Every 70s Movie: dennis christopher

Showing posts with label dennis christopher. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2016

Didn’t You Hear . . . (1970)

An obtuse oddity that would be long forgotten had two of its actors not later achieved stardom, Didn’t You Hear . . . began as a student film, then had a brief theatrical release in 1970. (Sources including IMDb list the movie’s vintage as 1983 because that’s when it received a wider release.) Although the picture has certain elements of conventional storytelling, it’s more of an impressionistic experience, like a series of dreams brought to life. In fact, the bulk of the movie comprises an imagined narrative during which the hero, assuming a secondary identity inside a dream, joins his friends in the takeover of an abandoned ship. Periodically, the movie stops dead for a trippy montage featuring double exposures and solarized images, often set to twee folk music, so the guiding aesthetic involves taking viewers beyond the realm of everyday perception. That sort of thing is all well and good conceptually, but drifting further and further from reality often leads inexperienced storytellers into outright nonsense, as is the case here. Director Skip Sherwood and his three screenwriting collaborators unquestionably form a distinctive mood during the movie’s strongest moments, landing somewhere between an acid trip and a nightmare, but the lack of a clear central concept and/or any discernible thematic purpose makes watching the picture frustrating. Broadly, Kevin (Dennis Christopher) is a college kid who feels lost or overwhelmed or something like that. Among his buddies is the rowdy James (Gary Busey). After some humiliating real-world adventures, such as being the target of a sorority-pledge prank, Kevin drifts into a dream state, upon which he and his pals become pirates steering the ship they name The Queen of Sheba. Driven by a weird electronic score, Didn’t You Hear . . . has a few moments the patient viewer can grasp, with Christopher channeling adolescent angst while Busey hoots and hollers about sex, but most of what happens is impenetrable.

Didn’t You Hear . . . : LAME

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

1980 Week: Fade to Black

Buried somewhere inside the offbeat horror flick Fade to Black is the sad story of a twisted young man who escapes his demeaning everyday existence by venturing into the fantasy worlds of his favorite movies. Writer-director Vernon Zimmerman periodically conjures a degree of poignancy, and he found an appropriate vessel for his melancholy vision in leading man Dennis Christopher, who gave a standout performance in the coming-of-age saga Breaking Away (1979). Yet Zimmerman seems confused about what sort of movie he’s making.
Sometimes, the picture is a dark character study depicting the lead character’s inability to relate to normal people—Travis Bickle Lite. And sometimes, the picture is an outright serial-killer saga, because the lead character dresses up in elaborate costumes whenever he’s consumed by murderous rage. Then there’s the odd subplot about an Australian wannabe actress named Marilyn who styles herself to resemble Marilyn Monroe, which suggests that the deranged protagonist is simply one of many broken humans flocking to Hollywood. Even that element would seem on point had Zimmerman not included additional subplots, like the undercooked thread about a bleeding-heart shrink who works with the LAPD. However, listing the tonal issues that plague Fade to Black sidesteps the picture’s biggest problem, which is disjointed storytelling. Zimmerman regularly jumps between scenes without proper narrative transitions, and by the end of the picture, characters behave inexplicably while Zimmerman herds story elements toward a colorful finale.
Still, Zimmerman presents a number of fun scenes and interesting ideas. Christopher stars as Eric Binford, a twentysomething flunky at a low-level film distributor. He lives with an overbearing aunt, and his head is always in the movies. He challenges coworkers to trivia contests, screens old films on his home projector, and masturbates to the poster of Marilyn Monroe that hangs on the ceiling of his cluttered bedroom. After suffering one too many torments from his aunt and from an abusive coworker (Mickey Rourke), Eric snaps. He creates elaborate costumes—Dracula, Hopalong Cassidy, the Mummy—and wears the costumes while murdering his “enemies” one by one. Meanwhile, Eric romances Marilyn O’Connor (Linda Kerridge), whom he of course believes is the real Marilyn Monroe.

Some of the “kills” are staged well, especially the creepy Hopalong Cassidy scene, and Fade to Black features enough shots of 1980 movie marquees to make any cinema fan of the proper vintage swoon. Unfortunately, Zimmerman’s inability to stick the landing—his White Heat-inspired climax is downright silly—reflects an overall lack of discipline that prevents this peculiar picture from realizing its considerable potential.

Fade to Black: FUNKY

Monday, January 26, 2015

Blood and Lace (1971)

Entertainingly awful, this kitschy horror picture combines abuse at a home for wayward girls with a serial-killer storyline to create a stew of intrigue, murder, and sex. As a result, the movie’s not boring, per se, but it’s meandering, tonally inconsistent, and underdeveloped. Watched with the right wink-wink attitude, however, Blood and Lace feels a bit like a grimy exploitation flick crossbred with a soap opera. The movie begins with the gruesome killing of two people sleeping in bed after sex, a scene that features a shot taken from the point of view of the murder weapon (in this case, a hammer), years before John Carpenter perfected and popularized that particular camera angle in Halloween (1978). The opening murder makes an orphan of pretty teenager Ellie Masters (Melody Patterson), who gets sent to a home run by Mrs. Deere (Gloria Grahame). Alas, Mrs. Deere is a cruel weirdo who violently abuses the young ladies in her care, even killing some of them. Concurrently, Mrs. Deere uses her sexual wiles to persuade a male social worker to ignore problems at the home. In similarly sexed-up subplots, middle-aged cop Calvin Carruthers (Vic Tayback) monitors Ellie’s case—presumably because of his inappropriate lust for her—and the mysterious individual who killed Ellie’s mother remains on the loose. Blood and Lace contains a few enthusiastically trashy elements, including a catfight, but it’s nowhere near gonzo enough to work as a go-for-broke shocker. (The movie’s rated PG, after all.) Instead, it’s closer to so-bad-it’s-good territory, especially with actors Dennis Christopher, Grahame, and Tayback playing the tacky material straight. Of these players, Grahame comes closest to rendering respectable work, since she channels bitterness and regret with singular clarity, even though her acting is a bit on the stiff side. Then again, considering the shabby nature of this project, who can blame the onetime Hollywood star—Grahame won an Oscar for her supporting role in the 1951 behind-the-scenes melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful—for seeming disinterested?

Blood and Lace: LAME

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Young Graduates (1971)

The ’70s-era operating principles of B-movie factory Crown International Pictures remain mysterious to me, because while other companies occupying the same low rung of the film industry during the ’70s regularly cranked out fast-paced potboilers, Crown International instead made turgid melodramas padded with pointless montage sequences. The unanswerable question, of course, is whether Crown’s projects represented misguided attempts at real movies or whether the company sold its products in bulk, meaning that more minutes translated to more money. In any event, those who view multiple Crown endeavors from the ’70s suffer mightily. For instance, even though The Young Graduates is fairly restrained by Crown standards, seeing as how nudity and violence are kept to a minimum, there’s not much to command attention. Marketed as a satirical referendum on the sexual practices of ’70s teenagers, The Young Graduates is really the story of one dippy high school student, Mindy (Patricia Wymer), who seduces a young teacher named Jack (Steven Stewart). Since Jack is married, much of the film’s action concerns the couple’s efforts to keep their romance secret. This thread of the story is not interesting. Later, once Mindy discovers she might be pregnant, the impetuous lass skips town for an adventure with her best gal pal, Sandy (Marly Holiday). Alas, their would-be getaway turns into a nightmare, because the girls fall into the clutches of a biker gang/cult/drug ring/whatever. This thread of the story is not interesting, either. Other segments of The Young Graduates feature dancing, drag racing, pot smoking, skinny-dipping, and other ho-hum pastimes, so the whole movie suffers from a catastrophic lack of urgency. The acting is mostly quite stiff (future notables Bruno Kirby and Dennis Christopher do what they can with underwritten roles), the cinematography is relentlessly flat, and the music is punishingly ordinary. In sum, The Young Graduates is far too bland and forgettable to merit genuine contempt; one can merely note with a sigh the existence of the thing before moving on to more rewarding activities, like cleaning out lint traps or clipping fingernails.

The Young Graduates: LAME

Thursday, May 23, 2013

California Dreaming (1979)

Made in the early days of the raunchy teen-sex-comedy genre, California Dreaming is a strange picture. It’s primarily the story of a nerd who travels from Chicago to L.A., gets caught up in surfer culture, and learns, among other things, how to score with chicks. Yet the narrative also has a number of downbeat elements, such as the lead character’s quest to honor the legacy of his dead brother, and a likeable supporting character’s struggles with mortality. Plus, the top-billed actor in the cast isn’t Dennis Christopher, who plays the nerd, but Glynis O’Connor, who plays the pretty surfer girl living in the house where the nerd crashes during an eventful summer. So, in some awkward way, California Dreaming is also the story of how O’Connor’s character matures beyond beach-girl superficiality in order to recognize the nerd’s appealing qualities. California Dreaming seems like a real movie during long sequences of sensitive-ish character dramedy, and yet it seems like a sleazy exploitation flick whenever it devolves into ogling shots of undulating female body parts. The sum effect is middling.

One big problem is the way Christopher is presented. Although the actor later demonstrated great oddball charm in Breaking Away (which was released a few months after California Dreaming), his characterization in California Dreaming is excessively awkward. With a faraway look in his eyes, a gangly build, and a weird habit of giggling at inappropriate moments, Christopher’s character comes across less like a geek who needs to get out of his shell and more like a budding serial killer. For instance, the scene during which a topless O’Connor enters a bathroom only to encounter an idiotically grinning Christopher seated on the toilet and staring at her while he’s in the middle of a bowel movement is particularly unpleasant to watch. As for O’Connor, the ’70s teen star who gave delicate performances in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and the theatrical feature Ode to Billy Joe (both 1976), it’s depressing to see her transformed into yet another bleach-blonde starlet whose bikini body is given more prominence than her dramatic skills.

Still another peculiar aspect of California Dreaming is the pathos found in subplots. For instance, Seymour Cassel easily steals the movie playing Duke Slusarksi, an aging beach bum with a mysterious past; the interest of his performance stems from wondering how many of the character’s tall tales are actually true, and the surprise of his performance comes from a startling scene in which he pays an awful price for prolonged adolescence. Far less compelling is a silly running joke about a local dude who takes a bet that he can live in his car for a month. California Dreaming provides ample footage of cool surfing and hot babes, but it’s hard to figure out the intended audience—the story’s too grim for the picture to qualify as escapist fare, and the abundance of tacky elements makes it impossible to take California Dreaming seriously.

California Dreaming: FUNKY

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Breaking Away (1979)

An Oscar winner for Best Screenplay and a nominee for Best Picture, Breaking Away is one of the true gems of the late ’70s. While the film is inarguably a feel-good sports tale with a big race for a climax—which is to say that the story traffics in formulaic elements—Breaking Away explodes with so much in the way of memorable acting, characterization, and dialogue that the handicap of a preordained ending isn’t crippling. From start to finish, screenwriter Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates ground the story in specificity, separating Breaking Away from the pack of routine inspirational athletic pictures. Tesich, a Yugoslavian native whose family relocated to Indiana when he was a teenager, brings a unique outsider/insider viewpoint to this perspective on American culture; he captures the colorful textures of American idiom while evincing a sharp consciousness of class divisions. Further, the credible qualities of Tesich’s script enable the film’s four principal actors to sculpt distinct (and distinctly likable) personalities.

Breaking Away’s protagonist is Dave (Dennis Christopher), a recent graduate from an Indiana high school who’s obsessed with a celebrated group of Italian bicyclists. Accordingly, even though Dave’s a corn-fed townie who spends his afternoons at a swimming hole with fellow high-school grads Cyril (Daniel Stern), Mike (Dennis Quaid), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley)—none of whom have clear plans for the future—Dave emulates Italian culture by singing along to opera and speaking Italian at every opportunity. This causes great consternation for Dave’s working-class dad, Ray (Paul Dooley); Ray’s befuddled rants about his kid’s abandonment of U.S. culture are endlessly entertaining. As the story progresses, Dave gets romantically involved—under false pretenses—with a pretty Indiana University coed, Katherine (Robyn Douglass), and he also decides to enter an annual bike race called the “Little 500.” Dave’s nervy encroachment into the rarified collegiate world exacerbates tensions between upper-crust students and blue-collar locals. (The college kids pejoratively refer to locals as “cutters” because limestone mining is a venerable local industry.)

You can pretty much guess where things go from here, and, indeed, the story features lots of oppressor-vs.-underdog standoffs. Yet the joy of Breaking Away is the journey, not the destination. For instance, the ensemble scenes involving Dave’s friends feature crisp dialogue, naturalistic acting, and a warm sense of camaraderie. On a deeper level, the sense of anxiety these young men express speaks volumes about the fraught lives of people restricted by limited choices. Christopher, Haley, Quaid, and Stern function as a cohesive unit, even though Christopher has more scenes than anyone else, and their enchanting work is complemented by great supporting turns from Dooley and Barbara Barrie (who plays Ray’s wife). The actors playing IU snobs don’t fare quite as well, since their roles lack equal measures of complexity, but everyone is effective in his or her way. Director Yates, who often made thrillers such as Bullitt (1968) and The Deep (1977), captures Tesich’s humanistic storyline in an unvarnished style that suits the material, and his filmmaking soars during the climactic bike race.

Breaking Away: OUTTA SIGHT

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

A Wedding (1978)

By the late ’70s, director Robert Altman had found his stylistic sweet spot, blending downbeat irony and edgy social satire in seriocomic ensemble stories laced with semi-improvised acting. Actors clearly had a field day on Altman’s projects, because the director famously shot with long lenses and multiple microphones in order to capture everything—and then, during editing, the moment-to-moment focus went to whoever was doing the most interesting thing on camera at any given time. As a result, even middling Altman pictures like A Wedding have variety and vitality, with imaginative actors using Altman’s ambling storyline as a springboard for creating interesting behavior.

The basic plot of A Wedding involves the union of Dino (Desi Arnaz Jr.), the son of an Italian businessman and his American heiress wife, to Muffin (Amy Stryker), the daughter of a self-made American entrepreneur and his dissatisfied wife. Taking place almost entirely at the posh reception held in the Italian’s mansion, the picture is a busy farce weaving together subplots about adultery, alcoholism, death, family secrets, illicit pregnancy, and youthful rebellion. Like most Altman pictures, subplots overlap with each other as the film bounces between short isolated scenes and long interwoven sequences. And like most Altman pictures, some of it works and some of it doesn’t.

The standout performance is delivered by Altman regular Paul Dooley as the exasperated father of the bride, a corn-fed windbag so infatuated with his favorite daughter, Buffy (Mia Farrow), that he doesn’t realize she’s promiscuous and tweaked. Dooley’s ability to toss off tart dialogue while harrumphing through an uptight tantrum is a joy to watch. Howard Duff is fun as the perpetually inebriated family doctor who gropes every woman he “treats,” blithely shooting people full of feel-good injections. Carol Burnett, while perhaps working a bit too broadly for Altman’s sly style, provides her impeccable comic timing as Dooley’s lonely wife; her scenes of romantic intrigue with a balding oaf of a suitor (Pat McCormick) are silly but enjoyable. Screen legend Lillian Gish shows up for a sharp cameo at the beginning of the picture, adding charm and gravitas.

Italian leading man Vittorio Gassman is less effective as the father of the groom, partially because his storyline is monotonously gloomy and intense; Altman frequently tried too hard to blend high comedy and high drama, and Gassman’s storyline in A Wedding is a good example of Altman veering too far into bummer psychodrama. Worse, some actors get completely lost—promising characters played by Dennis Christopher, Pam Dawber, Lauren Hutton, Nina Van Pallandt, and Tim Thomerson are introduced well only to fade into the chaos.

Ultimately, however, the real problem with A Wedding is that it doesn’t go anywhere. Altman forces an ending through the introduction of a deus ex machina tragedy, but the story really just vamps in a pleasant manner for two hours until the narrative stops at a somewhat arbitrary point. Thus, while it contains many interesting things, A Wedding is like so many other second-string Altman pictures: a mostly well-executed trifle.

A Wedding: FUNKY