KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Shampoo"

 

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. 

Shampoo

This is a social satire from 1975, set on Election night 1968. In spite of the references to the events in the news, there is really no political content here. The satire is about social mores and behaviors, not about public policy and politicians. It starts out as a comedy, but the closer it gets to the end, it turns into a cautionary tragedy.

Warren Beatty plays a self absorbed hairdresser, probably modeled after real life celebrity hairdressers like Jay Sebring and Jon Peters. George seems to have chosen the profession because it gives him access to beautiful women while at the same time deflecting the attention of their husbands because after all, hairdressers are all gay right, so what's to worry about.The comedic component comes in the form of all the love triangles that George ends up in. He has a girlfriend, who sort of dates a producer who might cast her in his latest movie. George is having an affair with the wife of a well known businessman, who is himself having an affair with Georges ex-girlfriend, who George still wants to be with. It never quite turns into a farce, but all of the figures do cross paths at some point and George can hardly catch his breath to keep up with his own libido.

Ther cast of this movie is stock full of well known players. In addition to Beatty, there is Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Goldie Hawn, and Julie Christie. The characters all fit some pretty easy stereotypes and the casting gives us a shorthand in their emotions. Hawn is a neurotic innocent, Grant is a clingy harpy and Christie is a conflicted ice queen. Jack Warden was nominated for supporting actor playing a businessman who is thoughtless of his family and mistress. You would almost assume that George is going to be some kind of hero. In the end, George is the one who after hurting everyone else, discovers that he is growing up a little late in life. 

Beatty plays George as a sexual Peter Pan, excited by all the women he meets, at least for a moment. He claims to care for Jill, his girlfriend, but he can't be bothered to listen to her when she is trying to ask him about a career choice that could alter both their lives. Lee Grant's Felicia is someone he can use and then dash off to meet another woman. Jill, the woman played by Christie, is someone George thinks he needs, but it is only coincidence that brings them back together. He nearly breaks up an opportunity for her to find the security she has always looked for, and his emotional manipulation leaves him and her devested in the end. The script, which Beatty co-wrote with screenwriting legend Robert Towne, has George constantly speaking in some scenes, but never paying attention to the people he is speaking to or even himself. George seems to have an attention deficit and his conversation skills and the speed with which he blazes past everyone else (except Warden's Lester), might make you uncomfortable to watch. 

Carrie Fisher famously made her film debut in this movie as Lester and Felicia's daughter, another woman that George does not have the sense to stay away from. It seems pretty obvious that he has enjoyed the libertine lifestyle for a number of years, as he has a loyal cotrie of admiring women pursuing his profession service as a stylist as well as his side work as lover. He feigns respect for Jill and he convinces himself that he really does love Jill, but those emotions just don't ring true in the end.

There is an odd moment toward the climax off the story, when things start to fall apart for George and he goes to work to reassert some control in his life. He learns that the son of the shop owner has been killed. It is not clear if this is a moment that forces him to confront reality in his life or if it is another opportunity to deceive himself into seeing his place in the world as being special. The film seems to end abruptly, and we don't get the coda scrawl that is so typical of movies in the last twenty years. 

I sa this film at the Garfield Theater on the corner of Garfield and Valley Blvd. My friend Art and I walked down from my house to the movie, after I had a blow-up with my little brother and a temper tantrum that probably scared my Mom. There was a lot of tension in our house and I can't quite remember which side of a family tragedy this happened on. I just know I was embarrassed to lose it infront of my Mom and friend, and as usual, a movie was an escape for me from the realities of my own life. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Diamonds"

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. 

Diamonds

The trailer here represents one of the issues with selecting this film for the TBT project. The movie is not commercially available so no one seems to have cared to find and post the trailer for the film. What you see above is a fan created promo, obviously done on free software since the watermark is all over the video. I had never heard of this movie before checking a list of 1975 films on IMDB. When I saw that Robert Shaw and Richard Roundtree were the stars, I was enthusiastic about including it on the project. The problem is that it is not really available. No streaming services were offering it, it never had a DVD release, and the only home media that was available was a VHS tape for sale on ebay. 

So I made my purchase and dug out the VHS player that my wife had used in her classroom, it also has a DVD player, and hooked it all up. It turns out I could have watched a bootlegged copy on You Tube. In the long run, a You Tube viewing will be my last resort for these lost films. I still prefer physical media, even if it is an antiquated format. 

Before I talk about the film itself, there are a couple of interesting points. First of all, the film was also marketed as "Diamond Shaft". That is the cover title on my ebay acquisition and the art work there pretty well explains why the title switch. Richard Roundtree was best known as the actor who portrayed Shaft in the movies. The character of John Shaft is nowhere in this film, and Roundtree does not ever hold a gun in his hand in the movie. Another alternate title was "Ace of Diamonds", which I think would have worked better, but back in 1975, no one asked my opinion.

This is a heist picture and it has some interesting elements to it. Robert Shaw for example, plays twins. He is both Charles and Earl Hodgson. Earl is a security expert who designs protection for large businesses. Charles is a diamond merchant. An early scene establishes the competitive nature of the two brothers, they are both blackbelts and they spar with one another. Charles has tricked his way into having a social evening with Sally, played by Barbara Hersey who was going by Barbara Seagull at the time. Sally is the girlfriend of recently released prisoner Archie, the professional thief played by Roundtree. It is a convoluted sequence designed to bring all of them together but also to potentially drive a wedge between Sally and Archie. Charles has some agenda that we are not yet privy to.

"Diamonds" was written and directed by Menahem Golan, who was yet to partner with his cousin Yoram Globus, to form Cannon Films, but they did have a history of making films in Israel, which is exactly where this movie is mostly shot. The rest of the cast are Israeli actors who I did not recognize, but they were all pretty good. Oh there is one other American actor in the cast, Shelly Winters appears as a widow visiting the Holy land, but her role is completely superfluous to the story. At best she is comic relief, but if you took her out of the film completely, it would not have changed a thing about the plot.

The three act structure is very clear in the plotting. The opening section is the recruitment phase, which largely takes place in London. When they arrive in Israel, things get more complex as the plan is being laid out for us and there is a substantial amount of police attention paid to Archie because he is a known criminal. I enjoyed seeing the Israeli locations and seeing all the people in the squares and marketplaces. This elaborate set up contains a lot of cat and mouse playing between the thieves and the police who have them under surveillance. There are also a couple of red herrings thrown in, to baffle the police and us. 

I am usually of the opinion that we as an audience should be in on as many details of the planning as possible, without giving away any surprises. There were a couple of technical elements in the execution of the theft which would have been more dramatic if we had seen them coming. However, the casing of the security vault and it's procedures was shown pretty effectively. Charles has some insider information that could have been laid out to his partners, but it was not of critical importance. I do think though that Shaw's character needed to have a little more development as a personality. The interactions between him, Archie and Sally, after the opening section in London, are pretty dry. There is a suggestion of some tension but none of it is very dramatic.

When we get to the heist itself, the parts we see were well staged. As is required in a plot featuring a crime like this, there are some complications, but the main variable is the cooperation of a representative of the security vault. His motivation to provide information is a result of threat and duress, but when he overcomes that, he is so tentative about approaching the authorities that the extra time feels like a dramatic cheat. Robert Shaw was on the other end of an elaborate con game in "The Sting", so it is kind of fun when the tables are turned on the cops and his partners at the climax of the film. "The Thomas Crown Affair" seems to have also been something of an inspiration for the story turns here. 

"Diamonds" or "Diamond Shaft" if you prefer, is not an essential film. Shaw was better in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" the year before. The film is however interesting enough for fans of heist films and Robert Shaw. Roundtree and Seagull(Hersey) have little opportunity to shine because character development is not a goal of the screenwriter/director. This is a movie that is all about the crime, and it is only moderately interesting in spite of the tricks that get played.  

  

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "The Hindenburg"

 

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 Hindenburg

This was another of the few 1975 films I am covering on this year long project, that I missed in theaters when it opened in December. As a freshman  debater at USC, we were expected to participate in and help out in the major National Debate Competition held on our campus"The Alan Nichols Invitational". So I was preoccupied at the holidays and never got a chance to catch up. Also in December we had "Lucky Lady","The Killer Elite", "The Black Bird", "Hustle", "The Man Who Would be King", "Barry Lyndon", and  "Sherlock Holmes Smatter Brother". Many of these were released the same day as "The Hindenburg". The reviews on the film were not promising at all. Many reviewers called it a "disaster" of a disaster movie. Some said it was the worst film of the year, and called the acting and dialogue laughable. So it was no wonder that it slipped passed me at the time. 

Many years later I caught up with the movie on a subscription service and my opinion was not nearly as negative. I remember thinking it was a little dull but I did not hate myself for having watched it. Today, I am going to stick to that opinion, the film is serviceable, not great, but certainly not the dregs that were suggested by Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby. The movie was made by Robert Wise, no slouch as a director,and meticulously integrates the real world events in with the fictional story that structures the movie. Several of the characters and the manner in which they escaped from the flaming crash of the Zeppelin, are accurate if dramatic re-creations of those events. I can't say that the acting was excellent but I can say that the cast was. George C. Scott was one of my favorites in the decade of the 1970s. He is trying to play a sympathetic German Colonel who is resistant to Nazi control of the military. He obviously needs the part to be written that way because we would be unlikely to root for a Nazi as our hero.  Anne Bancroft is a passenger on the trip, given a plot line just to justify having the female lead of the film portrayed by a star. William Atherton, who will become the default prick of so many 1980s films, is playing against type here as a crewman with a somewhat heroic but dangerous agenda. 

The rest of the cast was filled with familiar faces:Roy Thinnes, Gig Young, Burgess Meredith, Charles Durning, Richard A. Dysart, Robert Clary, and René Auberjonois. Young had been fired from "Blazing Saddles" a year before  because he was incapable of performing while withdrawing from alcohol. He was typecast as a boozer for very good reasons, and his ultimate tragedy is something you might wan to read about if you are in the mood to be depressed. Meredith and Durning both had two Academy Award Nominations in their careers, Meredith in fact was nominated this year for his performance in another 1975 film, "Day of the Locust" (which also featured Atherton and Dysart). While performances from this film were not honored, the special effects were, two wins for Special Achievement in sound effects editing and visual effects, and three nominations for art direction, cinematography, and sound. 

The best things about the film are in fact it's handsome production. The elaborate reconstruction of the interior of the Hindenburg is impressive. The metal frames and catwalks are intricate and provide lots of opportunities for the actors to run through, climb on, and ultimately fall off of them. The dining hall and lounge areas might make you wish that travel by airship still existed. The luxury of a cruise ship, combined with a view of the Earth from several hundred feet above the surface, is very appealing. The cabins look a little small but they could work if you spent most of your time looking out the observation ports. The manner of loadings, docking, and operating the ship seems to be pretty accurate, and if the plot does not suck you in, at least you can enjoy the details that are provided from the era.  

Basically, we know from the get go, that the Zeppelin explodes at the end of the movie. The story speculates on political intrigue because the Nazis used the Hindenburg as a propaganda tool, and it is still a mystery as to what really caused the explosion. This story postulates that there was a conspiracy to sabotage the airship as a way of indicating that there was a resistance effort at work in the Third Reich. The technical effectiveness of the film is tied up in how the actual film footage of the real disaster is integrated into the filmed sequences depicting what happens to the characters we see in the story. Except for some mild variations in the film stock and lighting, the results are very solid. Anyone who has watched the newsreel footage from 1937 will be amazed to learn that two thirds of the passengers and crew survived the conflagration.

The characters in the film represent a passenger list of 36 and a crew of 61. There is a fun sequence where the Broadway impresario plays a satiric tune on the piano as a vaudeville clown acts out the concepts. The mocking of the Führer was funny but unlikely to get as far as it did with the audience on board.  The movie is filled with red herrings about the plot. There is a clairvoyant, diamond smuggling, drafting sketches, and coded messages which are there to create intrigue but really have nothing to do with the threat to the vessel. Scott is a special security expert, brought on board to respond to a rumored threat, and Thinnes is the Gestapo counterpart who has methods that Scott's Luftwaffe Colonel objects to. 

I did find the film a little dull because of the pacing, but the whole point of a film like this is to build up to the conclusion. I did not find it objectionable but I would suggest that if you decide to watch this, you make sure you are fully caffeinated. I saw the Laser Disc version of this film many times but never pulled the trigger on that so I watched this on a bare bones Blu Ray release. There was literally no menu options except for subtitles. There were no extras, chapters, or other languages available on the media I had. I will say however, the picture looks fantastic and the images of the ship in the air combine the model effects with matte paintings very convincingly and in a beautiful composition. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"

 

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 Rocky Horror Picture Show

I have been an apologist for this movie since the very first time I saw it, which unfortunately was not during it's original theatrical run. My friend Dan had recommended it, I have no idea why he had seen it and I had not, but it was not until two years later, when it was becoming a cult phenomena, that I discovered the joys of "Rocky Horror". I have heard people say that the movie is terrible and stupid, it's my opinion that those descriptions apply to those critics rather than the film. This is a perfect satire of the culture, science fiction films, and musical theater, all wrapped up as a filmed entertainment. 

I will get to the cult audiences in a little bit, I want to start with the film itself. Brad and Janet are like all young couples in horror movies like "The Blob" from the 50s, they get stranded in a rainstorm and end up asking for help at the nearest house. Hysterically, Brad says "Didn't we pass a castle a castle back down the road a few miles?"  How can you not be in on the joke at this point? We have already had a corny song about their love, with a deadpan chorus of future characters in the background, and the narrator has pontificated in solemn tones with a melodramatic pause in just the right places. I was laughing at every second glance, cliché, and sly reference to sci/fi horror films. 

The title sequence is famous for the close up of the red lips and mouth, this image was used on much of the promotional material as well. When you listen to the lyrics of the song, you should be doing an inventory of all those old movies from RKO, Universal and others that are being referenced so cleverly. The Dana Andrews line should make you plotz. This film version of the stage play was my chance to see the story that had been a popular live show in Los Angeles in 1973. I remember seeing a billboard sized ad on the Shrine Auditorium, for the show that was playing in Hollywood at the Roxy Theater. In the summer of 1973, I attended a workshop for a month at U.S.C. right across from that ad and I thought it was intriguing, but I was too young to be driving over to Hollywood on my own to see the play. 

I have always been a fan of musicals, and having seen "Jesus Christ Superstar", I was especially entranced by the Rock musicals of the era. The year before this opened, I'd seen Brian DePalma's "Phantom of the Paradise", which has only a little bit of the tongue in cheek attitude of this film. When Riff Raff points out that Brad and Janet are wet, and she says "Yes, it's raining", the on the nose sarcasm is amusing as heck. And then "The Time Warp". Director Jim Sharman, who had done the play, took full advantage of the film formant to shoot this sequence in interesting Dutch angles, over head Busbee Berkley inspired shots and a cast of background dancers that is demented and dressed to suit that dementia. Having the Criminologist describe the dance and lead us through the steps in inserts during the song is additional icing on the humor of this movie. 

When star Tim Curry is slowly revealed as descending in an elevator, the shots are nicely matched with the rhythm transition to his introductory song, and when he throws off his cloak, revealing his get up, if you are not all in at this point, you better just give up, and I pity you. This is a performance that is fully committed, exuberant and just plain old fun. Maybe these days it would not seem shocking, since there seem to be drag performers everywhere, but in 1975, it was audacious. The juxtaposition with the straight laced Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon in their square cloths is another way we are being let in on the outrageous joke that everyone is involved with here.  

The creepy old house has the requisite living room for our dance sequence, but there is a delightful shot of the laboratory from the elevator perspective which focuses on a color change nearly as dramatic as when Dorothy arrived in Oz. The pink tile floors and walls assault our sense of what a "lab" should be, and the red instrumentation is flashing out at us as a production design made to draw attention to the color scheme.   As Brad and Janet step into the scene in their charming underclothes, their sense of alienness is exacerbated. Curry's Colin Clive style delivery of his speech to the conventioneers and the guests, is another salute to the old style of the classic Hollywood horror films. Sarandon and Bostwick are terrific in their uptight, wooden mimicking of the innocent bystanders. 

Almost every number is a showstopper, but it never feels like they are trying to outdo themselves from one song to the next. The progression of songs feels organic to the weird nature of the story. Meat Loaf shows up in a spotlight performance which is maybe the one segment that feels a little inorganic, but who cares "Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul" is a smoking solo number that gives us a motorcycle sequence, an axe murder and a chorus line dance, all in a short order and we get saxophone solos. The fifties sensibility with "Eddie" the greaser biker played by MeatLoaf reinforces the rock and roll roots of the musical and the time period of films that are being saluted here. 

Several sequences feature musical instruments being used in unusual ways. There is an organ pumping out gothic tunes at first in the scene where Riff Raff is teasing Rocky. Then there is a drum machine and an electronic organ to follow up. The guitars and piano in so many of the songs are more reflective of older style rock songs. The guitar plucking during "Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me" reminded me of Elton John's Crocodile Rock. Rock and Roll Porn!  

The Experience

When I finally caught up with the film, it was in the Midnight Screenings that happened at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena on Saturday Nights. In the summer 1977, my then girlfriend and future wife, would drive down to Hollywood for "Star Wars" at the Chinese Theater, and then on Saturday Night, go up to the Rialto for Rocky Horror. The audience participation there was full of the call outs and props that were probably found in other venues around the country. The Janet Umbrella was accompanied by showers provided by squirt guns. Cards and Toast were tossed at the right moments, and the swaying matches during "Over at the Frankenstein Place" probably violated a hundred local codes, but we did not care.  When we ventured to the Tiffany Theater in West Hollywood, we were surprised that there was cosplay and that the people dressing up acted out the movie in front of the screen. There was a guy who sold supplies to people in line. He would walk up and down the line with the refrain "Rocky Rice 25, Rocky Matches 10", and he had little bags with the logo filled with rice and matchbooks with the title on them. So for 35 cents you could participate too. 

This was a soundtrack that we played in Dolores's dorm room and in the car on a cassette player. The first MeatLoaf album also came out that year and we paired those two together on a regular basis. Oh to be young and in love with the movies.

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Lucky Lady"

 

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. 

Lucky Lady

Three big stars, on a boat, in 1975, that's a hit right?, Only if you add a shark, otherwise you have the misbegotten and mostly forgotten "Lucky Lady", an action romantic comedy adventure starring Academy Award winning actor Gene Hackman, Academy Award winning Actress Liza Minelli and soon to be Number One Box Office star in the world Burt Reynolds. You wonder how it could wrong, well let me count the ways.

To begin with, the director Stanley Donen was probably wrong for this kind of picture, although at first blush it seemed like he would be perfect for it. Donen had directed some of the greatest movie musicals of the 1950s, including "Singin' in the Rain" and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". Liza Minelli had recently won her Academy Award for a musical drama set in the 1930's, "Cabaret" and she was a friend of Donen's so it seemed like a good fit. There is a musical number at the start of this film. This part is right up his alley. Unfortunately, that sequence is only 2 minutes of a movie that ran a hundred and twenty-five minutes. Most of the film takes place on boats and you know, that ain't easy to get right.

The second problem is that the film can't quite balance the tone. Is this a slapstick nostalgia piece, is it an action film with gangsters shooting it out, or is it a romantic comedy with a ménages à trois as it's centerpiece? It tries to be all of those things and never hits the right amount of any one element. There were several films in the 1970s that were set in the depression era, gangster films and some others, but there were two that seemed most likely to have inspired Twentieth Century Fox to back this project: "Paper Moon" and "The Sting". Both of those films managed to get the hardscrabble era right, with a good amount of humor, but not turning it into a cartoon. This script by the married duo Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, is all over the place and Donen compounds the problem by having the lead actors playing it for laughs, in the face of machine guns mowing down people left and right. Burt Reynolds mugging, Gene Hackman aw shucking, and Liza sometimes sincere and sometimes shrill.  

In "The Sting" and "Paper Moon", everyone is playing it straight. Sure there are a couple of double take looks by Redford when shooting takes place in the story, but you feel the stakes are real. Ryan O'Neal is in serious danger from John Hillerman and his thugs in "Paper Moon". Hillerman is one of the bad guys in this film, but you never feel  like the main characters are at risk. Reynolds is taking pratfalls during the action and Hackman is aiding and abetting in all of that jocularity in the face of killers. Maybe you can get away with that in "Some Like It Hot" but the premise there is comedic to begin with as the leads are cross dressing to escape the gangsters. It simply doesn't work here. Especially, when the young companion of the three, gets shot to pieces and we see it with squibs and everything. The joke won't work in these circumstances.

Both Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds had four movies that they starred in during 1975. They were clearly very busy. I will be covering at least four of those other seven films during the yearlong project here. One of the co-stars in this picture was also in four movies in 1975. Geoffrey Lewis plays the captain of a Coast Guard ship that tries to stop the rum running scheme of the three main characters. This part was all bluster and buffoonery, even when he is pointing machine guns and shotguns on the two men and ordering his crew to basically murder them. This feckless character might work is the violence in the film was all cartoon like, but in the big climax, dozens of people are getting killed. 

The film was given at least three different endings, one of which involved the demise of the two male leads. But having tried to make this a light hearted romp thru bootlegging, that downer of an ending was dropped for something more in keeping with 80% of the film we have been watching. The big sea battle that is the finale of the picture would have made more sense if the eastern syndicate had been pitied against some of these other independent groups earlier in the film. Otherwise, as it seems in the film, they come out of nowhere at the end. In "The Sting" we get a sense of the community of con artists who have come together to take down the bad guy. No such connection was established in this script. 

I can't quite criticize the cinematography, it seems like it should be a good looking movie, and 

Geoffrey Unsworth, a two time Academy Award winning Director of Photography, had just done "Cabaret" and "Murder on the Orient Express" , two terrific looking period pieces. The problem is, the print I viewed this movie on was from a out of print DVD, that seemed to be badly in need of a remaster. This film is not available to stream anywhere, I had to go to ebay to find a DVD. It looks like it never had a home video release until the 2011 Shout Factory DVD. So though the whole VHS era, this movie was missing. That will tell you how forgotten it must have been.

This was a blind spot for me from 1975. I never saw this film before today, in spite of the fact that it features my favorite actor and it came out in my favorite film year. This was a Christmas release and Christmas 1975 was a tough time for us that year. I was in my first year at college and my schedule with the debate team kept me busy. It slipped by because it bombed and I never caught up with it until now.

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Smile"

 

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. 

Smile

I did not intend to do this film as soon as this week, but it worked out that it was practical for us to watch it last night so I went ahead and took the plunge. "Smile" is not the horror film from last year, but the social comedy from Michael Ritchie  and Jerry Belson in 1975. Ritchie had just directed two Robert Redford films and would soon be responsible for the "Bad News Bears", a beloved classic of the 70s, and "Fletch" a beloved classic of the 80s. Belson was a TV writer who had done "Love American Style" and "The Odd Couple", two very successful comedies of the 1970s.  

This is a slice of life picture that hints at social commentary but is barely about anything in particular. The subject of local beauty pageants will be lampooned in a dozen other films over the following fifty years, but "Smile" got there first. The "Young American Miss" contest is a fictionalized version of other contests and it targets the sponsors, participants and communities in a mostly good hearted way. There are some biting moments in the film, but there isn't an evil force operating, it is mostly a collection of clueless citizens, some who want to do good and others who are motivated by the inherent sexuality of a beauty pageant. 

Making perhaps his most sympathetic and comedic character, the center of the film, is actor Bruce Dern.  I have been a fan of his since the early 70s, despite the fact that he shot John Wayne in the back. He will be the subject of another of these Throwback Thursday posts, later this year. In this film, he plays "Big Bob" Freelander, an RV salesman who manages to be a success in the era of energy crisis depressed RV sales, because he is an authentic, optimistic personality. The car salesman has been negatively portrayed in the culture forever. "Big Bob" however, is not pressuring anyone, he is not acting in an underhanded way, he simply finds the things that might convince a buyer and he points them out with passion. As a community booster, he has the role of chief judge and he is honored to be in that position. He sincerely believes in the girls and the ideals of the contest, and wants it to succeed. His buoyant attitude will be challenged by his friend, his son and the other members of his Jaycee organization, who are not all so aligned. 

Some of the most amusing scenes require "Big Bob" to confront some uncomfortable truths about his son "Little Bob" and the relationship he has with his family. His perspective is altered a bit in a couple of moments of self awareness, that really are laugh out loud insights. His optimism seems undiminished though, when he still attempts to keep his best friend in town and cheered up, in spite of the problems his friend faces. He is confronted with many moments that cause him to become somewhat disillusioned with the pageant and the process. 

The girls in the pageant are variously mocked, admired and appreciated in different ways. There is a slight subtext of male domination and sense of proprietary power over women. The girls however seem to be in a lot more control than one might suspect. The two main contestants that we follow are Joan Prather's Robin and Annette O'Toole's Daria. Robin changes the most in the story, as she becomes more sophisticated and aware of the impact her choices can have on the judging of the contest. Daria is a knowing veteran of beauty pageants and becomes a confidant and advisor to Robin, often with amusing insights. Collen Camp and Melanie Griffith are also well known actresses who have parts as contestants in the film. Griffith in particular has this film, and another coming up on this project, where she has nude scenes at the age of eighteen. Early on, Griffith seemed destined for roles as sexy provocateurs in the stories she gets roles in. 

Choreographer Michael Kidd, who worked out the dances for "The Band Wagon" and the glorious "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", gets an acting part in this film, playing a prickly version of himself, taking on the job of choreographing the girls show routines.   Geoffrey Lewis, a terrific character actor who will be in four of this year's Throwback Thursday posts, plays the Jaycee's pageant organizer, who is the closest we come to a villain in the piece because his budget needs and attitude are not particularly supportive of the girls. Titos Vandis, a ubiquitous presence in 1970s film and television projects, plays an alcoholic custodian with a better attitude toward the girls than many of the pageant sponsors, but who still resents the plumbing problems they create. Also in the cast is Barbara Feldon who was best known as agent "99" in the series "Get Smart". She is great here as a former pageant champion, struggling to keep an identity as a woman with a purpose, but perhaps losing her relationship with her husband in the process. This is a fairly even handed look at how women's empowerment might impact the traditional roles of family. Navigating the changing social rules is difficult for both sexes, regardless of whether one had dominance over the other. 

A memory note on this film. I saw it at the same theater I mentioned in last week's post, the Avco in Westwood. Coming out of the previous screening, were my parent's friends John and Anne Moon. He was an aerospace guy who was also a magician and they were friends with Jerry Belson. I was seventeen and seeing my folks friends out on the other side of town was a little unusual, but we spoke for a moment and they told us we would certainly enjoy the film which we did. 

 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "The Other Side of the Mountain"

 

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 Other Side of the Mountain

This one is a real deep dive, I saw it once in 1975 and a remembered very little of it. I think this film was a slow roll out across the country and had built up some word of mouth as a romance. My memory may be playing tricks on me but I am pretty sure I saw this with my friend Dan Hasegawa and Diane Heitchew, a girl on the Speech team with us back in High School. We were all friends and Dan was always bringing her to activities that Fall when we were both freshmen at USC and Diane was still in High School. I know that the screening I went to was at the Avco Cinema Center in Westwood, right on Wilshire Blvd. That theater has been replaced with a very different movie complex, but it was a very popular location in the 1970s, with basically no parking and you risked being towed if you parked in the neighborhoods. 

The film is a true story (billed that way in the opening credits, not "inspired by") about skiing champion Jill Kinmont, who as an Olympic hopeful, was paralyzed  the week she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in an event that would have qualified her for the U.S. Olympic team. She was in a romantic relationship with U.S. Skier Buddy Werner at the time of the accident, but that relationship did not survive the tragedy. She was also connected with Champion skier and flying daredevil Dick Buek, and that is the romantic angle that this film takes. 

"The Other Side of the Mountain" could be the template for a thousand inspirational TV movies over the next twenty years.  It follows a very straight narrative, showing us the promising young woman in her prime, and the playful connections she has with others in the skiing community. She has a best friend who was also a skier who contracted polio and lost the ability to ski. The true life events in the film all take place in the mid-fifties and there are a lot of things that evoke nostalgia, but also make us glad that we don't live in that era. The tragedy occurs on the cusp of her greatest accomplishment and is emotionally hard hitting as a result.

Anyone who has seen one of these kinds of movies will recognize the style, or lack thereof in the film. The camera is not very dynamic but there are a few scenes of skiing that are mildly satisfying. There are several montages in the film, some of romance blossoming in the snow, some of the difficult rehabilitation that Jill goes through and all of them are accompanied by schmaltzy romantic music which is incredibly generic. Charles Fox the composer of the score was a prolific writer of music, primarily for television, which is why this may sound so cliché. The end song, was performed by Oliva Newton John, at the height of her musical career pre-"Grease". That may account for the fact that the song got an Academy Award Nomination.

  

Beau Bridges, playing a part that could also have been done by his brother, is Dick Buek, the romantic partner who will not give up on Jill. There is a sequence of him coming to the hospital and taking her out of her bed that is funny and could convince you that romance was indeed possible for these two. The rehab scenes and the visit that Jill makes before her accident, to see her friend with polio, will make you happy that you don't live in that period. Sincere medical providers were limited in the resources and tools they had access to, and it makes Jill's struggle even more compelling. 

If there is a moment of injustice in the film, it comes when Jill, struggling to be productive after her paralysis, discovers that academic institutions will not hire a teacher in a wheelchair. Can you imagine the outcry today if someone took that attitude? There would be protests and twitter bombs and outraged tiktok videos everywhere. There was a sequel to the film that featured the same actress, Marilyn Hassett, playing Jill Kinmont, in later periods of time. I never saw the sequel but it would not surprise me that part of it would  feature her pushing back on the barriers that she faced trying to become an educator. 

Larry Peerce was the director of this film and he seems to have missed out on a major career. After some dramatic successes in the 1960s, he was relegated to TV movies in the 70s and 80s, and frankly, based on this film, it seems that he was best suited for those. His film "The Incident" did come up in our Lambcast Discussion this week (Thanks to Howard Casner). 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975 "Brannigan"

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. 

Brannigan

John Wayne was in his final decade in the 1970s. He finished off the 60s with a much deserved Academy Award, and then made 10 films in the 1970s. As a child of the sixties, I had seen Wayne in dozens of cowboy films and war stories. He'd been the biggest star in Hollywood for almost forty years, and in spite of several health related setbacks, he continued to work well into his 60s. Apparently, he was at one time offered the role of "Dirty Harry" and turned it down. After seeing the success that it became, he signed up for two contemporary cop stories with the same lone wolf cop plot line. The first was "McQ" which came out the year before and was a modest success, "Brannigan" followed and it was not.

This is a standard 70s cop action film, where the righteous, break all the rules cop, goes after the bad guys and mayhem ensues. Wayne plays Jim Brannigan, a Chicago police detective, who has been pursuing crime boss Larkin, familiar actor John Vernon (he played the Mayor in Dirty Harry). Brannigan has had a contract put out on him by the crime lord. Larkin has relocated to London and Brannigan is sent to bring him back under extradition. So in addition to it being a cop film, it will be a fish out of water story as the American detective crosses paths with the British Criminal justice system. There is plenty of culture clash and the usual rogue cop shenanigan's, and that adds to the fun of a fairly standard action flick.

Wisely, the sixty-seven year old Wayne is not given a love interest, but there is a paternal angle as he is accompanied on his British escapade by a young policewoman that he becomes something a mentor to as she babysits him for Scotland Yard. Judy Geeson was charming in the role and I kept thinking I'd seen her in something recent, in fact I had. Geeson is the British neighbor across the hall from Paul and Jamie Buchman in the TV series "Mad About You" which I had been rewatching during the pandemic. Her character is lucky it is a John Wayne film rather than an Eastwood picture, if you have seen the other Dirty Harry films, you will know why, partners don't fare well with Harry. Her boss and Wayne's counterpart at Scotland Yard is  Cmdr. Swann  played by Richard Attenborough. He is a by the book British Official, who will be shown up by and then influenced by the Yank. 

There is a lot of gunplay in the film, and Brannigan is of course violating British Police policies by carrying a weapon. Swann frequently tries to get him to surrender his Colt but Brannigan simply smiles and offers a quip instead of his sidearm. The cop film replaced the cowboy film as the primary action format in the 1970s. This film very much feels like a western set in the modern era. Instead of horseback pursuits, there are car chases. We still get a bar fight, but it is in a British pub and it is played for laughs, much the same way as a dozen other Wayne cowboy bar fights might have been. The good guy and the bad guys face off at the end, but the last duel is not a gunfight in the dirt street of a western down, but a showdown with a sports car in a dockyard in London.

Sure John Wayne is playing a version of the same character he has portrayed before, but he seems to be having a good time doing so and there are enough twists and character points to make it fun. I especially enjoyed him throwing those haymakers in the pub, and the cautious approach to a toilet in his booby-trapped boarding house room. Sometimes the procedural of following kidnappers directions for a ransom payoff becomes a little tiresome, but the last bit with the double homing devices was fun. 

I originally saw this at the El Rey Theater on Main Street in my hometown of Alhambra California, That location is long gone but it was very typically the theater in the Edwards Theater chain that played these kinds of action films. I watched this yesterday on Pluto, it was free but I did have to sit through a lot of commercials.