1976 - THE SHOOTIST, John Wayne's final film

The Shootist's reputation as John Wayne's final film is a decent enough final film for this legendary performer.   It's now well known that Wayne who was suffering from cancer and in poor health had quite a few challenges getting through the filming.  Probably because he wasn't feeling well Wayne apparently had a lot of conflict with the director Don Siegel who was a fairly feisty guy as well.

 

This story is extremely downbeat.  Wayne plays an aging gunfighter dying of cancer who has decided to spend his remaining days living in a boarding house run by Lauren Becall.  However Wayne's reputation has made him a magnet for a lot of people looking to exploit him for a buck.  This all inevitably draws Wayne into one last gunfight.

 

This is a real old timer's film loaded with lots veteran actors.  Besides Becall, there's Harry Morgan, Scatman Crothers, Hugh O' Brian, Richard Boone, John Carradine, and Sheree North.  There's also a somewhat miscast Ron Howard as the young kid Wayne befriends.  Howard does a decent job with his role but at this point in his career he was so identified with his "Richie Cunningham" role from Happy Days it was difficult to see him in anything else.  James Stewart is also in the film and he gives a very good performance in a relatively small part.

 

John Wayne brought all of his skill and authority as an actor to his final film but The Shootist is an extremely depressing film and some what of a downer to watch.  Don Siegel another old timer Hollywood guy was known as a director of action films but he did a good job on The Shootist which is primarily a character study.

The film was written by Miles Hood Swarthout and Scott Hale, the running time is 100 minutes. 

1976 - ST. IVES, a Charles Bronson murder mystery

 Coming a few years after Charles Bronson's movie star making hit Death Wish.  St Ives is a change of pace film for a middle aged star who made his career shooting up lots of movie bad guys.  Bronson somewhat improbably plays a writer who gets involved with a shady businessman (crook?) who uses Bronson to get back some ledgers that will incriminate him to the police.  The businessman is played by of all people John Houseman.  Houseman's associates are played by Jacqueline Bisset in the femme fatale role and Maximillian Schell.

One thing leads to another and a simple exchange of money for the ledgers leads to lots of murders and double crosses.  Bronson is the smooth thinking and talking courier trying to figure things out.  Actually Bronson who doesn't waste a lot of people for a change does a good job playing the writer. The director J. Lee Thompson whose best days were behind him does a competent job putting the film together and the cinematographer Carroll Ballard was an old Hollywood professional who gave the film a nice noir look to it.

 

St. Ives has a good cast,besides the already mention leads.  Character actors, Harris Yulin, Harry Guardino, Dana Elcar and everyone's favorite 1940's actor Elisha Cook Jr. show up.  Bronson had been kicking around Hollywood since 1951 as a character actor himself.  By this time in his career all that experience had made him a very good film actor.

 

The mystery itself is no great shakes, it's the typical mix of obscure clues, lots of dead bodies and the usual withholding of information to the viewer until the very end making it essentially impossible to solve until Bronson explains everything.  Not a great film or a great mystery, however with this cast it's worth a look

The film was written by  Barry Beckerman, the running time is 94 minutes.

1976 - THE TOUGH ONES - Italian Poliziotteschi film

A fairly decent Italian police thriller set in Rome.  Inspector Tanzi, a character clearly modeled after Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry character is on the trail of a tough gang of French guys.  Tanzi also has to deal with a creepy killer hunchback played by the Italian actor Tomas Milan who I think was in about every Italian movie ever made.

The action is good.  There are some exciting car chases and shootouts.  The actor Maurizio Merli  who plays Inspector Tanzi, handles the usual rouge cop stuff well.  As with a lot of these cop movies he shouts and screams about the "system" and letting these "slime" get away. But fear not street justice will prevail.

 

The version of this film that I saw was dubbed into English which made Tanti's rants about the lack of law and order sound even more intense.  As was usually the way with these films an American actor in this case played by Arthur Kennedy is in the film for reasons I don't exactly understand.  Apparently Italian filmmakers liked to stick Americans in what are essentially rip offs or remakes of American cop films.

 

Anyway the film is entertaining and you get some good views of Rome circa the 1970's when people aren't being shot or run over by bad guys.

The film was written by Dardano Sacchetti who has a long list of films he worked on such as The Cat o' Nine Tails, Bay of Blood  and 1990: The Bronx Warriors to name just a few. The running time is a brisk 95 minutes.

1976 - MIDWAY, epic retelling of the navel battle via lots of stock footage

When I saw this film in the theater 47 years ago (yikes), I was fairly appalled by it.  The all star cast was for the most part doing it as a favor for producer Walter Mirsch or was filled out with the usual bunch of middle aged Universal stock players.  The film had to work in an interracial love story between a navy pilot and his Japanese girlfriend which seemed completely unnecessary.  Most if not all of the battle scenes were stock footage from various Japanese and American films about the World War II battle in the Pacific.  But most annoyingly Universal studios decided to add their technological marvel Sensurround to the soundtrack so you had to put up with your eardrums almost exploding at times.  You could barely hear the John Williams score towards the end of the film with all the Sensurround noise.

The cast were mostly people Walter Mirsch had worked with in the past, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Cliff 'Robertson, the list goes on.  Mirsch called in a lot of favors to pass this film off as an all star spectacular instead of some overblown TV movie of the week which it basically was.  The production even got Toshiro Mifune to appear yet again as Admiral Yamamoto.

As with all these navel films, there is a lot of pushing little model ships around on big table top maps which after a while gets completely confusing since all the little model ships look alike.  The director was Jack Smight a reliable guy that the studio could keep under their control.  But the real creators of this film were the editors, veterans Robert Swink and Frank Urioste.  They had to paste a movie together from films like Tora Tora Tora, Storm Over the Pacific, Away All Boats, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Battle of Britain and John Ford's documentary The Battle of Midway of all things.  It's actually kind of amazing the film is as coherent as it is.

For all my kvetching about this story,  the damn movie actually didn't play that badly.  The Battle of Midway is an important historical event during World War II and a very interesting piece of history.  As much as planning and the role that navel intelligence played in the battle on the United States side,  there is no question that the United States Navy was very lucky that day.

 The film was written by  Donald S. Sanford, the running time is 131 minutes.

1976 - KILLER FORCE aka THE DIAMOND MERCENARIES

Filmed mostly on location in South Africa, Killer Force is about a team of thieves who decide to rob a diamond mining complex of twenty million dollars in uncut diamonds.  The director is Val Guest who apparently rewrote the script as the film went into production.  Not the best way to make a movie.  Guest also called this film one of the most difficult assignments of his career.

The film has an unusual cast, Telly Savalas in what can only be described as a "paycheck performance" is the head of security.  Savalas dresses in some cool 1970's clothes and wears a pair of sunglasses throughout the film as he walks through his part.  Peter Fonda is one of the diamond mine's security team. Fonda is sporting a really bushy beard and sort of plays his part as a half hippie, half action hero.  Maud Adams the model turned actress is the unlikely girlfriend of the hairy Fonda.  Christopher Lee is part of the team of thieves, yet another bad guy performance from him.  Hugh O'Brian and O.J. Simpson apparently represent the American contingent in more oddball casting.

 

This is not a great film for the most part.  I suppose there is some entertainment value seeing this weirdo cast but the film seems rather sloppy in the acting and story telling departments.  The last 30-40 minutes is a big action climax with a shootout and a car chase in the desert to keep a viewer awake.  If you like to watch things blow up or lots of guys getting shot this will do.

 

Screenplay by Val Guest,  Gerald Sanford and Michael Winder, the running time is 102 minutes

1976 - MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED - a comedy/drama about ambulance chasers

The director is Peter Yates a man who flipped between interesting pictures like, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and junk like For Pete's Sake.  The writer is Tom Mankiewicz the son of director Joseph Mankiewicz who specialized in standard light Hollywood entertainments like the James Bond movies and garbage like the movie version of Dragnet.  Mankiewicz was a go to guy when you needed your script doctored.  His hands are all over a lot of 70's and 80's movies and TV shows which he was not credited for.

 Mother, Jugs and Speed is a black comedy about an independent ambulance service in Los Angeles.  They are in competition with another another ambulance service to secure the rights to providing the city of Los Angeles with transportation to their hospital.  The film has lots of  bits of black comedy as they drive around dealing with sick people in need of their services.  The film is interlaced with dramatic scenes as a counterpoint to all of the comedy.  The film clearly wants to be the MASH of the contemporary 1970's Los Angele scene I guess.

  

Harvey Keitel is "Speed" a disgraced cop working for the service.  Where someone got the idea Keitel a rather intense actor from the Martin Scorcese school would be a leading man is kind of a head scratcher.  Raquel Welch is tastelessly nicknamed "Jugs." Her main duty is to apparently provide the sex in the movie.  Bill Cosby is "Mother,"  who does most of the heavy comedy lifting in the film.

 

Is the film funny? I guess so, but even for a black comedy it's awfully cynical.  This is a slick piece of product from the Hollywood studio system. No auteur stuff here thank you.

The running time is 98 minutes, apparently it made money.

1976 - BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS OR SITTING BULLS HISTORY LESSON, Robert Altman

Critics didn't particularly care for this film when it was released.  Since it was a Robert Altman film you could be sure that the thing was dead commercially.  Still, it's an interesting film.

Altman's take on Buffalo Bill is probably a little obvious.  Buffalo Bill is a braggart, conman and an honest to goodness American celebrity in this country's best tradition.  Bill is running a wild west show that portrays the exploits of White Americans in a heroic manner.  Never mind that the white culture  was responsible for the eradication of almost all of the Native American population during America's pursuit of Manifest Destiny.

As usual with an Altman film there is a large cast.  Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill is at the center of the film. However when it comes to an Altman film it's the fringes that are also interesting.  One of Altman's  skills as a director is moving actors around in an improvisational manner.  The production looks great. The cinematography by Paul Lohmann really captures the Wild West Show and the surrounding Alberta, Canada area where it was shot.  Final thought, I enjoyed this film a lot.

 

Altman wrote the screenplay along with Alan Rudolph.

Running time 123 minutes.

1976 - CANNONBALL, aka CARQUAKE

Yet another film based on the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash a cross country race that was popular in the 1970's.  This illegal race spawned 5 movies including this one.  The Cannonball Run, The Cannonball RUN II, The Gumball Rally and Speed Zone. 

The film was produced by Roger Corman and directed by Paul Bartel who had filmed Death Race 2000 the previous year.  Paul Bartel was sort of a cult director who apparently wasn't entirely happy to be stuck in the car race genre. But Bartel stuck enough of his sense of humor into the story to make the film a lot of fun to watch.

From left to right Scorcese, Paul Bartel and Sylvester Stallone.

The film has a real interesting cast to put it mildly.  David Carradine, Carradne's brother Robert, Gerritt Graham, Judy Canova, Carl Gottlieb, Dick Miller and James Keach.  In addition there are lots of directors in the film.  Paul Bartel plays a role as a bad guy.  Martin Scorcese and Sylvester Stallone show up in one scene eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Joe Dante, Don Simpson, Roger Corman, Jonathan Kaplan and Alan Akrush all have small parts.  

Cannonball follows the Corman formula as usual, a little sex, a little action and a little social commentary.  This is a fun film and I would dare say a better one than the Burt Reynolds Cannonball films.

93 minutes. Written by Paul Bartel and Donald Simpson.

1976 - THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, fascinating crime drama

John Cassevettes writes and directs a film noir / crime drama genre film with his usual touches.  I. E. lots of long scenes shot in a semi improvisational style.  Great attention is paid to character and the photography really eschews any kind of standard Hollywood look.

This is a very challenging film Cassevettes has one of leads, Ben Gazzara on screen almost the entire film.  Gazzara is the owner of a stage club who stages nudie shows with actual themes and stories in them.  As we watch Gazzara go through his life messing things up the viewer becomes more immersed in his fascinatingly seedy personality.

The film comes to a climax in an act of violence that has severe consequences for Gazzaras's character, Cosmo Vittelli.  But really the film is a study of a low life and his low life world.  The rest of the cast (including the strippers) are pretty good.

135 minutes.

1976 - FELLINI'S CASANOVA - the life of Casanova as rewritten by Fellini

Critics at the time of release commented that Fellini didn't seem to like his main character Casanova which was rather odd since the film was supposedly about the life of Casanova.  Fellini's Casanova is a rather empty film especially for a director like Fellini whose films are usually the "life is a carnival" thing.

Fellini's Casanova was his follow up to Amarcord which had been a big commercial and critical success.  Where that film was upbeat and funny this is one dour and cold film.  It probably didn't help Fellini's Casanova that the film was shot entirely in the studio.  This gave the film a phoney but I will have to say an interesting look.   Fellini always had the best cameramen and set designers working on his film. 

As was the process with a lot of Fellini's later films, the actors didn't actually have dialog to speak, the were instructed by Fellini to just say numbers after which he would dub in the dialog.  Fellini frequently worked from a story outline with out a fully prepared script which tended to make his later films more a series of episodes rather than a fully realized story.

 Fellini's Casanova seems to be primarly about the sex life of Casanova, but in this film all the silly sex scenes aren't presented as much fun.  The point seems to be that Casanova's hedonistic lifestyle was extremely unfulfilling and empty.  Well whatever, the film does have a few interesting scenes and it does look good.

155 minutes.

1976 - KING KONG, first remake.

Long and kind of lame remake of the original film.  The writer Lorenzo Semple Jr. the guy who created the Batman TV series with Adam West wrote a semi spoofy version of the original film.  John Guillermin a director the studio could push around was hired.  The producer was the eccentric Italian Dino De Laurentis who had worked with Fellini on La Strada and Nights of the Cabiria along with Orca, The White Buffalo, Lipstick and Death Wish.

The cast had competent actors like Jeff Bridges, Rene Auberjonois, John Randolph, Ed Lauter and Charles Grodin.  But the film also had the De Laurentis discovery, model turned actress Jessica Lange who De Laurentis hired because she had "big boobs."  Lange is pretty hopeless in this film, she plays her character like she is channeling another "big boob" actress Marilyn Monroe. 

This is a very 70's film, the bad guy is the evil oil company and there is an overall campy tone that pervades the entire film.  The special effects are the old Toho studios trick of sticking a guy in a monster suit (in this case a monkey suit) and having him stomp around miniature jungle and New City sets.  De Laurentis played fast and lose with the production facts claiming that a 40 foot robotic gorilla would play Kong.  In fact an actual full scale replica was built but barely worked and never looked like the guy in the monkey suit.

What entertainment there is in this film pretty much comes from Charles Grodin as the snarky oil executive trying to exploit Kong.  The film has some good photography from the cinematographer Richard Kline.

134 minutes.

1976 - SKY RIDERS, modest action thriller

On location filming, a decent director, spectacular Greek scenery and a hang glider assault on a Greek monastery add up to a fast moving action film.

The cast is not uninteresting, James Coburn, Robert Culp, Susannah York, Charles Aznavour, Harry Andrews and Kenneth Griffith which keeps you interested in the film until the big battle at the abandoned monastery which seems to be filled with a battalion of international terrorists.

The last 20 minutes of the film are really the best part with the spectacular hand glider sequences around the Greek mountains. 

91 minutes

1976 - THE DROWNING POOL, sequel to Harper.

Paul Newman is private eye Lew Harper, in this sequel to Harper.  This time Harper is in New Orleans investigating a blackmail scheme for an old fling played by Newman's wife Joanne Woodward.

This is the usual private eye stuff.  Girls, guns and wisecracks.  The plot is one of those too complicated to understand exactly what is going on stories.  The finale involves a hydrotherapy chamber which Newman and the chief bad guy's wife flood in order to break out of.  That seems a little improbable but it is kind of a cool scene.

This film has a pretty good cast, of 1970's actors.  Murray Hamilton, Richard Jaeckel, Gail Strickland, Tony Franciosa and a very young Melanie Griffith as a piece of jail bait.  However, this is a Paul Newman film, and he is in about every scene and has to carry this rather lightweight mystery film to the end.

Behind the camera is some fairly decent talent.  Gordon Willis was the director of photography.  Willis was known for filming scenes in very low light levels.  He photographed Woody Allen's best films along with The Godfather films.  But one of the problems with The Drowning Pool is that every scene in this film is mighty dark.  Its hard to see exactly what is going on.

The director was Stuart Rosenberg who had a couple of good films and was probably hired because he could handle Newman who he had worked with before.  Lorenzo Semple Jr, Walter Hill and Tracy Keenan Wynn all have screen credit as the writers.  This is never a good sign in a film.

109 minutes.

1976 - DRIVE-IN, comedy of small town life

A night at the drive-in theater in a small Texas town where nobody, especially the teenagers has anything to do.

This is what critics would call a "modest comedy."  Nobody aimed real high but this isn't some crappy film.  Obviously American Graffiti was the inspiration but this film can stand on its own.  The cast is a bunch of unknown actors from the Texas area.  The film making is pretty basic but the script is fairly funny.

Everyone is piling into the drive-in to watch a crappy 70's film called "Disaster 76" which looks like a Universal 70's genre film like Airport 75 of Earthquake both of which came out in 1974.  This spoof which runs throughout the film isn't even that funny but it doesn't have to be because it perfectly nails how stupid those films were.

Drive-In is almost a documentary.   Watching a movie in your car or aimlessly wandering around the blocks of cars pointed at a large screen with crummy speakers has almost completely disappeared from the Midwestern way of life.  I should know because I was a part of this experience.  Highly recommended and love the country western songs on the soundtrack.

96 minutes.

1976 - BOUND FOR GLORY, is boring

The completely fictitious and very long and boring life of singer and union organizer Woody Guthrie.  During the reign of the old studio system, the studios would spit out biographies of famous people that were to put it mildly loose with the facts.  But for every Life of Emile Zola, or Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet that might play loose with the facts at least they were sincere and not boring.

Bound for Glory is very sincere and very boring.  This plot free film has non singer David Carradine wander around the south western part of the United States becoming socially aware about the plight of the Okie's in the dust bowl and the exploitation of fruit pickers in California, all the while strumming that damn guitar.

Somehow kind of  creepy David Carradine portrays Woody Guthrie as a real lady killer which seems highly doubtful.  The film oddly casts an actor, Melinda Dillion in two roles.  One as Guthrie's wife Mary and another as a singer called Memphis Sue for no apparent reason.  The film also has spectacular photography from Haskell Wekler, which is great to look at but completely distracts from one should be a hard edged story about poor people suffering.

Bound for Glory is what you get when you let a bunch of rich Hollywood liberals make a movie about the "simple people." A film which means well but is as disconnected about real life as Star Wars was from science fiction.

For a good film about the Depression and the Dust Bowl check out John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath.  The photogrphy by Haskell Wexler is impressive, probably the best thing in the film

147 minutes, written by Robert Getchell but supposedly mostly improvised by the cast and director.

1976 - THE GUMBALL RALLY, first in the trilogy

The first film based on the "Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash" which was an unofficial car race from New York to California, the chief legacy of this cross country race appears to be the inspiration for 3 films, 1 of them fairly decent the other 2 fairly terrible.

The Gumball Rally, has a couple of things going for it.  A screenplay by Leon Capetaneos who worked frequently with Paul Mazursky of all people and the director Charles Bail a stuntman and stunt coordinator.  Bail was never any kind of film stylist, but at least he knew how to stage and photograph action which Hal Needham couldn't do in The Cannonball Run. 

The Gumball Rally, has realist car stunts, something that probably would not even be attempted today.  Capetanos set up enough funny situations and characters that if they weren't gut busting  hilarious at least were funny unlike the Burt Reynolds film.  This film also has a decent cast who actually play characters unlike The Cannonball Run which was just a bunch of "B" grade actors mugging for the camera.

A well done car chase comedy.

105 minutes.

1976 - MAITRESSE , love story that you probably shouldn't watch with your spouse/girlfriend.

A dominatrix falls in love with a burglar in a you have to see it to believe it story about the world of sado-masochistic torture and bondage.

The film stars Gerald Depardieu as the thief and the director Barbet Schroder's wife, Bulle Ogier in an incredible performance that matches the crazy bondage outfits she wears throughout the film.

This is not some cheap exploitation film. Maitresse is a carefully made examination of an extreme lifestyle and in particular a woman who seems perfectly normal and respectable, apart from her habit of feeding flies to her Venus Flytrap and abusing men and women in her chic torture chamber below her apartment. 

Probably the high point of the film is an extended bondage session where Ariane does her stuff in a variety of ways to a group of people.  The S&M sequences were graphic enough for me and I could have probably done without the male genital torture scene. 

Did I mention this is also a black comedy along with being a love story?

Fascinating if disturbing stuff.

112 minutes.

1976 - FAMILY PLOT, Hitchcock's last film is a real talk fest.

Hitchcock's final film was written by Ernest Lehman who had worked with him on North by Northwest.  The expectations were high for a film of that caliber, what the audience got was a very low key television type mystery thriller.

The elaborate plot about jewel thieves who get mixed up with a phony psychic and her boyfriend is a complicated thriller which coasts along on dialog heavy scenes.  The film lacks the visual touch that Hitchcock in his prime could bring to a story.  Only a couple of scenes look like Hitchcock even directed them particularly the car chase.  The film seems to really run out of gas towards the end with Hitchcock phoning it in with a very unmemorable climax.   

A lot has been written about Hitchcock's lack of interest during the filming of Family Plot.  Years of eating a steak a day for lunch had finally caught up with hm and he was in poor health throughout the filming.

Whatever energy the film has comes mostly from Bruce Dern (smoking a pipe) and Barbara Harris.  Apparently when he wasn't acting in front of the camera Bruce Dern spent his time off screen attempting to motivate Hitchcock into actually directing the film. 

A ill looking Hitchcock with Bruce Dern

Family Plot wraps up a career from a master filmmaker who made eight great films, eight good ones, three bad ones and thirty interesting if not successful films, a very good record in the film business.

121 minutes.

1976 - TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, decent occult horror film

At the end of their run, Hammer took another shot at adapting a Dennis Wheatley novel.  Their previous Wheatley story The Devil Rides Out had Terence Fisher as the director and Richard Matheson adapting the book, this film didn't have that level of talent.  However To The Devil a Daughter isn't bad.

Christopher Lee is the defrocked priest who has established a cult that worships the demon Astaroth.  He plans to use one of his "nuns," Nastassia Kinski to summon Astaroth into the world.  To the rescue is occult writer Richard Widmark.  Lee and Widmark are quite good in their parts, Kinski does what she does best, take off her clothes.  Overall the film actually has a fairly decent cast.

Since To The Devil A Daughter was made towards the end of film production for Hammer the sex, nudity and violence were ramped up to compete with films like Rosemary's Baby.  None of that stuff really brings anything to the film and I doubt that the original author Dennis Wheatly would have been very happy about these little additions to his story.

Apparently Widmark was a huge pain in the butt during filming the script went through numerous revisions and the budget was cut.  Considering all the issues this film turned out fairly well.

95 minutes.

1976 - CHESTY: A TRIBUTE TO A LEGEND, John Ford's final film as a director

John Ford's tribute to the United States Marine's most decorated soldier is virtually unknown.  The production was a cheap one and the majority of the film is made up of combat footage from World War II and the Korean War.

Ford appears in the film interviewing General Puller, both of these old guys are as stiff as a couple of boards.  Narrated by John Wayne in his cowboy costume, the whole thing seems outdated and a little out of it. When this documentary/tribute was filmed, the country was in the coma of the Vietnam War.  The general public probably wasn't in any mood for a tribute to tough marines.

Chesty:  A Tribute to a Legend, is interesting for the war footage that Ford incorporated.  The scenes of the Korean War, are more fascinating than the stuff Ford filmed for his terrible documentary This is Korea.

This film isn't particularly well made and with the exception of the marching bands and the usual military ritual stuff it would be impossible to tell that it was directed by Ford.

Serving in the navy during World War II had been the pivotal point in Ford's life, so it's not unexpected that Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend, is more about Ford's fascination with military life and ritual.

Edited into two different lengths, the short version doesn't seem much different than the long version.

27 minutes

47 minutes