1972 - LADY WHIRLWIND, Angela Mao kicks butt

There is really not a lot you can say about Lady Whirlwind.  It's kind of a standard marital arts film for the most part.  What this film does have going for it is Angela Mao who besides being an actor was also an excellent martial artist.  Mao had been a Chinese opera performer and when from what I've read about the Chinese opera it was no place for wimps. 

In this film Mao is out to avenge her sister who committed suicide after being left at the altar so to speak There is lots of marital arts action which includes the usual scene where one of the protagonists has to learn a new technique to toughen him up after getting beat up by the chief bad guy etc.  

 

Naturally it all comes together at the end for a big fight scene with everybody hitting everybody else. However it's always fun to see a female martial artist kicking butt in what was essentially a male dominated genre.

 

An interesting fact about Angela Mao, she ended up relocating to New York City where her family has opened up several restaurants.

The film was written by Huang Feng, the running time is 88 minutes. 

1972 - THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, corny but entertaining Irwin Allen foolishness

Another film in our Gene Hackman memorial film festival.  The Poseidon Adventure is an Irwin Allen production with all of the good and bad stuff that Allen was noted for.  The Poseidon Adventure marks the beginning of the 1970's disaster cycle.  Take an improbable situation, in this case a luxury liner tipping upside down after a tidal wave knocks it over and focus on a group of survivors trying to escape before it sinks.

Producer Irwin Allen assembled what would back then be called an all star cast.  Gene Hackman is a defrocked minister who leads a motley bunch of has been movie and TV actors out of the Poseidon.  Ernest Borgnine is an LA cop on vacation with his former hooker wife played by Stella Stevens.  Red Buttons is a Haberdasher who is a lonely single guy.  Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson are a Jewish couple on their way to Israel to see their grandson and because this is a 1970's film there is an annoying little kid played by Eric Shea who you wish somebody would drown.  Naturally since this is the 1970's we get a couple of women stuck running around in hot pants in lots of gratuitous derriere shots. 

 

The director Ronald Neame who in a past life had been associated with David Lean and had filmed a lot of quality English dramas and comedies signed on for this nonsense and was probably responsible for keeping the focus on the story.  Apparently true to form Gene Hackman was not a happy camper on this production but who can blame him as he had to get doused with water and avoid explosions and fires throughout the production.  Still he turns in an excellent performance.

 

This is an enjoyable film, it keeps you watching but it's pretty dumb when you stop to think about it.  The characters are basically a bunch of stereotypes but as the film goes on you do get kind of get a vested interest in what will happen to them.  The producer Irwin Allen was really hot after this film and reached his professional peak with The Towering Inferno but it was all downhill from there.  His brand of entertaining schlock had finally worn out it's welcome.

The Poseidon Adventures has two excellent screenwriters, Wendell Mayes and Stirling Silliphant but you would never know it watching the collection of cliches they put together.  Still the  film is fun to watch.

The running time is 117 minutes, it made a lot of money.

1972 - THE GODFATHER - the classic modern day gangster epic

A few thoughts on Coppola's legendary film.  The Godfather is about a loving supportive Italian American family in the 1940's who also happen to be a group of organized crime killers.  Marlon Brando who was on the outs with Hollywood mostly because of his behavior on previous film sets had to audition for the part of Vito Corleone.  Interestingly enough Brando's comeback role plays like a supporting role in the film.  He's barely a presence in the middle part of the the story.

The other actors in the film were future stars to watch.  James Caan as Sonny Corleone, Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen, and John Cazale as Fredo Corleone.  Diane Keaton played the wife of Michael Corleone but her part is  the usual "please dear don't go out and be a murderous gangster tonight dear."  Some film cliches are hard to change.  The Godfather succeeds because the film rests on the shoulders of Al Pacino who basically moves the story along with his very impressive performance.

Francis Ford Coppola co-wrote the screenplay with the original author Mario Puzo and the film cleverly jumps between the domestic lives of the Corleone family and some impressively staged scenes of violence. Coppola was aware he was playing to a 1970's audience so he includes some sex scene stuff when he must.  Puzo's novel is in many ways kind of a trashy story classed up by Coppola.

The Godfather made the career of Francis Ford Coppola.  He was more than  happy taking the credit for being a film making genius.  However this film benefited greatly from the contribution of cinematographer Gordon Willis.  Willis's skill in lighting and composing images for this narrative was a major and extremely important contribution to the success of this film.

 

The Godfather has a lot and I do mean a lot in common with Paramount's previous attempt at a gangster epic, The Brotherhood which was released in 1968.  That film is forgotten today but I think people viewing The Brotherhood would be surprised to see how many of the plot points are similar between the two films.  The Godfather was a big success for everyone involved but Paramount's desire for a sequel (more money to be made after all) led them to surrender most of their control over to Coppola for The Godfather Part II, a more impressive film than this one.

The film was written by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, the running time is 175 minutes

1972 - PURSUIT, author Michael Crichton directs his first film

 Michael Crichton the doctor turned author was primarily known for the techno thrillers.  Kind of a mix of science fiction and the espionage genres.  Crichton had a successful career as a writer.  Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain were very popular.  He created the long running TV series  E.R.  At some point Crichton got it in his head that he wanted to direct.  Pursuit, based on one of his early novels called Binary was a modest made for TV film that was first time behind the camera.

Pursuit has a clever plot which is about a government agent tracking a rich right wing industrialist who appears to be planning a terrorist act during the Republican convention in San Diego. Crichton or whoever his casting director was put together a good cast.  Ben Gazzzara is the government agent, E. G. Marshall casting against type is the industrialist, Martin Sheen shows up in a small part and  "Dr No" himself, Joseph Wiseman is one of those scientist types who are basically around to clear up plot points for the audience.

 

Pursuit maintains interest basically by focusing on Crichton's narrative as the government starts to piece together Marshall's plan.  For a first effort behind the camera Crichton does okay.  As a film director he was always a little on the mediocre side.  Basically he was a point and shot kind of filmmaker. He lined up the actors and got the scenes filmed.  In fact Crichton's career behind the camera is really noting special from a visual standpoint, but there was no question he was good with clever stories, witness films like Westworld, Coma, Looker and The Great Train Robbery.  Although Runaway his out of control robot film is kind of stupid. 

 

Pursuit is a good story and has good actors pulling the film across the finish line in spite of indifferent direction. 

The screenplay was by Robert Dozier, the running time was 74 minutes.  The film has the usual breaks in the narrative where advertising was inserted during the network showing.

1972 - GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT, De Palma's first Hollywood film

This is the usual story of a Hollywood studio luring a hip, hot filmmaker from New York in this case Brian De Palma, to make a film that would appeal to a younger audience.  Not liking the approach De Palma took,  the studio and the producer Tommy Smothers, proceeded to interfere with De Palma so much that the end result was a poor comedy with a couple of inventive visual touches.

The story has something to do with a businessman who drops out of the corporate culture and decides to be a dancing magician with the help of his teacher played by Orson Welles of all people.

 

Along the way Smother gets involve with Katherine Ross playing a character called "the beautiful girl," and realizes that he has just traded one corporate straight jacket for another type of straight jacket.  There's probably a decent idea or two rolling around in this film but it's all for nothing, the film just doesn't work.

 

Written by Jordan Crittenden the running time is 92 minutes.

1972 - FRENZY. HItchcock at 73 years old.

 After a series of not so great to pretty bad films for Universal Studios, Hitchcock managed to put together a fairly decent film.  For a man in his 70's and not in particularly great health this was a considerable achievement.

With a fairly decent British writer in Anthony Schaffer and a very good British cast, Hitchcock returned to London to film it away from the interference of Universal Studios.

 

The film is one of Hitchcock's "run for cover" stories he had done successfully before  Frenzy follows a serial murder running around London strangling women.  Hitchcock pulled it together for a couple of okay to good Hitchcockian scenes and the London locations did seem to invigorate his storytelling.

 

Frenzy is not up to some of Hitchcock's greatest films but it is a fairly good film to wrap up his career with,  Family Plot excluded in this case. Running time 116 minutes.

1972 - THE HEARTBREAK KID, is a comedy of supreme discomfort.

Charles Grodin plays a man who decides it's time to get married.  He hooks up with a woman and after the marriage ceremony heads down to Florida for their honeymoon.  On the drive down he decides that the woman he married is really annoying the crap out of him. He runs into a beautiful blonde played by Cybill Shepherd probably at the peak of her beauty.  He begins to formulate a plan to dump his new wife and hook up with the Cybill Shepherd character instead.

 

This film has some big time comedy talent behind the camera.  Elaine May is the director and Neil Simon wrote the screenplay.  Simon gets sole screenplay credit, but I find it had to believe that May didn't have considerable input into the story.

 

The film is a real showcase for Charles Grodin's talent as an actor.

Running time, 106 minutes.

1972 - THE WRATH OF GOD, offbeat action film to put it mildly.

Robert Mitchum is a machine gun packing priest, or is he?  This is one nutty western. He's mixed up in a rebellion in Mexico when he would rather be robbing banks.

Ralph Nelson is the director and he doesn't appear to have gotten a hand on the story. Apparently the film was plagued with production problems.

The film moves from one crazy scene to another.  Still it's entertaining and has an interesting cast which includes Frank Langella, Victor Buono, Rita Hayworth and John Colicos.  

Ralph Nelson and Jack Higgins wrote the screenplay the film runs 111 minutes.

1972 - AVANTI, a romantic comedy from Billy Wilder.

Avanti just misses being a very good romantic comedy from the usually cynical Billy Wilder.  What kills it is the length, 140 minutes.  This is long for just about any film much less a comedy.  Wilder had final cut and refused to shorten the film.

Avanti is about an American businessman traveling to Italy to pick up the body of his deceased father.  While there he discovers that his father had a long running affair with a woman which went on for over 10 years.  The business man also runs into the woman's daughter, a rather overweight Englishwoman. Let the fat jokes commence.

Jack Lemmon plays the business man almost like an older version of his CC Baxter character from The Apartment. Juliet Mills is the free spirited Englishwoman who worms her way into Lemmon's life.

 

This film is considered a late period Wilder film.  It has a more gentle touch than the last couple of films that Wilder had directed which were pretty damn cynical.

If you can get past the length this isn't a bad film. but once again the length of the film makes it somewhat of a chore to get through at times.

Written by Wilder and his frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond.

1972 - JOE KIDD, tired Clint Eastwood western.

Nobody brought their A game to this disappointing western from Clint Eastwood and John Sturges.  Clint's the tough guy who's been hired to kill a Mexican bandit in a land rights swindle.

 

Sturges direction seems very tired and everyone has seen Clint do his silent tough guy shtick more than a few times.

The film has a decent action scene towards the end but that's about it.  Sturges occasionally shows his ability to frame individuals against scenic vistas and even in a tired film like this, he does stage some of the action scenes fairly well.

 

Elmore Leonard wrote the boring script but it doesn't help that everyone seems to be mumbling throughout the picture.  It's hard to tell what is going on.

Running time 88 minutes.

1972 - PRIME CUT - a very odd gangster film

This one went right over everyone's head.  Michael Ritchie, one of the best satirists in the film business took on the crime film genre with this oddball film.  

  

The film is at first glance a gangster film with Chicago mobsters attempting to collect from a rival gang which just happens to be located in rural Missouri.  It seems the hick gangsters haven't been paying the big city guys the money owed to them.  In an attempt to get the money the Chicago mob has sent some of their best enforcers down to collect. 

 

Unfortunately for the Chicago guys these hicks aren't exactly a bunch of pushovers.  So the Chicago enforcers return to the big city as wieners.   Yes they are processed at a meat plant in Kansas City and shipped back to the mob boss in Chicago as hot dogs.

The Chicago mob boss isn't going to take this lying down so he sends his top "torpedo" played by who else, Lee Marvin.  Bring on the violence.

The under riding theme of the film seems to be about the deep corruption in America's heartland.  The film is a mixture of county fairs, swap meets and farm boys running around with shotguns protecting their way of life even it it means killing a bunch of city slickers.

 

Subtle in it's own unsubtle way.  No one watching this film in 1972 was going to get what was going on.  I doubt even in 2020 a viewer will understand this very crazy satire on American way of life.

Prime Cut was written by Robert Dillon who specialized in very oddball stories, the running time is 88 minutes.

1972 - WAY OF THE DRAGON, Bruce Lee auteur

A film written and directed by Bruce Lee.  This is an unusual Bruce Lee movie in that he attempts to mix some comedy with the usual martial arts action stuff.

The plot involves Lee flying to Rome to save a Chinese restaurant that is being threatened by local gangsters.  The story is really just an excuse as usual for Bruce Lee to beat up a lot of guys which he does with his usual finesse. 

The film is rather poorly directed but once Lee gives up on the silly comedy at the beginning of the film and gets down to the fighting stuff the film finally comes to life.  Towards the end Bruce Lee takes on Chuck Norris who was in his prime as a martial artist.  Guess who wins.

As with most Bruce Lee films the martial arts fights are really something to watch.

100 minutes, written by Bruce Lee.

1972 - WHAT'S UP DOC, a rehash of a 30's screwball comedy.

Bogdanovich's follow up to The Last Picture Show was this slavish recreation of a 1930's screwball comedy particularly a Howard Hawks comedy.  Peter Bogdanovich was entering his boy wonder director genius period of his career.  After this film the critics and the Hollywood studios were so enamored of Bogdanovich that he was labeled the next Orson Welles.

This movie made a ton of money when it was released.  Audiences loved it.  Bogdanovich juggled a pretty good cast of character actors in the usual eccentric character parts that are a staple of this type of film.  The female lead Barbara Streisand did a pretty good job copying Katherine Hepburn from Bringing Up Baby.  Ryan O'Neal seemed very stiff and uncomfortable in the Cary Grant part.

Bogdanovich probably juggled the set pieces about as well as anyone could considering this film was a rehash without one real original idea in it.  Overall the film has a rather curious distancing effect as is Bogdanovich is observing the action from about 2 city blocks away from the action.

What's Up Doc has a big car chase at the end of the film.  Car chases were big stuff in movies in the 1970's they were always a sure fire audience favorite

94 minutes, written by Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton, but it was apparently Buck Henry who came in at the last minute and rewrote and saved it.

1972 - LA CABINA or The Phone Booth

A man is trapped in a phone booth which is the entire plot for this unique short film from Spain.

La Cabina, reminds of a Luis Bunuel film.  Lots of surreal touches, comedy and some horror.  The film is probably some kind of allegory for Spanish society but since I don't as rule like allegories very much, this can just be enjoyed as a very entertaining short horror film.

Considering that the viewer has to watch a film that is essentially an actor confined in one space for about 30 minutes this is a well directed little piece of cinema.

36 minutes, written by Antonio Mercero and José Luis Garci.

1972 - BAD COMPANY, a very dour western

Robert Benton and his writing partner David Newman had written the script for Bonnie and Clyde. With the success of that film, they had enough clout to get one of their personal projects made.  They chose to film a cynical western about a group of young men heading west during the Civil War.  They hired a decent cast in particular Jeff Bridges who was always a likable actor.   The cinematographer Gordon Willis who shot Bad Company had been associated with urban dramas like The Godfather and many of Woody Allen's best films.  The result was a well acted but depressing film story wise and visually.  

Gordon Willis was known for pushing the limits when it came to filming in darkness and shadows and he really pushed it here.  Scenes set inside houses are so dark at times it is almost impossible to tell what is going.  Even when the film goes outdoors filming on some arid Kansas prairie, Willis smothers the film in sepia filters and you still can't see anything.  Bad Company is a pretty ugly looking film.

Bad Company is one of those revisionist westerns.  The film wants to show what the west was really like.  While that is all very good it doesn't actually make for a lot of fun when you have to sit down and watch it.

Bad Company does have a rather amusing in-joke.  The character actor David Huddleston plays an outlaw called "Big Joe."  Big Joe is based on film director Joseph L Mankiewicz who Benton and Newman had worked with on There Was A Crooked Man, another revisionist western.

93 minutes.

1972 - BROTHER SON, SISTER MOON, the hippie Saint Francis

Returning from some war,  Francesco has a spiritual crisis and decides to rebuild a monastery and minister to the poor.  This is the story of St. Francis of Assisi portrayed as if he was some sort of conscious objector during the Vietnam War.

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli who had been an assistant to Visconti, Rossellini and De Sica, he should have known better.  The film lacks the virtues of a saint who took vows of poverty and simplicity amongst other things.  An overblown bunch of overproduced slop with lots of scenes of people frolicking in fields of flowers and artistic shots of lepers arranged in front of a water fall for pictorial effect.  The cast is made of up young pretty actors who look like they came out of a fashion show rather than a religious order.

There is a very deliberate attempt to portray Francis and his followers as a bunch of hippie freaks, instead they come off as clueless idiots with some sort of strange mental problems.  Frequently awful songs by folk singer Donovan are heard on the soundtrack set to the words of St. Francis.  The whole thing seemed to be pitched at an audience of potheads.

Towards the end of the film Alec Guinness shows up in an extended cameo as  Pope Obi Wan Kenobi or something to validate the philosophy of St Francis.  May the "Force" be with St Francis.

122 minutes, written by Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Lina Wertmüller, Kenneth Ross and Franco Zeffirelli.

1972 - PLAY IT AGAIN SAM, a really good Woody Allen film not directed by Woody Allen

Haven't seen this film in years and re-watching it was a real surprise.  The now familiar and still clever idea of having the ghost of Humphrey Bogart return to help the impaired love life of Allen's nebish character still works very well.  There is a lot of funny stuff in this film.

Allen "opened up" his stage play and most of those scenes work pretty well.  But the big improvement here was setting the film in San Francisco instead of New York, and having Herbert Ross, a fairly decent director of musicals and comedies shoot the film.  Ross brings a real professional approach to the film with none of the primitive technique that Allen had as he coped with learning how to make films in his early features.  

The cast which includes Allen's old crony Tony Roberts and his one time girlfriend Diane Keaton who works very well with Woody, they were in the original Broadway production, so they certainly knew their characters.  Also, this is Woody Allen early in his career and his "nervous Nellie" neurotic Jew shtick was still pretty fresh and even watching it today very funny.

 85 minutes, written by Woody Allen