KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Bite the Bullet

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Bite the Bullet

I have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks, including travel. This is a repost of two entries on a 1975 film that I love, but did not have time to watch again fore the project. 

Next time someone tells you everything is available on line, try to get them to find the original trailer for this movie. I looked all over the place and could not find it.

[As you can see above, this has changed since the original post]

That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but I suspect that may be the case.

Sometimes, you have to make due with what you have. I have this movie on a DVD that goes from a letterbox format for the credits to a pan and scan version for the rest of the film. This is really too bad because a lot of the pleasure in this movie are the vistas and wide-screen images of the contestants in this horse race. The scanning seems to take some of the grandeur and a lot of the energy out of the story, (at least as I remembered it.)


I saw this movie at the Chinese theater, on the big screen. Of course at the time there was only one screen at the Chinese Theater. There are actually quite a few westerns on my list, which is a little surprising since the 70's were supposed to be the death of the western. It so happens that this particular Western stars my favorite film actor Gene Hackman. I looked over his filmography, and for a guy who got started in the business in the late 60's, he has actually made a lot of Western Films. Earlier this week, we came across Zandy's Bride, which I had nearly forgotten and came out a year earlier. Gene Hackman was a big star at this point, he was cast as the leading man a couple of years earlier in "The Poseidon Adventure" but he has always been a character actor to me. When he plays a part, he is the charater he is playing not the star. In "Bite the Bullet" he is the first lead but really just one of a dozen characters that make up the story.

This film features a 700 mile horse race across deserts, over mountains and through forests. There are gunfights, action, dramatic twists and a sense of history as things go on. Hackman and James Coburn play two of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders a few years after the Spanish-American War. The modern is mixed with the old west at a time when the world was in fact changing. Ben Johnson basically repeats his role as the last of a dying breed from the Last Picture Show. Candice Bergen is the female lead in a pretty solid part for a woman in a movie like this. This same month she was starring in "the Wind and the Lion", so it was pretty clear she was Box Office at this moment in time. There are other familiar faces as well, but I want to take special note that this was the period of time that Jan-Michael Vincent was ascending and he was very promising in the movie. It is a shame that drugs and alcohol sidelined a guy who could easily have taken over a lot of leading man roles in the next few years.

Opening the movie is a prologue that introduces several character, including the wealthy owner of the favored horse and the newspaper people that are sponsoring the race. It was a little odd that there was so much time devoted to those story arcs and that they basically disappear from the movie. The only thing I felt was unsatisfying about the film was the last ten minutes of the race. The result was fine, but there is no resolution for some characters and it feels like an epilogue would have been appropriate. I recall that the film got a very fine review from the LA times when it opened; probably Charles Champlian wrote the review, he was the main critic at the Times in those days. This movie seems largely forgotten now, which is too bad because it is a good action film with some realistic situations and characters. It runs off the track a bit in the last act, but that can be forgiven pretty easily.

POST #2

This is an update to a post I did nearly two years ago on one of the Original Movie A Day Project Films. I have long wanted to see Bite the Bullet in it's original widescreen form, but it has not been available. The version in the original post was a pan and scan DVD that I acquired for a very modest price. You can find my original comments here. "Bite the Bullet" was a big scale Western at a time that such movies were dying out. It features a brutal 700 mile horse race across deserts and mountains and plains. It is perfect for a director to compose shots that will fill that screen with those vistas and also show the characters in relevant space. A month ago I read a review of a Blu Ray release of Bite the Bullet and went in search of it. It turns out that the film was not being mass marketed but was a specialty release with only 3000 copies being produced. None of them was available at any of my local retail outlets so off to the internet I flew. I could buy a new copy on Amazon for $36 plus shipping. I found a used copy on ebay for thirty and went for it. I am happy to say that it was worth the investment. I still think the last few minutes of the movie are underdeveloped, but the rest of the film looks spectacular.

There is an early shot of two trains passing each other in a railroad yard that would cut out one of the trains in the pan and scan version. Since the character we are following would need to stay in the frame, a severely cropped for television version leaves out a side of the picture. Here one gets a greater sense of the enormous changes that are taking place in the world at this time because of the trains passing each other in what might charitably be called a small town. Later shots of the railway also cut out the whole train in the shots, but here we get to see it as it moves across a bridge or travels though a forest. These are mostly little points in the movie, the real use of the widescreen comes in the horse race scenes, especially those set in some wide desert vistas. In the current widescreen Blu ray, we can see shots that include several of the contestants in the race at once, although they are clearly a great distance from one another. The empty spaces between them emphasize the desolate nature of the environment. In some later scenes, the layout of the territory in a chase and prison break makes more sense because of the way we can view it. There is a scene in which Gene Hackman's character chases down Jan Michael Vincent and lays into him for the negligent way he has treated his horse, it has more drama and excitement in it with the space not being as condensed as in the pan and scan version.

This was one of the first times I remember seeing the death of a horse from exhaustion being visualized in such a dramatic way. John Wayne's horse in True Grit gives up the ghost when he is trying to get Maddie Ross back to the trading post. Here, we see all of the horses perspiring and covered in foaming sweat. Their legs are shaky and the riders are either tender and cautious or reckless and indifferent. As the animals are falling in the sand or rolling down a hillside, the broad view makes us much more aware of how difficult the race really would be. I am very satisfied with the quality of the picture and the extra price was worth it to me. One more comment about the movie that is unrelated to it's presentation. Hackman has a great piece of dialogue about the charge at San Juan Hill that his character was supposed to be a part of. It sounds at first like it is going to be a sucker punch slam at the Spanish American War and Teddy Roosevelt. Instead it reminds me,and I hope you, of why Theodore Roosevelt was in fact one of our greatest leaders. After having his glasses shot off and his arm nicked, Roosevelt rallies the Rough Riders to storm the hill. Hackman's character says that they didn't follow out of a desire for victory, or to promote freedom. They went willingly with Roosevelt into the rain of death from above because they would have been ashamed not to. If it's not a true story, it feels like one.

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Tommy

 Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Tommy

Reading comments on-line, people either love this movie or hate it. The work of collaborators Peter Townsend and Ken Russell has turned The Who's Rock Opera, "Tommy" into a motion picture and it does not lack for audacity or bombast. This is an in-your-face collection of 1970s excess from a director who was known for his excesses and a producer who would later give us another even more hated Rock Opera based on Beatles songs. Robert Stigwood was a record mogul who became a movie producer and is responsible for some of the biggest hits and flops in musical films of the 70s and 80s. Director Russel might have been willing to live with lesser artists, but Stigwood encouraged the excess by holding out for Elton John and Jack Nicolson to join the cast of this film. This was a confluence of egos that created a visual assault on the audience that can still be felt 48 years later.

Oh, count me in the loves the movie category.

A parable about family secrets creating a cult of personality, "Tommy" is a social satire par excellence. Avariciousness, idolatry, drug use, sexual mores  and more, all come in for some bashing with humor and style. Is it excessive at times? Yes, but it is also imaginative, invigorating and fun. Roger Daltry plays Tommy, the boy who has a psychosomatic condition that cause him to be blind deaf and unable to speak.  Daltry must have performed the opera hundreds of times as a member of The Who and now he he  gets to act as well as sing the part. I personally prefer the sound of the album version of the music, but the soundtrack here is quite good, adding as it does, a variety of other artists to interpret the songs, including some who are not noted for their singing.

The sequence with Eric Clapton as the Preacher, at a temple that worships Marylin Monroe as a deity, capable of performing miracles,  is one of the most disturbing conflations of ideas about pop culture that I have ever seen. The dancers who trudge down the aisles wearing a ceramic version of the face they worship is creepy as all heck.  Clapton's low key vocals are hypnotic as the rhythms entice the faithful to kiss the feet and peek up the skirts of an effigy to their object of adoration.  This is like a tent show healer without the fire and brimstone but rather the soothing melody of hypnosis as a solution to your problems.

Every few minutes in the film is a set piece highlighting the work of another guest star. Tina Turner dazzles as the Acid Queen and Russell has visualized an Iron Maiden of hypodermic needles to hive us nightmares. Add to that a mirrored split screen and some psychedelic lighting effects and the influence of the director's madness is evident. The show stopper tune however, is the "Pinball Wizard" contest, pitting blind, deaf and dumb kid Daltry,  against a rock icon of the era, never noted for subtlety, Elton John. The audience in the scene is equally frantic and when the Pinball Wizard falls, and is carried out by his oversized boots, you should be getting a great laugh.

Oliver Reed and Jack Nicolson both sang their own parts, although they are not singers. Reed is mostly bullying himself through the process with a gruff voice pushed to short bursts of trying to stay in tune. Nicolson would not be putting out a Christmas album, but he acquits himself very nicely in a short scene where his eyebrows interact with Ann-Margret most effectively. Speaking of Ann-Margaret, she was nominated for Best Actress for this part and I have seen a number of people question that nomination. I think it was perfectly justified, she does all the heavy lifting of the songs that have to hold the narrative together. Her character also has almost as elaborate a story arc as Tommy himself. If  you pay attention, you will see that it is not only the scene with the beans, bubbles an chocolate that she throws herself into. She is energetic as all get out in a number of other moments and she is also very poignant at times. It's best that she did not win, but being in the mix was certainly reasonable.

If you are looking for additional Ken Russell moments, watch the "I'm Free" number, where Daltry swims, runs, tumbles and flies in a kinetic montage while singing one of the best loved songs from the work.  Also, the reverse climax of the film which returns us to the long overture segment of the movie is really quite clever. This film is bursting in inventiveness but it is not always tasteful or coherent, which may account for why some people hate the film. It was a huge success when it was released in the spring of 1975, and that is when I first saw it. My memory is that I saw it at the Academy Theater in Pasadena. Today I watched it on a DVD that I burned from my Laserdisc years ago. 

The cast, the music and the costumes, and scenery make this a perfect snapshot of 1975. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Day of the Locust

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Day of the Locust

Well it turns out there was a reason I never rushed to see this film when it came out in 1975. "The Day of the Locust" is a dour, black hearted takedown of the Hollywood Dream and by association the American Dream. It is showered in technical excellence in performances, production design and cinematography, but it is also lathered up by the most vile version of failed movie people you are likely to see this side of "Babylon". At least this film avoids the elephant shit. 

One of the reasons I never followed up on the film is that I could never get a sense of what it was about. Maybe I missed the trailers because the one above is pretty direct in saying it is the underside of Hollywood that we are going to see. Look, I know that there was a dark side to the Golden Age, there are always flip sides to any story. It's just there there is almost no one that you care about in the story, so whatever tragic outcome shows up will probably be met with indifference. Donald Sutherland is listed as the first lead in the movie and he does not appear for three quarters of an hour into what we see on screen. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a strange relationship that never takes on the quality it needs to make us want to know more about the two figures who are really at the center of the picture. William Atherton may have the most sympathetic role of his career here. He is notoriously the obnoxious prick in 80s comedies and action films. Maybe he is more sympathetic as a terrorist on the Hindenburg than here, because his character literally tries to rape a woman, and then apologize for it. So Drunken Rapist or murderer against the Nazi Airship, which one is the most appealing character? This was probably his biggest role and he is very good in it, but again, it is hard to feel sorry for people who are so obliviously self destructive. 

Karen Black, is the star of the film, playing Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who is struggling to get extra work, and lives with her aging vaudeville performer father played by Burgess Meredith. Faye is a character who seems like she could be appealing to start with, but she rapidly is revealed as a potential gold-digger,  and she certainly is aware of the effect she has on the men around her. She is self centered and leads Atherton's character as well as Sutherland and Bo Hopkins and Pepe Serna on for most of the movie. She is mercurial and insecure and thoughtless to the men in her life. You almost sympathize with Atherton's Tod when he does assault her. Maybe we could have more sympathy when she is forced to resort to prostitution, except she is such a bitch to everyone around her that it seems like maybe she has found her real niche.

Fecklessness thy name is Homer Simpson. Not the cartoon character, but the Sutherland role in the film. As a lonely man, maybe a cloistered homosexual, he has difficulty relating to others and when Faye latches on to him, it's like watching a cat play with a mouse. The incongruity of their relationship and her continued connection to Tod is simply befuddling. No one is getting what they want from any of the connections they are forming. Everyone feels like an object of pity. Little Person actor Billy Barty is aggressively confrontational in what is likely to be the biggest role of his career, and Burgess Meredith pushes the pity button but also is cloyingly cliched. 

Director  John Schlesinger has mounted a admirable visualization of old Hollywood, finding the homes in the hills to shoot scenes at, constructing moments of behind the camera elements for the work being done at a studio, and working with Cinematographer Conrad Hall, to produce a soft focus view of the corruption we are seeing on the screen. The work earned him a well deserved Academy Award nomination. Schlesinger's collaborator on previous films, Editor Jim Clark, probably needed to find a way to make the story flow a little faster, although his work on the two best scenes in the film is excellent. 

Those scenes that will remain with me, as the highlights of this movie, include an on set disaster during the making of a Napoleonic War film, and the extremely disturbing climax of the picture. Novelist Nathaniel West, on whose book this movie is based, clearly was down on the American dream and his nightmarish vision of the culture is embodied in the climax of the film where a character murders a child, is subsequently murdered by a mob, all of this taking place at the site of the most lavish of images from the 1930 depression era, a Hollywood Movie Premiere. The satire and cynicism in the two scenes is not subtle, but both sequences are staged very effectively and I think would justify a viewing of this film, if you can put up with the dark side of the Golden Age of Hollywood. 

[I watched this on a cropped laserdisc version, not the ideal aspect ratio]

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Obviously we were going to get to some of the prestige pictures of the year 1975. In addition to "Jaws", "Dog Day Afternoon", which I have talked about on this project, the other Oscar Nominees for Best Picture are "Nashville", "Barry Lyndon" and the ultimate winner "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Famously "Cuckoo's Nest" won the top five prizes at the awards that year, tying a record with "It Happened One Night" and later repeated by "Silence of the Lambs". This was the fifth nomination for Jack Nicolson and the first time he won. As you watch the film it is evident why this was going to be the outcome. Maybe Ken Kersey thought Nicolson was wrong for McMurphy, but for a cinematic experience he is the perfect fit.

The part of McMurphy is that of a joker in a situation that is grim, an outsider in the ultimate inside game, and the reluctant hero to a group of reluctant fans. He gets to indulge some of his wild mannerisms and facial expressions, but there are also a number of equally quiet and serious moments. The tension between McMurphy, the prisoner faking mental illness and the head nurse, Miss Ratched, is evident in their looks at one another and their voices express a barely suppressed distain. McMurphy of course, is much more open in his aggressive manner of interacting, Louise Fletcher has to hold her emotions back in the passive aggressive pattern that the nurse uses with all of the patients. Her deliberately calm demeanor may be meant to create a safe space for all of the group, but it comes off as condescending at times and she exerts her power with an icy stare rather than a raised voice. This is a film with two fantastic parts and both actors are completely up to the task of bringing them to life.

Maybe this is about the machine and how it grinds everybody down, or maybe it is a film about individuality and the importance of fighting to keep your unique identity. I always think it is about the banality of evil. Miss Ratched seems on the surface to care about her patients, and she probably thinks she is doing right by them, but at every step of the process, her manner sends the signal that they all need to conform and submit to her power. Authoritarians always think they are right and acting in the greater good, regardless of who's necks they have to stand on and what the cost is. She is the embodiment of the Covid Crusaders who wanted everyone to do as they were told, regardless of what the consequences might have been to someone else's life. Ratched acts more aggressively when her power is threatened.  What happens to Billy Babbit is a result of her turning the passive control she has exerted over him, into a cudgel, and his betrayal of McMurphy and the self consciousness about being with a woman and the way it will impact his mother are a recipe for disaster, and Nurse Ratched is the one who puts it on the stove to cook.

In an institution filled with troubled souls, you would have a hard time differentiating the patients from the actors. Vincent Schiavelli, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd are three actors early in their careers and their looks were not typical. When you throw in horror icon Michael Berryman in the background, the group seems very much a set of misfits. Sydney Lassick and William Redfield are both very good in parts that have a greater degree of dialogue. Cheswick will make you take pity on a lost soul and everyone will be frustrated with the obtuse Harding, but they are still essential to the group. The other two performances that need to be singled out are key characters in the plot. The "Chief" was played by non-actor Will Sampson. a large man of native American Indian ethnicity, and he makes a great impression in a nearly wordless performance. The moment he does utter a single word, is a transcendent one in the film. Brad Dourif as Billy Babbit makes us root for him and wonder at the world that has produced this sensitive kid that can hardly express himself. Dourif got the nomination that would have gone to the entire supporting cast if the SAG awards Ensemble category had existed in 1975.

Verisimilitude in the film is one of the things that makes the story work.  The therapy group sessions are forced, like a true psych experience might be. The patients are all resistant to participating or saying anything that could have a negative consequence. The fact that they shot in a real, active mental institution means that the sets never feel like they are cardboard fronts but caged windows, communal tubs, and a near dormitory existence. The ECT treatment that McMurphy gets looks real and by all accounts represents an accurate portrayal of the procedure. The patients lining up for their medication also seems too real. 

The two best sequences in the film are of course the ones that give Jack the biggest opportunities to play to his strengths. When McMurphy breaks out to take the group on the fishing expedition, he plays with all of the other characters and gets a lot out of what is going on. It is a collective moment that he inspires. However, the greatest moment is his improvised calling of a World Series Game that isn't on the TV. Although all of the supporting cast backs him up, it is really his moments and it feels perfect. 

I make no secret of my preference for another film this year, but if "Jaws" is not going home with the stupid trophy, I'm glad that this film did. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Breakout

 Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Breakout

It's been a month since I posted one of these Throw Back Thursdays films, in that time I have traveled literally from one side of the country to the other. So many logistics have been involved that it has not been reasonable for me to catch up on a film for the purpose of this series. One thing however that I did do while pausing the viewing of films from 1975, was acquire a couple of those films for later use. Today's film would be one of those. I was sure I had a copy of the Charles Bronson/Robert Duvall film in my collection, but when I went to find it, there was no disc or box. I was puzzled because I wrote about this movie back in 2016, but I guess I must have watched it on one of my services. Thankfully Kino Lorber had a nice Blu-Ray with extras. [By the way, while writing this I went to the Kino Lorber site and dropped a bundle]

This is a terrific Bronson film that came out right after "Death Wish" and right before "Hard Times" so it is in the sweet spot of his most productive era. The film was also on the cusp of the new marketing strategy by the film studios of front loading their films into as many locations as possible, simultaneously. This strategy would be revolutionized by the film "Jaws" the very next month after this was released. Get paid now instead of slowly rolling out your film. With heavy advertising the movie did quite well and returned a profit with a couple of weeks. 

"Breakout" is based on a real life prison break from Mexico, by a shady character who was accused of murdering his shady partner, but the body was not identifiable and the convicted guy proclaimed his innocence vehemently. For legal reason, the producers never refer to the book that the film is made from and they don't even use the famous "inspired by true events" tag. The Mexican government was not happy that a movie was being based on the real escape, the first to use a helicopter, and the film makers tried to distance themselves from the story because there was also an implication that a relative of the convicted man was framing him to keep an inheritance out of his hands.

Robert Duvall plays the prisoner, and he does most of his acting with a look of stupor on his face.  The character is going mad, drinking excessively, and is physically declining so that gives the plot a sense of urgency. Jill Ireland plays his loyal wife who is plotting escapes but not having a great deal of success. She hires Bronson, a plane pilot with some smuggling background to help her get her husband out before he just gives up the ghost. There are some effective scenes when she visits him in prison and she struggles with the unwanted attention from the guards who search her and a lack of desire to have a conjugal visit in the pigsty of a room that she and her husband are given. Ireland was a beautiful woman but sometimes a bit wooden as an actress. Here though, she acquits herself quite well opposite Duvall. Even though her character loves her husband, she does have a rather flirty relationship with the impish pilot played by Bronson. He seems to be doing the job as much for her as for the money, and he develops a big crush on his client.

John Huston, who had just starred in "Chinatown" the previous year, and was getting ready to shoot "The Man Who Would be King", did one day of work on the film as the mysterious grandfather of Duvall's character. It is very murky why he is working against Duvall, it seems to be tied up with something in their business but those exposition scenes were apparently cut and Huston is only on screen for about two and a half minutes in three brief scenes. Randy Quaid plays Bronson's partner and he gets involved in the plot at one point by trying to dress in drag and connect with Duvall in the prison. This was the second of two escape plans that failed before Bronson lights on the helicopter idea. 

The prison scenes will remind you of why you never want to go to jail in Mexico, and the corruption starts at the beginning with the murder of the Man that Duvall is supposed to have killed. He does have a companion in the jail who is sympathetic and facilitates the plan, unfortunately, unlike in the real life incident, he does not make it out with his friend and that is the button on the end of all the visual promotion material for the film. To make the actual escape more engaging and exciting, someone has to die and that is going to be the loyal Mexican compadre of Duvall. 

One more spectacular moment takes place late in the film when a spy, trying to thwart the escape for Huston's character, ends up in a fight with Bronson on an airstrip after the fugitives have left Mexico. Plotwise it is never clear why the CIA is working with the grandfather, and the fight feels like a last minute addition. However, if you were disappointed in not seeing the Nazi mechanic in the airfield fight in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" , getting dismembered on screen, there is a shot in this film that should make it up to you. 

Charles Bronson plays a different kind of character her, much closer to the pre-murder Paul Kersey in his earlier film than the vigilante that Kersey becomes.  While not as slyly humorous as his turn in "From Noon till Three", it is still a comic performance and he nails it pretty well. If you have not seen this film, I would recommend it to you, it is a couple of hours well spent with one of the great action stars of a different and earlier generation. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Eiger Sanction

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

The Eiger Sanction

This is the second time I have written about this film for the blog. The first was on my original Movie a Day project that started the whole blog. "The Eiger Sanction" was number 73 on that summer countdown. As one of the few films on the project from Clint Eastwood, that was not a western, it should stand out a little more. I was probably a little underwhelmed when I wrote about it thirteen years ago because it was a slow burn that took ninety minutes to get to the featured premise of the movie, mountain climbing spy action. 

In filling the time before we actually arrive in Switzerland to ascend the Eiger, there first is a series of scenes and plotlines that feel only slightly connected to the plot. The best is Clint going to Europe to execute one of the killers he has been sent to "sanction". He is Johnathan Hemlock, an executioner for a secret agency known as C-2, that is directed by a mysterious Albino called Dragon. Hemlock wants out and is refusing to continue to work for C-2, but Dragon blackmails him into performing this last sanction by threatening his art collection, which is Hemlock's main motivation for working in the field in the first place. Like Charles Bronson in "The Mechanic", Hemlock appreciates art and music and uses his wealth to acquire a fantastic collection that today would be worth hundreds of millions. 

In my original post I warned that this film might be a little tough for modern audiences to accept. The intervening years have made that even more the case. Hemlock passes himself off at one point as an effeminate delivery man to throw off the prey he is after. When he gets a chance to gain revenge against a former friend who is a raging homosexual by 1970s standards, he is particularly cruel. The name the antagonist has for his dog is not only insensitive but nearly as objectionable as if he had named to dog with the "N" word. Like Ethan Hunt or James Bond, Hemlock ends up in bed with another asset of the company and gets trapped into carrying out an even more elaborate "sanction" of an as yet unidentified counter agent. That woman is named Jemima Brown, and there are plenty of jokes about pancakes and ethnicity. There is an extended sequence of Hemlock training for a climbing expedition, and an attractive woman of Native American heritage becomes a sex object with the added bonus of jokes about Cowboys and Indians. 

A few things that I do want to draw attention to. First of all, the opening section of the film is set in Zurich, as a man drinks his beer next to a canal or river, and then strolls through some older traditional parts of the city to his apartment. All the while, there is no dialogue and the music is by the great John Williams. 

I feel like I have seen a dozen movies from the era that repeat the same kind of sequence at the start. It was a trope of the era and if you listen to the music clip above, you will hear a familiar piano style tune that has been enhanced with some jazz and electronic tools to make it sound more mysterious. It's not a bad thing at all, it just feels overly familiar, although it may not have been so when the film first came out. 

The main reason to see the film is for the suspenseful climbing sequences that take place in the last half hour of the film. The movie was made on location and there are no blue/green screen composite shots in the film. Eastwood did his own climbing in this section as well as some the ascent of the Totem Pole edifice in Monument Valley (although he and George Kennedy were helicoptered to the top and professional climbers did the main ascent). 

On the Eiger, there were dangerous shots that actually lead to some injuries to  a camera operator, and a another climber, helping with camera shots was killed by falling rocks. Eastwood did the ultimate stunt at the end of the film when dangling by a rope several thousand feet above the valley floor. He actually drops when he cuts the rope above him, it is hard to imagine that a movie studio could get insurance for an actor/director in that scenario today (Tom Cruise being the exception maybe). 

The plot gets convoluted as it usually does with a spy film. There are double crosses, mixed motives, and attacks from unanticipated sources around every corner. There is a sense that this is a more serious sort of James Bond film, but then "Dragon" runs the command from his light free subterranean lair, and the other operative we see is an ineffectual lug who has less knowledge of karate than I do. I will say there is one trick I learned from this film. If someone is following to close behind me, instead of tapping the breaks which interferes with my momentum, I sometimes turn on my head lights which activates the rear lights and makes whoever is following, think you are breaking. 

I will recommend the film to those who like a slow burn, a satisfying action climax and don't mind a little 70s sexism and racism spicing up the film.  

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Jaws

 Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Jaws 

This was a hectic day and I didn't get a chance to rewatch a film for the project, so I'm sharing with you some of the material from the past on the greatest film of 1975. 

I had two theatrical presentations of Jaws this year, one in May, and the second in July.  Of course I have seen the movie at home a couple of times earlier in the year. Frankly, I could watch this movie ten times a year rather than the four or five that have been standaard for me over the last couple of decades. This is the movie that I know I have seen the most and it is also the one I have written about the most.

Back in 2015, on the fortieth Anniversary of the film, I did an extensive set of posts celebrating the four decade long reign of this film as my favorite (At least of the second half of the twentieth century). 

Here are some links for you to go back and see from that time frame.

A list of non-shark shark sightings in the film.  

Everyone knows the most famous line from the film, here are some other good ones.

We have probably added a dozen to the collection in the last eight years, this was Amanda's Closet in 2015.

The three leads are not the only great characters in the picture.

Here's to swimming with bow legged women.

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother

Once the door had been opened by Mel Brooks with "Blazing Saddles", it became inevitable that there would be comedies coming on a regular basis from the collection of crazies that had put that gem together. The follow up was "Young Frankenstein" and it's a better film, although maybe just slightly so. Parodies of  Silent films, Hitchcock, and Biblical epics would be coming down the pike soon. In addition to Brooks, Gene Wilder would direct some of these 70s and 80s comedies and Marty Feldman would write and star in some of them as well. Today's entry into my Throwback Thursday series is the first movie that Gene Wilder directed.

He had this idea for a comedy take off on Sherlock Holmes while he was working with Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn on "Young Frankenstein", and Wilder said that if he had been unable to cast the two of them in the film with him, he would have just skipped it. Fortunately, they read the script and liked it and both joined up to continue the shenanigans they had begun with Brooks. This is a farce with it's heart in the right place, and although it does descend to a couple of sex references that are mildly risqué, if you are watching with tweens and teen, you should be OK.

Mycroft was the brother that was mentioned in the original Conan Doyle books, and what Wilder has done is simply added a younger brother, frustrated by being in the shadow of his siblings and anxious to prove himself. Sigerson Holmes is a funny enough name and it fits with the other two Holmes siblings as odd enough but also slightly sophisticated. The name comes from an alias that Holmes used in a short story written by Conan Doyle. Both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are characters in this film but they are mostly in the background, with one big exception. There is a very amusing scene where Holmes and Watson are supposedly leaving London, which is why Sigerson is stepping in for him. It is a subterfuge, and the manner in which it is accomplished is very amusing.

Madeline Kahn was a national treasure who left us far too soon, but not before contributing to some of the greatest comedies of all time. In this film she is the romantic female lead,  and her character seems to be a variation of  Brigid O'Shaughnessy, from "The Maltese Falcon", you can never trust anything she says, and from the beginning Sigerson knows it. Kahn performs several dance hall songs from the era the film is set, the 1890s, and she has a great singing voice and can do the singing in a comic manner that is required. 

Marty Feldman also left us much to early and here he plays a combination of a Dr. Watson/Inspector Lestrade character. The comic bit that they create for him is that he has photographic hearing and sometimes gets stuck in repeating back information and needs a little push like a record that is skipping. As the comic foil to Wilder's Sigerson, the two of them are well matched clowns who carry off both some verbal humor and some slapstick. 

There are some great visual jokes, like the duel on top of hansom cabs and the sets behind the scenes of the opera they participate in. Dom Deluise hams it up as a conspirator in the plan by the well known nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty. Leo McKern is the professor with a case of Tourette's syndrome. There is a sword fight near the end  and there was a  "Chekhov's Gun" set up early on. Wilder was in fact proficient in sword play having trained in fencing during his time in a theatrical school.  

This is ultimately a pretty sweet film although it has some distasteful moments. All of that will be forgiven when the Kangaroo Hop comes along. Enjoy.  

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings

This is a piece of Southern Cornpone that was exactly the kind of thing that would fill a summer night perfectly. Burt Reynolds plays W.W., which doesn't stand for anything, a slick gas station hold up man with a charming approach to his victims and all the confidence in the world. The film is set in 1957 at the crux of country and rock and roll music. W.W. gets tied up with a local band wanting to make it big and he tries his best to help them because he is smitten with Dixie, the singer/guitarist and he wants to prove himself to the doubting members of the band. He drives a fancy gold and black Oldsmobile and continues to steal as he is also becoming the manager for the band.

An additional advantage of the film is that it is filled with musical numbers that are pretty entertaining, as long as you can enjoy some country music. Ned Beatty even gets to sing a number. We get a tour of old Nashville, including the Ryman Auditorium which used to host the Grand Old Opry. So the historical surroundings make the film worth a trip as well. The film is full of a lot of colorful characters, some of whom are not particularly attractive. There are several country music stars in the film including Jerry Reed who worked with Burt Reynolds several times in movies in the 1970s.

This film should be better known because it was made by director John G. Avildsen, who would win the Academy Award the next year for "Rocky". You can see some clever little touches in the transition swipes in the film, they are almost certainly attributable to Avildsen's decisions on making the film feel so corny and hip at the same time. Reynold's was apparently irritated by Avildsen however, because the director was not very understanding of the stutter that singer Mel Tillis suffered from, and Tillis appears as one of the gas station attendants that W.W. holds up.

Of course the whole thing would fall apart if Burt Reynolds had not turned on his charm to eleven. The story is dependent on Southern mannerisms and it has some fun with everyone being so polite even when they are robbing, swindling, or chasing the crooks.  W.W. is not such a bad guy but he is way over confident when the stakes get higher and his inability to solve the problem he is faced with in the one chance to get some drama into the comedy and chase scenes. 

The film is full of verisimilitude with cars, clothes, and songs that are all from the era. The car W.W. drives for most of the movie is an interesting automobile with a real history, and the country and religious stations that are featured on the radio also sound like the real deal. The backroads that W.W. and the band travel are probably unchanged even today, because those off the beaten path Farm to Market roads, still look the same. 

There is a story arc for W.W., it is subtle but emotionally rendered. In the end, it is a minor film but a lot of fun.  

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Report to the Commisioner

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Report to the Commissioner  

One of the lost gems of 1975 is this gritty police thriller that draws us once again into the mean streets of NYC in the seventies. Much like "Serpico" which came out two years earlier, it follows a rookie police detective as he ends up over his head with official corruption and nasty criminals which are hard to sort out. It is hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys sometimes, because the cops can get just as violent as the crooks. There is also a heavy pall of racism hanging over the detective squad that our young protagonist is assigned to. 

It's tough enough being the new guy in any situation, school, a party, or the workplace. When you don't fit in physically or culturally, the inside group looks at you with suspicion and mistrust, and that is the scenario that faces Bo Lockley, played by Michael Moriarty. Moriarty was an interesting actor who is still working but has moved to material that is far from the quality work he did early in his career. He has a baby face and a mild voice, which makes him perfect for the naive and idealistic Detective Lockley. The sincerity of the character is what ends up bringing on the major dramatic points of the film.

Just a quick, synopsis as we get going. Detective Supervisor Hanson and Captain D'Angelo, authorize a questionable undercover operation featuring a pretty young policewoman. Bo Lockley is unwittingly used as cover for her identity, but his dogged pursuit of his assignment, runs afoul of the operation. Hanson is played by character actor Michael McGuire, who will come up in a post on "Hard Times" later this year. D'Angelo is played by the great Hector Elizondo. The year before, he had played the  arrogant pain in the ass who may be so  mad they threw him out of the Mafia Mr. Grey, in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3". D'Angelo is politically adept but soulless and it is his arrogance that leads to the complicated resolution of the storyline. 

The film is filled with actors that you will know and others you will recognize. Yappet Kotto is in another NY Detective Squad, and he plays Bo's training officer/partner. Dana Eclar , who you may recognize from "The Sting" and Vic Tayback, play Kotto and Moriarty's superiors. William Devane shows up late in the movie to play a slick,sympathetic, but sinister district attorney, Sonny Grosso, the real life detective that Roy Scheider's character is based on in "The French Connection", plays another detective, naturally. Richard Gere makes his film debut as that most elusive creature, the white pimp.

Susan Blakely, who had a bit part in "Shampoo" and was about to become a TV Icon in "Rich Man, Poor Man", is the doomed undercover detective, who was the women no one could believe was a cop, and sent hundreds of pushers to prison. Her crusading ingenue has a pretty broad range of what is acceptable undercover work. The fact that she is dedicated to staying undercover is one of the complications that the film features as part of the story.

I saw this movie originally, at the El Rey Theater in Alhambra (a location that no longer exists). I went with my best friend Art, who worked for the Edwards Movie chain and got us in for free. I think I paid to see the movie again a couple of weeks later. Or, it may have been a second feature with some other film I saw, and fifty years later I just don't remember.

The two scenes that I do remember vividly were very different from one another. Bob Balaban, plays Joey, a Vietnam War veteran, injured mentally and physically. Bo becomes a bit of a friend of his by returning the roller sled he uses to push himself around the streets on, having lost the lower portions of his legs. Years later, I saw Eddie Murphy riffing on a character like this in "Trading Places". Anyway, Joey tries to follow Blakley's character for Bo, while Bo is having trouble finding a functioning payphone. The sequence I remember is him rolling through the traffic of NYC and holding onto the bumper of a Taxi, so he could keep up with the subjects he is following. It was a pretty harrowing chase, and very different from the usual car chases you get in movies.

The other memorable sequence is the climax of the film, when Bo and "Stick", the pusher/arms dealer that the woman detective was ingratiating herself with, get trapped in an Elevator at Saks 5th Ave, and basically have a Mexican Standoff with each other in a claustrophobic environment. Cop and crook are faced with bad choices and the characters do a little philosophizing while there.

The film is filled with the casual racism of the era, and Yappet Kotto expresses some of the dissonance that he has to accept in order to fit in with his fellow cops. Moriarty is basically playing a hippie type and that also is a source of the alienation he seems to have, even from his own father, for whom he really joined the force for. The squad rooms, decaying lofts, marquees of the Times Square Theaters, all give this film an aura of the times. It is gritty, dangerous and exciting all at once. Bo gets swallowed up in it, just as his partner predicted, and some of the higher ups try to take advantage of that. 

Formatting the story as a series of flashbacks, usually punctuating some narration from "The Report", the film feels fresh in contrast to some of the other movies of the time. Director Milton Katselas was a respected acting coach and teacher at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. "Butterfly's are Free" is probably the best know of the few films he directed. 

Although the report that is submitted, finally clears things up, this is another one of those 1970s films with a downer ending. "Chinatown", "Dog Day Afternoon", "Electra Glide in Blue" and a dozen others, all follow the trend of the time, and this picture does as well. In this case, the ending is earned, but that doesn't make it any less despairing. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Dog Day Afternoon

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.

Dog Day Afternoon

We are just over halfway thru this series, and although I have covered a lot of interesting pictures, the ones most likely to be recalled by audiences have stacked up a bit in the queue. That logjam of high quality, award worthy, box office successes, is about to be broken. "Dog Day Afternoon" is one of those films from the 70s that everyone knows, admires and it came out in 1975. It was nominated for six Academy Awards including, Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and it won for Original Screenplay. This is the first of the nominated films to be covered on the project, but we will certainly be getting to the others.

The Director, Sidney Lumet, is an icon of the film world. His gritty New York stories filled theater screens in the early 70s, and he made films that actors lionize, like "12 Angry Men", "Fail Safe", "the Pawnbroker" and "The Verdict". It is amazing that he was never awarded a competitive Oscar in his career, but thankfully, the Academy provided him an Honorary Award for his body of work. I would say that this film was probably the best of his career, although "The Verdict" might make a run at that title. The fact that the film is set in a Brooklyn neighborhood, on a hot summer day, makes it a perfect medium for Lumet. He has a knack for filming gritty environments and plugging the story into those places which served those stories so well.

Before any of the main characters are introduced, we are shown a variety of quick moments of people walking on the sidewalks, working in the sweltering heat, trying to cool off in a park, and just generally surviving the day. Our two bank robbers, Sonny and Sal, are doing the same thing, but their venue is a bank and the activity is illicit. The world is tough enough when things go wrong, but when you add the oppressive heat and the tension from an illegal activity with the threat of violence, looming over everything, that's when you get a film like this from Lumet. This is not a precision heist, timed out with meticulous planning, this is a poorly thought out act of desperation, by two men who are in over their heads. 

One of the ways that the film feels so natural is the way the characters inside the bank act. Sonny is bellicose to try and gain control, but he is also thoughtful of the employees in spite of his threats. Al Pacino may have had his best role with the character of Sonny, who is conflicted about his actions, motivated by very different pressures and coping with braggadocio at times. In the scenes where he is talking with his lover, there is an odd tenderness but also frustration and his temper is barely contained. When he gets on the phone with the mother of his two kids, he loses all composure and explodes. This is a character that allows an actor to show his range and not be accused of grandstanding. Pacino takes the part and owns every moment on screen.

The supporting cast is equally up to the challenge. The lead bank teller is marvelous, the pizza delivery guy is just right. The manager of the bank is neither craven or heroic, he is just trying to do what will keep his employees safe and get the experience over as fast as possible. Carol Kane plays one of the "girls" who is a teller in the bank, this same year she was an Academy Award Nominee for Best Actress, so she was having a career year. Charles Durning, who has made a ton of films better over the years, adds another fine performance to his body of 1970s films that include: "The Hindenburg", "The Sting", "Sisters", "Twilight's Last Gleaming" and "The Muppet Movie". Also in the cast is future vampire and prince, Chris Sarandon, and Lance Hendrickson who will make a lot of bad movies over the years but also a lot of great ones. James Broderick, who plays a warm hearted father in the TV show "Family", is a steely eyed, manipulative FBI agent in this movie.

I certainly do not want to forget to mention the late great John Cazale who plays Sal, Sonny's partner in crime. Cazale famously only made five movies, and all of those films were nominated for Best Picture. I tried to watch this film on a streaming platform, but I decided to buy a Blu Ray because I could not believe I did not have this movie in my collection. The Blu ray package I bought includes the wonderful documentary "I Knew it was You", about the career of Cazale. Sal is a sad sack introvert, who Sonny brings to the robbery as a menacing wing man.   The actor gives him a pathos in spite of his job as intimidator. You can understand the Stockholm Syndrome identification that the hostages have with Sal because of Cazale's gentle eyes and subdued voice. 

Whenever someone levels a criticism at a movie plotline, suggesting that it is improbable enough to reject as realistic, they should be reminded of this film, which was based on a real incident with real people, in the same scenario. The dramatic license the film takes is with the characters, but not with the plot, which takes a turn that uniformed audiences would not see coming. 

This is one of the true classics of 70s American Cinema, and it came out in 1975. It is arguably Pacino's best performance, Lumet's best film and has an ensemble cast that can match up with any film of the era. There are a lot of films that I covered on this project so far, that are not memorable. This is not one of those, it is a film that stands the test of time and can be rewatched on a regular basis if you ever want to feel like you were living in NYC in the seventies. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

Picnic at Hanging Rock 

I was aware of Peter Weir's phantasmagoric film back in 1975, but I never had a chance to see it in a theater. Over the years I certainly could have caught up with it on home video or on my satellite service, but again, I never did. This last weekend on "The Lambcast", we had a Roll Your Own show and my colleague David Brook was choosing Cinema New Wave Films from different parts of the world. Director Peter Weir was the essential film maker of that period. "Gallipoli" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" were the films that first brought him to my attention. His subsequent American films have been among the best of the last forty years.   Picnic at Hanging Rock was voted the best Australian film of all time by members of the Australian Film Institute, industry guilds and unions, film critics and reviewers, academics and media teachers, and Kookaburra Card members of the National Film and Sound Archive, in a 1996 poll.

The film is a languid mystery about the disappearance of school girls from a young woman's college while on an outing to nearby Hanging Rock, a geological formation that is quite unique. There is a soft horror story that goes along with the mystery because everybody at the school and surrounding community is effected negatively by the vanishing. Some of the consequences of the event are mild hysteria but other manifestations are more deeply complex, frightening and tragic. All of this takes place in a beautiful setting with historically elegant period design. The cinematography is gorgeous, which is of course strongly reflecting the surroundings. 

Early on you get a feel for Weir's hand in the film, when the principle young woman, Miranda, is shown in her room, reflected on a mirror that is reflected off of another surface. This is a movie that is composed so that the images will be memorable and attractive, even if the consequences are ambiguous and somewhat creepy. The feel of the movie is almost always like an episode of "The Twilight Zone", where we know what we are seeing is going to be changed by the events that occur, and a pall of sadness lingers even if the images are beautiful. 

In addition to the photography, the mood is heightened by the selections of classical music on the soundtrack and the frequent contributions of Greek pan-flautist Zamfir. 

I have to admit that my familiarity with his work consisted only of the infomercial sales pitches on saw on independent TV stations in the 1980s, an example of which you can see above. The cheesy ad may undermine your confidence in the quality of his product, but in the film it sets a very strong emotional tone. The flute compositions are haunting and beautiful, which fits perfectly with the movie and the way it has been shot.

The film plays out as a series of events which lead to surprising outcomes. A young Englishman, who lives with his Uncle and Aunt, is mesmerized by the young women when he sees them walking up the rock formation very briefly. Their vanishing cannot simply be ignored and he obsesses over the missing girls. One unfortunate girl, Sara, who has a deep connection with Miranda, also suffers in her absence and the school becomes something more oppressive to her as time passes. The headmistress Mrs. Appleyard sees her school being crushed by the events and she feels the moral crisis of having to deal with an unjust financial situation. The other teachers are flummoxed as to how to respond to developments, and the one girl who does return from being missing, sheds no light on the subject. 

All of this takes place in a world vaguely tinged by burgeoning sexuality. The girls are somewhat objectified as sexual beings by the two youths who observe them. Sara seems romantically drawn to Miranda, and one of the teachers seems to feel the influence of the young ladies who are coming into their womanhood. One of the maids at the school is having a sexual dalliance with one of the groundskeepers, and the police and local doctor seem to be particularly careful about the implication that the girls might have been sexually assaulted. Mrs. Appleyard seems to imply that some of the relationships between the guardians of the girls and their charges are suspiciously unclear. There is no actual sexual activity shown on screen but there is an undercurrent in some of the images. 

Those of you who are narrative lovers and want a complete story, may be frustrated by the fact that the movie ends ambiguously. We don't discover what happened to the girls, we only learn what happened to everyone else. The landscapes and costumes are attractive, and the movie plays slowly, but it is magnetic to look at and will probably get you thinking about the ripple effect, in a way that is completely different than was talked about in Jurassic Park. I was very happy to catch up with this classic from 1975.