Fear Is the Key (Michael Tuchner, 1972)

Cast: Barry Newman, Suzy Kendall, John Vernon, Dolph Sweet, Ben Kingsley, Ray McAnally, Peter Marinker, Elliott Sullivan. Screenplay: Robert Carrington, based on a novel by Alistair MacLean. Cinematography: Alex Thomson. Production design: Syd Cain, Maurice Carter. Film editing: Ray Lovejoy. Music: Roy Budd. 

Fear Is the Key is a somewhat preposterous thriller that begins well with the protagonist resisting arrest and arraignment and leading law enforcement on a car chase through the Louisiana bayous and backroads. And it ends well with a scene of high suspense in a bathyscaphe under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But what comes in between is often muddled and hard to follow, with too much exposition crammed into too tight a space. Barry Newman plays John Talbot, an underwater salvage expert who winds up working for some crooks in the employ of a wealthy oil company executive, trying to retrieve a fabulous fortune from the undersea wreckage of an airplane. For much of the film, it looks like a case of bad guys vs. worse guys: Talbot as we see him is a stone-cold killer, who guns down a deputy in the courtroom where he's being arraigned, kidnaps a woman in the courtroom, and takes her along on the aforementioned high-speed chase, driving a stolen car. But then there's a twist in mid-film, one that necessitates Talbot doing a lot of gabbled explanation to the terrified hostage, Sarah Ruthven (Suzy Kendall), who turns out to be the oilman's daughter. Well, if she can believe him after he's put her life in serious danger speeding through the backwoods, why can't we? John Vernon is the chief villain, and his sinister sidekick is played by Ben Kingsley in his film debut; he looks a little confused about what he's being asked to do. This is one of those movies to ride along with and not think about much while you're doing it or afterward. 

Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev, 1974)

Anna Prucnal in Sweet Movie

Miss Monde 1984/Miss Canada: Carole Laure
Potemkin Sailor: Pierre Clémenti
Capt. Anna Planeta: Anna Prucnal
El Macho: Sami Frey
Mrs. Abplanalpe: Jane Mallett
Jeremiah Muscle: Roy Callender
Mr. Kapital: John Vernon
Mama Communa: Marpessa Dawn

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: France Gallagher, Dusan Makavejev, Martin Malina
Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme
Production design: Jocelyn Joly
Film editing: Yann Dedet
Music: Manos Hatzidakis

In the 1933 decision that lifted the ban in the United States on James Joyce's Ulysses, Judge John M. Woolsey dismissed the charges of obscenity, though he found that "in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic." I've never found anything to be "emetic" in Ulysses, certainly not on the level of some of the more queasy moments in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie, which exploits every orifice known to be possessed by human beings, especially in the orgiastic scenes featuring Otto Muehl's commune. As for obscenity, that lies in the eye of the beholder. To my mind, Sweet Movie dallies on the brink of it in the scene in which Anna Prucnal's Captain Anna, scantily clad to say the least, makes what appear to be sexual come-ons to a group of boys aboard her boat called Survival. At moments like this I snap out of the trance of make-believe into which art lures us, and into a realization that the boys in the scene are pre-pubescent actors. There's a layer of child sexual abuse in staging such a scene that I can't quite rise above. Beyond that, however, Sweet Movie does precisely what Makavejev wants it to: It surprises, startles, shocks, overturning most of our expectations of what a movie can and/or should show us. It's valuable for that reason alone. Whether it illuminates or provokes thought in its even-handed assault on both capitalism and communism is another question. It has begun to feel dated, as many avant-garde satires tend to do. But it's also done with a great deal of verve and chutzpah, which never really grow old.     

Animal House (John Landis, 1978)

Tom Hulce in Animal House

John "Bluto" Blutarsky: John Belushi
Eric "Otter" Stratton: Tim Matheson
Donald "Boon" Schoenstein: Peter Riegert
Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger: Tom Hulce
Kent "Flounder" Dorfman: Stephen Furst
Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day: Bruce McGill
Chip Diller: Kevin Bacon
Dean Vernon Wormer: John Vernon
Marion Wormer: Verna Bloom
Prof. Dave Jennings: Donald Sutherland
Katy: Karen Allen
Clorette DePasto: Sarah Holcomb
Mayor Carmine DePasto: Cesare Danova

Director: John Landis
Screenplay: Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller
Cinematography: Charles Correll
Art direction: John J. Lloyd
Film editing: George Folsey Jr.
Music: Elmer Bernstein

The granddaddy of gross-out comedies, Animal House has a certain innocence to it 40 years later. For one thing, it goes lightly on the gross-outs, the most famous one being Bluto's zit joke. We don't even get to see Flounder throw up on Dean Wormer. For another, without their familiar lined faces and grayed, thinning hair, such veteran actors as Peter Riegert, Tom Hulce, and Kevin Bacon look almost naked. The film has maintained its reputation, even being inducted into the National Film Registry in 2001. There are things in it, however, that wouldn't pass muster today, including the blatant objectification of the young women, especially in the scene in which Bluto spies on them undressing. And would any reputable filmmaker today dare to include the scene in which Pinto debates whether to rape the unconscious Clorette, abetted by a roguish devil and a prissy-voiced angel? There are touches of unchecked homophobia throughout.  John Landis's direction, too, sometimes seems a bit stiff-limbed, as if waiting for the audience to laugh before proceeding with the next line. There are flashes of wit in the screenplay, as when Bluto refers to the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, and Boon tells Otter, "Forget it, he's rolling." But many of the sight gags, such as the climactic assault on the homecoming parade, weren't worked out enough in advance, the exception being the marching band that gets led into a blind alley and then can't extricate itself. Still there's a fine energy to the performances, and even Dean Wormer gets to make a good point: "Fat, drunk, and stupid" really "is no way to go through life." But mostly the film is a strong reminder of what we lost with the early death of John Belushi -- and, more recently, of Stephen Furst.

Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock, 1969)

John Vernon and Karin Dor in Topaz

Andre Devereaux: Frederick Stafford
Michael Nordstrom: John Forsythe
Nicole Devereaux: Dany Robin
Rico Parra: John Vernon
Juanita de Cordoba: Karin Dor
Jacques Granville: Michel Piccoli
Henri Jarré: Philippe Noiret
Michele Picard: Claude Jade
François Picard: Michel Subor
Boris Kusenov: Per-Axel Arosenius
Philippe Dubois: Roscoe Lee Browne

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Samuel A. Taylor
Based on the novel by Leon Uris
Cinematography: Jack Hildyard
Music: Maurice Jarre

There's one Hitchcockian touch, almost the only one, in Topaz, that's become known as "the purple dress scene": As a woman, shot at close range, collapses to the floor, the skirts of her dress spread out around her like blood. It's a striking effect, but also a distractingly showoffy one in a film that is remarkably free of other such irruptions of style. Topaz may not be the worst film Alfred Hitchcock made -- there are some strong contenders in his early silents as well as in some of his other late films -- but it's certainly one of the dullest. There are four sections that cry out for some of the Hitchcock wit to make them more tense and entertaining: In the opening sequence, we watch as a highly placed official in the KGB defects to the West, along with his wife and daughter; then the French agent Andre Devereaux is tasked with retrieving a crucial document from a Cuban officer residing in a Harlem hotel during the opening of the United Nations; next, Devereaux goes to Havana to obtain further information about Russian missiles in Cuba (the film is set in October 1962); and finally, Devereaux is charged with unmasking the high-ranking French intelligent agents, whose code name is Topaz, who are selling secrets to the Soviets. Staging all of these sequences should have been child's play to the director whose mastery of the spy thriller was well-established in such films as Notorious (1946) and North by Northwest (1959), but each of them somehow fizzles into overextended business without real suspense. Part of the problem seems to be that Hitchcock was working without a finished script: After Leon Uris's attempt to adapt his novel was rejected, Hitchcock turned at the last minute to Samuel A. Taylor, who had written the screenplay for Vertigo (1958). Whatever you may think of Vertigo, the strengths of that film are not in its screenplay, and Taylor, working under intense deadline pressure, was unable to come up with a script that successfully ties together the four big sequences of Topaz. The frustration and ennui that Hitchcock felt with the situation is palpable. The ending was reshot several times, the first time after a preview audience rejected the notion of a duel between Devereaux and the Topaz agent Henri Jarré that took place in a soccer stadium, the second after audiences were confused by a scene in which Jarré manages to escape to the Soviet Union. The final version, in which Jarré commits suicide off-screen, lands with a thud, partly because Philippe Noiret, who played Jarré, was unavailable for the filming, so that we see only the exterior of his house and hear the sound of a gunshot. More interesting stars than Frederick Stafford and John Forsythe would have helped the film, but most of the blame for the dullness of Topaz has to be given to Hitchcock.

Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)

Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin in Point Blank

Walker: Lee Marvin
Chris: Angie Dickinson
Mal Reese: John Vernon
Lynne: Sharon Acker
Yost: Keenan Wynn
Brewster: Carroll O'Connor
Frederick Carter: Lloyd Bochner
Stegman: Michael Strong
Hit Man: James Sikking

Director: John Boorman
Screenplay: Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse, Rafe Newhouse
Based on a novel by Donald E. Westlake (as Richard Stark)
Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop
Art direction: Albert Brenner, George W. Davis
Music: Johnny Mandel
Film editing: Henry Berman

Stoner noir. With its non-linear storytelling and audaciously post-realist tricks of style, Point Blank clearly shows the influence of the great French and Italian filmmakers of the 1960s, but even though its director was a Brit whose only previous non-documentary film was Having a Wild Weekend (1965), an attempt to do for the Dave Clark Five what A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1963) did for the Beatles, it's unquestionably an American movie. Its loner antihero, Walker, is straight out of American Westerns, and the two cities it shifts between, San Francisco and Los Angeles, are the American final frontier. That any studio, let alone MGM, would allow John Boorman and Lee Marvin to make Point Blank what it is -- an eccentric spin on a familiar genre -- shows how the Hollywood studio system had imploded. It's a film full of outrageous moments: Walker bursting into Lynne's apartment and emptying his revolver into an unoccupied bed. Walker fastening his seat belt -- in the days before shoulder belts and mandated buckling up -- and embarking on a one-car demolition derby with Stegman in the passenger seat. Walker dumping a naked Reese from a penthouse balcony. Chris pummeling an immovable Walker with her purse and her fists before collapsing in exhaustion. It has showoffy tricks: The pock pock pock pock of Walker's heels as he strides down an airport corridor, a sound that's carried over even after he's left the hallway. The often psychedelic color effects, like Chris's day-glo wardrobe or the closeup of the multicolored perfumes in the bottles that have shattered in the bathtub after Walker swept them from the shelves. Its plot stretches credibility to the breaking point: How did Walker survive being shot at, yes, point blank range and then get away from Alcatraz? This alone has served as the focus of countless attempts at interpretation: Is Walker a ghost? Or is what happens after he's shot the revenge fantasy of a dying man? In short, Point Blank is a glorious mess, made into an enduring work of fascination and puzzlement by wonderful performances, particularly by Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson. Is it a great film or just an enduring cult movie? I tend to the latter view, but it's bloody fun in either case.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies