Category Archives: 1973

Jesus Christ Superstar
Directed by Norman Jewison
Written by Melvyn Bragg and Norman Jewison based on the Broadway musical, book by Tim Rice
1973/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Judas: [singing] Did you mean to die like that, was that a mistake? Or, did you know your messy death would be a record breaker? – “Superstar”, lyrics by Tim Rice, music by Andrew Lloyd Weber

I have a feeling this is a movie you either love or hate.  Don’t expect a positive review from me, despite the my fondness for the music.

This musical version of the last week in Jesus Christ’s life was filmed on location in Israel at the Dead Sea.  It is presented as a story being put on by hippy actors who arrive in a psychedelic bus.  Gradually the presentation morphs into a bizarre world where most of the Christians wear hippy clothes, the Pharisees wear black robes with headgear reminiscent of Pasolini, and King Herod is a fat, half-naked, debauchee.

Jesus (Ted Neeley) has a loyal fan base but it is growing and he becomes perceived by the authorities as a dangerous man.  Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Ellison) is his devoted servant and maybe his lover, this is left unclear.  Judas (Carl Anderson) heartily disapproves of the relationship and the expense of anointing Jesus with expensive ointments.

The Pharisees think Jesus is becoming far too popular.  Soon Judas provides them with a means of getting rid of him.  All the basic incidents of the Passion story ending with the Crucifixion are presented.  After his suicide, Judas reflects on what it all meant.  Then the hippies get back on the bus.

Jesus Christ Superstar was a hit concept album before it was a stage musical.  The album was in regular rotation at my house at the time.  There are a few fantastic songs but Rice and Lloyd Webber would go on to do much better.  I can remember seeing a concert version of the musical but don’t think I have ever seen this movie.

Anyway, I think it is a real mess.  Jewison and his creative team just seemingly threw together all their random ideas for irreverently presenting the piece and it does not work in my opinion.  It is cringingly 70’s.  Also, the key issue of this film is whether Jesus succeeded or failed as a superstar.  We get none of the message of the Gospels.  To top it off, being a “rock opera”, all of the dialogue is sung.    What worked for Jacques Demy seems dreadfully silly in this movie.

I am going to wash the taste out of my mouth by revisiting 1973’s  other hippy Jesus musical Godspell.  It’s lower rated on IMDb, but in my opinion vastly superior and leaves the viewer uplifted rather than kind of disgusted.

Jesus Christ Superstar was Oscar-nominated for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation.

Carl Anderson and company perform “Superstar”

Charley Varrick
Directed by Don Siegal
Written by Howard Rodman and Dean Reisner from a novel by John Reese
1973/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Harold Young: I can’t start my life over again now.
Maynard Boyle: You don’t have much choice, Harold. They’re gonna try to make you tell where the money is. You know what kind of people they are. They’re gonna strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

This gritty heist movie is quite OK.  I’m on the fence whether Walter Matthau was a great choice for a brilliant, gutsy, babe magnet.

The story is set in New Mexico.  Charley Varrick (Matthau) was formerly a stunt pilot and now flies crop dusters.  He plans a series of small bank robberies with his wife acting as driver and psycho friend Harman Sullivan (Andy Robinson) in second seat.  The very first try goes spectacularly wrong.  Charley’s wife is killed.  Then, the robbery netted $750,000.00 cash when it should have netted no more than $30,000 at such a small country bank.  Charley correctly guesses that the money is being held by the bank on the way to its laundering.  So he knows he has the cops, the mafia, and the dirty bankers on his trail.

He holes up in his trailer with Harman, who is a loose cannon to say the least.  What Charley would like to do is figure out a way to return the money and leave the country but Harman wants nothing to do with that.  Charley leaves with the money while Harman is sleeping.  The bank hires a sadistic hitman named “Molly” (Joe Don Baker) who is close behind at all times.  I will stop here.  The movie ends with a spectacular stunt that left me gasping.

This is the kind of movie Don Siegel was born to make – taut and with plenty of action.  I felt like I had seen this story before and couldn’t get too invested in it.  If you are in the mood for this kind of thing, though, it could be just the ticket.

Scarecrow
Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Written by Garry Michael White
1973/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Max Millan: You didn’t pick me, I picked you.
Lion: Why?
Max Millan: ‘Cause you gave me your last match. You made me laugh. God damn crows are laughin’…

The 70’s were a decade for road movies.  This is one of the good ones.

Max (Gene Hackman) has just been released from prison.  He has saved all his money and meticulously planned buying a car wash business in Pittsburg.  He is hitchhiking cross-country with a detour to see his sister in Denver.  On the road, Max meets fellow hitchhiker Francis Lionel (‘Lion” – Al Pacino).  Lion has come home from the sea and is on the way to Detroit with a present for the five-year-old child (sex unknown) he has never met and a desire to make it up to the child’s mother.

The larger-than-life brawler Max and the goofy peacemaker Lion could not be more different. However, Max is immediately taken with Lion and decides on the spot to take him into the car wash business.  They make a good team.

The boys have adventures along the road and a high old time with Max’s sister and her sexy friend Frenchy (Ann Wedgeworth) in Denver.  Their luck kind of changes in Detroit.

Wow, this movie is so much of its time but continues to work well now.  It is simply a pleasure to watch Hackman and Pacino in their prime.  The supporting characters are memorable as well. And since this is a character study that’s all you really need.  It’s got that seventies sadness but is also warm and funny.  Recommended.

Scarecrow was the co-winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

The Last Detail
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Robert Towne from a novel by Darryl Poniscan
1973/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Mulhall: I don’t know what I woulda’ done without the Navy.
Buddusky: Yeah… I guess we’re just a couple of lifers.
Mulhall: Yeah.

I don’t why I waited so long to see one of Jack Nicholson’s best performances.

Eighteen-year-old raw Navy recruit Meadows (Randy Quaid) is caught trying to pilfer $40 from the donation box of the Admiral’s wife’s pet charity.  For this he is sentenced to eight years in prison.  Buddinsky (“Bad Ass” – Nicholson) and Mulhall (“Mule” – Otis Young) are killing time at the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia waiting for their next orders to come in. They are temporarily ordered to escort Meadows from Norfolk to the Portsmouth Naval Prison in New Hampshire.  The trio will travel by bus.  The trip should take two days but the sailors have  been allotted a week.  The escorts think of the trip as a chance to have a vacation on the Government after dropping Meadows off.

But their hearts are even bigger than their vocabulary of curse words and they feel sorry for the morose Meadows whose mood only gets worse with each passing hour.  The idea that the kid will spend years in jail prior to any adult experience of life inspires the two to try to show him a good time before delivering him to prison.

As you might imagine, Buddinski is a bit of a wild man aside from being a career sailor. His enthusiasm for life ensures a good time is had by all.  Meanwhile, Mulhall worries that Buddinski may have lost interest in their actual mission.  With Carol Kane as a young prostitute.

I guess that the premise of this didn’t grab me when this first came out and I have overlooked it ever since.  Glad that this project led me to check it out.

In the event, I absolutely loved this.  Nicholson and Quaid are both fabulous in their parts. This is, I think, NIcholson nearing his peak as an actor.  He is convincing both as a wild and crazy guy and as a committed career sailor and you kind of have to love him.  Ashby provides his off-kilter sensibility and the script is hilarious.  My favorite part is when these guys run into people trying to sell them on Nichiren Soshu Buddhism and Quaid decides to give chanting a shot.  I had a brush with the movement around this time and its portrayal made me laugh and brought back old times. I also loved that the ending did not take an obvious route.  Recommended.

The Academy nominated Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid in the categories of Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively.  The film was also nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

Spirit of the Beehive (El espiritu de la colmena)
Directed by Victor Erice
Written by Angel Fernandez Santos and Victor Erice
1973/Spain
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Ana: If he only comes out at night, how can you talk to him?
Isabel: I told you he was a spirit. If you’re his friend, you can talk to him whenever you want. Just close your eyes and call him… It’s me, Ana… It’s me Ana…

Erice explores the vulnerabilities of children in times of crisis in this contemplative, beautiful film.

The story is set in a Spanish village in 1940 during Franco’s reprisals against Republicans following the end of the Spanish Civil War.  Seven-year-old Ana (Ana Torrent) lives with her parents Teresa and Fernando and older sister Isabel (who is maybe nine or ten).  Ana’s father keeps bees.  Ana has great big brown eyes with which she surveys the world and is clearly very sensitive.  James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) draws a large audience when it comes to town.

Ana and Isabel attend.  Ana is completely engrossed in the story and wants to why the little girl and the monster had to die.  Isabel first tells her nobody died because the movie is a trick.  Then she mischievously switches tacks and tells Ana that the monster is living as a spirit in the family’s sheep shed and only comes out at night.

Ana becomes obsessed with the sheep shed, eventually working up the courage to enter. One day she encounters a man in rags who has an injured leg hiding there.  She adopts him as the monster and tries to help him.  I’ll stop there.

The story takes place at that mysterious juncture between reality and imagination through the eyes of a child trying to make sense of the world around her.  It has little dialogue and Erice seems fond of Ozu-like ellipses where key events are cut away from.  Anyway, this is a very beautiful film painted largely in golden light.  Ana Torrent gives one of the great child performances ever.  It’s sad but recommended.

Theatre of Blood
Directed by Douglas Hickox
Written by Anthony Greville-Bell
1973/UK
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1000 Great Horror Movies on theyshootzombies.com

George Maxwell: You… It’s you! But you’re dead!
Edward Lionheart: No. Another critical miscalculation on you part. I am well. It is you who are dead.

Vincent Price, Diana Rigg and a sterling cast of British character actors ensured that I had a good time despite all the blood and gore.

Edward Lionheart (Price) is a famous or perhaps infamous Shakespearean tragedian.  He is certain he is the greatest actor who ever lived had his heart set on winning a theater critics guild award as Best Actor of 1970.  Why he thought he could win is unclear as the critics on the awards committee roundly panned all his performances.  In the event, the award went to a newcomer leaving Lionheart humiliated.  He barges into the after-party takes the award and jumps out the window several stories up. We learn that his doting daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg) has never recovered from her grief.

It turns out Lionheart is not dead after all.  He is now living in a derelict theater with a bunch of hoboes who resemble the living dead.  He enlists their help in his fiendish plan to kill off the critics one by one using a murder featured in each of the plays he performed that season.  These murders are customized to dole out the deranged Lionheart’s idea of poetic justice.  I’m not going to say any more as part of the fun is figuring what the murderer is going to do next and there is a major plot twist too (one that you will probably anticipate well before the reveal).  The critics are played by Ian Hendry, Trevor Dickman, Corale Browne, Robert Cooke, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, and Dennis Price.  Milo O’Shea and Eric Sykes play detectives.

I thought this was clever in an extremely gruesome sort of way.  The script keeps you on your toes.  I especially enjoyed seeing Price reciting some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines.  His no holds barred style suits the Bard very well.  Rigg compliments him beautifully and the cast of character actors is rock solid.  Production values are strong.  I loved the somewhat romantic score though I thought it possibly would have fit better in another movie. As mentioned, there is a lot of bloody gory close-up murder to sit through.  Highly recommended to fans of the genre.