Buzz Kulik – The Magnificent 60s

Warning Shot (1967) ****

So underrated it doesn’t even feature on Wikipedia’s chart of 1960s crime pictures, this tight little gem, with an early reflection on police brutality, dream cast, violence in slow motion (prior to The Wild Bunch, 1969, mind you) and stunning score from Jerry Goldsmith is definitely in need of resurrection. Astonishing to realize that cop pictures had fallen so out of fashion, that this was the first Hollywood cop film of the decade – outside of a drama like The Chase (1966) – the entire previous output focusing on gangsters with a rare private eye (Harper, 1966) thrown in. With none of the vicious snarl of Madigan (1968) or the brutality of Coogan’s Bluff (1968), this was more in keeping with the later In the Heat of the Night (1967) in terms of the mental and physical barrage endured by the cop.

In thick fog on a stakeout for a serial killer at an apartment block Sgt Tom Valens (David Janssen) kills a potential suspect, wealthy Dr Ruston. Valens claims the suspect was reaching for his gun. Only problem – nobody can find the gun. Up on a potential manslaughter charge, Valens is pressured by boss (Ed Begley), lawyer (Walter Pidgeon) and wife (Joan Collins) to take the rap and plead guilty. The public and media rage about police brutality. Putting Valens’ testimony in doubt is a recent shooting incident, which left Valens with a stomach wound, and which may have clouded his judgement.

Although suspended, Valens has no alternative but to investigate, interviewing elderly patient Alice (Lillian Gish) whom the doctor was visiting, patient’s neighbour playboy pilot Walt (George Grizzard), doctor’s assistant Liz (Stefanie Powers), doctor’s wife Doris (Eleanor Parker), doctor’s stockbroker (George Sanders) with nothing to show for his efforts but a savage beating, filmed in slow motion, inflicted by the doctor’s son and pals, and an attempt on his life. He gets into further trouble for attempting to smear the doctor as an abortionist (a crime at the time).

The missing gun remains elusive though the direction at times suggests its existence is fiction. The detection is superb, red herrings aplenty, as Valens, the odds against him cheating conviction lengthening by the day, a trial deadline to beat, everyone turning against him, openly castigated as the killer cop, struggles to uncover the truth. And it’s clear he questions reality himself. He has none of the brittle snap of the standard cop and it’s almost as if he expects to be found guilty, that he has stepped over the line.

Along the way is some brilliant dialogue – the seductive drunk wife, “mourning with martinis” suggesting they “rub two losers together” and complaining she has to “lead him by the hand like every other man.” Cinematography and music combine for a brilliant mournful scene of worn-down cop struggling home with a couple of pints of milk. The after-effects of the stomach injury present him as physically wounded, neither the tough physical specimen of later cop pictures nor the grizzled veteran of previous ones.

David Janssen (King of the Roaring 20s, 1960) had not made a picture in four years, his time consumed by the ultra-successful television show The Fugitive, but his quiet, brooding, internalized style and soft spoken manner is ideal for the tormented cop. This is also Joan Collins (Esther and the King, 1960) first Hollywood outing in half a decade.

Pick of the supporting cast is former Hollywood top star Eleanor Parker (Detective Story, 1951) more recently exposed to the wider public as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965) whose slinky demeanor almost turns the cop’s head. The cast is loaded with simialr sterling actors.

In the veteran department are aforementioned famed silent star Lillian Gish (The Birth of a Nation, 1915), veteran Brit George Sanders (The Falcon series in the 1940s), Walter Pidgeon (Mrs Miniver, 1942) also in his first film in four years, Ed Begley in only his second picture since Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) and Keenan Wynn (Stagecoach, 1966). Noted up-and-coming players include Stefanie Powers (also Stagecoach), Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), George Grizzard (Advise and Consent, 1962) and Carroll O’Connor (A Fever in the Blood, 1961). American television star Steve Allen (College Confidential, 1960) plays a hypocritical pundit.

A sophomore movie for noted television director Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968), this is easily his best picture, concentrating on character with a great eye for mood. Screenwriter Mann Rubin (Brainstorm, 1965) adapted the Whit Masterson novel 711 – Officer Needs Help. The score is one of the best from Jerry Goldsmith (Seconds, 1966).

Has this emanated from France it would have been covered in critical glory, from the overall unfussy direction, from the presentation of the main character and so many memorable performances and from, to bring it up once again, the awesome music.

Villa Rides (1968) ***

Best viewed as Charles Bronson’s breakout movie. Yes, he had played supporting roles in The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, but these had all been versions of the same dour, almost monosyllabic, persona. Here, though somewhat ruthless, he steals the show from the top-billed Robert Mitchum and Yul Brynner with many of the best lines and best situations with an extra slice of humor (make that first-ever slice of humor) to add to the mix. He is the most interesting of the three main characters, in part because he does not have to spout any of the “good revolution/bad revolution” dialog that falls to the other two.

Villa (Brynner) is fighting the Colorados but his superior General Huertas (Herbert Lom) is planning to overthrow President Madero (Alexander Knox). Mitchum is an aeronautical gun-runner from El Paso, initially against the revolutionaries, stranded in Mexico when his plane breaks down. He has just about time to romance a local woman Fina (Maria Grazia Buccello) before the Colorados arrive, take over the village, start hanging the leaders and raping Fina. Villa saves them, Bronson slaughtering the Colorados with a Gatling gun on the rooftop. Faced with the one-man firing squad that is Bronson, Mitchum turns sides. His plane comes in handy for scouting the enemy, then bombing them.

The actions sequences are terrific especially Villa’s attack on a troop train. To get Villa out of the way, Huertas puts him in the front line in a suicidal attack on a heavily-defended stronghold which turns into another brilliant set-piece with cavalry charges. The plot is constantly interrupted by politics of one kind or another and comes to dead stop when Villa is arrested by Heurtas and Villa demands a proper trial. It’s kind of hard to take when a murdering bandit, no matter how legendary, decides that he has been hard done by.

That aside, there are interesting attempts to build up his legend. He doesn’t want power for himself, but to give it to the people, although he has sat back and let the first village be attacked so that the people there learn to hate the Colorados enough to join the fight. There’s not really any good guys – Brynner and Bronson are stone-cold killers, Mitchum a mercenary. But Brynner does marry Fina in order to prove that a raped woman should not be treated with dishonor, though he has a tendency to marry other women as well.

Bronson’s unusual one-man firing squad involves him laying on the ground with a pistol in each hand and giving prisoners the opportunity to escape before he shoots them. After all that hard work, he bathes his hands. Then he decides he can kill three men with one bullet, lining them up exactly so he can drill them all in the heart. But he’s also the one who shoots a molester in a cantina, then delivers the classic line: “Go outside and die, where are your manners?” He is at the heart of some well-judged comedy – continually sending back his meals and trying to get out of getting into a plane with Mitchum. Without him, there would be too much justification of slaughter (Brynner) and arguments against (Mitchum). This is the first time in the kind of action role that suits him that he has an expanded characterization.

Brynner did not like Sam Peckinpah’s original script so Robert Towne (Chinatown) was brought in to present Villa in a more appealing light. Bronson (Adieu L’Ami/Farewell Friend, 1968) shows hints of the screen persona that would so appeal to the French. Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) adorns his character with many shades of grey, but Robert Mitchum (Secret Ceremony, 1969) has less to do. Buzz Kulik (Warning Shot, 19660 has great fun with the action, less fun with some of the turgid dialog-ridden scenes.

Good for action and Bronson.

Riot (1969) ***

Stand-Off might be a more apt title but that’s not going to sell many tickets. After taking over the wing of a prison, not a great deal happens except for character development. As it turns out the threat of a riot is intended merely as a ruse to cover an attempted break-out.

Inmate Cully (Jim Brown) is the first to point out to escape mastermind Red (Gene Hackman) the deficiencies of his plan. For a start, they are in the middle of the desert and without transportation and food, neither of which is handy or arranged, they are likely to find the wilderness a worse prison. Secondly, there’s a hell of a lot of digging to do, a tunnel long enough to allow them to emerge on the other side of the walls.

And thirdly, and most presciently, most of the prisoners don’t give a fig about organizing a break-out. They are simpler souls, wanting to enjoy a brief moment, even if still incarcerated, of freedom, happy to glug down gallons of home-made brew, watch drag acts for entertainment and slit the throats of the guards taken hostage.

It’s ironic that Cully and Red begin acting like prison warders, defending the hostages against the most vicious of the inmates, guarding them as they take a walk of shame to a hideout, and chucking into solitary the most depraved of the prisoners. The prison break, when it finally comes, is exceptionally well done by director Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968) .

A small hole in the sun-parched earth becomes bigger until a furry head like a groundhog appears and the outside of the prison walls is viewed from the perspective of a potential escapee.

*The ultimate sex’n’violence double bill.*

But, mostly, it’s a long haul of tension. Red holds the officials at bay with not just the hostages but a set of demands for better treatment, triggering a bout of negotiation and talking to the media. As in female-starved male-dominated pictures like The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and The Dirty Dozen (1967), women are shunted in by devious means, in the former via a mirage, in the latter through the sex workers smuggled in prior to the mission. Here, Cully dreams of landing by helicopter beside a pool of beautiful bikini-clad women who rush to worship him.

Although Cully and Red don’t exactly see eye-to-eye and for the picture to work of course must bury their differences and work together, the pair don’t rack up the confrontation required for this movie to zing. Cully is somewhat laid-back and Red uses his fingers rather than his fists or loud voice to make points. You kind of wished there was more sign of imminent explosion.

Sure, there are setbacks, and having to change plan and improvise on the spot. The stakes are only really raised when the vacationing prison governor returns and dumps the softly-softly approach of his stand-in, telling the prisoners in no uncertain terms that he will happily murder ten prisoners for each hostage killed, storm the wing and gas them all. The end shows exactly what level of brutality he is capable of.

But, meanwhile, we are left dancing around a bunch of fairly cliché characters, the prisoners in for short terms who don’t want to participate, the lifers wanting brief respite, the killers denied the opportunity to kill, the men who hide their sexual desires under the more acceptable cross-dressing.

Rioting is actually thin on the ground. In fact, Red has to do the opposite. Prevent everyone getting out of line because that will precipitate assault by the prison guards. Keeping everyone happily penned up for the time it takes to complete the tunnel is more Red’s plan than letting the prisoners loose to run riot.

That said, both Jim Brown (100 Rifles, 1969) and Gene Hackman (The Gypsy Moths. 1969) are impressive. Brown reins in the tough-guy act, holding sway in soft-spoken manner, while Hackman brings out more elements of the screen persona that would win him an Oscar a couple of years later for The French Connection. Naturally, Hackman, in retrospect, attracts the kudos but in reality I think this is a step-up for Brown and he is not acted off the screen. (The pair had appeared together in The Split, 1968).

One of the flaws, I would hazard, is that this kind of picture should have been the break-out vehicle for rising stars – as with The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and The Dirty Dozen – but in that department it’s sorely lacking and I think the picture overall suffers as a result.

Given he knows more than the audience where the story is headed Buzz Kulik (The Warning Shot, 1967) does well to concentrate on the friction between Brown and Hackman. James Poe (The Bedford Incident, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Frank Elli book.

Men under pressure are not under enough pressure to make it zing.

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Sgt Ryker (1968) ***

Universal pulled a fast one with this tidy courtroom drama. The studio resurrected a two-part television piece originally made as the The Case Against Paul Ryker five years before under the Kraft Suspense Theatre brand to capitalize on the unexpected box office success of Lee Marvin, the decade’s most unlikely new star after a straight run of hits from the Oscar-winning Cat Ballou (1965) through western The Professionals (1966) to The Dirty Dozen (1967).

Re-titled and hoping audiences would not notice the sleight of hand, this was thrown out into first run. By normal standards it would be deemed a flop for a star of Marvin’s newfound magnitude but the $1 million notched up in rentals Stateside and more overseas prove a handy cache of found money for the studio. Audiences might have smelled a rat when the star’s name came at the bottom of the opening credits with an “And” billing, which generally denoted guest – rather than main – star.

Still, despite being promoted as an actioner, posters show Ryker with machine gun in hand in the midst of a battle scene – there is such a scene but Marvin plays no part in it – it’s actually a decent drama, especially given the unusual background. Set in 1951 during the Korean War there’s nothing gung-ho about it. The Americans are retreating, evacuating Seoul, when army attorney Capt Young (Bradford Dillman) feels Ryker was short-changed during a trial that condemned him to death as a traitor.

Young and Ryker’s estranged wife Ann (Vera Miles) embark on a deadline-dogged mission – he’s due to be hanged in a couple of days’ time – to clear his name. Strafed by enemy planes during a trip from Tokyo to Seoul, there’s a hint of nascent romance. And when they are later caught together in a clinch, this adds to the murky atmosphere, Young facing court martial accused of the deadly sin of having an affair with a colleague’s wife and deemed a pariah by colleagues. He has another strike against his name – he dug up a grave.

The situation is exacerbated by high command caught between troops needing the morale-booster of seeing a traitor hanged and fearing scandal if they are found after the event to have sent an innocent man to the gallows. And there is the irony that Young, in his capacity as prosecutor, was the man who found Ryker guilty in the first place. He only ends up on the opposite side as punishment for exposing technical irregularities in the defence’s handling of the case.

Ryker doesn’t help himself by initially proving to be an unreliable witness, remembering in erroneous detail minor matters but not the one thing that could clear his name, whether his commanding officer, now deceased, had left a note clearing Ryker. The sergeant, caught behind enemy lines, had claimed he was acting under orders during a counter-intelligence mission.

So the odds are heavily stacked against Ryker, at the re-trial the sheer malevolence of his boss Major Whittaker (Peter Graves), and sex-obsessed pal Capt Appleton (Murray Hamilton) and what seems like ranks of generals barely concealed. The investigation focuses on finding missing items – watch, pen, notebook – of the dead officer, none of which it transpires helps the case.

The courtroom has plenty of the usual twists including a surprise witness proving Ryker fraternised before the war with a Korean general. So, with army politics and a downbeat take on war thrown into the mix it’s a generally absorbing drama.

Bradford Dillman (A Rage to Live, 1965), usually relegated to leading man or supporting star in the credits, one or two places below the star in the billing, gets the chance to shine, essaying both a man standing up for his principles against heavy opposition and a lover guilty of attempting to steal another man’s wife. Appearing in virtually every scene, he gives a better account of his acting skills than in most of his movies, far more than the often one-note performances to which he was consigned. One-time Hitchcock protegee Vera Miles (Hellfighters, 1968) doesn’t bring quite enough of the internal conflict to her role but she’s a reasonable sidekick.

Had any big studio been paying attention, Lee Marvin gave pretty good notice of his potential for star status especially the menace he could impart with just a glance rather than the showy over-acting to which he was inclined in previous villainous outings such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). He’s careful to allow the shiftier and gloomier elements of his character to come into play rather than playing the role as heroic innocent. There’s good back-up from Peter Graves and allowed, a little leeway from their normal movie personas, Murray Hamilton md Norman Fell (both from The Graduate, 1967).

Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968) directed from a screenplay by Seeleg Lester (Change of Mind, 1969) and William D. Gordon (Cotter, 1973).

At a crisp 85 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome as long as you’re not taken in by the still-misleading poster. A good example of the species with excellent performances.

Plus, you can catch if for free on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqT7AOV8_8

Warning Shot (1967) ****

So underrated it doesn’t even feature on Wikipedia’s chart of 1960s crime pictures, this tight little gem, with an early reflection on police brutality, a dream cast, violence in slow motion (prior to The Wild Bunch, 1969, mind you) and a stunning score from Jerry Goldsmith, is definitely in need of resurrection. Astonishing to realize that cop pictures had fallen so out of fashion, that this was the first Hollywood cop film of the decade – outside of a drama like The Chase (1966) – the entire previous output focusing on gangsters with a rare private eye (Harper, 1966) thrown in. With none of the vicious snarl of Madigan (1968) or the brutality of Coogan’s Bluff (1968), this was more in keeping with the later In the Heat of the Night (1967) in terms of the mental and physical barrage endured by the cop.

Although suspended, Valens has no alternative but to investigate, interviewing elderly patient Alice (Lillian Gish) whom the doctor was visiting, patient’s neighbour playboy pilot Walt (George Grizzard), doctor’s assistant Liz (Stefanie Powers), doctor’s wife Doris (Eleanor Parker) and doctor’s stockbroker (George Sanders) without nothing to show for his efforts but a savage beating, filmed in slow motion, inflicted by the doctor’s son and pals, and a further attempt on his life. He gets into more trouble for attempting to smear the doctor as an abortionist (a crime at the time).

David Janssen (King of the Roaring 20s, 1960) had not made a picture in four years, his time consumed by the ultra-successful television show The Fugitive, but his quiet, brooding, internalized style and soft spoken manner is ideal for the tormented cop. This also Joan Collins (Esther and the King, 1960) first Hollywood outing in half a decade.

In the veteran department are aforementioned famed silent star Lillian Gish (The Birth of a Nation, 1915), Brit George Sanders (The Falcon series in the 1940s), Walter Pidgeon (Mrs Miniver, 1942) also in his first film in four years, Ed Begley in only his second picture since Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) and Keenan Wynn (Stagecoach, 1966). Noted up-and-coming players include Stefanie Powers (also Stagecoach), Sam Wanamaker (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), George Grizzard (Advise and Consent, 1962) and Carroll O’Connor (A Fever in the Blood, 1961). American television star Steve Allen (College Confidential, 1960) plays a hypocritical pundit.

Worth catching on Amazon Prime.

Villa Rides (1968) ***

Brynner did not like Sam Peckinpah’s original script so Robert Towne (Chinatown) was brought in to present Villa in a more appealing light. Jill Ireland (Mrs Bronson) has a small part and you can also spot Fernando Rey.

The links below seem somewhat dodgy but you could try the Talking Pictures channel which is free.