Every 70s Movie: joanna cassidy

Showing posts with label joanna cassidy. Show all posts

Monday, March 24, 2014

Stunts (1977)

Gonzo director Richard Rush has opined that during the long gestation periods of his film projects, disreputable producers frequently copied his ideas and created lesser versions that diminished his box-office potential. Watching Stunts, which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Rush’s demented drama The Stunt Man (1980), it’s tempting to give Rush’s complaint credence. Like The Stunt Man, Stunts depicts an out-of-control film shoot on which a maniacal director’s quest for spectacle endangers the lives of stunt performers. Yet the similarities mostly end there, since The Stunt Man is as deep as Stunts is shallow. Stretching credibility way past the breaking point, Stunts implies that authorities would allow production to continue after not one but three on-set deaths, and that authorities would be content letting macho stuntmen investigate the mortalities. Just because Stunts is silly, however, doesn’t mean the movie lacks entertainment value. The various stunt scenes, including falls from tremendous heights and tricky automotive gags, are staged and filmed well, with hack director Mark L. Lester employing a range of stylish camera angles and maximizing tension through the use of brisk editing. Furthermore, the production values are slightly more than adequate, and it’s always fun to see behind-the-scenes footage showcasing what movie sets looked like back in the day.
Atop all that, Stunts shamelessly panders to audience expectations with such clichéd characters as the lone-wolf stud, the nosy reporter, the obnoxious director, and the tweaked special-effects guy. Incarnating these one-dimensional roles is a fun ensemble cast comprising offbeat men and sexy women. Robert Forster, at his most endearingly indifferent, stars as a heroic stunt man investigating the death of his brother. Portraying his fellow daredevils are Joanna Cassidy (Blade Runner), Bruce Glover (Diamonds Are Forever), and Richard Lynch (The Sword and the Sorcerer), among others. Meanwhile, petite blonde Candice Rialson and sultry brunette Fiona Lewis play the women romancing Forster’s character, while veteran character actor Malachi Throne appears as the overbearing director. Alas, none of these actors is given a single original moment to play—beyond the trite elements already mentioned, Stunts features a starlet sleeping her way to the top and a scene of macho dudes honoring a pact by pulling a paralyzed pal off life support. Nonetheless, the movie’s colorful milieu, impressive stunts, and zippy pace make for 90 minutes of pleasant viewing.

Stunts: FUNKY

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Bank Shot (1974)

To get a sense of the endearingly fluffy humor that pervades this caper flick, consider a moment when bumbling FBI agent Streiger (Clifton James) shows his team surveillance footage of master criminal Walter Upjohn Ballantine (George C. Scott). First, the surveillance camera is angled away from Ballantine because the cameraman is ogling a pretty girl’s figure, and second, Ballantine reveals he’s aware of the surveillance camera by dabbing the lens with the tip of an ice cream cone. Gritty realism this is not. Yet while some other adaptations of lighthearted crime books by author Donald E. Westlake spiral into stupidity, the Westlake adaptation Bank Shot comes awfully close to cooking that most delicate soufflé of pure farce, especially during sequences of epic-proportioned slapstick. It helps, of course, to have a leading actor of consummate skill, since Scott plays every single scene perfectly straight, no matter how absurd the circumstances. Together with an adept supporting cast and the confident direction of Gower Champion (a former dancer and choreographer), Scott’s performance makes Bank Shot highly entertaining.

The plot is a standard Westlake lark. Career thief Ballantine, whom Scott portrays with comically bushy eyebrows and a pronounced lisp, is stuck in a prison work farm until his excitable accomplice, A. G. Karp (Sorrell Booke), visits with news that a bank has been identified as vulnerable for robbery. Ballantine stages a ridiculous escape by hijacking an earthmover and bulldozing his way through prison walls. Then he meets the unimpressive crew Karp has gathered. These offbeat theives include a nebbish ex-FBI agent (Bob Balaban), a jittery goodfella (Don Calfa), and a sexy society dame (Joanna Cassidy) who’s moonlighting as a crook for thrills. Karp’s undercooked plan involves robbing a bank that’s temporarily housed in a mobile home, so Ballantine arrives at an audacious method—hook the mobile home to a truck, cart it away to a safe location, and crack the bank’s vault later.

Even though the movie is very brief (83 minutes), Bank Shot includes a string of goofy running gangs, like the trope of Ballantine dosing himself with saltpeter in order to resist the advances of Cassidy’s character, lest he get distracted from his task. (Cassidy, playing one of her earliest major film roles, enlivens the picture with her carefree spirit and throaty laugh.) The picture is handsomely shot and quickly paced, though it slows down, appropriately, during moments displaying the thieves’ careful technique; watch for the bit when an explosives man gets more and more frustrated each time a charge proves insufficient for blowing a safe open. Bank Shot gets very cartoonish toward the end, with Streiger and his men chasing after a runaway mobile home—c’mon, you knew that was going to happen—but the charm of the main performances and the cheerful unpretentiousness of the whole enterprise compensate for a lot of rough edges.

Bank Shot: GROOVY

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Prime Time (1978)

The creators of this atrocious comedy strung together a group of lame sketches under the premise that some unknown anarchistic force hijacked the American airwaves in order to beam subversive content into the nation’s boob tubes. The level of humor here is indicated by an ad for a Candid Camera-type gotcha show called The Shitheads, in which unsuspecting participants have buckets of excrement dropped onto their noggins. If that doesn’t sufficiently warn you away from investigating Prime Time, consider the ad for “Stay Down,” an aerosol erection suppressant with the unfortunate side effect of uncontrollable flatulence. Every so often, the movie triggers a reaction with its audacity. The best-executed sketch is probably the celebrity sports show in which two hunters (one of whom is played by Warren Oates!) climb to the top of the tower on the University of Texas campus in Austin, then open fire for “The Charles Whitman Invitational,” named after the crazed sniper who killed 16 people from that tower in 1966. The filmmakers include a few brief interstitial bits of things like government officials trying to stop the pirate broadcast, but the movie rises and falls on the quality of the gags, and the gags are consistently juvenile, obvious, and unfunny, with homophobic and racist overtones thrown in for good measure. Even appearances by familiar faces—among them Joanna Cassidy, Fred Dryer, Kinky Friedman, Dick O’Neill, and Harry Shearer—aren’t enough to generate interest. The Groove Tube (1974), Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), and even the deranged Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video (1979) did this sort of thing so much better.

Prime Time: SQUARE

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Outfit (1973)

An action thriller with an effectively unvarnished style, The Outfit presents a believably grim portrayal of life among professional criminals. The picture also features a tasty cast—led by Robert Duvall, in one of his first star turns after achieving notoriety with The Godfather (1972)—plus contributions from a pair of top action specialists, composer Jerry Fielding and cinematographer Bruce Surtees. Orchestrating the onscreen violence is writer-director John Flynn, arguably best known for helming a subsequent tough-guy flick, Rolling Thunder (1977). If dwelling on peripheral information suggests that trivia pertaining to The Outfit is more interesting than the movie itself, that’s somewhat true. While the movie is not without its pulpy merits, the content and vibe are so perfunctory that The Outfit fails to leave much of an impression (unless you’re Quentin Tarantino, who devoted an entire obsessive chapter in Cinema Speculation to this flick).

Based on a novel by bestselling crime guy Donald E. Westlake (via his Point Blank alias Richard Stark). The Outfit stars Duvall stars as Macklin, a small-time hood who once helped rob a bank controlled by Mobsters. In the aftermath of the crime, Macklin ended up in jail and his brother, who participated in the robbery, ended up dead. That’s why Macklin and the third robber, Cody (Joe Don Baker), embark on a campaign to rip off Mob-controlled operations until they compel the Mob into paying them off. Unsurprisingly, the Mob—personified by big boss Mailer (Robert Ryan)—doesn’t like the idea of caving to blackmailers, so a war ensues, with Macklin and Cody alternating between raiding Mob establishments and engaging in shootouts with enforcers. Caught up in the action is Macklin’s companion, Bett (Karen Black), who occasionally serves as an accomplice.

Although The Outfit neither presents a discernible theme nor transcends its genre limitations, the picture accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. The shadowy look of the movie suits the frontier-justice milieu. Some flourishes are intense, as when Duvall’s character shoots a thug’s hand to demonstrate dominance. Regarding the actors, second lead Baker’s country-fried blend of charm and menace lends helpful dynamism given how extremely Duvall underplays his role; laconic Hollywood vet Ryan gives one of his characteristically seething late-career performances as the main villain (his main scene with Duvall is a highlight); future Blade Runner costar Joanna Cassidy turns up in her first significant role, playing Ryan’s irritable arm candy; and Richard Jaeckel, Bill McKinney, and Sheree North add verve to small roles.

The Outfit: FUNKY