1974 - THE CASTAWAY COWBOY, another mediocre live action Disney film

Another live action Disney film made after the death of Walt.  I really don't understand these live action films they are just so poorly conceived and executed.  It's like the Disney organization needed to keep the movie pipeline going.  For the most part they put very little thought into the screenplays of these films.  The actual film making is at best dull. 

 

The Castaway Cowboy is just so typical of these films.  James Garner is what else, a castaway cowboy. Garner washes up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where he ends up on the farm of widow Vera Miles.  Naturally Miles has a son badly in need of a male authority figure.  Garner uses his cowboy skills to round up cattle for Miles who is going to lose the farm to evil businessman Robert Culp.  The sale of the cattle will help her pay off the mortgage on the farm.

As you can tell, this film has a fairly decent cast.  It was filmed on location in Hawaii but the plot is just so lame.  Garner has to train a bunch of natives to be cowboys and there's a cattle drive you have to sit through.  This whole film could have been set in Texas instead of Hawaii but then the actors wouldn't have had a nice vacation in Hawaii.

 

This film was directed by Vincent McEveety a proficient and for the most part decent television director.  However his feature films are mostly forgettable in particular his Disney films.  Disney live action films were always considered safe entertainment for the entire family.  However what kid ever wanted to go see boring family films with their parents?

The film was written by Don Tait, the running time is 91 minutes.  

1974 - WINTER SOLSTICE, somebody's idea of a bad joke

I've heard of avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton who made lots of experimental films in his career and shot on 16mm film no less.  So being a lover, nerd of film this seemed like the time to check one of them out.  I chose to inflict upon myself Winter Solstice.

Winter Solstice was apparently filmed at a steel mill and consists of a lot and I mean a log of shaky camera work of stuff on fire, stuff burning and vats of molten steel bubbling away.  I suspect Fampton's footage is so shaky because he was trying to avoid getting burned.  Apparently he never learned from his parents at a young age to keep away from hot stoves.

 

Did I mention the film is silent?  Well it is in color although the primary color is yellow as the bright burning materials of the steel mill literally burn into the 16mm negative.

 

I hate to say this since this is a quote i despise from the legendary film team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert but "this is 33 minutes of my life I will never get back."  The best way to sum it all up is that this  is really boring. 

1974 - ZANDY'S BRIDE, a western and a love story (maybe)

In the old west rancher Zandy Allen has decided he wants to marry.  He places an ad in a newspaper and Hannah Lund agrees to be his mail order bride.  It turns out that Zandy is a real misogynist and treats his new bride like a piece of crap as he looks at her like she's a breed mare.  It's battle of the sexes time as Hannah fights to earn respect from Zandy. 

The leads are played by Gene Hackman as Zandy Allen and Hannah Lund played be Liv Ullmann.  However I would have to say that Hackman is playing one of the most repellent characters I have ever seen in film.  Watching this film it's impossible to understand why the Liv Ullmann character would ever stick around to be mentally and physically abused by this guy.

 

The other issue with the film is the storytelling. With the exception of Hackman's larger than life asshole of a character this film is mighty low key storytelling. The director Jan Troell is a Swedish filmmaker trying to blend his  European filmmaker sensibility onto a simple American western.  Troell gets some very mixed results.  I suspect the American  settings might have been a little beyond his ability to get a handle on this Hollywood production.

 

The film was shot on location in the Big Sur area of California so the locations are mighty impressive to look at.  Jan Troell was always a very strong visual director particularly in his Scandinavian films..  The scenery is probably the best thing in this film but most film goers usually don't watch movies for the pretty pictures.  

The film was written by Marc Norman, the running time is 97 minutes. 

1974 - THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, aka The Revenge of Milady

The conclusion of The Three Musketeers story directed by Richard Lester.  The original film The Three Musketeers was clearly intended as an epic film with a lengthy running time however for what ever reason the producers split the film in two and re titled the remaining film The Four Musketeers much to the annoyance of the actors who thought they were only signing on for one film.

The conclusion of the story more or less follows the plot of the Alexandre Dumas book which frankly is kind of depressing.  Milady De Winter played by Faye Dunaway schemes to get her revenge on the Musketeers for defeating her plans during the first film.  All the expected sword fights and the Richard Lester slapstick touches are here but overall the fun and hi jinks of the first film are missing.  Frankly this film is kind of a downer. I recall one critic at the time speculating that the splitting of the original film was deliberate because all of the fun stuff was in the first film.

 

There are compensations viewing this film.  The all star cast is fun.  The cinematography of David Watkin  looks great and the overall production is impressive with lots of on location filming in Spain.  

 

Thia film was a commercial success.  It gave Richard Lester the hit film he needed although his later films never seemed to live up to his earlier films.  Lester and most of the cast reunited for a sequel in 1989 called The Return of the Musketeers, but it was a disappointing rehash of the earlier films.

Written by George MacDonald Fraiser, the runing time is 108 minutes.

1974 - THE TERRORISTS aka RANSOM

Mediocre movie watching continues with this film.  The batting average for good film watching has not been great lately.

In order to get Sean Connery back in the role of James Bond for Diamonds Are Forever, United Artists agreed to several of his demands,  Connery wanted one million dollars for his return and the right to produce three films of his choosing.  Connery didn't have much success with the films he chose, The Terrorists was one of these films.

 

In The Terrorists,  Connery with his Scottish accent and really stretching credibility plays Col. Nils Tahlvik, the head of security for a fictitious Scandinavian country called uncleverly "Scandinavia".  When the British ambassador is kidnapped by terrorists and a plane is hijacked at the same time, Connery has his hands full dealing with both terrorist acts and government ineptitude.  If this sounds like an interesting idea for a plot it sort of is.  Unfortunately the director Casper Wrede and the screenwriter Paul Wheeler can't seem to work up any tension or even interest in these conflicts for that matter.  The film plods along with lots of poor acting and an incredible mishmash of unbelievable English and sort of Swedish accents for a country called "Scandinavia."  

Even the photography by one of the greatest cinematographers in the history of film, Sven Nykvist looks like it was filmed as a TV show, clearly this was just a paycheck for him.  The film sort of has a twist ending and very little action.  The best you can say about this film is it looks like it's on the cold side since this was shot on location in "Scandinavia",  This film is just about a complete waste of time even for Sean Connery die hards.

The running time is 94 minutes.

1974 - THE GODFATHER PART II - second film in the trilogy

Paramount had a big commercial and critical hit with The Godfather, so movie studios being what they are decided a sequel was called for.  Francis Ford Coppola was lured back with the promise of creative control.  More importantly Al Pacino returned as Michael Corleone now the head of the family and an extensive power player in the Las Vegas gambling scene.

The Godfather Part II is about Michael Corleone's plan to become the major player in the organized crime world.  The film's plot follows Michael as he travels from Nevada to Cuba to New York in an effort to consolidate his power.  With a bigger budget, Coppola has a much wider canvas to stage some epic scenes.

A lot of the original cast is back, Diane Keaton is Michael's wife (she still doesn't have much of a part.)  John Cazale is Michael's clueless brother Fredo, Talia Shire is Michael's sister Connie  and Robert Duvall is the family lawyer Tom Hagen.  But as in the first film Al Pacino is the whole show, he completely dominates this story.

 

The film jumps between the present day gangster stuff and the 1920's which tells the story of the early days of Vito Corleone and his rise to power as a Mafia Don.  Marlon Brando obviously to old for these scenes is replaced by a young Robert De Niro as Vito.  De Niro apparently couldn't speak a word of Italian but you would never know it, his performance is that good.

The Godfather Part II is based on a lot of real life characters in Mafia history during the 1950s. Understandably the names of these characters were changed for the film. No sense looking for trouble.

This is quality film making on an epic scale.

The running time is 202 minutes, the film was written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola

1974 - SISTER STREET FIGHTER aka Revenge of the Dragon

Definitely a big step up from the mediocre Return of the Street Fighter.  Sister Street Fighter stars Etsuko Shihomi as Tina  a martial artist searching for her brother an undercover cop attempting to locate the source of a heroin connection entering Japan  The heroin is actually hidden in women's wigs but that's another story.  Anyway as Estuko begins the search for her missing brother she runs up against a tough Japanese gang peddling the hair heroin.

Needless to say since this a Street Fighter film, there is lots of martial arts action.  Etsuko Shihomi  karate chops her way through the usual bunch of incompetent bad guys.  Sonny Chiba shows up in this film but this time he is not playing Terry Sugury but a martial arts instructor named Sonny Hibach. Of course when Chiba starts fighting he's back to his old tricks of ripping body parts out of his opponents.

 

Also featured in this film is Masashi Ishibashi as a bad guy called Hammerhead who is sent out to kill Etusko Shihomi.  This is Ishibashi’s third appearance  in a marital arts film that also has Sonny Chiba in it.  Chiba ripped out his vocal chords in the Street Fighter and yanked out more body organs in Return of the Street Fighter.  This time Etsuko Shihomi gets to finish him off in this film.  But I'll bet he shows up in the other Street Fighter films in this series.  Shihomi was also a skilled martial artist.

Well there's lots of action and blood.  The karate fights are entertaining and Etsuko Shihomi makes a good heroine, apparently in real life she was a trained martial artist, actress and a singer.  

The film was written by Masahiro Kakefuda and Norifumi Suzuki, the running time is 86 or 81 minutes depending on how much of the bloody fighting was cut out I suppose for different audiences.

1974 - RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER aka Satsujin-ken

The first sequel to The Street Fighter is a very lazy film even as crappy sequels go.  The first third of the film's running time is taken up with flashbacks to the original film and has unending scenes of martial arts students training.  The film finally settles down into the story which is essentially the same plot as the first film, not unexpected I guess.

Sonny Chiba is back as Terry Sugury, who is still a Kung Fu tough guy ripping out his opponents eyes or throats, or kidneys or any other body part that he chooses.  I've yet to figure out if The Street Fighter is a good guy or a bad guy.  One minute he's killing off some guy for a Tokyo gangster and the next minute he's wreaking havoc on the American Mafia. 

I fully realize that this film was never going to be on the level of  Kurosawa's Yojimbo or Sanjuro.  But this is pretty crappy film making even for what is essentially a B level action film.   At least the first Street Fighter film was entertaining for it's over the top violence and Sonny Chiba's constant sneering. The best I can say for this film is that Sonny Chiba is still his very scary sneering self.

 

The film was written by Hajime Koiwa, the running time is 85 minutes

1974 - THE STREET FIGHTER, a Japanese martial arts film

 The bone crunching, blood flowing and general body harming Japanese martial arts film featuring the actor Sonny Chiba.  Chiba plays a brutal martial arts fighter called Terry Sugury also known as The Street Fighter.

If you are looking for the Bruce Lee Kung Fu style which is probably more elegant, don't expect that in this film.  Chiba is an intense brutal guy especially in the fight scenes and he's not about dancing around his opponent unlike Bruce Lee, he's here to beat the crap out of anyone who gets in his way.

 

The film's plot for what it's worth has Terry Sugury guarding the heiress to an oil company.  Apparently the Japanese Yakuza wants to move in and take over the company, big mistake.  Terry Sugury plows through these gangsters with his fighting skills like he was kneading bread dough.

There's plenty of blood spilling and ripping of organs out of bodies and if you are looking for action you should be satisfied.  The film was so popular that it spawned sequels and spinoffs with the words Street Fighter in the their titles.  

 

This film, is a big favorite of Quentin Tarantino. Although I haven't heard him talk about it lately on the podcasts he appears on. Sonny Chiba passed away in 2021 from complications derived from the Covid virus.  The Street Fighter is entertaining for what it is.

The film was written by Kōji Takada and Motohiro Torii, the running time is 91 minutes.

1974 - KILLDOZER!, the possessed bulldozer classic

 Deliriously goofy made for TV movie from the mid 1970's. The ABC network had something on their schedule called "The Movie of the Week."  Essentially they were low budget films that fit a 90 minute time slot on Tuesday nights.  The stories skewed heavily towards low rent science fiction and/or horror genre plots.  Killdozer! managed to cover both of these genres.

In brief, an alien entity comes down to earth and happens to crash on an island where a construction crew is building a landing strip.  The entity possesses a bulldozer which proceeds to kill the construction crew one at a time.  This film was clearly trolling in the same waters as Duel the made for TV classic that put Steven Spielberg on the map as a director to watch.  I would even venture to say that Stephen King in his B-movie classic Maximum Overdrive took a good long look at this film before he created that classic.

The movie has a to die for cast of television actors, Clint Walker uttering the immortal line "come and get me dozer," Carl Betz, Neville Brand and James Wainwright as the leads.  The film also includes two supporting players, a young Robert Urich, future star of the film Ice Pirates and James A Watson Jr, the only black guy in the cast so you know he's gonna get it right away.

 

The film lists Theodore Sturgeon a noted science fiction author as one of the screenwriters. Sturgeon had seen better assignments writing for the original Star Trek television series.  The director Jerry London was basically a TV guy who graduated to high class assignments like the miniseries Shogun, The Scarlet and the Black and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman to name just a few.  You have to give Jerry London credit, he manages to stage the death scenes for most of the cast in creative ways. The killer bulldozer moves at such an incredibly slow pace, it makes you wonder how nobody could stay out of it's way. 

 

Killdozer! was written by Ed MacKillop and Theodore Sturgeon, the running time is 76 minutes, 45 minutes of it are spent setting up this ridiculous but entertaining situation.  Killdozer! is on YouTube in a fairly decent copy.

1974 - SUPER STOOGES VS THE WONDER WOMEN, look at the title

 Back to the silly movie posts.  With a title like Super Stooges vs the Wonder Women the viewer should instantly be aware that this is a comedy.  This Italian film made in association with Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers is in the best tradition of silly, make that very silly action comedies.  How the Italians and the Shaw Brothers got teamed up to make this film is probably a story in itself. 

The Super Stooges are three goofballs with some special fighting abilities, Marc Hannibal is Moog who is a real strong guy, people break furniture over his head and he walks through walls without suffering any kind of injury. Yueh Hua is Chung who for some reason is wandering around rural Italy.  He's a martial arts expert.  Finally we have Aldo Canti who is a character named Dharma II, he's good at jumping off mountains and doing back flips he wears a mask for some reason.

 

These three guys team up to take on a tribe of Amazons who are terrorizing the local villages.  Needless to say the women all dress in short skirts or two piece fighting outfits.  There's much fighting and the musical score has lots of funny noises to emphasize the goofiness of the whole film.  I will say that the film moves along but it seems awfully silly even for this genre.

 

The movie is directed by Alfonso Brescia. Some of his previous credits include, Battle of the Amazons, Cosmos: War of the Planets, Battle of the Stars and War of the Robots, well you get the picture.  This can basically be watched while you are cruising the internet on your cell phone or something like that.  In the end the whole thing is probably just a footnote in the world of silly action comedies.

Written by Alfonso Brescia and Aldo Crudo, the running time is 94 minutes.

1974 - THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, original version of this influencial horror film

Finally got around to watching this, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is basically an exploitation film which is fairly well made considering it's very tight budget of $140,000 dollars.  The film struck a cord with the film going public and made the investors a lot of money.  Even today almost 50 years later the film still has a number of effective scenes which shock.  The setting of the house where all the killing takes place is practically a grisly version of a nature museum.  The cannibalistic family of 4  seems like an extreme version of an American nuclear family, if that family happened to be totally insane.

The film certainly foretold the direction of the horror film, sick killings, the exploitation of women as victims and lots of blood and body parts. The film does effective ramp up the suspense and horror as the last teenager, Sally Hardesty is pursued and caught by the notorious "Leatherface," who just happens to be good at dismembering people with a chainsaw.

The director Tobe Hopper, considering the pressure he must have felt to wrap the filming up as quickly as possible and the small budget certainly got the job done.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is definitely some kind of horror film classic.  The is probably Hopper's best film.  

 

 The success of this film got him work in Hollywood where he directed several unremarkable films.  His film Poltergeist was allegedly directed by producer Steven Spielberg.  Hooper signed with the legendary team of Golan and Globus the head of Cannon studios and directed a film called Lifeforce, basically a vampires from space show that was a box office failure but also a seriously over the top and weird film.  His remake of Invaders From Mars was also a box office disappointment.

Written by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper, the running time is 83 minutes

1974 - 11 HARROWHOUSE, a decent to good crime caper film

 This is the followup film for Charles Grodin after his success in The Heartbreak Kid.  11 Harrowhouse is the kind of lightweight comedy thriller that can be difficult to pull off and in this case that seems to be the problem at times.  Grodin plays a low level merchant who develops a plan to pull off a major diamond heist from a company called 11 Harrowhouse.  We are in Rififi territory here with an elaborate heist, split second timing and all the usual tropes of this genre.

Grodin is assisted by his spectacularly gorgeous girlfriend Candice Bergen.  James Mason in an excellent  performance is the low level employee who is the inside man helping Grodin with the heist.  John Gielgud is the the hiss-able bad guy running 11 Harrowhouse, and Trevor Howard in a rather flamboyant performance is the rich man financing Grodin's big caper.  This is a pretty good cast.

This should have been Grodin's big break as an actor, no one knew how to deliverer one liners like him.  However the film apparently tested badly with audiences. Grodin or someone got the inspired idea to add a narration which runs throughout the film.  This device works for about half the film but then becomes kind of tiresome.

 

Overall the film is entertaining with this cast and some of the action elements this is a very good  crime caper.

The film was written by Jeffrey Bloom with Charles Grodin taking an adaptation credit, (probably the narration).  The running time is 95 minutes.

1974 - PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE , a Brian De Palma musical

It doesn't appear that most critics knew what to make of De Palma's take on The Phantom Of The Opera and Faust. It also seems like the studio releasing it was equally clueless when it came to selling the film to the public, audiences stayed away.

However, this is one of the best of the early De Palma films that for a change wasn't heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock. Brian De Palma wrote the screenplay and cleverly mixed a lot of film genres.  His lead actor Paul Williams, a man probably more known for his songwriting than acting put together a very amusing score which parodied a lot of different pop music styles.  Williams is also entertaining portraying the crazed music producer who has made a deal with the devil.  

The film follows plot lines from Faust and The Phantom Of The Opera but De Palma keeps things interesting with his clever camera work and his staging of the musical acts that range from a Beach Boys type of group to a goth/heavy metal band.

 

The rest of the cast is well chosen with William Finney as the helpless composer turned phantom, Jessica Harper as his love interest and De Palma regular Gerrit Graham as one of William's crazed musical performers.

A very entertaining film, it runs 91 minutes.

1974 - THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, B movie time

Everything about this film just screams B - movie.  To begin with the film is based on a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had brought the world Tarzan.

The cast is headlined by American actor Doug McClure a mainstay mostly on television in particular the TV western The Virginian.  Because it is this kind of a film  there always has to be a girl, Susan Penhaligon is the lucky actor.  The rest of the cast is made up of journeymen British actors affecting German accents.

 

This film has one crazy story line.  During World War I a German U-Boat sinks a British merchant ship,  The survivors of the ship manage to somehow take over the U-Boat and they attempt to sail to a neutral seaport.  Instead they get lost and end up on a continent called Caprona which is full of dinosaurs, volcanoes and cavemen.

 

Well there's lots of fighting and running away from dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs are some sort of special effects using some kind of puppetry, they look kind of cheesy.  To cut to the chase, this film is what it is an adventure film for 12 year boys who like lots of fighting and dinosaurs.

Written by MIchael Moorcock and James Cawthorn, running time 91 minutes.

1975 - BREAKHEART PASS - another twisty Alistair MacLean thriller

 A starring vehicle for the always unlikely movie star Charles Bronson.  Breakheart Pass is adopted from the novel of the same name by the author Alistair MacLean.  

 

The film looks good, it was photographed by Lucien Ballard who did his best work in the western genre with Sam Peckinpah.  It was final film from 2nd unit director/stunt coordinator "Yakima" Canutt.  The director was Tom Gries a competent film director.

 

If you've seen or read any Alistair MacLean thrillers you can expect lots of twists intermixed with action and Breakheart Pass follows his usual formula.  

 

The film has a good cast of old pros, Richard Crenna, Ben Johnson, Charles Durning, Ed Lauter and as usual Bronson's wife Jill Ireland.  It runs a quick 95 minutes.

1974 - THE SUPER COPS, fun 70's cop film

Enjoyable period crime film based on the exploits of a couple of New York City cops,  David Greenberg and Robert Hantz.  These two characters supposedly had one of the highest arrest records of any NYC cop at the time.

 The director Gordon Parks and the screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. have fashioned the movie as a comedy/drama as Greenberg and Hantz spend as much time battling the NYPD bureaucracy as they do busting criminals.  Parks was a talented still photographer and he has a real feel for some of New York's seediest locations.  The action is fast paced but at least realistic considering these guys are practically a couple of cartoon characters.

 In real life Greenberg and Hantz were not really the good guys the film would have you believe but anyone expecting the absolute truth from any film which has the tag line "based on" should know better.

 

Running time 90 efficient minutes.