1973 - CHARLEY VARRICK. a well made crime caper

Walter Matthau is Charley Varrick a crop duster in New Mexico who has taken up bank robbing when his business fails.  After robbing a bank in a small town.  Varrick realizes that the money from the robbery is being laundered by the Mafia. Now with the police after him he has to contend with a Mafia hitman also on his trail.

The film has an interesting cast.  Walter Matthau is generally remembered for playing comedy. Actually he was in a number of serious roles particularly at the beginning of his career.  Joe Don Baker is the "good old boy" hit man on his trail.  One time 20th Century Fox Studios starlet Sheree North is a forger who Varrick hires to create a new passport in order to get out of the country. Perennial bad guy John Vernon is a member of the Mafia.

 

The film was very well directed by Don Siegel.  Siegel was one of those Hollywood directors who essentially shot medium to low budget films and was elevated to auteur status over the years by the critics.  However  for every Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry and Riot in Cell Block 11 there was crap like Duel at Silver Creek and The Black Windmill.  Siegel also directed John Wayne's last film The Shootist and had to deal with a very cantankerous Duke Wayne throughout the filming.

 Charley Varrick was a story that played to Siegel's skills as a good director of action films.  This film zips along at a good pace without losing sight of the characters at the expense of the action aspects of the film something current filmmakers could learn.

As good a job as Siegel did as the director, this film is blessed with a very good script from Dean Reisner and Howard Rodman.  In fact a major asset to this film's success is their contribution.

The running time on this film is 111 minutes.

1973 - FANTASTIC PLANET, interesting, unusual science fiction film.

If you are looking for a fully fluidly animated feature film in the style of a Disney cartoon keep looking.  This is not a film that advanced the technique or art of animation.  However this is a fascinating science fiction film with a very interesting story.

On an earth like planet live two species.  The giant blue Drags who dominate a smaller humanoid species called the Oms.  The Drags treat the Oms as inferior pets at times almost like ants.  When one of the Oms escapes with a piece of Drag technology that educates individuals by directly transmitting information into their brains, the story becomes a metaphor for race relations as the Oms start to rebel.

 

The film has a unique look to it.  The animation may not be the pinnacle of full movement but the story and visual qualities of the film more than compensate for this lack of animation.  

 

The film was written by Rene Laloux and Roland Topor, the running time is 71 minutes.

1973 - THE FATE OF LEE KHAN, or Ying chun ge zhi Fengbo

A transitional figure in the Asian martial arts genre the writer/director King Hu was extremely influential in bringing the rather primitive film making processes of the early martial arts genre towards a more sophisticated style.  The Fate of Lee Khan is also known for Hu's focus on his female characters instead of the usual male head busting protagonists that are found in this genre.

 

The Fate of Lee Khan chronicles the attempts of some rebels to stop the notorious General Lee Khan and his daughter who are ruling the country like a couple of martinets.  The film is primarily set in an inn owned and operated by Wan Jen-mi and her female staff.  There's lots of intrigue during the first part of the film and it all leads up to an extended action climax.

 

KIng Hu was apparently working on a tight budget but it certainly looks good and is well staged.  The acting is at a high level with the actor  Li Li-hua as the clever Wan Jen-mi the owner of the inn, working to defeat General Lee Khan.  Also in the cast is Angela Mao who in the world of these wuxia films went on to be considered one of the best martial artists working in Hong Kong cinema.

Overall a very entertaining and well made marital arts film.

The film was written by King Hu and Chung Wang, the running time is 105 minutes.

1973 - SCORPIO, more mediocrity from Michael Winner

For a guy who didn't make very good movies, Michael Winner was an amazingly prolific filmmaker.  Scorpio is typical of Winner's skill behind a camera.  The film is loaded up with a couple of good leading men, Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon.  There is also a decent supporting cast with old stalwarts like Paul Scofield (what's he doing in this?), Gaye Hunnitcutt, Vladek Sheybal, John Colicos and J.D. Cannon.  The film however is nothing you haven't seen on television a million times.

Delon is Scorpio a hired killer for the CIA who has been ordered by them to kill his mentor played by Burt Lancaster.  Lancaster is suspected of being a double agent, so he's got to go apparently.  So begins a game of "cat and mouse" as Lancaster the old pro takes on Delon the cold blooded killer.  The film's plot is basically a rehash of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, one of those who's doing what to whom spy stories.

 

About the only reason to watch this is Burt Lancaster who was 60 years old at the time they made this and still running around doing his own stunts during an elaborate shoot out.  Try as much as he could a big French star like Delon could never get a Hollywood career going, for some reason,  Scorpio is just another failed attempt.

 

Scorpio has the usual Michael Winner touches.   On location filming to the point of viewer distraction. The sound in almost every scene has a weird hollowness  to it. The staging and photographing of the action scenes are conceived from about every uninteresting camera angle he can think of.  The whole film has that "let's just get this thing done" feel to it which isn't the greatest way to approach film making.

Scorptio was written by David W. Rintels and Gerald Wilson, the running time is 114 tedious minutes.

1973 - THREE WISHES FOR CINDERELLA, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic version of Cinderella.

 Not really the kind of film I watch, but I was a little curious about how they would tell the story of Cinderella in Eastern Europe without the presence of an overblown Disney animated feature. They definitively made some changes although the basic story is still the same

Cinderella is still the downtrodden maid to her evil stepmother and stepsister,  The director Vaclav Vorlicek apparently thought one stepsister was enough.  There is no magic pumpkin or cute mice in this version.  In fact they even got rid of the fairy godmother.  Instead Cinderella ends up with hazelnuts that have three magic wishes. Cinderella also seems to be able to talk to the animals like Doctor Doolittle. Well you can kind of guess the rest from here.  Cinderella uses her wishes to go to the ball, meets the prince loses her shoe etc.

Vaclav Vorlicek is the same director who filmed the very funny science fiction film Who Wants To Kill Jessie.  However the time Vorlicek is aiming for something a little more mellow and sweet. This is after all a children's story.  Vorlicek filmed Three Wishes For Cinderella during the winter which gives it an intriguing kind of mystical look. 

The performances are as expected emphasized to play up the romantic and fantasy elements of the story.  An interesting film to take a look at.

The film was written by  František Pavlíček, the running time is 83 minutes.

1973 - THE LAST OF SHEILA, puzzle film/murder mystery

 No lover of mysteries am I the most annoying thing about them is you really have to pay attention.  At what time did Colonel Mustard go into the library?  The least suspicious person in the room is always the guilty party.  Important information is always held back from the reader until the very end of the story etc.

With that in mind The Last of Sheila is an entertaining story.  The Last of Sheila has an all star 1970's cast and was filmed in the south of France which is not the worst way to spend time on a film location.   James Coburn is a movie producer who's wife is killed in a hit and run during one of those wild Hollywood parties they supposedly are always having.  There are 6 suspects, a talent agent played by Dyan Cannon, an actress played by Raquel Welch and her husband played by Ian McShane and a screenwriter and his wife played by Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett and James Mason a washed up film director.

 

Coburn's character is a puzzle playing freak who has invited them to his yacht for a cruise where he has arranged a series of real life puzzles during the cruise which will ultimately reveal the killer of his wife.  As is to be expected things don't really go the way he planned, such is life in the movies.

The film was directed by Herbert Ross who usually filmed Neil Simon comedies.  But the real auteurs behind this film are the witty screenwriters, Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins.  They clearly must have enjoyed themselves developing the elaborate clues that they scattered throughout the film.  While The Last of Sheila is a murder mystery one of the bigger mysteries about the film are who these characters are actually based on.  Fans of this film have been speculating about that puzzle for some time.  After watching the film I would have to admit this is a very clever and entertaining film.

The film was written by award winning Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim along with mister "Norman Bates" himself, Anthony Perkins\.  The running time is 120 minutes.

1973 - THE LONG GOODBYE, Altman does Chandler

Quirky and mostly noncommercial director Robert Altman takes on the detective genre.  Altman was always game to try something different, so why not a Raymond Chandler mystery set in Los Angeles. Altman and his screenwriter Leigh Brackett updated the Chandler novel from the 1940's to the 1970's but kept Philip Marlowe as a more of a 1940's character rather than a contemporary private detective.

As always with Altman there was the usual cast of his favorite characters, Elliot Gould, Henry Gibson, Nina Van Pallandt and in a rather small part, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The director Mark Rydell played a very scary crime boss named Marty Augustine and Sterling Hayden an interesting actor was cast as an alcoholic writer which was apparently typecasting when it came to him.

The screenwriter Leigh Brackett had started her career working for Howard Hawks on 1946's The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe.  Brackett had been around quite a while but apparently she got along very well with Altman. 

This is a typical Robert Altman film with lots of improvisation, his famous multilayered dialog, an interesting visual style from the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and music from mister Star Wars composer himself John Williams One of the best jokes in the film is the title song constantly repeating itself in different versions throughout the film.

 

This is one of Altman's best films.  The mystery is actually fairly easy to follow as long as you pay attention to the overlapping dialog in the soundtrack and it's probably as authentic a picture of 1970's Los Angeles that you are going to get.  But as usual with an Altman film it was a commercial failure. With the exception of MASH, Altman was never a guy you could count on to for a money making feature film.

The running time is 112 minutes.

1973 - DAY FOR NIGHT - aka La Nuit américaine

Truffaut's film about making a film is usually considered one of his best.  It was regarded as a return to form after a recent series of less than enthusiastically received films by the critics and the public.  Day For Night is extremely well made and very entertaining.  Besides being a great filmmaker Truffaut was also a great film buff which he refers to throughout this film with lots of references to famous directors and even scenes from his own films.

Day For Night also has a terrific cast.  Jacqueline Bisset is the lead actor playing Pamela in the film "Meet Pamela" that is being shot.  Truffaut cast himself as the director Ferrand trying to pull "Meet Pamela," across the production finish line.  Jean-Pierre Léaud who essentially played Truffaut's alter ego in his Antoine Donel films is in it as an immature actor.  Jean-Pierre Aumont who had a long career in film is playing Léaud's father and Valentina Cortese a noted Italian actor is Leaud's mother,  characters in "Meet Pamela."

 

Day For Night walks through the film process in an enjoyable way. The viewer gets to see all of the mishaps and compromises that go along during film production.  The cast and crew are like a bunch of rabbits in heat sleeping around with each other during filming.   In a way the film is about how much Truffaut  loves making films and working with his actors even when it's a challenging situation.  

 

Day For Night is an agreeable film to watch.  It is also basically a very lightweight film.  Like the brainless love story "Meet Pamela" that they are filming, there just isn't a whole lot to think about after it's over. The film is apparently a favorite of many film directors and movie buffs but I think the general audience will probably wonder "what is the point" of this thing.

Written by Francois Truffaut , Jean-Louis Richard and Suzanne Schiffman.  The running time is 116 minutes.

1973 - DILLINGER, another shot at the famous 30's gangster

Macho director/writer John Milius persuaded American International Pictures to let him direct his script on the life of gangster John Dillinger. AIP President Samuel Arkoff agreed and result was Milius's first film.

The film has a very good cast, Warren Oats, Ben Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss.  Dillinger was filmed in Oklahoma but sort of has that AIP low budget look to it. 

Milius had commented that his version of the John Dillinger story more closely followed the facts of his life.  But this was probably typical hyperbole by the overly macho director.

 

The film is like an odd mixture of a John Ford film celebrating traditional values of American life and a gangster film with lots of shooting.  Milius, a gun nut seems to enjoy staging scenes of houses and people getting riddled with machine gun fire.

In the end the film is just as big a fantasy as about every other gangster film.

Running time, 107 minutes.  

1973 - EMPEROR OF THE NORTH or EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE

 During the Depression of the 1930's hobos ride the railroad and have to contend with conductors trying to keep them off of their trains.  One conductor in particular called Shack is particularly sadistic in dealing with kicking hobos off of this train.  It's up to one hobo in particular called "A-No-1" to face him down.

The photography is great the locations were the same ones used by Buster Keaton in The General. The director is macho man Robert Aldrich so you  be sure the action will be tough and rugged.

The film stars two of Aldrich's favorite actors Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine (who is very scary), so you can be sure this film will be dripping with testosterone to put it mildly.   

A very entertaining manly adventure drama.

118 minutes.

1973 - BREEZY, boring pointless love story

This love story was directed by Clint Eastwood in his typical straightforward (i.e. boring, unimaginative) style.  This is your standard May/December romance between a middle aged real estate agent and a 70's hippie.

 

Eastwood hired old Hollywood pro William Holden who basically has to carry the entire film.  The young hippie girl is played by an actor named Kay Lenz who makes almost no impression.  In fact it's impossible to see what the weary Holden would see in this tiresome ditz.

It's amazing to think that after about 40 years directing films Eastwood's film technique has barely evolved past the level of a silent film.  You could have hired a competent 70's TV director and gotten the same results that Eastwood achieves in this film. 

A waste of time that can take it's place with many of Eastwood's other mediocre films such as The Eiger Sanction. The Gauntlet, Pink Cadillac and Blood Work to name a few of the many.

108 minutes, written by Jo Heims.

1973 - THE MACKINTOSH MAN, a spy thriller with Paul Newman directed by John Huston.

Paul Newman takes another shot at an espionage thriller 17 years after appearing in Hitchcock's spy movie disaster Torn Curtain.  The Mackintosh Man was directed by another veteran filmmaker John Huston.  

Newman is a secret agent undercover for British Intelligence.  He is supposedly on the trail of a notorious British traitor but as in all of these serious spy films, all is not what it seems. 

The Mackintosh Man is smoothly and efficiently directed by John Huston.  Maybe a little too smoothly for that matter.  The veteran director doesn't seem to have much interest in the film.  The action scenes are tossed off so nonchalantly it's as if they were almost a second thought. 

This is a good looking film, well photographed by Oswald Morris in Ireland and Malta.  The film has a good cast beginning with Paul Newman, James Mason and Dominique Sanda.  There are also many British character actors like Michael Hordon and Harry Andrews.  It's unfortunate that Huston couldn't bring any interest to the film.  However The Mackintosh Man is still very watchable for the most part.

98 minutes, screenplay by Walter Hill and William Fairchild.

1973 - MASSACRE IN ROME, interesting true World War II story.

Probably not a great film but a very interesting one.  In 1944 as the Allies were closing in on Rome, Italian resistance fighters killed 33 German soldiers.  In retaliation the Germans killed 330 Italians and buried them in a mine in Rome.  The film tells the story of the efforts of an Italian priest played by Marcello Mastroianni  to stop the German commander played by Richard Burton. 

The director George Pan Cosmatos was not known for making this kind of film.  He was usually associated with big budget action films like, Rambo, Cobra and The Cassandra Crossing.  On this film he actually has a screenwriting credit.

For a couple of past their prime acting hams, Burton and Mastroianni are pretty restrained.  I almost believed for a minute that they were real characters.  Burton has always been kind of a sad case as an actor, I guy who kind of threw away his talent during his career.  He is actually pretty good in this film. 

Massacre in Rome has some interesting criticisms of the Catholic Church, the Vatican and the Pope who if he didn't sanction it made no effort to stop it.  Probably the most depressing aspect of this film is the brutality of the killing the Germans committed.  A further example of the human race's ability to inflect pain and suffering on their own species.   

110 minutes, written by Robert Katz and George Pan Cosmatos.

1973 - LIVE AND LET DIE, Roger Moore's first shot at James Bond

After dragging Sean Connery back to the James Bond series for Diamonds Are Forever.  The producers, Broccoli and Saltzman tried to get him back for Live and Let Die.  Connery declined,  the very light weight leading man Roger Moore was cast as Bond and the Roger Moore years commenced for the Bond series.  

Live and Let Die had the novelty of using black actors as the bad guys.  The film is sort of a blaxploitation film that has been completely scrubbed and sanitized by a bunch of white filmmakers.

Since this was a film shot in the mid 70's and all mid 70's films had to have a car chase, there are a lot of chases with vehicles in this film.  If the Bond producers couldn't think of original action situations for their film, they were going to top other car chase films with an elaborate speed boat chase which is still kind of impressive.  After that sequence the rest of the film is a letdown as the director Guy Hamilton races as fast as possible to tie up the very loose plot line and wrap up the film.

Overall this is one of the poorest of the Bond series but better than the horrible Quantum of Solace,  probably the worst in the series.  Roger Moore was known for getting along with almost everyone on set.  He made seven Bond films and got better in the role although he essentially played the Bond character like his Saint character Simon Templar.

121 minutes, written by Tom Mankiewicz.

1973 -THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR an amazing cultural relic from the 1970's

A call to militant revolution for black Americans, The Spook Who Sat By the Door advocates an armed uprising against the United States Government no less.

This film was asking for trouble.  Apparently it was pulled from distribution almost as soon as it was in the theaters.  The film is somewhat difficult to see but it's out there if you know where to look.

 

The director Ivan Dixon worked from a screenplay by the author of the book Sam Greenlee.  I was expecting some complete rabid propaganda junk but this a highly intelligent piece of film making on a very low budget.  The film does have a point of view, not necessarily one I would agree with but it makes it's political arguments very well for the most part.  

It's unfortunate the director Ivan Dixon will probably be remembered for his supporting role on Hogan's Heroes.  He had a successful career directing lots of television shows with lots of white actors.  The Spook  Who Sat by the Door and Trouble Man show that Dixon did have some talent making feature films.

102 minutes

1973 - MESSIAH OF EVIL, surprisingly good horror film

A young woman searching for her father, ends up in a small northern California town full of ghouls.

Incredibly this film was made by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz the screenwriters frequently associated with George Lucas.  After writing American Graffiti, it was all sharply downhill for them with French Postcards, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Howard the Duck, Lucky Lady and Secrets of a Hollywood Nurse.

Messiah of Evil is a low budget horror film with some very effective scenes shot in a small seaside California town.  The film has a very eerie atmosphere and some decent performances.  At times Messiah of Evil has a poetic quality to it much like a Dreyer or Bergman film.

So what happened to the careers of Huyck and Katz?

85 minutes

1973 - CHINO, nearly plotless Charles Bronson western.

Bronson's a loner raising horses when a kid rides up looking for work.  Bronson takes him in and they sort of have a father son relationship.  Bronson's wife Jill Ireland shows up as usual and they fall in love, but Ireland's mean brother doesn't want her to marry a low life like Bronson, end of plot.

John Sturges produced and and directed but according to the IMDB it was co-directed by some Italian which would indicate some sort of problem during production.  In any case Chino ain't much of a film.  It takes over an hour before Bronson starts shooting guys as it marches to it's pointless conclusion. 

This is the period in Bronson's career where he was able to parlay the success of Death Wish into large paychecks for himself.  The problem for Bronson was that he associated himself with films that were basically crap.  Bronson's wife Jill Ireland frequently starred in these films in one of the classic examples of nepotism.  Reviewers would criticize her acting, but frankly I've seen a hell of a lot worse.

Chino was shot in Spain with an Italian crew which makes it an official spaghetti western.

98 minutes, written by Clair Huffaker.