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The Mad Bomber (1973)
Must See Sleaze from Mr. B.I.G.!!
I don't know why I resisted seeing this movie for so long. I think it's because I thought that the plot description was too dull and pedantic for a great Bert I. Gordon experience. I thought that it sounded like a routine police actioner that Mr. BIG must have directed when he needed to make a car payment. Well, I was completely wrong. Maybe not about the car payment, but certainly about the movie. Gordon has delivered one of the most depraved, callous, stupefying images of Los Angeles ever committed to celluloid. And boy is it hilarious.
It pre-figures "Falling Down" and is a thousand times more satisfying. An almost unrecognizable Chuck Connors plays the most angry, righteous, and hateful in LA. His daughter has died of a drug overdose, and like most Angelenos, he chooses to blame the town for his bad luck. This performance is so brave, so unaffected and balls out, that I suspect Chuck Connors may be one of the most unappreciated actors of the 70s. That, or he was completely whacked out of his head during filming. This guy runs through Los Angeles looking exactly like the kind of guy who would plot the doom of society. Hell, his eyebrows look like they could jump off his head and eat a person. This is one intense looking dude.
Connors has been planting bombs around the city and at one target he's seen by a virulent rapist whose just trying to grab another victim. What Bert I. Gordon does with this outline is unexpected and wonderful. He shows the daily existence of these cretins. Connors goes around with a chip on his shoulder bigger than his actual shoulder. Only in a Mr. B.I.G. movie would you see a rampaging lunatic shop for his food before he flips out on a cashier at a Ralph's grocery store for not providing proper service. The rapist is also shown in his private places. Like when he masturbates to soft-core porn of his wife! And it's not like she's gone or dead or anything. This middle-aged, puffy housefrau just likes to keep her lovin' hubby happy.
Despite working with a restrictive budget, Gordon manages some oddly contrived but surprisingly effective explosion scenes. Especially wonderful is the first one at a high school with plenty of young victims. There's a hilarious scene where Connors infiltrates a meeting of feminists only to plant a bomb underneath the chicken they've ordered for the snack. As with most movies directed by the incomparable Gordon, this film lays on the sleaze in dollops not veneer. Vince Edwards, the cop pursuing Connors, finds his investigation leading to a strip club. As he interviews one stripper backstage, the one on stage is in the frame behind Edwards. Only Bert I. Gordon would remember to put the girl in that shot! To make clear his commitment to the case, Edwards says one of the most memorable lines in the movie. "Let me blanket the city with policewomen just begging to be raped!" If that makes you laugh, run to find the uncut version of this masterpiece. If such dialog has you wondering whatever happened to Paddy Chayefsky, then go nowhere near this or any other Bert I. Gordon work.
Scream for Help (1984)
Another glacial mess by Michael Winner - compulsively watchable!
Michael Winner again misses actual greatness by a light year, but achieves inadvertent greatness in trafficking crap with his slapdash approach to film-making. The dopey plot involves a high school girl (Rachael Kelly) who believes her stepfather is trying to kill her mom.
The dippy sub-Nancy Drew exploits are periodically interrupted by typical Winner sleaziness including completely gratuitous nudity. The acting is uniformly amateurish, as if the cast just memorized their lines minutes before they were shot. As with most Winner movies, it's shot haphazardly and unimaginatively. The over-anxious soundtrack is almost always inappropriate and sounds like it belongs in an episode of "Charlie's Angels". And if you're a fan of bad songs, stay tuned through the credits for "Christy", one of the most laughable themes I've ever heard! Surprisingly sung (horribly) by Jon Anderson of the legendary prog-rock band Yes.
All of this is not to say the movie isn't perversely entertaining. Most of Winner's movies are, for me. It's fascinating to watch such slapdash nonsense. This is the kind of movie that has you checking the cast on IMDb just to see if anyone escaped this crap and went on to anything of note. I checked. No one really did. Corey Parker is the only one who had much of a career to speak of following this mess. Though Led Zepplin's John Paul Jones surprisingly is credited for the crap score! This is obviously a travesty, but for ludicrous plotting, inane dialog, brain dead behavior from every character and a handful of sleaze, it's just the ticket.