Classic 70s Movies (BFS)

 

        Picture: C-     Sound:     Extras:     Film:

Born to Win (1971)                     C              D           B-

Katherine (1975)                        C-            D           C+

The Harrad Experiment (1973)    C-             D           B-

 

 

This triple-feature DVD set from BFS is called Classic 70s Movies, but it is really about the early 1970s, so the disco mirror ball on the cover is misleading.  This is, nonetheless, an amusing collection of films from that era.

 

Ivan Passer’s Born to Win offers George Segal in a fine performance as a hairdresser-turned-junkie doing what he can to get the money he needs for his habit, which in his case is being the most charming con artist he can be.  It is consistent, if not groundbreaking, but it is at least honest and realistic.  Some may consider it not going far enough, but the drug culture and its troubles are far worse now than they were then.  The film also stars Karen Black, Paula Prentiss, Hector Elizondo, Burt Young, and an early Robert De Niro appearance as shadowy figure.

 

Katherine is one of those wacky TV movies you just cannot make up, with Sissy Spacek (soon to be Brian De Palma’s Carrie) as the daughter of Art Carney and Jane Wyman (the ex Mrs. Ronald Reagan), who becomes a political revolutionary!  Yes, but this is a TV movie, which makes it even weirder and more restrictive.  She gets whatever advice she can from her sister, played by future voice of Marge Simpson Julie Kavner, who was just becoming the sister of Valerie Harper’s Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off, Rhoda.  Then there is the revolutionary boyfriend played by a pre-Fonzie Henry Winkler.  Go into shock as the N-word comes out of Winkler’s mouth in defense of neglected African American youth, then more shock when on of them turns out to be played by Todd Bridges in an early speaking role.  The bad remakes of then-recent hit Rock classics adds to the insanity, but it is a hoot that tried to be serious, which is more than I can say about the TV movies we get now.

 

The Harrad Experiment is based on Robert Rimmer’s book about a co-ed experiment where sexual activity is encouraged.  James Whitmore and Tippi Hendren (capitalizing on Hitchcock’s obsession with her) head the study.  Unlike Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997), where the co-ed thing has reached new heights by the sexes sharing showers and thinking nothing of it on their way to war, this is a much more serious attempt to examine the results of the student’s disorientation and maladjustments in said situation.  The film has not always aged well, especially some poor soundtrack choices, but Ted Post is one of Hollywood’s best journeyman filmmakers of his time and the sexuality is handled very well.  The R-Rated film does not feature anything near-X/NC-17, but still offers plenty to think about and see, including some exceptionally liberal nudity.  Post should be commended for capturing the sensitivities and uncomfortableness of the interactions, which is far more real than the act and fronts current films, TV, and Music Videos offer with much younger people suddenly being filled with carnal knowledge and attitude.  All of that is extremely phony, more so after seeing the more honest moments in this film of the same, even when they do not always work.

 

Don Johnson was establishing himself as a feature film star, moving on to the even more daring Science Fiction film A Boy and His Dog (1975, reviewed elsewhere on this site), but that arc would falter.  It certainly was not from lack of trying to be in good material. Of course, a later irony is Hendren and Johnson being in this film, as Johnson later married (for a while) Hendren’s daughter Melanie Griffith, who makes a cameo in this film.  Laurie Walters, Robert Middleton, Victoria Thompson, Bruno Kirby (listed a B. Kirby Jr.), and even future TV heartthrob Gregory Harrison (Trapper John, M.D., the unnecessary Logan’s Run series, showing up here with no dialogue, long hair and always nude.  That’s him in the middle of the people jumping in the swimming pool during the skinny dipping sequence) show up.

 

It is also sad to watch this deep into the AIDS era, that there was a time sex was taken more seriously and people were not dealing with as many health dangers.  It begs the question, is our current attitude of not taking sex and intimate relationships seriously enough now escalating a crisis?  This spawned a sequel, Harrad Summer, a year later.  Some of this cast returned and it added comedian Marty Allen!  We’ll have to see that one sometime.

 

The prints on all three films are full screen and not very good.  Born to Win has detail trouble and its Deluxe Color is bad, Katherine is a bad TV print, and The Harrad Experiment is missing footage here and there throughout to the end credits.  All are monophonic and here in Dolby Digital 2.0, all down a few generations form whatever their original soundsource was.  The Harrad Experiment has too much background hiss.  The limited text extras of brief bio/filmographies and fleeting facts are joined by also-brief awards lists (two text frames each) for each year of the 1970s.  Though the presentations are limited and films only so good, they are all worth a look, making this one of the better of such BFS sets.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo