd’s Benedict Canyon mansion). The actual plot doesn’t kick in until the third act! Alan Oppenheimer (BLIND AMBITION) plays a concerned technician who wants to shut down the park when the robots begin malfunctioning. Look for STAR TREK’s Majel Barrett as a wry madam and PLAYBOY’s Anne Randall (STACEY!) as a comely Medievalworld wench.

The Fury (1978)

Except for John Cassavetes exploding into a million gooey pieces, the highlight of THE FURY is Jim Belushi, working as an extra in a scene filmed along Chicago’s North Shore, wandering back and forth past the camera like a clever struggling actor trying to get some extra camera time. Silly pranks aside, THE FURY is a ridiculous but exciting supernatural thriller that glosses over its story inconsistencies (John Farris adapted his own 1976 novel) with camera pyrotechnics and slick Rick Baker makeup effects.

Cassavetes (FACES) plays an evil spy in charge of a government agency that kidnaps Americans with telekinetic powers to use as weapons against foreign powers. One of Cassavetes’ victims, teenage Andrew Stevens (10 TO MIDNIGHT), is the son of good spy Kirk Douglas (SPARTACUS), who wants him back. Director Brian DePalma’s follow-up to CARRIE carries some of the same themes, including a girls’ school where the students — including Hilary Thompson (NIGHTHAWKS), Melody Scott-Thomas (THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS), and Daryl Hannah (BLADE RUNNER) — torment a classmate (Amy Irving) with latent psychic powers.

THE FURY also shares with CARRIE, unfortunately, a penchant for lame lowbrow humor, including Dennis Franz (NYPD BLUE) as a dumb cop obsessed with his new car and Gordon Jump (WKRP IN CINCINNATI) as the king of a ratty castle forced to give up his clothes to Douglas at gunpoint. Charles Durning (SHARKY’S MACHINE) and Carol Rossen (THE STEPFORD WIVES) play the directors of a special school for psychics that may or may not be a recruitment station for Cassavetes’ sinister agency.

As you may guess, the plot meanders between Irving’s new teachings and Douglas’ vengeful rescue mission with Douglas’ gal pal Carrie Snodgress (MURPHY’S LAW) as the connecting tissue. One memorable moment of mayhem is set at the defunct Old Chicago amusement park, which operated a mere five years, but is captured on film forever. John Williams (STAR WARS) delivers an expensive score that gives the outlandish plot a needed boost of credibility. While THE FURY would have benefitted by beefing up the sneering Cassavetes’ role, Douglas’ special brand of ham takes up the slack.

Enter The Dragon

The last film Bruce Lee completed in his lifetime — he died three months after the end of production — is by far his best. One of the greatest action movies of all time and certainly the greatest American martial arts film, ENTER THE DRAGON is enormous fun, a mixture of chopsocky and James Bond spyjinks. Released the month after Lee’s July 20, 1973 death at the age of 32, the Warner Brothers release was an immense hit and would have opened a lot of doors in Hollywood to Lee.

Written by Michael Allin (TRUCK TURNER) as a live-action comic book and directed with great energy by Robert Clouse (DARKER THAN AMBER), ENTER THE DRAGON is based around the tried-and-true premise of a martial arts tournament. British Intelligence urges Lee (Lee) to compete as a cover for his true mission: gather evidence against the tournament’s sponsor and owner of the private island upon which it is held. The authorities suspect wealthy Han (Shih Kien), a disgraced former member of Lee’s Shaolin temple, of kidnapping young women, addicting them to heroin, and selling them on the white slavery market.

Joining Lee on his mission, once they discover their host’s corruption, are two more competitors: war buddies Williams (Jim Kelly), on the run from racist cops, and Roper (John Saxon), who needs money to pay gambling debts to the Mob. Though Lee is initially hesitant to use his considerable martial arts ability as a crime fighter, the mission becomes a personal one when he learns his sister (Angela Mao) was a victim of Han’s chief bodyguard Oharra (Bob Wall) three years earlier.

While Clouse’s filmography boasts a handful of decent action movies, it is Lee, who choreographed the fight sequences, who deserves credit for ENTER THE DRAGON’s most exciting moments. The film features one of the most famous action climaxes of all time: a tour de force stalk-and-slash between Han, who wears a four-”fingered” claw on one hand, and Lee in a house of mirrors. Another great moment finds Lee taking on about fifty henchman in an underground corridor (one of them is Jackie Chan; he also fights in other scenes Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung). Lee’s acting is good too. He’s relaxed and has good chemistry with Saxon (basically a co-lead, to Kelly’s chagrin). And while handing out praise, don’t neglect composer Lalo Schifrin (BULLITT), whose exotic score captures the flavor of Allin’s colorful story and Clouse’s spirited direction.

Before shooting ENTER THE DRAGON, Lee began directing a passion project, which he was unable to complete while alive. Clouse later took over direction using a Lee impersonator, and GAME OF DEATH was released in 1978. It is correctly regarded as an abomination, except for the few fight scenes featuring the real Lee, and is an unfortunate anticlimax to the screen icon’s legend. ENTER THE DRAGON is a masterpiece.

Nazis At The Center Of The Earth

The Asylum’s cheapjack ripoff of IRON SKY, though its story is different, likely because Asylum screenwriter Paul Bales (2010: MOBY DICK) couldn’t master the former film’s political satire and black humor. Instead, Bales packs his script with meanspirited violence and outrageous ideas right out of a Ziff-Davis comic book. No concept was too silly, too farfetched, or too insane to throw into NAZIS AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Not one, including a robot Adolf Hitler, is more unbelievable than Jake Busey playing a scientist.

If only Bales and director Joseph Lawson (LORD OF THE ELVES) had the wit to make the most of their delightfully loony ideas. Or the filmmaking skills. Sure, they’re working on a low budget, but the acting and production values in NAZIS AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH are on the same level as a VD scare film of the 1930s. That includes one-time indie queen Dominique Swain (LOLITA), whose acting talent has regressed more dramatically than the polar ice caps.

Swain plays one of two American scientists kidnapped in Antarctica, which Lawson — also the visual effects supervisor — depicts by placing his actors in front of a white wall on a white floor covered in corn flakes. Their abductors are Nazi stormtroopers, who take Swain and her colleague to an underground bunker, where none other than Dr. Josef Mengele (Christopher Karl Johnson) flays the colleague alive (this is actually an effectively gruesome effect).

When Swain and company don’t check in, station chief Busey (STARSHIP TROOPERS), who keeps reminding us that he’s been living in Antarctica for ten (!) years, takes some co-workers, who act like dumb college students, but are supposed to be the most brilliant minds in their fields, way way underground to find them. They eventually find a humongous underground chamber with sunlight and trees and dirt trails, coincidentally just like a typical park in southern California.

At least Lawson went outside for a day. Most of the comically bad long shots and establishing shots were created on a 1990s Amiga desktop with awkwardly jerky digital figures unconvincingly posing as real people. Come to think of it, all the CGI looks like that. It takes a special lack of talent to make a film this wretched that includes Nazi zombies, a sharp-shooting Mengele, nudity, SAW-style gore, an underground paradise, body switching, laser guns, a robot Hitler with a machine gun, and a plan to infect the Earth with a flesh-eating bacteria from a giant Nazi flying saucer.

Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969)

The years following THE TWILIGHT ZONE’s 1964 cancellation saw Rod Serling run the gamut from writing screenplays for Oscar-winning films (PLANET OF THE APES) to hosting game shows (THE LIAR’S CLUB). He returned to weekly television briefly as the creator of THE LONER, an interesting one-season western starring Lloyd Bridges, but the show more fondly remembered was his next: NIGHT GALLERY.

Though Serling unfortunately was much less involved in NIGHT GALLERY than he was on TWILIGHT ZONE, he introduced the segments and wrote several of them, including the astonishing “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” which was nominated for the Emmy as Outstanding Single Program. More importantly, he wrote the pilot that got NIGHT GALLERY on the air: a triptych of thrilling stories that not only convinced NBC to give the dramatic anthology a regular timeslot, but also gave 21-year-old Steven Spielberg his first job directing network television.

And what a job he did on “Eyes,” a boffo Serling segment with a wrenching twist ending straight out of TWILIGHT ZONE (or EC Comics) and one of Joan Crawford’s final performances. The Oscar winner (for MILDRED PIERCE) plays a nasty blind woman who buys the eyes of down-and-out gambler Tom Bosley (HAPPY DAYS), so she can see again, if only for a few hours. She blackmails doctor Barry Sullivan (THE IMMORTAL) into performing the surgery, but when her bandages come off...well, that would be telling.

Expertly directed by Spielberg, who got along with his temperamental star, “Eyes” is a delightful thriller, but it plays as a hammock between two other stories almost as good. Boris Sagal (THE OMEGA MAN) directs Serling’s “The Cemetary,” which casts Roddy McDowall (CLEOPATRA) as the greedy nephew of invalid George Macready (PEYTON PLACE). He murders Macready for his money, but finds himself haunted by the old man from beyond the grave. Barry Shear (ACROSS 110TH STREET) directs Richard Kiley (LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR) in Serling’s “The Escape Route” as a Nazi war criminal hiding in South America who bumps into elderly Jew Sam Jaffe (BEN CASEY), who was a prisoner in Kiley’s concentration camp 25 years earlier.

Serling introduces each tale from a dark art gallery surrounded by paintings created by Jaroslav Gebr, who ran Universal’s Scenic Arts department (Tom Wright, who later became a television director, painted the art used in the series). Though Serling hosted and wrote all three stories, production duties were handed to William Sackheim (THE IN-LAWS). Billy Goldenberg (COLUMBO) composed the varied score for all three segments, plus the theme. The NIGHT GALLERY series premiered over a year later as part of NBC’s FOUR-IN-ONE umbrella (with MCCLOUD, THE PSYCHIATRIST, and SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT) and went weekly in its second season.

Open Fire

The fourth and final collaboration between star Jeff Wincott and director Kurt Anderson, OPEN FIRE follows the very good MARTIAL LAW II: UNDERCOVER, the excellent MISSION OF JUSTICE (which Anderson only produced), and the pretty decent MARTIAL OUTLAW. It’s one of a bajillion ripoffs of DIE HARD that cluttered video store shelves in the 1990s, but manages to rise above its derivative premise with Wincott’s likable leading performance and a steady series of exciting setpieces staged by Anderson and stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt.

The target is Martinson Industries, a chemical plant run by Bob McNeil (Lee de Broux), whose son Alec (Wincott) happens to be an ex-FBI agent drummed out of the bureau and now working as a telephone lineman. Terrorists have invaded the plant and demand the release of their leader, Stein Kruger (Patrick Kilpatrick), which sounds nothing like Hans Gruber, from prison. The cops do release him and take him to the plant, but the terrorists prove untrustworthy (who coulda seen that coming?) and keep the hostages anyway.

To the rescue is Alec, whose offer of help is officially rebuffed by his old FBI boss Davis (MIDNIGHT CALLER cop Arthur Taxier), who is completely ineffectual in classic DIE HARD tradition. So he ziplines in anyway, says something witty, beats the hell out of a henchman, and begins a one-man assault on Kruger’s forces. Writer Thomas Ritz (MARTIAL OUTLAW) includes more plot about Kruger sabotaging the chemical tanks, but who cares when Wincott is punching through a full pitcher of beer to smash someone in the face? OPEN FIRE violates DIE HARD protocol by leaving the plant in the third act, but the climactic fight between Wincott and Kilpatrick is so good that I’ll allow it.

Act Of Vengeance aka Rape Squad

Busy 1970s starlet Jo Ann Harris (THE BEGUILED) earned a deserved leading role in this uncomfortable thriller with a politically incorrect title and whiplash-inducing mixed messages of female empowerment and leering sexploitation. RAPE SQUAD is quite good, though, with Harris believably vulnerable and confident and director Bob Kelljan (SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM) steering the sex and violence with steady hands.

Harris plays a lunch-wagon proprietress who becomes the latest victim of the Jingle Bells Rapist (handsome Peter Brown, also a slug in FOXY BROWN that year), an egotist in a hockey mask and orange jumpsuit who forces women to sing the Christmas carol while he assaults them. The police, represented by detective Ross Elliott (INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN), are ineffective, so the victims organize a “rape squad”—a vigilante group with a 24-hour hotline dedicated to capturing rapists, mashers, perverts, pimps, and even obscene phone callers. They take karate lessons from diminutive Lada Edmund Jr. (SAVAGE!), who teaches them how to crush a mannequin’s testicles with a baton.

Newly empowered, Harris and her squad, which includes Connie Strickland (BLACK SAMSON), Lisa Moore (HARRAD SUMMER), Jennifer Lee Pryor (THE WILD PARTY), and Patricia Estrin (BABY BOOM), get down to business. They entrap sleazy club manager Tony Young (POLICEWOMEN) and beat up a street pimp caught smacking his girls around. Naturally, ol’ Jingle Bells discovers the women’s game plan to crush his jewels, and he plots a return match.

Like many exploitation movies of the era, RAPE SQUAD tries to have it both ways—to offer strong, independent female characters in control of their own lives, while still dishing out a healthy amount of nudity and violence against women. Rape scenes were frequently inserted into these films for their titillation value, as an excuse to provide its slobbering audience with a pair of bare breasts.

Of course, if the film doesn’t show rape as the horrifying and indefensible crime that it is, it runs the danger of watering down the crime and not providing a strong motivation for the heroines’ revenge. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Perhaps aware of this, co-writer David Kidd used the pseudonym “Betty Conklin,” as he did on Jack Hill’s THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, to counteract any criticism of misogyny. Kidd’s screenplay with H.R. Christian (BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA) does its best to portray its rape victims with a certain amount of sensitivity, while still paying strict attention to the studio’s (American International Pictures) commercial demands for boobs and blood.

Give Kelljan credit for handling the difficult material with aplomb, delivering a suspenseful and occasionally thoughtful thriller that may not have set the drive-ins on fire on first run. Originally released to theaters and reviewed in 1974 as ACT OF VENGEANCE, the film was re-released a year later as the more salacious RAPE SQUAD in a bid for attention.

Adding much to the film is Brown’s performance as the narcissistic rapist. Appearing in most of his scenes with his face covered by a hockey mask that predates the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies, Brown is nasty, cutting off his victims’ clothing, brutalizing their breasts, and compelling them to sing aloud (why “Jingle Bells” is never explained) and compliment him on his “lovemaking” skills.

Harris, who began appearing regularly on TV in 1968, usually as a scheming vamp in episodic guest shots or as the lead in several unsold pilots (including the Jane Fonda role in a CAT BALLOU remake), gives an intelligent, sexy performance as Brown’s nemesis—a smart, self-sufficient small-business owner who risks her life and, in an unusual twist, the lives of her friends in her obsession with her attacker’s capture.

I Was A Teenage Frankenstein

Just a few months after AIP had I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF in theaters, producer Herman Cohen (HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM) pumped out this quick follow-up. I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN isn’t a sequel, even though Whit Bissell returns from TEENAGE WEREWOLF as another mad scientist.

Bissell is actually playing Dr. Frankenstein, and he’s continuing his ancestor’s experiments in creating life from dead organs and flesh. He’s incredibly lucky. A car accident kills two teens right outside his front door, and a few days later, an entire high school track team is killed in a plane crash. The head, Frankenstein just chops off a necking boy. The body parts he doesn’t use he dumps in the alligator pit beneath his suburban mansion. His needy fiance Phyllis Coates (SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN) eventually discovers the hunky young monster (ripped Gary Conway, later to star in BURKE’S LAW and LAND OF THE GIANTS) hidden in the laboratory.

Whereas Michael Landon’s teen werewolf was a strong character and protagonist, Conway’s Frankenstein monster is a wooden cipher buried beneath Phillip Scheer’s comical makeup. Bissell’s arrogant performance gives TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN most of its entertainment value, making the most of writers Cohen and Aben Kandel’s ripe dialogue (“You have a civil tongue in your head. I know you have, I sewed it back myself.”). Unlike TEENAGE WEREWOLF, this film is pure schlock (Bissell, playing a Brit, makes no effort at an accent).

Director Herbert L. Strock shot the film at Ziv Studios, where he also made television shows like SEA HUNT, SCIENCE FICTION THEATER, and HIGHWAY PATROL in a similarly perfunctory manner. As a cool gimmick, the climax of this black-and-white film was shot in Eastmancolor. Cohen continued the unofficial AIP series with HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, which also had a color climax.