1970 - ASSIGNMENT TERROR aka The Monsters of Terror or Dracula vs Frankenstein

This film is review protected especially from the musings of this little blog.

In Spain, space aliens revive the bodies of two deceased scientists bringing them back to life for their own nefarious purposes.  The leader of the space aliens was played by Michael Rennie who had come a very long way from his previous alien character "Klaatau" from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  German actor Karin Dor who is probably remembered for her appearances in You Only Live Twice and Topaz if she is remembered at all is one of the resurrected scientists.

Well the space aliens plans to take over the world involves them resurrecting all of the great movie monsters.  Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and of course Frankenstein's monster.  All the monsters end up in a Spanish castle ready to go to work for the space aliens and waiting to pounce on an unexpected mankind.

 

Fortunately for mankind Inspector Tobermann of the Spanish police figures out what's going on and confronts the monsters in the castle.  Inspector Tobermann's main squeeze Ilsa Sternberg has been kidnapped by the space aliens and brought to the castle.  So now Inspector Toberman must rescue his girlfriend and fight off the monsters. 

Assignment Terror does have nice color photography.

The film was written by Jacinto Molina Álvarez who apparently played a lot of monsters in his career including, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman and the Mummy although not all of them in this movie.  The running time is a tidy 85 minutes. 

1970 - LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS, a fun 1970's comedy

 A very entertaining 1970's rom/com. This film has a real feel for the time and cultural attitudes of that screwy period.  A young couple who have been living together out of wedlock (or in sin) as they used to say, decide to make their arrangement legal by getting married.  This brings the two families of the bride and groom into the planning of the wedding.  There are a lot of humorous subplots involving brothers, mothers, fathers and boyfriends sorting out their goofy relationships which the wedding seems to bring out.

 The cast is a group of actors soon to be very popular, Bea Arthur, Richard S. Castellano, Gig Young, Diane Keaton, Cloris Leachman, Anna Meara, Jerry Stiller, Bonnie Bedelia and perennial character actor Harry Guardino.

 

The film featured a hit song "For All We Know,"  which I swear I heard at about every wedding I got dragged to in the 1970's.  That song was alternated with the love theme from The Godfather which I heard at every other wedding I got dragged to.

The funny screenplay was written by Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor who really didn't write many comedies for some reason.  The running time is 104 minutes.

1974 - BIG BAD MAMA, drive in trash from Roger Corman

This piece of exploitation junk came from the one and only producer, Roger Corman.  Big Bad Mama carefully follows the typical Corman film formula, a little sex, a little social commentary, and a little violence.

The film is a mashup of a lot of other films particularly Bonnie and Clyde and Corman's own Bloody Mama.  Angie Dickinson is the criminal mother on the run during the Depression with her two jail bait daughters.  They hook up with crooked Tom Skeritt way before MASH and Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. 

 

Well there's lots of shooting and a whole lot of nudity particularly during an extended striptease for a group of Shriner's or an American Legion men’s group or something. This strip scene just goes on and on.  Corman clearly was going to get his money out of the stripper if it killed her.  The striptease is so long it finally becomes boring.  

After years of playing cover up Angie Dickinson at the age of 43 apparently decided that it was time to do nude scenes in a Roger Corman film for some reason.  Well it can be reported that she looks to be in fine shape.

 

This isn't a movie to be reviewed by any film reviewer much less this amateur reviewer.  The film is what it is, ripoff genre crap made to make a buck.  Roger Corman made a lot of money with these kinds of films throughout his career.

The film was written by William Norton and Frances Doel, the running time is 83 minutes.

1965 - CASANOVA 70, a very funny sex comedy.

Marcello Mastroianni one of Italy's best actors never had a problem appearing in films where he made fun of his image as the great Italian lover.  Casanova 70 is one of his best roles.  In this film Mastroianni is a NATO officer who can't get aroused with a woman he wants to screw unless he is in some sort of situation where he's in danger. The best solution his psychiatrist can offer him is maybe he should try men instead of women, apparently a non starter for Mastroianni.

One of the funniest parts of the film is Mastroianni's engagement to the stunning Virni Lisa who Mastroianni can't get aroused around.  Baring her failed engagement to Mastroianni, she has decided to join a convent and become a nun which she has already been in training for anyway, and so it goes in this film.  All of this stuff is orchestrated by the director Mario Monicelli who was one of Italy's top comedy filmmakers.  I'm familiar with Big Deal on Madonna Street his spoof of crime fllms and it's also a very funny film as well.

 

The film is well photographed by Aldo Toni who had worked with Visconti, John Huston, Fellini, and Roberto Rossellini.  The color is vivid but not garish.  Overall the film is very entertaining and has a lot to say about the male ego especially when it comes to their attitudes about women and sex.

 

The film was written by Mario Monicelli, Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Tonino Guerra.  All of them talented Italian film professionals.  The running time is 113 minutes.

1970 - CHISUM, an average if entertaining western film.

Towards the end of John Wayne's film career the "Duke" was basically keeping the traditional western genre film alive by himself after it had died out.  Chisum will never go down as one of the great western films but it entertains in it's weird old fashioned way.  John Wayne was at the icon phase of his long film career and there's no arguing that he had his "John Wayne" character down.

Chisum is set during the Lincoln County War which was an actual range war that was fought over land in New Mexico.  The film does feature a number of iconic characters that were involved.  Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Henry Tunsell, Lawrence Murphy and Wayne playing prominent rancher and land owner John Chisum.  As with all these "based on a true story" films the details and actual facts tend to get a little fuzzy. But when did a movie let facts get in the way.  I doubt John Chisum was the straight shooting  patriotic tough guy that Wayne portrayed him as.

 

The film was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen a charter member of this blog.  As I've said before McLaglen had been an assistant director for John Ford, Budd Boetticher and William Wellman so he was definitely familiar with working in the western film genre.  When he moved over to directing,  McLaglen while competent never seemed to have that special touch that a Ford or a Wellman could bring to a  film.  Chisum is fairly typical of his non style. McLaglen gets the job done even if there isn't a whole lot of artistry that he brings to a film.

As with any late period John Wayne film .  It’s loaded up with a lot of his old cronies.  Bruce Cabot, Forrest Tucker, Ben Johnson, Glen Corbett, John Agar and Hank Worden to name a few. These actors would frequently turn up in his 60's and 70's films.  A lot of them were drinking buddies of his.  It's rather comforting to know that these over the hill actors were still getting work thanks to the Duke.

Chisum is what you could call comfort food in movie watching.  There is nothing special about this story or the way it's told but it goes through the motions with it's  familiar fist fights, gun fights and cattle stampedes all of which are strangely entertaining in an odd mellow way. 

The film was written by Andrew J. Fenady, the running time is 111 minutes.

1970 - LET IT BE, legendary unseen Beatles documentary is finally seen.

The director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg probably had his hands full during the making of this Beatles documentary which turned out to be filmed as the group was finally breaking up.  Let It Be is supposed to be about the Beatles but the film should probably be called Let It Be starring Paul McCartney with featured players The Beatles because McCartney really dominates the film. 

You really don't get a sense of George Harrison's discontent during the recording sessions, he actually quit the group for a few days until he was lured back.  It's clear during one point in the film Harrison isn't crazy about McCartney telling him how to play his guitar.  McCartney is plainly in the "I'm taking over The Beatles," mode.

John Lennon looks mighty disengaged during the sessions.  The presence of his girlfriend Yoko Ono who hovers next to him during the recording sessions is almost like she was super glued to him.  Yoko doesn't utter a word but she does seem kind of intimidating throughout the film.  Ringo is Ringo.

 

The film was rescued by Peter Jackson and remastered with his company's usual technical wizardary.  It's been playing on the Disney Channel.  If you are a Beatles fan and interested in the group's history you can give it a look but there doesn't seem to be much here.  The film was clearly heavily edited to present The Beatles in the best light that was possible at the time of filming. It's probably amazing they got a film out of these recording sessions at all.

The film runs 80 minutes.

1970 - Gas-s-s-s, Roger Corman's final film for American Internation Pictures.

Not going to spend a lot of time on this one.  Gas-s-s-s was the final film Corman made for American International Pictures (AIP).   Corman was unhappy with AIP after they cut several scenes which he felt were important to the film.  From the looks of what's left Corman did not direct some masterpiece.  The film is an unfunny mess of situations and characters.

The basic premise is interesting enough, a gas from a government laboratory has escaped and his killed everyone over 25.  This leaves a bunch of kids in charge of the country and probably the world.  The film could have been a jumping off point for some pointed satire about the state of the country but the so called comedy scenes never seem to work.  

The film has a Corman in-joke with the appearance of a character who is apparently Edgar Allen Poe on a motorcycle, a call back to Corman's Poe films for AIP.  That's about as clever as the film gets.  Roger  Corman has spent a lot of time trying to explain why the film failed, (studio interference, to intellectual, the black humor that runs throughout the film) but the reality is the film just never worked.

Written by George Armitage, the running time is 79 minutes

1970 - THE CONFORMIST, should have been called The Fascist,

A film with a big reputation, Marcello Clerici played by Jean-Louis Trintignant wants to be part of the Fascist party in Italy during the 1930's.  To achieve this goal Clerici will assassinate a former college professor who is an anti-fascist.  The film flashes back through the life of Clerici as we see how he got to this point.

 

 Frankly the film seems a little weak with the explanations of the past scenes we see of Clerici's life in order to explain why he does what he does.  There seems to be a lot of two bit Freudian analysis for my taste. But I would be negligent to point out that this film is considered one of Bertolucci's best films.  

 

What can't be argued is the film's stunning cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.  Storaro has long been an advocate of photographing film where the use of color can be manipulated to create an emotional response in the viewer. Along with Bertolucci's staging the film certainly has a very stunning look.

 

The film was written by Bernardo Bertolucci and runs 108 minutes.  The Conformist is a flawed film but worth seeing.

1970 - WATERLOO, large scale recreation of the famous battle

This is a large scale film with literally a cast of around 15,000 people, (in this case the Russian Army) in a re staging of Napoleon's defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo a town located in Belgium.  Probably only one person, Sergei Bondarchuk the director of the large scale Russian version of War and Peace and his team could have pulled off the impressive battle scenes in the last half of the film.

The film for all of it's impressive physical production had some huge problems.  Chiefly, the very poor story and screenplay by H.A.L. Craig which does not do a good job of explaining the importance of the battle or the strategies of Napoleon and his counterpart the Duke of Wellington.  The characterization of the two commanders is also not really developed very well and you don't get a sense of who these men were and what their motivations were before and during the battle.

 

The film also has a big problem in the casting of Rod Steiger as Napoleon.  Steiger and actor from New York gave a real over the top performance and certainly doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word subtle with his portrayal of the "Little Corporal."  On the other hand we have Christopher Plummer who doesn't give much of a performance as Wellington.  If Steiger is loud and obnoxious, Plummer is so stiff and uncomfortable it's hard to get a handle on his character.

 

What the film has to recommend it are the spectacular battle scenes and they are something to see.  The money on the production was certainly well spent on the staging of these scenes.  Of course with current film making techniques these battle scenes would all be created digitally.  Still there is something to be said for seeing actual people reenacting this famous battle.

Screenplay and story by H.A.L. Craig, Sergei Bondarchuk, Vittorio Bonicelli, and Mario Soldati.

1970 - WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, the 2nd film in Hammer's prehistoric trilogy.

 A followup to the Raquel Welch/Ray Harryhausen film One Million Years B.C..

The film has excellent stop motion dinosaur special effects from Jim Danforth who also did the matte paintings and for want of a better phrase "eye popping" views of model Victoria Verdi.  

The director and screenwriter Val Guest who also seemed game for trying out something different has cooked up a story from J. G. Ballard and he has crammed so much action into it that the fact that the cast can only speak in monosyllabic words doesn't distract from the happenings one single bit.

 

I doubt that Victoria Verdi was ever much of an actress since I see a credit for her in that classic film Invasion of the Bee Girls. But nobody at Hammer hired her because they saw her on the stage performing Hedda Gabler.

 

The film was shot on location in the Canary Islands which from the looks of it probably isn't much of a vacation spot.  

 

The film made money for Hammer studios and was followed by Creatures the World Forgot, which was a real step down from the two previous films.

The running time is 100 minutes.  96 minutes in the U.S. because the frontal nudity was cut out.

1970 - DARKER THAN AMBER - a would be cult film

A film based on the popular Travis McGee series of detective novels.  Since I have never read any of these books and am barely aware of the character Travis McGee this was all news to me.

Darker Than Amber is supposedly considered a cult film.  But you would have to read a lot into this film to figure out where the cult status comes from.  Maybe the brutal fight scenes or the chief psychotic (what else) villain played by veteran character actor William Smith are supposed to give the film its cult status but I think that would be pushing it.

Darker Than Amber was directed by Robert Clouse whose claim to fame is Enter the Dragon.  Clouse isn't particularly adept at staging action scenes or actually any scenes for that matter.  The film kind of plods along from one cliched story point to another, McGee falls in love, McGee solves a murder, McGee has a fight with a real tough guy, etc.

Veteran actor Rod Taylor is Travis McGee but he basically plays Rod Taylor.  Suzy Kendall who had been in some Italian Giallo films is the love interest.

96 minutes, written by John D. MacDonald and Ed Waters.

1970 - THE KREMLIN LETTER, complex spy vs spy stuff

In this movie watching era of short attention spans you better be on your game sorting through the very intricate plot of The Kremlin Letter.

This is cold war spy vs spy stuff made during the spy movie craze of the 1960's.  Occasionally a major league director in this case John Huston would take a shot at this genre.  Huston had been one of the five directors who was mixed up in the goofy first version of Casino Royale.  But this time Huston was trying for something different, a complex cynical film about the espionage business.

Cynical can't really describe how bleak this film is.  There isn't one character that the audience can even remotely identify with and it's amazing what Huston gets away with in this film, homosexuality, drug abuse, rape and murder.

The film has a good cast, everyone in it is a first rate professional and gives an excellent performance.  The Kremlin Letter probably ranks up there with some of Billy Wilder's films like, Double Indemnity or Ace in the Hole.  But Huston certainly has one up on Wilder with this really grim film.

121 minutes, screenplay John Huston and Gladys Hill.

1970 - FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON, more Mario Bava Eurotrash

 Mario Bava's film is a direct ripoff from Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians.  Stick a bunch of people on a remote island than have one of them bump them off the rest one at a time.   

This is not one of the better Bava films but it does have it's moments.  The hanging of the dead bodies in the walk in meat locker, the usual graphic and kind of sick killings and the general Eurotrash vibe throughout the film are worth a one time look

As with some of these later films Bava, the inspiration and lack of creativity seems extremely apparent.  Perhaps the lack of originality in the story just couldn't get Bava to work up much enthusiasm.   He had been making these mad killer movies for about 15 years.

On the positive side, the film is nice and short.

78 minutes, written by Mario di Nardo.

1970- COLD SWEAT, typical international action thriller.

Liv Ullmann has worked with many distinguished leading men in her career, Max Von Sydow, Gunner Bjornstrand, and Laurence Olivier.  Clearly the next step in her distinguished career was to match her formidable acting skills with one of the 1970's most popular leading men, Charles Bronson.

Cold Sweat has Ullmann, Bronson, and James Mason.  It was directed by Terence Young who in his better days had worked on the early James Bond films with Sean Connery.  This film is one of those international "Euro Crime" films, heavy on the action and very light on an actual plot that sort of makes sense.

Charles Bronson is comfortable beating people up, breaking necks and generally being a tough guy, but Liv Ullmann seems completely out of her element in this kind of film.  As far as playing Charles Bronson's wife, she has zero chemistry, no hugging or kissing or any of that affection stuff.  It's probably safe to say this was strictly "a take the money and run" acting job.  

 As usual with these kinds of films they are filmed on glamorous or exotic locations.  In this case the French Riviera.  One can assume the cast and crew had a very nice stay during the production. 

94 minutes, written by Shimon Wincelberg, Jo Eisinger and Dorothea Bennett.

1970 - KELLY'S HEROES, very confused genre film

A confused mess of a film if ever there was one.  Kelly's Heroes is maybe a war film or an antiwar film.  Maybe a comedy or maybe some sort of bank heist film.  In any case it all mashes together somewhat uncomfortably.  

The cast is certainly an eclectic bunch,  Clint Eastwood is the leader of a group of soldiers rushing behind the enemy lines during World War II to get their hands on a bank full of gold.  Telly Savalas is the loud mouthed sergeant.  Don Rickles is the supply sergeant feeding them weapons and fuel.  Rickles is playing on his Las Vegas insult comic persona.  The wild card in the bunch is Donald Sutherland playing a late 1960's hippie somehow dropped into a 1940's war movie.  Sutherland is so completely out of character it would be interesting to know who had the idea for him to go down this odd character path.

The director Brian G. Hutton can't seem to figure out the right jokey tone for the film so he resorts to some large scale battle scenes staged by the famous 2nd unit director Andrew Marton who was always good at blowing up stuff.   

Overall this is a very cynical film somewhat funny at times.  It gets it's entertainment value from being a big production with excellent photography from the legendary Gabriel Figueroa a cinematographer usually associated with Luis Bunuel

146 minutes, written by Troy Kennedy Martin.

1970 - ZABRISKIE POINT, flawed but impressive study of American culture circa 1970.

Antonioni's look at America should have been a masterpiece of film making.  However his decision to cast two non actors, Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin created deep flaws in Zabriskie Point which affected the overall film.  Antonioni's gamble that the audience would identify with his two main characters simply did not work.  Professionals like Rod Taylor. G. D. Spradlin and Paul Fix really demonstrate the ineptitude of the performances of "Mark and Daria."

 

Yet, this film has some strong points to make about American consumerism and the culture that created it.  If Antonioni at times stumbles into pretentiousness at least he's trying to say something.  Obviously scenes such as the group orgy at Death Valley's Zabriskie Point and the final scenes of destruction in Arizona are over the top, but they are extremely well done.

At the time this film was released, American critics clobbered it with some of the worst reviews a major director had ever received.  The 70's counterculture audience that MGM hoped would make the film a success failed to show up and the film was a fairly big budget disaster for 1970.  The film's criticism of the American way of life probably hit a little to close to home for the public.

 

A major asset to Zabriskie Point is the cinematography by an Italian photographer Alfio Contini,  
The film is very impressive to look at.  

110 minutes, written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fred Gardner, Sam Shepard, Tonito Guerra and Clare Peploe.

1970 - ON THE COMET, another delightful film from Karel Zeman

A comet touches the earth and scoops up a French outpost and an Arab army along with some dinosaurs, pirates and a pretty girl.  This is another charming fantasy adventure  from Karel Zeman who combines his animated and live action technique for a unique visual look.

Zeman adapts another Jules Verne story and mixes in some amusing satire of the traditional military mindset with a sweet love story.  It doesn't add up to a whole lot but it is fun to watch.

Zeman can't compete technically with the slick Hollywood special effect loaded film, but he doesn't have to.  He has more than enough talent and imagination to pull off a film like this.

73 minutes, written by Karel Zeman and Jan Procházka.