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PAGE 6—'September 27,1973
TV Movies
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- FUZZ (1972) -•. . .is, as you might
expect from the title, a satire on the police, in
this case depicting the bumbling
crime-detection antics of Ed McBain’s
mythical 87th Precinct in Boston. Both the
slapstick material and the performances -
Burt Reynolds as the cosmopolitan detective
with Jack Weston and Tom Skerritt as his
subordinates, Raquel Welch as a police
woman decoy(!), and Yul Brynner as an
exotic extortionist -- are so inept that they
become laughable -- an effect not otherwise
achieved by director Richard Colla. The
narrative line of FUZZ seems to concern
Brynner’s systematic decimation of Boston’s
city commissioners as the result of the police
department’s failure to take his extortion
demands seriously, but the multiplicity of
minor characters and subplots obscures the
story-line quite effectively. Viewers who find
murder, attempted rape and the burning of
helpless hobos less than hilarious may wish to
pass up this one. (A-lll)
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1 — 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) - DOCTOR’S WIVES (1971) -
DOCTOR'S WIVES is a soiled soap opera
sorely in need of enzyme action. Revolving
around the acitivity of a posh California
medical clinic, the film sloshes through a
variety of cycles, including therapeutic
adultery, promiscuity, manslaughter,
lesbianism, extortion, drug addiction,
frigidity, miscegenation, alchoholism, and the
medical code. In short, DOCTOR’S WIVES
made sure it had something for everyone,
everyone, that is, who buys this sort of
simple-minded, groin-leveled trash. Of course,
serious ethical questions are raised along the
way regarding a doctor’s responsibility to his
patient, but these questions are introduced
solely to provide the sham profundity that
indolent television watchers, bathed in sweet
tears, have come to expect from this sort of
film. This M.J. Frankovich production,
directed ploddingly by George Schaefer, only
emphasizes its low tone by obviously trying,
via suggested off-camera shenanigans and
euphemistic dialogue, to have its cake and eat
it too. To some, the film will appear to be
“clean,” but it is actually simply dishonest
and devious. It is gruesome, too, presenting
stock footage from an actual open-heart
operation for your colorful viewing pleasure.
Too bad the film itself has no heart. (B)
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- ISN’T IT SHOCKING? - TV feature
not previewed at press time seems to sport a
cast made up entirely of “Guest Stars” -- Alan
Alda, Louise Lasser, Edmond O’Brien, Lloyd
Nolan, Will Geer and Ruth Gordon. Who is
the REAL star remains a mystery, which is
also a description of the plot. Appears that
the senior citizens in a picturesque little New
England town all take to dying under strange
circumstances, and it is up to newcomer Alda
to figure out who or what has been killing
them. Yesiree, things get mighty devilish in
Mount Angel.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - LETTERS FROM THREE LOVERS
- Another “premiere” TV film, with most of
the suspense hinging on the slow delivery of
the mails. Letters arrive a year late (thanks to
a plane crash) to three women (June Allyson,
Juliet Mills, Belinda Montgomery), and
change their respective love lives.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - THE WILD BUNCH (1969) -- When
this semi-historical Western was first released
in movie theaters, it occasioned an uproarious
debate about the use of graphic (rather than
idealized or softened) violence in the film
medium. The story concerns the last few
forays, at the period closing the Old West, of
an actual gang known as The Wild Bunch. As
the law and modern times gradually close in
on them, the gang (headed by William
Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Edmond
O’Brien) are driven to greater risks and
increased brutality in their robberies. The
concluding shoot-out in a Mexican outpost is
one of the bloodiest (exploding flesh, spurting
blood, gaping wounds) on film, and its
interpretation as message and art is what
caused all the furor. Does all the gore tell us
that dying in the Old West was not the clean
and sudden thing we have been told it was
through the traditional Westerns, that it was
actually grisly and painful and often
lingering? Or is it that film maker Sam
Peckinpah is simply cashing in on the public’s
appetite for violence by presenting it in a
realistic manner? The debate has yet to be
resolved, but what is important for TV
viewers is that "The Wild Bunch” is
nonetheless an expertly made film of a period
and place important in our cultural history,
and that it is disturbingly real in style. We
won’t know what -- if anthing — has been cut
out of the film until we see it on our home
TV screens, but you might approach it with
some caution if violence disturbs you or
members of your family, especially
youngsters. (A-IV)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5 —9:00 p.m. (CBS)
-- THE WRECKING CREW (1968) -- The only
truly funny aspect of this limp spy-spoof is
watching Dean Martin lumber through it as
superagent Matt Helm. The plot has to do
with the transfer of one billion dollars in gold
from Denmark to London - which affords
Martin a number of occasions for sly jokes
about “Danish pastries,” etc. (one of them is
played by Elke Sommer). Other diversion is
provided by Nancy Kwan, Sharon Tate, and
Tina Louise. Nigel Green plays the head of a
British crime syndicate that tries to heist the
bullion, and John Larch is Martin’s
understandably exasperated superior. The
level of entertainment, like that of the
alledged wit, is adolescent. (B)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - THE ALPHA CAPER - Brand-new
TV film stars handsome Henry Fonda as a
probation officer who turns to crime when he
is forced to retire suddenly. Seems that Henry
knows his clients’ backgrounds sufficiently
well, enough so, at least, to recruit among
them a gang of thieves who might -- but just
might - pull off a large-scale heist of Federal
gold bullion. John Marley co-stars as the
Treasury agent blocking the way.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - SUPPORT YOUR
LOCAL SHERIFF (1969) - Here is a gentle,
genuinely funny spoof on the Hollywood
Western and its heroes. When a gold strike
transforms a slow-moving Western settlement
into a raucous, lawless boom town devoid of
peace and peace-officers alike, the local folk
hire quiet drifter James Garner as sheriff.
Things look grim for the young stranger, what
with all those ornery gun-toting badmen, that
is, until he institutes a series of clever and
non-lethal maneuvers aimed at ridding the
town of crime and violence. Garner is a past
master at the type of characterization called
for by the script, thanks to his stint as TV
Maverick, and his performance combines
neatly with Burt Kennedy’s deft, off-beat
direction to make for one of the new seasons
TV movie highlights. Joan Hackett provides
Garner with romantic interest, and Walter
Brennan and Jack Elam are among many
contributing nifty character cameos. (A-l)
OOQOQQOQOOQOOQQQQQQOQOOOOQ
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Film Classifications
A - Section I - Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A - Section II - Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section DI — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B - Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
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/^/////Z I I
SAVE THE CHILDREN (Paramount) is
both title and theme of this longish but
rewarding, black-oriented film which uses
music as the medium for its message about
black economic and social self-help. The
occasion for the film was last year’s PUSH
Expo, held in Chicago, an exposition of black
enterprise and arts and related cultural
advances. Everything is given a great big gloss
by a mammoth concert featuring the nation’s
top black recording artists, groups and
entertainers. In color and neatly edited, the
film swings from stage performances to scenes
at the exposition, often with the music
commenting on the visual images. Among the
many, many artists featured (and the film
tried to fit too many of them into its 2
hour-plus format) are the Jackson Five,
Roberta Flack, the O-Jays, the Staple Singers,
Isaac Hayes, etc., etc. Muscially, the film is a
matter of (pop-rock-soul) taste; culturally,
and in its non-racist message of black
upward-mobility, it is quite significant. (A-l)
LE SEX SHOP (Peppercorn-Wormser)
Claude Bern’s new film - which he wrote,
directed and stars in - is intended as a gentle
satire on contemporary sexual mores. Mr.
Berri is persuaded to remodel his flagging
bookstore into a “sex shop” which
merchandizes erotic books and related
mechanical contraptions. Delving into his own
wares, the somewhat awkward but
increasingly successful entrepreneur becomes
obsessed with the objects of his trade and is
soon engrossed with his swinging clientele in
various forms of experimentation with his
unwilling wife (Juliet Berto) and a
wife-swapping couple (Jean-Pierre Marielle
and Nathalie Delon). As characteristically
happens in such sex farces, Berri as bumbling
hero is unable, try as he may, to master the
required techniques or consummate the
necessary infidelity, whether the occasion is a
visit to a local sex club or a swinging “love”
cruise (accompanied, as luck would have it,
by his in-laws). Berri as director is no more
successful in holding up the objects of his
satire to any telling effect. There is simply not
enough wit present in the effort to sustain the
feature’s running time (92 minutes). As a
result of such softedged satire, the explicit
nature of much of the film’s treatment is at
best tasteless and at worst grossly offensive.
(C)
THE ADVERSARY (Altura) Satyajit Ray’s
films of Indian life have gained international
interest because they have illuminated human
nature and only incidentally emphasized the
special character of Indian society. This
particular film, however, is different because
society is the protagonist, and the film centers
on the chaotic conditions that make India
unique among the family of man. It is Ray’s
most political film, concerned with the failure
of the present system and the possible options
open for Indians to humanize the process of
industrialized urbanization. Set in Calcutta, a
city drowning in its mass of humanity, the
antagonist of the film is a former student
faced with the hopeless necessity of finding a
job. As it becomes increasingly apparent that
he has no chance of getting other than
dead-end work, his alienation deepens into
despair. When he suddenly falls in love, he
compromises his principles to take a job as a
drug salesman in a back-country area, content
to accept his karma and resign his
individuality into the larger stream of the
faceless Indian masses. There are many little
touches of humanity (the job interview in
which the young man cannot help but show
his scorn of the whole humiliating process is
an example) to remind us of Ray’s greatness
as a director. But there is also a steel-hard
passion in depicting the daily injustices and
humiliations of Indian life which is new in
Ray’s work. Although the film ends with the
compassionate, yet ambiguous, image of the
young man accepting his fate, Ray has
committed himself to taking a social position.
All of which is to say that this blend of
humanist sensibility with political fervor
makes THE ADVERSARY an important film
for our time. (A-ll)
GORDON’S WAR (Fox) offers a new
wrinkle on the now-familiar blaxploitation
scene: fancy pimps and super-fly drug dealers
as villains, and not a cop, corrupt or
otherwise, in sight during the entire 90
minutes. The plot is pencil slim: Gordon (Paul
Winfield) returns from Vietnam to find his
wife dead of an overdose of herion given her
by the pimp who had corrupted her, and
seeks absolute vengeance. He recruits a
three-man army of other vets (Carl Lee, Tony
King and David Dowling) and leads them in a
constantly escalating battle that spirals
upwards through the criminal ranks to a white
(naturally) Park Avenue executive.
GORDON’S WAR leaves behind it a truckload
of bodies of pushers and pimps and assorted
thugs to add to the ghetto’s street litter. As an
action flick, the film is full of the harsh
brutality one might expect, including one
explicit sex scene and one unusual shot of
naked heroin cutters at work under the blue
darkroom light of a Harlem dope factory. It is
unfortunate that the film dishes up so much
unrelenting (if fantasy-prone) street violence,
frank nudity, and unconcious acceptance of
the hero as righteous avenger, because
director Ossie Davis obviously has a moral
point to make about what dope is doing to
black people, and because he otherwise
captures the gritty feel of Harlem’s vitality
quite effectively. (B)
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY . . .LOVE,
GEORGE (Cinema 5) A young lad (Ron
Howard) searching for his unknown father
comes to a New England fishing village
inhabited by the kind of bizarre characters
only found in the cheapest horror movies.
Cloris Leachman, Patricia Neal, and her
daughter, Tessa Dahl, find themselves among
the hapless cast in this unsympathetic vehicle.
MOTHER’S DAY was written by Robert
Clouse and is ineptly directed by Darren
McGavin, whose own acting experience
should have made him know better. The
film’s gory violence, supposedly motivated by
sexual repression, is a totally inappropriate
fantasy for the young and an unsavory one
for adults. (B)
RECENT FILM CLASSIFICATIONS
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.
Frankweiler (Cinema 5) -- A-l
The Paper Chase (Fox) -- A-lll
Le Retour D’Afrique (New Yorker) -- A-lll
The Pyx (Cinerama) -- A-IV
Happy Mother’s Day, Love, George
(Cinema 5) -- B
HOLY YEAR, 1950 -- Devout pilgrims praying the Rosary are part of
the throng which visited Rome during the Holy Year in 1950. Pope Pius
XII is carried down to the great porch of St. Peter’s Basilica to officiate
at closing ceremonies on Christmas Eve, 1950. An estimated 4 million
persons made the pilgrimage during that most recent Holy Year.
Preparations are underway for another Holy Year to be held in 1975. (NC
Photo)
BOOK REVIEWS
BY FATHER JOSEPH GALLAGHER
“Soundings in Satanism.” Assembled
by F.J. Sheed, Sheed and Ward: N.Y.,
xii-236 pp., $6.95 (paper $3.45).
It is no news that along with the
rather recent rebirth of widespread
interest in the occult, the figure of
Satan and the practice of Satanism have
achieved a renewed popularity.
When, 20 years ago, the Catholic
publishing house of Sheed and Ward
published a translation of a collection of
French Essays entitled Satan, they
could scarcely have imagined how
timely such a subject would become a
short two decades later.
Frank Sheed, irrepressibly energetic
and topical even in his 75th year,
though no longer heading Sheed and
Ward, has taken eleven essays from the
1951 volume-roughly one-third of
it-and added about ten more articles to
confect the present volume.
In an Assembler’s Note, Mr. Sheed
asserts that “the present book is not
about Satan but about Satanism.” In
view of subsequent articles such as
“Satan in the Old Testament,” and
“Demoniacs in the Gospel,” this remark
seems incorrect.
The remark also seems askew in view
of the attention given to the sense of
the diabolic itself in such literary figures
as Dante, Balzac, Gogol and Dostoevski.
(Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel the
Elder are artists of another sort who
gain attention.)
The discrepancy needn’t be stressed,
for there are articles enough on
Satanism as such. One of the best,
which would have made a natural
introductory article is Richard Wood’s
lively and very up-to-date “Satanism
Today.”
Flashback articles on the same theme
include a treatment of the devils of
Loudun, Cotton Mather and the Witches
of Salem, and a 19th century Black
Mass in Paris.
Out of the abundance of facts and
theories packed into these essays, these
individual items particularly struck the
reviewer:
-While most of Europe was involved
in the mania of witchcraft, Ireland
seems to have been free of it.
--Cotton Mather specifically
denounced torture as a means of getting
confession from suspected witches.
-In these days of increased Satanism,
the Roman Catholic Church has
eliminated the minor order of exorcism
as a normal step toward priesthood.
-In the Old Testament, Satan is of
very little importance.
-Western man, preoccupied with
unity, has not excelled artistically (in
sculpture and painting) in depicting the
diabolic, which is “legion” and
fragmentary.
--“Hell is heaven hollowed out”
(Barbey d’Aurievilly).
Readers with an interest in the
diabolic will be grateful to Mr. Sheed
for this diverse sample of fairly modem
writings on the subject, and to John
Updike for his captivating and already
widely-noted introduction.
BY FATHER C.J. MCNASPY
“PAINTING ON SILENCE” by
Joseph Gallagher. Exposition Press. New
York. 1973. 95 pp. $4.50. (500)
I approached Joe Gallagher’s
“Orchestra of Poems” (as he subtitles it)
with a critical handicap. Knowing and
liking the person so well, would I be
able to appraise the poet with the sort
of distance critics value so? After a few
pages, my malaise dissipated. How, for
example, does one resist ( or criticize)
such a seven-word frolic as this?
Hope
is checking your mailbox
on Sunday.
Is it a poem? Or does that matter?
It’s verbal fun, with a point.
Living in an academic world, where
undergraduate verses (and graduate
ones, too) plumb extragalactic depths
and probe post-Freudian psyches, I was
refreshed and delighted to find mature
joy and pain expressed in
unselfconscious language.
A truly learned man, Joe Gallagher
has no need to brandish arcane symbols
or terms, sending the earnest reader off
to encyclopedias or the OED. When he
lapses into the phrase “time’s insidious
strigil,” he is humble enough to add a
footnote explaining that “strigils were
implements used by ancient athletes to
scrape oil from their bodies.” Some
readers may find this condescending; I
found it kindly.
None of this is meant to suggest that
the poems here are facile in an Edgar
Guest sort of way. Many have to be
“earned,” but I invariably found the
energy price worth it all.
Joe’s approach to poetry is made
plain in what he calls “Program Notes”
(obviously to carry out the orchestra
image). It is a tiny, lucid, unpretentious
“ars poetica” in which appear some of
the sanest things ever said about poetry.
The poet’s function he suggests, is to
be a Noticer, a Connector, a Celebrant
of freshness, laboring “to avoid the
stereotyped, the stale, the ready-made,
the predictable.” This fits my own
notion of other arts as well: as Poe
suggested ages ago, and Eliot more
recently, what art does is provide
“surprise”- not any surprise, to be sure,
but surprise that somehow turns out to
be right.
This implies wit, not simply in the
sense of humor. It leaves room too, for
what may be archly called the didactic
poems with a “message.” Joe Gallagher
is not afraid to touch on serious
problems like death, religion, war,
racism. But he touches them with the
art of image and word; accordinly, one
feels moved, not preached at.
Take this, for instance: “Asiatics, / as
we all know,/ have a different view of
death / from us / and hold life cheap. /
What I don’t know / is how it happens /
that when one of our cameras / focuses
on one of their / cancelled children, /
fragmentary husbands, / smudged out
mothers, / there almost always
somehow / manages to be on hand, /
weeping and wailing, / one of those /
culturally deviant / Orientals / who
never got / the local, / anesthetic /
message.”
The points are so sharply made that I
expect not to forget them.
(I t
&
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
Why Me
BY KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
Why me, Lord? What have I ever done to
deserve even one of the pleasures I’ve known?
Tell me, Lord, what did I ever do that was
worth loving you or the kindness you’ve shown?
Chorus
Lord, help me, Jesus, I’ve wasted it so,
Help me, Jesus, I know what I am.
But now that I know that I’ve needed you so,
Help me, Jesus, my soul’s in your hands.
TYy me, Lord, if you think there’s a way I can
try to repay all I’ve taken from you.
Maybe, Lord, I can show someone else what I’ve
been thru myself, or my way back to you.
(c) 1972 Monument Record Corp.
Resaca Music Pub. Co. (BMI)
Kris Kristofferson raises an interesting question in “Why Me.” Why does God
seem to be good to those who are evil? He admits that he has wasted part of his
life and yet the Lord has been kind to him.
The answer is easy to explain but sometimes difficult to understand. Our God
has this crazy kind of love with which he delights in blessing men. Crazy because
we wouldn’t shower it as freely as he does-crazy because he offers it over and
over even to those who reject him.
We don’t work like that. We avoid people who do us wrong because we don’t
want to get hurt. Even if we forgive the hurt, our memories are too good to
forget the hurt and grudges can run deep. God doesn’t hold grudges-when he
forgives, he forgets. He is so concerned about our happiness that he surrounds us
with the signs of his love so that in the freedom which is ours we just might
come to see that loving him is the right thing to do.
The problem some people have is that they can’t accept themselves as
loveable. I’m no good, I’m not worthy, nobody can love me-it comes out in all
kinds of ways. This is a dangerous attitude because if you give a person the
impression that he is rejected you give him an excuse for acting rejected, for not
trying any more. God accepts each one of us, with our past mistakes and the
possibility of failure in the future. Each of us has all that he needs now to be
loved by God and all that he asks is that we keep trying.
It’s easy to be down on yourself, to regret the past, to wish things about you
were different because you want to be perfect. It’s difficult to say O.K., I blew
it, I’m sorry and I’ll just have to accept the fact and go on from here. King
David, St. Peter and Mary Magdalene all stood at that spot of failure and yet
went on in life conscious of God’s love for them. I’m sure that thoughts of their
failures and unworthiness came back from time to time (see Psalm 51), but they
didn’t give up.
What it all boils down to is this-you’ve got to learn to love yourself because
you’re good and God loves you. That’s why the thought in this song is
beautiful-he admits failure, accepts it and asks for help from God. It’s a truly
humble attitude of one who knows his place before God and realizes the help
that he needs to go on.
The second verse deals with helping others. What’s interesting here is that he
couldn’t sing the second verse if we were still worrying about his own
unworthiness. No one can know what compassion is if he doesn’t have it for
himself first. It’s only when one accepts the fact that he is accepted by God that
he can move on to seeing the world outside himself.
Jesus spent a lot of time saying love your neighbor, but when he framed those
two greatest commandments, we have to remember that he made the second one
conditional-love your neighbor, sure, but you’ve got to love yourself first.
Loving yourself can be the greatest lesson in acceptance you can ever learn.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans, St. Joseph’s Church, 216 Patton
Avenue, P.O. Box 5188, Shreveport, La. 71105)