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PAGE 6—October 4,1973
TV Movies
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7 — 8:30 p.m,
(ABC) - HANG ’EM HIGH (1968) - This
happens to be a rousing good Western,
starring Clint Eastwood. It was Eastwood’s
first American-made movie since he had
returned in triumph from making a star of
himself in three bloody spaghetti Westerns
directed by Sergio Leone. For a change, this
Eastwood vehicle (which still has him pretty
silent and smokin’ those black cheroots) is
full of action but not too much violence, is
clever but not campy, is hard-hitting but not
overly brutal. The story takes Eastwood as a
former lawman into the Nebraska Territory,
where he is promptly hanged (but not high
enough) and then almost bushwacked. From
then on it’s only a matter of time before
rough justice is brought to the range -- with a
little help on the side from hanging judge Pat
Hingle. And for the first time, Clint enters a
fairly normal man-woman relationship with a
widow (inger Stevens) who herself had been
brutalized by a lawless mob. (A-lll)
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8 — 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) - YOU’LL LIKE MY MOTHER
(1972) -- A young, pregnant widow (Patty
Duke) arrives unannounced one wintry eve at
the baronial mansion of her Vietnam-killed
husband, where his mother offers a somewhat
less than icy welcome. Things get curiouser
and curiouser, as they say, as the young
woman tries to account for her
mother-in-law’s hostility, as well as for the
odd behavior of a menacing young man seen
lurking here and there in the shadows. She
gradually realizes she is being kept a prisoner
in the creaky old house. The only comfort, in
fact, comes by way of another youngster, a
deaf-mute played by Sian Barbara Allen. We
won’t give away the plot and all of its twists,
except to say that for adults with nothing
better to do, this tight little horror-mystery
offers a number of chills and shocks. (A-lll)
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - SHIRTS/SKINS - Made-for-TV
comedy about six young executive-types
whose weekly basketball game gets a little out
of hand. Rene Auberjonois, Bill Bixby, Doug
McClure, Leonard Frey star in this wacky
farce. Seems that one week the game really
gets rolling - enough so that it becomes a
full-time adventure of hide-and-seek (of the
basketball), gradually escalating into a
mini-war of the wits as one team of three tries
to outfox the other, at the expense of their
business and personal lives. Some fun.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE
DARK — Kim Darby and Jim Hutton are a
cute pair of newlyweds who inherit a creaky
old house way out in the middle of nowhere.
Their fun-packed plans for the house turn to
chills when it becomes apparent that - gasp!
-- the old place has a life of its own. In fact,
the house has ghosties and ghoulies coming
out of the woodwork -- and they want Ms.
Darby to join them!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12 — 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - DRACULA - New version of the old
Bram Stoker chiller about the blood thirsty
count, this one made expressly for TV (which
means the commercials fit into the story
better). Jack Palance stars as Count Dracula,
putting the bite on unsuspecting folks who
visit his country estate in Britain (why they
transplanted him from Transylvania is a
mystery). Among his victims is lovely Pamela
Brown, who then develops a taste for blood
on her own . . .
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13 — 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - DOUBLE INDEMNITY -- TV
remake of the suspenseful thriller by Billy
Wilder and Raymond Chandler, which can
hardly be improved upon. But TV film
makers will stop at nothing, and for this new
version starring Samantha Eggar and Richard
Crenna as an evil-doing pair, they have even
used the original Wilder-Chandler script. Story
concerns a tangled web of murder and
deception, with wife Ms. Eggar and insurance
salesman Crenna arranging an “accidental”
death for Ms. Eggar’s unsuspecting but heavily
insured husband. Things go fine for the
schemers until a couple of insurance
investigators notice a slight odor of fish
hovering over the case. If this is half as well
done as the 1944 original, it’s worth
watching.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13 — 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) -- THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971) -
Director Sidney Lumet almost succeeds in
splicing together an exciting “perfect heist”
narrative and an ironic statement about
electronic eavesdropping, public and private.
The trouble is that the two don’t quite mix as
well on the screen as they did in the popular
novel by Lawrence Sanders. Sean Connery
plays Duke Anderson, a likeable but
businesslike thief who has hatched a master
plan to knock off an entire New York luxury
apartment building. His plan is perfect on the
surface, but underneath - i.e., in every
basement corner, every neighboring
apartment, every decorator’s shop and
favored Mafia restaurant -- there lurks a
multitude of bugging and filming devices. In
fact, everyone Duke recruits for the job, from
his mistress (Dyan Cannon) to his mobster
bankroller (Alan King) is being watched or
listened on in. The irony of it all is that none
of the eavesdroppers is operating either legally
or in conjunction with the others, so no one
has a full picture of what’s really going on.
Other than that, we don’t give the plot twists
away, save to indicate that the material is
definitely intended for adults, and in
occasional scenes may prove objectionable to
some. (A-lV)
A PAT FROM THE POPE - Four month old Rebecca Kleffner of
Seattle, Wash., is about to receive a friendly pat from Pope Paul VI during
a general audience last week. The child is being held by her mother,
Mrs. Ed Kleffner. The pope spoke about the upcoming Holy Year at his
audience, calling on Christians everywhere to make it “an hour of grace.”
(NC Photo)
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Film Classifications
A - Section I - Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A - Section II - Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Adolescents
A — Section III — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B — Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
nooQoooooooooooooO
///
BOOK REVIEWS
FISTS OF THE DOUBLE K (Marvin Films)
The ads claim this is the first Karate/Kung Fu
motion picture “sanctioned” by the “Royal
K/K Society.” Despite this dubious
distinction this latest in the endless cycle of
Hong Kong imports is bottom-drawer in every
category, from plot to production values,
processing and dubbing. The action is, once
again, bloody and interminable, interrupted
only by some coy sex in the way of '-^n
attempted rape of a blind girl. If it is true that
these films have been playing primarily to
black audiences, then those situations in the
New York area where DOUBLE K is being
released with a lush travelogue produced by
the South African government are truly a
commentary on the distribution company’s
appreciation for the sensitivities of its
audience.(C)
SCALAWAG (Paramount) is notable
because it introduces a new director, Kirk
Douglas. Unfortunately, the pirate movie,
based loosely on a Robert Louis Stevenson
effort, also showcases an old Hollywood
actor, Kirk Douglas. It’s not that Douglas
cannot act; rather, it seems that he reverts to
flashing grins and springy leaps when
confronted by a director who’s not sure who’s
in charge. The tale, which also stars Mark
Lester, whose gulps and bug eyes are a match
for Douglas’ flamboyant gestures, meanders
along the Baja California coast, now at sea
with pirates taking over gold-laden
merchantmen, now upon the hardscrabble
coastal area, where Lester and his pretty sister
are trying to maintain a homestead. Romance
enters the picture too, along with
double-crossing and a climaxing fight for life
and loot deep inside what appears to be an
abandoned strip mine. It is refreshing td see
an old-fashioned adventure of this sort, with
any killings either taking place just off camera
or representing themselves as obvious fakes. It
is not so refreshing, though, to see a clumsy
rape attempt played for laughs in a movie
aimed expressly at the under-ten set. (A-lI)
DETROIT 9000 (General Film Corp.) is
the “Mayday” signal used by the Detroit
police force to indicate an officer in need of
assistance. Actually, the film’s central figure is
a tough white cop named Basset (Alex Rocco)
who does not need — much less want -- any
help from his colleagues as he goes about,
nip-and-tuck, solving the daring heist of a
local black politician's campaign war chest.
Despite his toughness and whiteness, Rocco’s
cop is not a racist; in fact, he hates just about
everybody with equal fervor. A rather
complex man, Lt. Basset has been passed over
for promotion by the department, which puts
his former partner, a college-educated cop,
into the chief of detectives slot. This sort of
injustice only serves to harden Basset in his
pursuit of criminals and in his utter
incorruptibility. He cannot buck orders,
however, and he is forced to take on a black
detective (Hari Rhodes) as a partner in
cracking the political caper. The trail leads
into any number of blind alleys (all of them
photographed by Harry May to bring out the
meanness of Detroit’s ghetto streets), with a
final turn taking the cops to an abandoned
train station and its decaying environs. The
final shootout is stupefyingly prolonged' and
gory, as the desperate robbers are hunted
down one-by-one. Morally the film is as
ambiguous as the relationships of the players,
good and bad, which makes for interest if not
clarity. The cops mix black and white; so do
the robbers; and no one is ever completely
sure about where the other guy's loyalties are
heading. The ending itself is cloudy, with the
black detective wondering aloud whether his
white partner was the crookedest or
straightest cop he’d ever known. Director
Arthur Marks, working from a script by
Orville Hampton, handles the action and
super-tough dialogue very well, although the
constant grittiness of both is eventually
enervating. But there are long moments in the
movie where the violence is plainly excessive,
as well as a few short moments where nudity
intrudes, not really explictly but not really
necessary for plot advancement, either. (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
found only in the cheapest of horror movies.
It is most unfortunate that Cloris Leachman,
Patricia Neal and her daugher, Tessa Dahl,
find themselves among the hapless cast in
such an 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)
BY GERALD M. COSTELLO
“THE PRIEST” by Ralph Mclnerny,
Harper & Row, New York, 531 pp.
$8.95.
Somewhere out there there’s a great
novel to be written about the Church in
the U.S. in the tumultous years since
the end of the Second Vatican Council.
But “The Priest” -- despite an author
who knows his subject well, a good
narrative flow, and a substantial amount
of critical attention - is not it.
The characters about whom Ralph
Mclnerny writes are more or less
recognizable, at least outwardly; and the
settings bear all the signs of familiarity.
The trouble lies in the fact that they
remain just that - characters and
settings, actors playing scenes on a
stage. They never break through the
proscenium to become real people, and
in the end their fate matters no more to
us than that of characters in a play.
The priest of the title is Father
Francis Ascue, coming home from
post-ordination studies in Rome to take
up duties in his home diocese of Fort
Elbow, Ohio. The time is the summer of
1968 - the summer in which Pope Paul
made public his enyclical on birth
control, Humane Vitae.
The mandatory types for popular
novels of this sort are present and
accounted for -- the Crusty Monsignor,
the Inner-City Priest, the Emerging Nun,
and so on. Several lay people are
characterized in detail - a philandering
husband, whose wife is heavily into
posters, banners and CFM, and heavily
out of housework; and a conservative
businessman who heads a lay
organization of self-proclaimed Catholic
intellectuals. The daughter of the First
couple dates, then becomes infatuated
with, a young seminarian, and the
businessman’s daughter, a stewardess,
comes close to having a fling with
Father Ascue. Author Mclnerny does
not cheapen these situations with the
possibilities they suggest. The novel is
not at all exploitative, as others in this
genre have been.
Mclnerny, a philosophy professor at
Notre Dame, avoids another problem
that has side-tracked some authors of
novels about the post-conciliar Church:
the division of the cast into good guys
and bad guys-- more often than not, the
frustrated, misunderstood young liberals
against the intractable Establishment. It
would be refreshing to report that in
avoiding that pitfall, Mclnerny dispenses
fi \
c*
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
Loves me Like a Rock
When I was a little boy,
and the devil called my name,
I say who do, who do you think
you’re foolin?
I’m a consecrated boy,
singing in the Sunday choir
CHORUS:
Oh, my mama loves me, she loves me
she gets on her knees and hugs me,
She loves me like a rock,
she loves me like the rock of ages,
and loves me.
When I was grown to be a man
and the devil would call my name,
I’d say, who do, who do you think
you’re foolin?
I’m a consummated man
of purity.
CHORUS:
And if I was the President
the minute the Congress would
call my name
I’d say, who do, who do you think
you’re fooling?
I got the Presidential seal,
I’m up on the Presidential padium.
by: Paul Simon
(c) CBS, Inc. 1973)
In almost every song since Paul Simon started his solo venture into pop music
there is a curious thread that can be traced and finally shows up now in full
force.
The thread is the reference to “mother” or “mama.” It shows up in “Mother
and Child Reunion,” and again in “Me & Julio” when “Mama Pajama” appears.
In “Kodachrome” he pleads “Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.” And
with that hit still on the charts he releases “Loves Me Like a Rock.” Of course,
the one who loves him here is “Mama.”
It is not really clear who “mama” is, whether lover, girlfriend, wife or really
good old mama. And it’s even less clear why she keeps coming up. But at least
here in this latest song we can make a reasonable guess that “mama” is an image
for a kind of search-the search for security.
The search for personal security, for feeling affirmed and worthwhile is a
search that everyone seems faced with at one time, if not constantly. And in that
search you look for signs to tell you that you’re O.K. and that you always will
be.
One of the places to concentrate the search for security is among those
institutions which have been long established and recognized. And this song
deals with three of these. The first is the institution of religion. When “the devil
called my name” he would really provide no threat because “I’m a consecrated
boy, singing in the Sunday choir.” He is firmly attached to religion, the “Rock
of ages,” and has nothing to fear.
When he is older and new threats arise there is a new institution which can
give some steadiness to his life and person. He vows himself to the institution of
marriage as “a consummated man.”
Even in a position of great risk “if I was the President he can align himself to
the institution of politics and the signs of his office to give him the needed
security.
But there is a real question to be asked in this approach to the search for
security: “Who do you think you’re fooling?” If religion brings security it’s
certainly not just being part of the institution or “singing in the choir.” The
same can be said of just being married or having the “Presidential Seal.”
If security comes from any place, it comes from the fact that you are lovable.
That’s why there’s “rock” security in the way that “my mama loves me.” This is
utterly important. But beyond that and following from it is the real need to
believe that you yourself are lovable. Ultimately security must come from
within, even to be able to benefit from the loving security that comes from
outside. Otherwise all you may wind up with is the fact that only “my mama
loves me.”
a little goodness to everyone concerned,
but it ? s quite the other way around. His
characters are the sorriest lot imaginable
to have representing the People of God:
fearful, self-centered, opportunistic.
I don’t think Mclnerny set out to
write a novel hostile to the Church, but
a reader who reflects on the universal
unattractiveness of the people here
cannot help but wonder about it. If that
was his intention, I think his tactic is
invalid. “The Priest,” as a novel of the
contemporary American Church, simply
does not say enough about that
overwhelming majority of good people
trying to make the best of troubling
times-worshipful, trusting, hopeful,
concerned less with saving their own
skins than with giving witness to Christ
in a world that needs him as never
before. They are here, all around us,
young and old, “liberal” “conservative.”
You know them, and so do I. Perhaps
Mr. Mclnerny does not, and if so, that is
his loss.
A final note: a novelist can certainly
be forgiven a simple mistake, but
downright silliness is something else.
Silly is the only word to describe the
scene in which the layman-editor of the
Fort Elbow Catholic, the diocesan
newspaper, does everything but turn
cartwheels and somersaults
because-ready? the National Catholic
Reporter has phoned him about doing a
story on a local incident. On
speculation, of all things.
Look, anybody in this business would
be perfectly pleased to get a call from
Don Thorman or Terry Brock, or
anyone else at NCR. But to have to look
for a bathroom over the sheer
excitement of it? Professor, that’s so
bad it’s embarrassing.
“DR. SUESS ON THE LOOSE”
-- “This Suessian creature who’s
called Sam I Am / Has the pivotal
role in ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ /
One of three tales by the famed
Dr. Suess / Seen on the show ‘Dr.
Suess on the Loose’.” CBS will
broadcast the show on Monday,
Oct. 15. (NC Cartoon from CBS)