The Enforcer (1976, James Fargo)

Spoiler alert: these reviews reveal plot twists.

Story: A criminal group calling themselves the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force terrorise San Francisco. Inspector Harry Callahan is assigned to the case… with a new female partner…

Harry Callahan: As this is the third film in the series, the vast majority of viewers will know Harry’s personality and abilities by now. Nevertheless the character’s no-bullshit approach is reestablished in an early sequence that sees him called to a hostage situation. Crooks are holding up members of the public in a San Francisco shop and demand a car from the watching police. So Harry gives them one… by driving it through the shop window. He then subdues the gang – in one case, by shooting a guy up the arse as he climbs some stairs.

That gag is not the only way The Enforcer deliberately tries to undercut the humourless, hard-man image of Harry Callahan. Star Clint Eastwood has often subverted or critiqued his on-screen persona, and you detect some of that playfulness later on when Harry is searching for a member of a different crime gang. To get some information, he poses as a naive John in a massage parlour (Tiffany’s Massage & Sauna, ‘Men & women, open daily’). With all the talk of being instructed in 32 positions of lovemaking for $75, and Harry pretending to be a dopey guy looking to get laid, it’s a comedic set of scenes that you can’t imagine fitting into the first Dirty Harry. But it does point towards the less-serious films in the actor’s future, such as 1978’s Every Which Way But Loose.

Clint Eastwood: Speaking of comedy, since the second Dirty Harry film, Eastwood had starred in the lighthearted crime movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (directed by Magnum Force writer Michael Cimino). He’d also produced, directed and appeared in the action flick The Eiger Sanction and the western The Outlaw Josey Wales. Eastwood only started calling the shots on Josey Wales during production, after falling out with and then firing the original director, Philip Kaufman. This decision had two big consequences. The furore led to a new union rule that prohibited stars or producers from dismissing directors and taking over themselves. And the extra time Eastwood now needed to spend on the western clashed with the pre-production period for The Enforcer. He had initially hoped to direct what was then planned as the final Dirty Harry, but instead he gave the job to his long-time assistant James Fargo.

Villains:
* The Enforcer’s antagonists are a ramshackle crime gang calling themselves the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force. An uneasy mix of idealistic hippies (‘This for the people!’), Vietnam vets and cynical crooks who just ‘want the bread’, they set in motion a campaign of terror. After stealing some weapons, they demand millions of dollars of ransom from the city authorities. Their leader is Bobby Maxwell (DeVeren Bookwalter), a man with a temper and a psychotic look in his eye. Other members include Miki Waleska (Jocelyn Jones), a Jodie Foster type who features prominently in the movie’s striking opening sequence, and the flower-power Wanda (Samantha Doane). There’s also Henry Lee Caldwell (Tim Burrus), a defector from a more pacifist group, who Harry spots planting a bomb at SFPD HQ. Caldwell conveniently waits around after the explosion, all the better for a resulting foot-chase. Backed by some Blaxploitation wah-wah music, Harry pursues him across the city in a sequence that plays fast and loose with real San Fran geography. (At one point, Caldwell also falls through a skylight into a porn set: another instance of The Enforcer adding in some oddball humour.) Eventually the group kidnaps the mayor, leading to an action finale at the deserted island prison of Alcatraz…

Other notable characters:
* Harry’s cop colleague Frank DiGiorgio (John Mitchum) is back for his third and final appearance in the series. Frank is actually Harry’s partner as the story begins, but is mortally wounded when he stumbles across the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force breaking into a warehouse. He survives just long enough to tell Harry some key plot information in the hospital.
* Harry has a new boss: Captain Jerome McKay (Bradford Dillman), who is furious with the $14,379 worth of damage caused when Harry dealt with the hostage-takers. Three of the hostages are also threatening to sue to city for emotional turmoil. Harry is frustrated because he’d been asked by McKay to clean up the streets: ‘What did you want me to do?’ Yell trick-or-treat at them?!’ The captain responds by transferring Harry to the SFPD’s personnel department, working on vetting new detectives. ‘That’s for assholes!’ complains Harry… leading McKay to point out that he worked there for 10 years.
* The hassled but sympathetic Lieutenant Al Bresser (Harry Guardino) returns from the original Dirty Harry.
* Ms Gray (Jan Stratton) is a stuffy woman from the mayor’s office and sits in on the recruitment panel run by the SFPD personnel department. Her aim is to make sure that the force hires more women, but she is soon offended by Harry’s brazen and brusque behaviour when they’re interviewing a new candidate.
* The new candidate in question is Officer Kate Moore, played by Tyne Daly. Moore has been in the police for nine years, but always stuck in admin roles; she now wants to be a detective. Harry calls her on her inexperience – she’s never even made an arrest – but is grudgingly respectful of her knowledge and book-smarts. He’s then taken aback when she’s appointed as his new partner after DiGiorgio’s death… The plot is deliberately casting Harry as the old-fashioned sexist (‘Look, she wants to play lumberjack, she’ll have to handle her end of the log’) and Moore as the fresh young feminist (she even playfully challenges her new colleague on his phallic handgun), and it’s while a familiar story the actors make it work. Clint Eastwood had pushed for Daly’s casting, having been impressed by her performance in a TV movie-of-the-week. Daly turned the role down more than once, unsure about the character’s agency, but she’s the best thing in the film. She later, of course, played another tough cop: Mary Beth Lacey in 80s TV show Cagney & Lacy.
* Father John (MG Kelly) seems at first to be an innocent bystander – a young priest who is angry that Harry has chased a suspect into his church and is rough-arming him. ‘I think you’re a disgrace to this city!’ says John. However, Harry later twigs that the suspect didn’t run into the church randomly: Father John is part of the criminal gang.
* The mayor is played by John Crawford. The gang kidnap him after a San Francisco Giants baseball game by arranging to have a bascule bridge raised, which will block the road and hold up his official car. (Shades of James Bond film A View to a Kill, in which a similar bridge in the same city features in a car chase. Coincidentally, Bond is name-checked during this sequence.) The terrorists hold him hostage on the deserted prison island of Alcatraz – a location that Clint Eastwood would return to three years later, for prison-break drama Escape from Alcatraz. (There must have been a recent election in the fictional world of Dirty Harry, because there’s been a change of mayoralty since 1971. In reality, the mayor of San Francisco in 1976 was George Moscone, who’d replaced his fellow Democrat Joseph Alioto in January. San Fran hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1964.)

Albert Popwell: Albert gets his biggest role yet in this series – and his most complex. After appearing as a robber (Dirty Harry) and a pimp (Magnum Force), he now plays Big Ed Mustapha, an unflappable, self-possessed man in a kaftan who runs a black protest group from his office behind a barbers in the Fillmore District. Ed agrees to talk to Harry when the latter comes asking for information – much to the irritation of his hot-headed hangers-on, who tell Harry he’s as welcome as ‘a turd in a swimming pool’ and try to sexually intimidate Moore. Ed’s office is full of knickknacks purloined from hotels, which gives Harry leverage in getting Ed to spill the beans on his ex-compatriot Caldwell… The character is clearly meant to remind viewers of the then-topical Black Panther movement (as had the black bank robbers in the 1971 film, Quentin Tarantino has argued) so we’re primed to assume he’s a dangerous villain. But Ed is actually anti-violence and acts as an uneasy ally for Harry. He admits he knows Caldwell, the bomber who struck the police station, saying he’s ‘gone white’ by defecting to the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force.

Music: The Enforcer is the only Dirty Harry film not scored by Lalo Schifrin, who was so busy in the mid 1970s that the duties were passed to his friend Jerry Fielding. Fielding had just worked with Eastwood on The Outlaw Josey Wales; otherwise his career was most notable for his collaborations with Sam Peckinpah. His music here is chintzier and more unironically strident than Schifrin’s work on the first two films. Whereas the scores in Dirty Harry and Magnum Force had felt cool and confident, The Enforcer’s is closer to a TV cop show – the kind of stoic, humourless themes that were later parodied in comedy series Police Squad. The pop-jazz backing sometimes edges towards lounge music.

Key moments: The movie’s opening scene owes a lot to Sergio Leone, the Italian film director who had given Clint Eastwood his first leading roles in the movies. In this prologue to the main action, a young blonde woman in a pair of Daisy Dukes – later revealed to be People’s Revolutionary Strike Force member Miki – pretends to hitchhike on an isolated road above San Francisco. She tells the first driver who stops to buzz off then zeroes in on two guys who work for Western Gas & Electric. Flirting with them, she bags a lift and sits provocatively on the dashboard of their van as they drive her to her destination.

Leading them to a deserted house on a bluff, the woman lets the fella assume she’s up for some fun… But then a compatriot of hers appears. He’s an obscure figure in the far distance… until we see some very Leone-like close-ups of his dangerously violent eyes. He creeps up on the older van driver and stabs him to death, while the other gas-company man is killed by a savage shotgun blast. It was the van they wanted. The guys were just collateral damage.

These two acts of brutality are all the more chilling because the film doesn’t linger. Like in a Sergio Leone western, it’s the build-up to the violence that contains the interest; the act itself is over in a flash. The widescreen frame is used brilliantly to create tension and dread – almost like in a horror film – and there’s great use of the then-unusual dynamic of the female character having the power.

Review: The Enforcer was a conflation of two separate sequel scripts – one about Harry getting a female partner by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night); and one about Harry tackling a terrorist group, which was an on-spec submission passed to Eastwood via the manager of a restaurant he owned in California. Dirty Harry writer Dean Riesner was later brought in to polish the Frankenstein draft into a final shooting script.

The result sometimes feels more like a TV show than a movie – in terms of both its material and its ambition (and mentioned above, its music). Several talky scenes take place in bland and staid rooms, for example, and the explosion at the police station is especially low-rent, being dramatised by a sound effect and some distressed sets. Some of the smaller roles are not cast as tightly as you’d hope, and the threat of the People’s Revolutionary Strike Force has neither the dramatic intrigue nor the political weight of the series’s previous antagonists.

But that’s not to say the movie fails as a piece of entertainment. It doesn’t. Despite its flaws, The Enforcer is enjoyable and tautly structured (the film is noticeably shorter than the previous pair). In Officer Kate Moore it also has the most fascinating character so far in the series.

At its heart, The Enforcer is a story about everyday sexism. Moore is belittled, patronised and sidelined; her costume is impractical – a skirt, a handbag – and she finds an autopsy queasy. The political brass also use her in a publicity stunt, without her consent and when she doesn’t deserve the credit she’s being given. But the smartness of the filmmaking is to present all this stuff in dynamic ways… and to cast an actor as good as Tyne Daly.

Daly is the highlight of the whole enterprise. Her performance has energy, integrity, charm and a sly wit. She’s also not averse to a bit of comedy, such as a moment – improvised on set – when Harry has to yank her out of the way of a bazooka’s backfire. While some may read that gag the way Harry does, as the experienced, capable man having to save the naive, dumb women, the movie is actually doing something more clever. The whole point is that Moore is a real person. She’s *not* the kind of all-powerful, perfect, unshakeable female character that Hollywood loves today – those often played by irony-free people like Gal Gadot. Moore makes mistakes and doesn’t know things because she’s inexperienced… and yet she’s still very good at her job and deserves her position. She *earns* her worth and shows her strength, despite all the barriers, rather than a film just telling us she’s strong. And that makes her a much more interesting, sympathetic, identifiable character.

Seven seven-point suppositories out of 10

Next: Sudden Impact

Stay Hungry (1976, Bob Rafelson)

For this film-by-film look at the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’ve been watching his movies in a random order and jotting down a few thoughts. The Schwarzenegger Says quotations are taken from Total Recall (2012), Arnie’s brilliantly bonkers autobiography.

Watched: 25 September 2020
Format: Amazon Prime Video
Seen before? No.

Review: Rich but directionless, Craig Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a young man wasting his life. He works as a middleman for a company that buys up property for redevelopment, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s then faced with a dilemma when he’s instructed to purchase a gymnasium in Birmingham, Alabama called Olympic Spa.

As he gets to know its owner and staff, he grows to like them – especially the spirited receptionist Mary Tate (Sally Field) and its most famous client, bodybuilder Joe ‘Mr Austria’ Santo (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is currently training for an upcoming Mr Universe contest. Life at the gym seems much more vibrant and exciting to Craig than his WASPy social scene. He starts to train with Joe and seduce Mary Tate, and he can’t bring himself to con owner Thor (RG Armstrong) out of his business.

Schwarzenegger’s performance in Stay Hungry actually won him a big award – a Golden Globe for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture, Male (even though this was his third feature film). While this now seems rather surprising, he does make a decent stab at the eccentric Joe Santo, a gleeful, carefree man who enjoys dressing up as Batman. There are plenty of stronger performances elsewhere, not least from Bridges and Field, but at least Arnie is suited to the role.

A touch too laid-back and idiosyncratic for its own good, Stay Hungry tells a simple story of a man discovering a zest for life from a new set of friends. There’s a bit of comedy here and there – some darkness too – as well as the surreal imagery of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the violinist in a bluegrass musical act.

Schwarzenegger Says: ‘I was grateful to [Sally Field] and Jeff Bridges for helping me learn… I invited other cast members to critique my acting, and I made Jeff promise to tell me what he really thought. At first it was hard not to take criticisms personally. But [director Bob] Rafelson had warned me that changing careers would be tough. In this world, I wasn’t number one in the universe; I was just another aspiring actor. He was right. I had to surrender my pride and tell myself, “Okay, you’re starting again. You’re nothing here. You’re just a beginner. You’re just a little punk around these other actors.”‘

Six important bodies out of 10

Next: Liberty’s Kids: Valley Forge & James Armistead

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976, Blake Edwards)

Spoiler warning: These reviews reveal plot details

Driven insane by the ineptitude of his colleague, police chief Dreyfus forms a plan to have Jacques Clouseau killed…

Burt Kwouk, who played the valet Cato in the Pink Panther series, once joked that he had trouble telling the movies apart. To him, they felt like one 12-hour film that took 20 years to make. While this is understandable from his point of view – The Pink Panther Strikes Again is Cato’s third consecutive appearance in which he goes through the exact same gags – the notion doesn’t really hold true for us viewers.

The present film, rushed into production thanks to the financial success of its immediate predecessor, is so far removed from the early PP films that it’s essentially a different genre. By 1976, the humour used in the series had become childlike and outrageous; this is a film built on implausible slapstick, dangerous-looking stunts, and the kind of comic-book villain later satirised by Austin Powers. We’ve come a long way since the first film‘s relatively low-key Raffles knock-off.

Another change is that this plot does not concern a thief or a gang of thieves. Instead, the storyline is motored by the psychosis of a recurring character. Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom again) has been getting increasingly unhinged as each film goes by, pushed to the limits of his patience and sanity by the erratic behaviour of Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers). In both A Shot in the Dark and The Return of the Pink Panther Dreyfus actually *killed people* while in crazed frenzies but somehow kept his job!

As this story begins, he’s completing a recuperative stay at a psychiatric hospital. However, a chaotic encounter with Clouseau then tips him over the edge into madness and Dreyfus resolves to murder his irritating colleague. Seemingly overnight, the police chief becomes the kind of outlandish bad guy that was dominating the James Bond series in the 1970s: he has lots of underlings and a baroque base of operations and is somehow extremely well-funded. He kidnaps a scientist and blackmails him into building a doomsday weapon that can obliterate entire cities…

Meanwhile, the film’s guest cast is largely cherry-picked from contemporary British TV shows. As well as Michael Robbins from On the Buses and Leonard Rossiter from Rising Damp, there’s both Lesley-Anne Down and Patsy Smart from Upstairs, Downstairs. Lesley-Anne Down, as a sexy Russian secret agent called Olga Bariosova, was actually a recasting after Bond girl Maud Adams balked at a nude scene. When she left mid-production, Edwards wanted to replace her with ‘the young girl from Upstairs, Downstairs’. The rumour is that he actually meant Nicola Pagett, who had played Elizabeth in the ITV period drama, but there was a mix-up and he ended up with the actress who played Georgina.

If true, this confusion would not be out of keeping with the general tone of The Pink Panther Strikes Again. It’s all incredibly sketchy stuff and has the feel of being bodged together without too much thought. This film more or less abandons true storytelling in favour of puerile comedy and scenes of Peter Sellers let loose. As well as giving a rather self-centred performance, the star was reportedly unhappy with the finished film. He’s not the only one.

Five parallel bars out of 10

Next time: Revenge of the Pink Panther

Rocky (1976, John G Avildsen)

A series of reviews looking at Sylvester Stallone’s two most famous characters, Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, film by film…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal plot twists.

Small-time boxer Rocky Balboa is offered the chance to take on the world champion…

What does Stallone do? Wanting to give his career a kick-start, struggling actor Sylvester Stallone wrote a script inspired by a no-hoper boxer who nearly lasted the distance with Muhammad Ali in March 1975. Selling the project to United Artists, he insisted that he play the lead role himself and this was the start of Stallone the movie star. Nevertheless, his persona in this film is quieter and far more downtrodden than he later became; it’s actually a decent job of acting. Rocky Balboa (aka the Italian Stallion) is a young guy from Philadelphia, scraping a living from fighting in poorly paid boxing bouts and carrying out strongarm work for a puffed-up gangster. Crucially, he’s not an out-and-out crook – early on, we see him defy his boss and *not* break someone’s thumb. We also feel for Rocky when he’s given just $40 for a bruising fight or when he loses his locker at the local gym or when he sweetly flirts with a woman he fancies. He’s a nice guy, if rough round the edges. The character is then offered the chance of a lifetime: to fight the world heavyweight champion in a title bout. (Unbeknownst to Rocky, the champ has picked him from obscurity simply because he likes his nickname.)

Other main characters:
* Rocky’s love interest, Adrianna ‘Adrian’ Pennino, is played by Talia Shire (then most notable for her role in The Godfather series). When we meet her, she’s a meek, nervous, glasses-wearing singleton in a cardi who works at a pet shop. Rocky flirts with her and their slow-burn, underplayed romance takes up a big section of the movie’s middle third.
* Mickey Goldmill (Burgess Meredith) runs Rocky’s local gym and has a 50-year career in boxing. He’s rude and mean towards Rocky – but we eventually realise it’s down to frustration. Mickey thinks Rocky has the talent to be successful but wastes his time working for a loan shark. When Rocky is offered a chance to fight the world champion, the gravelly-voiced and lopsided-faced Mickey offers to be his manager/trainer. He’s one of the great mentors in cinema, and Meredith brings plenty of soul to the part.
* Paulie Pennino (Burt Young) is Rocky’s pal and Adrian’s brother. A drunk and a dullard, he tries matchmaking Rocky with Adrian because she’s nearly 30 and he worries about her ending up alone.
* World heavyweight boxing champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) – a charismatic, verbose character fairly obviously based on Muhammad Ali – is preparing for a boxing bout to celebrate America’s bicentennial. But his opponent pulls out due to injury, so Apollo hits upon the PR-friendly idea of taking on a local unknown instead. Weathers is terrific, taking a thinly written character who doesn’t get much screentime and giving him so much pizzazz.

Key scene: The title bout, as Rocky goes 15 rounds with Apollo. There’s a remorseless volley of punches, sweat flying everywhere, the macabre moment when Rocky needs to have his bruised eyelid sliced open, and the euphoric ending that pulls an amazing trick of giving our lead character an emotional win despite him losing the fight on points. After the final bell, as Rocky calls out for his girlfriend – ‘Adrian! Adrian!’ – he doesn’t even listen to the result being announced. It was never about winning. Creed was just too good. It was about *not falling down*.

Review: At the Academy Awards ceremony on 28 March 1977, Rocky beat All the President’s Men, Network and Taxi Driver to the Best Picture Oscar – that’s some company, and to be honest it’s difficult to argue that the conventional Rocky deserved the win. The narrative structure of a lowly hero who overcomes obstacles is as old as the hills and has a familiar Hollywood chime. But perhaps what appealed to the Academy voters the most was the grimy, cynical sense of realism. This story takes place in a cold, inner-city, working-class world of litter-strewn streets and flaking wallpaper and money problems. It’s shot in real locations and is not lit very prettily. Aside from the pointedly flashy Carl Weathers, the film is also stocked with characterful and ‘unattractive’ faces. All this makes the slightly implausible story – an unknown being given a shot at the big time – feel like something that could actually happen, while the script and Stallone’s unshowy performance really make you root for Rocky. Then once we enter the training scenes and especially the climactic bout, Bill Conti’s incidental music becomes more and more stirring and rousing and anthemic and you’re throwing and ducking every punch. It’s melodramatic, but you can’t take your eyes off it.

Eight raw eggs out of 10

Next time: Rocky II

Family Plot (1976)

An occasional series where I review a randomly selected movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock…

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal plot twists.

When two con artists try to track down a missing heir, they come into contact with a pair of kidnappers…

Alfred Hitchcock’s last film, released when he was 76 years old, is a comedy thriller. Neither taking itself too seriously nor ever becoming too silly, it’s an entertaining couple of hours.  A lot of the enjoyment comes from watching omnisciently as two seemingly separate storylines slowly start to intertwine.

As we start, fake psychic Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is conning an elderly woman (Cathleen Nesbitt) with a cod séance routine. When the OAP mentions a long-lost nephew who would inherit a fortune, Blanche and boyfriend George offer to find him for a fee of $10,000. Meanwhile, another pair of criminals – Fran (played by the top-billed Karen Black) and her boyfriend, Arthur (William Devane) – are kidnapping VIPs and ransoming them for jewels.

The two sets of characters literally cross paths early on, when George nearly runs Fran over, but are otherwise discrete until the 45-minute mark… George has been following clues like a detective, trying to find the long-missing nephew. He talks to someone who knew him, then we see this old friend show up at Arthur’s office to tell him people are looking for him. That’s right: Arthur is the heir, but because he’s also a criminal he assumes Blanche and George asking questions about him must be bad news. The cat and mouse game is on.

Alfred Hitchcock was born just four years after the Lumière brothers invented the medium of cinema, and had been a film director for half a century when he made Family Plot. But here’s a movie that’s startlingly of the 1970s: the fashions, of course, and the cars and the also the style of filmmaking. Or rather not *film*making. The master’s final movie is surprisingly televisual. It’s very talky. There are studio sets and California locations. To be honest, it often looks and feels uncannily like an episode of Columbo. Also, being his 70s and suffering from poor health, Hitch was unable to travel too far from the San Francisco production base so an action scene as a car with no brakes careers down a mountain road is done with second-unit POV shots, an under-cranked camera and some very unconvincing process shots of Dern and Harris in a studio.

But there’s still plenty to enjoy, not least the four central performances. Bruce Dern is a loose, pipe-smoking charmer (Al Pacino was considered for the role but was too expensive). William Devane is terrifically icy cool and sinister (they actually starting shooting with Roy Thinnes, but then he was ungraciously dumped when first choice Devane became available). Barbara Harris is adorable and funny. And Karen Black has real star quality (she’s also the focus of a self-aware gag from Hitch: when we first see her character, she’s a classic, enigmatic Hitchcock blonde… then she takes her wig off to reveal brunette hair).

There’s also a grandstanding cameo from Nicholas Colasanto (later Coach in sitcom Cheers) as a kidnap victim; Katherine Helmond (later Jessica in sitcom Soap) playing Basil Exposition and telling George the necessary plot information at just the right time; and decent incidental music by John Williams, then hot from Jaws (1975).

Eight silhouettes out of 10

 

 

The Wicker Man: The Different Cuts

SPOILER WARNING: These reviews reveal plot twists!

The version of The Wicker Man that came out in 1973 was not what the director intended. Around 12 minutes of footage had been removed from Robin Hardy’s movie on the orders of his superiors at production company British Lion. They feared that it was too difficult a film for a general audience and also wanted a shorter cut that could be released as a B-movie. Running at 87 minutes, The Wicker Man was first released as the support for Don’t Look Now in December.

Then, in 1976, Hardy decided to release his original version in America. But there was controversy when it became apparent that his 99-minute cut had been junked, as had all 368 cans of the raw footage from the late-1972 shoot. Some people, including the movie’s star Christopher Lee, saw this as a deliberate, petulant ploy on the part of British Lion. Less paranoid people concluded that the footage has simply been misplaced. (Archiving the rushes and assembly edits from an unsuccessful horror film was not standard practice in the 1970s.)

It was then recalled that a print of the longer version had been sent to independent film producer Roger Corman in LA when he’d been asked for advice on how to market the movie. Being a film geek, Corman had kept his copy – so it was now used for the basis of a rerelease in 1977. (Ironically, Hardy took the opportunity to take out a few scenes.)

I’ve already reviewed the 1973 version of The Wicker Man, so this is a look at the extra footage that’s contained in the original director’s cut. It’s not an extensive list of every difference; just a discussion of the interesting ones. Some of these moments were trimmed out for the 1977 release, but all three versions are now available on DVD/Blu-ray.

* Because any scenes that were cut out in 1973 are taken from Corman’s viewing print, the picture quality is not as strong.
* As originally released in 1973, The Wicker Man begins with policeman Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) arriving on the island of Summerisle. In the earlier director’s cut, however, that arrival is preceded by six minutes of storytelling… On the mainland, Howie chats to a colleague called McTaggart (John Hallam) and walks past some graffiti on a wall that reads ‘Jesus saves’. Howie agrees with the sentiment but still wants it removed. McTaggart then gently ridicules his superior after Howie asks how things are in the town: “Just the usual,” he replies. “Rape, sodomy, sacrilege.”
* Next, we see Howie attending and speaking at a church service (some footage of which was used in the theatrical cut as brief flashbacks). We get a closer look at his fiancée, Mary (Alison Hughes), while the minister is played by director Robin Hardy in a Hitchcock-style cameo.
* In the next scene, a postman (Tony Roper) delivers a letter to the police station and shares a joke with McTaggart about the uptight, prudish Howie. “Ah, poor old Mary,” says the postman. “When those two are married, she’ll spend more time on her knees in church than on her back in bed!” Howie then walks in on them laughing. The letter, of course, is the one telling Howie about the missing Rowan Morrison. He says he’ll visit the island of Summerisle and will be away overnight.
* We then cut to him flying to the island in his seaplane – ie, the opening scene of the theatrical version.
* The film’s first in-story song, The Landlord’s Daughter, has an extra verse in the longer cut. During it, the landlord (Lindsay Kemp) bangs the optics with a pair of spoons and we get a look at the musicians.
* Later in the same scene, after the landlord says that last year’s harvest-festival photo is missing because the frame broke, there’s an extra shot of him looking meaningfully at the space on the wall.
* A major bit of restructuring occurs now. In the longer cut of the film, Willow (Britt Ekland) doesn’t sing her sexy song at this point in the story. Instead, we see the musicians in the pub (including the film’s composer) singing a gentle, sensual folk song. Outside, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) appears under Willow’s bedroom window and introduces her to a boy called Ash Buchanan (Richard Wren). This is clearly a regular arrangement: Summerisle brings Willow young men for her to bed. Howie watches on bemused. Then Summerisle has a long speech about how he likes animals: “They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to ‘God.’” Later, Howie is trying to sleep but has to ignore the sound of Willow and Ash having sex.
* The next morning, Howie and Willow share a quick scene and he asks where the school is. In the theatrical version it was replaced by a scene (absent from the long cut) where Willow wakes Howie with a cup of tea and says, “I thought you were going to come and see me last night.” (Because, of course, in that version of the film she’s already tried tempting Howie into bed.)
* A scene that was cut out in 1973 shows Howie questioning the island’s unhelpful doctor (John Sharp). Howie has been told that the missing Rowan Morrison has died and asks the GP how. “She was burnt to death,” he says. “As my lunch will be if I continue here talking to you.”
* Willow’s siren song happens now – during Howie’s *second* night on the island. As well as being moved, a verse was trimmed out when the film was edited down in 1973.
* In the longer edit Howie’s frantic search of the island has a couple of moments that were missing in the theatrical cut: he looks in the hairdressers, then falls down someone’s stairs.

REVIEW: It may be sacrilege to say it, but the shorter, butchered version of The Wicker Man is a better film than the original director’s cut. The theatrical print is leaner, tauter, pacier and jumps straight into the story, whereas the longer version has scenes that you just don’t need. The opening, for example, is six minutes of hammering home Howie’s puritanical, uptight Christianity. But cutting it in 1973 didn’t damage the film because later scenes (and Edward Woodward’s excellent performance) sell the notion perfectly well and more economically. The other major difference between the cuts is the shifting of Willow’s song from the story’s second night to its first. Again, the enforced change helps the movie. Not only does it pull Britt Ekland’s nudity forward – this is, after all, an exploitation film – but it means we lose Summerisle’s original introduction. His first scene in the director’s cut is a rather naff and redundant scene where we spy him standing him outside Willow’s window. In the 1973 release print, he gets a much stronger first moment: Howie thinks he’s in an empty room in Summerisle’s mansion, then Christopher Lee appears from behind a high-backed chair.

Nine slugs out of 10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This website was incredibly helpful in providing information and context.

King Kong (1976, John Guillermin)

A cash-in sequel called Son of Kong followed within a year of the 1933 version of King Kong. The title character then appeared in two Japanese movies – King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) and King Kong Escapes (1967). However, this is a section-by-section review of the big-budget remake produced in 1976. Warning: there are spoilers ahead!

Surabaya, Indonesia: An oil company is funding an expedition to an obscure island, but as the ship takes on supplies a palaeontologist called Jack Prescott smuggles himself aboard…
* It’s clear straight away that this remake has decided on some significant changes. For a kick off, it’s contemporary so we’re in the mid-70s rather than the early 30s. We also start in Indonesia, so there’s no New York prologue. And the character who drives the story has been switched from a movie director to a greedy oil executive: Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin). One of his hangers-on is played by René Auberjonois, later the baddie in Police Academy 5 amongst other things.
* The heroic Jack, who’s the lead character in this version of the story, is played by a wild-haired Jeff Bridges.

On board the Petrox Explorer: The team travel to the island, which Wilson explains is uncharted and has never been seen. But a static fog bank and some satellite imagery mean land must be there…
* Prescott sneaks into a briefing and reveals himself with a blaze of information-heavy dialogue. (It reminds you of Quint in the town-meeting scene of Jaws… only not as good.) He suggests the fog bank might be hiding something dangerous, but Wilson just wants him locked up for trespassing.
* On his way to the temporary cell, however, Prescott spots a raft floating in the water. Its only occupant turns out to be an unconscious, beautiful, blonde woman in a flimsy cocktail dress. (Of all the rafts I’ve ever found in the middle of the ocean, not one of them has ever contained this.) The woman turns out to be Dwan (sic – she changed the spelling to be kooky), played by Jessica Lange. Before she wakes up, there’s a bit of comedy business as a crewman considers molesting her. There was a similar gag in Superman: The Movie. The 70s, eh?
* Once awake, Dwan gets over the drowning of all her friends very quickly and is soon flirting with Jack and others. Dwan is the equivalent of Ann Darrow from 1933, of course: both characters are actresses. Meryl Streep was in the running to play Dwan, but the producer didn’t think she was attractive enough. Well, the role could have done with her acting skills. Lange looks lost in the part and – with her confidence knocked by poor reviews – didn’t do another movie for three years. She also gets some tame nudity.
* The antagonism between Prescott and Wilson is kinda dropped around now, because it’s been proved that Jack is who he says he is. He’s given the job of expedition photographer, which means he can be in all the important scenes and play a role in the story.
* The movie is pretty drab around this section. There’s little life to anything, and some rambling line-readings don’t help. Some shots feel like they’re filmed a rehearsal.

Skull Island: Once past the thick fog that surrounds the island, a small team goes ashore. They find a tribe of natives performing a ceremony, then Dwan is kidnapped and given as an offering to a massive ape called Kong…
* There’s such little tension to the story at this point – a real contrast from the 1933 film. The characters are flimsy and dull, and the film’s whole tone is drab. Having said that, John Barry’s incidental music is working overtime to create some mood. It’s big and brassy in Barry’s classic James Bond style.
* Another thing this segment has going for it is the location work. Rather than the LA backlot and beaches of 1933, this King Kong has gone to lush, epic Hawaii. It’s well shot too, making good use of pretty lighting conditions. But the tick in the visual box quickly fades when we get our first matte shot of the island’s huge wall. It’s like something you’d see in a 1960s Star Trek episode.
* A couple of changes from the 1933 film here: oil is found, giving Wilson reason to stay, while the natives make their intentions for Dwan clear as soon as they spot her.
* After Dwan is kidnapped, we get our first sighting of Kong. It’s an actor in a gorilla costume. Now, the Kong in 1933 was demonstrably a stop-motion puppet and no more ‘real’ than someone being filmed on a scale set. But this is close to comical, especially given how Kong walks upright like a man. There’s actually a misjudged joke in the script when someone says, “Who the hell do you think [flattened the jungle]? A guy in an ape suit?” If it’s meant as a wink to the audience it doesn’t work. As well as a guy in an ape suit, a number of other techniques are used to represent the giant beast: a life-size model hand, an animatronic face and some ropey composite shots. But it’s a man in a costume when Kong brawls with an unconvincing giant snake.
* It’s also really noticeable that once Kong appears the film becomes very indoorsy. These are scenes set outdoors but shot on a sound stage, presumably because of the difficulties in filming Kong. There are painted backdrops and echoey footsteps. You wouldn’t say this is the movie’s best sequence, even if it does give Dwan a chance to show more fight than 1933’s Ann Darrow ever did.
* Meanwhile, as Prescott and others risk their lives to try to save Dwan, oilman Wilson relaxes on the beach and gets a massage. Subtle character stuff, there. When he finds out the island’s oil is worthless, Wilson decides to set a trap for Kong as a way of making the trip profitable. It’s very noticeable that the natives have all vanished from the story now.

On board the Petrox Explorer (again): A captured Kong is transported back to America…
* A massive change to the 1933 story here: we actually see the characters’ voyage home. Because the expedition is funded by an oil company rather than a film director, the ship is big enough for Kong to be kept in the cargo hold. Christ, the film’s getting boring now. This section is superfluous.

New York City: Wilson forces Kong to take part in an event to publicise his oil company, but the beast breaks free and goes on the rampage…
* The same basic events from 1933 happen again, but instead of a theatre show we get an open-air exhibition. The train stunt from the original film is restaged with a nice twist: Dwan is on the train. This whole sequence is lengthier than in 1933, though, and less exciting. Prescott and Dwan even have time to hole up in a hotel and flirt some more.
* Of course, one massive change from the original is that Kong no longer climbs up the Empire State Building. Instead it’s the South Tower of the then-new World Trade Center. (Presumably as a deliberate nod to 1933, Dwan mentions the Empire State Building earlier in the movie. It’s also seen briefly.)

Review: Shallow characters, poor performances, naff effects. At times the script feels like it wants to zip along like a Tom Mankiewicz-scripted Bond film, but it just falls flat. The movie feels even longer than its 134 minutes, in fact.

Five coast-to-coast tours out of 10

Next: The 2005 remake…

The Omen (1976, Richard Donner)

Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal plot twists.

After a series of strange deaths, the American ambassador in the UK fears his son, Damien, may be the Antichrist…

Best performance: Gregory Peck holds the whole thing together, playing Robert Thorn as a man emotionally tortured into thinking the unthinkable. But it’s a notably strong cast, with terrific turns from David Warner as suspicious photographer Keith Jennings, Patrick Troughton as troubled priest Father Brennan, and Billie Whitelaw as Mrs Baylock, the terrifying nanny.

Best death: Keith Jennings, who’s decapitated by a sheet of glass that’s been flung sideways off the back of a truck. The stunt is shot from numerous angles and the edit shows us the impact four times. The fake head then spins off almost poetically, while behind Keith a shop window breaks and red wine is symbolically thrown up into the air.

Review: The really smart thing about this film is – to use the director’s term – its verisimilitude. Everything is played absolutely for real. It’s a horror film seemingly about the son of Satan, yet nothing inexplicable or supernatural actually happens. A nanny hangs herself, there are some tragic accidents, a child throws a tantrum or two… The horror instead comes from these plausible events mounting up, the way they’re centred on a creepy little boy, and – most effectively – the fact a father allows himself to be convinced that his son is evil. But is he right? One interpretation of the story is that Damien is just a normal child and Robert has gone mad. It’s a fascinating idea. The Omen is a great movie, helped by some terrific incidental music by Jerry Goldsmith, fine location filming at the genuine American embassy in Grosvenor Square, and an all-round excellent job of directing by Richard Donner. Superb.

Nine armies on either shore out of 10

Carry On England (1976)

A new commander takes charge of a Second World War army camp and is shocked to discover it’s a mixed-sex outfit…

What’s it spoofing? The film is trading on the popularity of contemporary sitcoms such as Dad’s Army (1968-1977), MASH (1972-1983) and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (1974-1981), where a military organisation is made up of wisecracking soldiery and frustrated officers.

Funniest moment: Peter Jones’s brigadier keeps making weak puns then turning to his assistant expecting a complimentary laugh.

The Big 10:

* Kenneth Connor (16) plays Captain S. Melly. He’s trying his best, but the material’s just not there.

* Peter Butterworth (15) has little more than a cameo as Major Carstairs.

* Joan Sims (23) is given the underwritten role of Private Ffoukes Sharpe, which was originally offered to The Good Life’s Penelope Keith.

Notable others:

* Peter Jones, as mentioned, plays an army bigwig.

* Johnny Briggs – who was just about to join Coronation Street for a 30-year stint – appears as Melly’s driver.

* Windsor Davies is back from Carry On Behind to play Sergeant Major ‘Tiger’ Bloomer, a shouty character not a million barrack rooms away from his role in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.

* Patrick Mower, now of Emmerdale, is the de facto lead of the soldiers: Sergeant Len Able. It’s yet another attempt on the Carry On producers’ part to find a new Jim Dale.

* Judy Geeson plays Sergeant Tilly Willing. Geeson’s sister, Sally, had been in a couple of earlier Carry Ons.

* Jack Douglas plays Bombardier Ready (subtle surnames, aren’t they?) and does some more twitching.

* Melvyn Hayes – yet another It Ain’t Half Hot Mum star – plays Gunner Shorthouse.

* Diane Langton plays the ditzy and busty Alice Easy. The role was meant for Barbara Windsor.

* Patricia Franklin, in her fifth and final Carry On role, gets about three seconds on screen as a cook.

* Julian Holloway appears in a Carry On one last time, playing Major Butcher, the camp’s doctor.

Top totty: As strange as it feels to say – given that she now plays a granny in Hollyoaks – but Diane Langton’s quite cute.

Alternative version: The original edit of Carry On England – which I watched for this review – ran into trouble with the BBFC due to a scene of topless women and a gag punning on the word Fokker. So the cut released in 1976 toned the former down and replaced the latter with a different joke. Both versions are included in the DVD box set, though the milder one is VHS-quality for some reason.

Review: This film proves why so many of the earlier Carry On movies are still popular today: despite their obvious failings, none is as horrendously unloveable as this garbage. There’s barely a single laugh in the whole thing, while none of the regiment make any real impression – they get the screen time but they’re all so forgettable. Add in nonsensical slapstick, lots of post-dubbed dialogue and tacky sound effects, and you get a grotty little film.

Two battledress trousers (that is all) out of 10

Arrival (1976)

Note: I’m reviewing the albums as available in the UK on CD. Track listings sometimes vary from original Swedish releases.

Cover: Last time, the cover art depicted the group as old-fashioned fops in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven car. Now that they’re global superstars, they’re in a fucking helicopter. They’re dressed all in white, while the sun is low and in their eyes, giving them an angelic glow.

Best song: Well, it’s clearly Dancing Queen, isn’t it? It was originally called Boogaloo and was a deliberate attempt to ape the then-current disco scene. All four band members have spoken of knowing instantly that they had something special. It starts with an infectious piano-slide intro, then there’s a driving hi-hat beat and cut-glass vocals. The way the track seems to endlessly wind its way upwards is mesmerising. Dancing Queen is a legal high.

Honourable mentions:

* When I Kissed the Teacher opens the album with some acoustic guitar strums, then becomes a foot-tapper reminiscent of 1960s girl-group pop. The vocal parts pile up, and there’s even a breakout line (“One of these days…”) where the track slams to a halt.

* My Love, My Life has a lovely, soft harmony intro.

* Knowing Me, Knowing You is a blockbuster. It was actually written before either of the group’s two couples split up, but the lyric – part resignation, part defiance – is the quintessential ‘divorce’ song. Frida’s characterful lead vocal is superb, as are the detailed backing parts. And the invention in the arrangement is breathtaking. Check out the delayed strikes of a guitar that open the song, the bass guitar complementing the singing line, the dramatic rise in intensity before the chorus, the ‘A-ha!’s, the neat little guitar solos, and the sexy whispered backing vocals (“They’ll be… with me… always…”). Fantastic stuff.

* Money, Money, Money. Effortlessly brilliant.

* That’s Me – a jaunty, likeable track, which is one of Agnetha’s favourite ABBA songs.

* The album closes with an instrumental that has wordless vocals and a vaguely folk or Celtic feel. It was called Arrival because that had already been chosen as the LP’s title.

Worst song: Dum Dum Diddle is a saccharin-flavoured throwaway.

Best CD extra: There’s loads of good stuff on the album’s bonus DVD. The contemporary Swedish TV special ABBA-DABBA-DOOO!!, which is a mixture of filmed performances, old clips, biography and interviews, is a hoot. You can also see Noel Edmonds introduce Fernando on Top of the Pops. But the highlight is an extract from a 1976 documentary that was the only time ABBA were ever filmed in the studio. There’s footage of Benny and Björn talking Frida and Agnetha through the vocal melody of Dancing Queen – and then, wonderfully, a clip of the women singing a verse that was cut from the finished song (“Baby, baby, you’re out of sight/Hey, you’re looking all right tonight…”).

Best video: Like so many ABBA videos, the promo for Money, Money, Money begins with a close-up of piano keys. We see lead vocalist Frida rushing through city streets, then cut to a film studio, where she’s standing moodily in an artful spotlight while wearing a big hat. She’s alone and mysterious and exotic and very sexy. Her bandmates appear whenever the song kicks into the chorus, all dressed in flamboyant white disco-karate outfits. At one point, Frida and Agnetha stand face to face so closely that you’re certain they’re going to kiss. Sadly they choose to carry on singing instead. The video has insert shots to hammer home the theme of the lyric – we see shiny coins, dollar bills, diamond rings and the group driving along in a convertible. From this album, the band also shot promos for Dancing Queen (set in a night club, handheld camera, the band on a tiny stage), That’s Me (lots of the couples hugging each other, long two-shots of the girls looking down the lens, shots repeated from Money, Money, Money) and Knowing Me Knowing You (filmed in the snow, Frida wearing a massive furry hood, more hugging and two-shots).

Review: The highs are higher than ever before. But there are still two or three tracks we could do without.

Eight laws of geometry out of 10.