Movie Review: Rio Lobo (1970)

Genre: Western  
Director: Howard Hawks  
Starring: John Wayne, Jorge Rivero, Jack Elam, Jennifer O'Neill  
Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: After the end of the Civil War, former foes Cord McNally (John Wayne) and Pierre "Frenchy" Cordona (Jorge Rivero) become allies. Cord embarks on a personal mission to identify traitors responsible for the death of a close friend. His quest reunites him with Frenchy, and they team up to help the widow Shasta Delaney (Jennifer O'Neill) in her mission to seek revenge on the evil men dominating the town of Rio Lobo.

What Works Well: The opening train holdup scene is patient and contains more than one original nugget. Cinematographer William H. Clothier captures some elegant vistas, and John Wayne contributes reliably robust presence.

What Does Not Work As Well: The final movie directed by Howard Hawks is a disappointing and dispirited effort, going through the motions of retreading elements from the much better Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Here the plot meanders with notable clumsiness, never achieving focus nor a sense of place. The aimless drift is confirmed by an unimaginative but still cluttered supporting cast and barely defined villains. The anachronistic Jennifer O'Neill is particularly exposed in an underwritten role.

Conclusion: A tired horse munching on stale oats.



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Movie Review: Summer Of '42 (1971)

A coming-of-age drama and romance, Summer Of '42 is a wistful look back at friendship and first love.

In 1942, 15 year old Hermie (Gary Grimes) is vacationing with his family on Nantucket island. He spends the long and empty days on the beach with his best friend Oscy (Jerry Houser) and the slightly younger Bengie (Oliver Conant). The boys' hormones are in overdrive and they mostly obsess about feeling up girls and getting laid, fuelled by a big book about sex Bengie finds on his parents' bookshelf.

Hermie is immediately infatuated by Dorothy (Jennifer O'Neill), a beautiful married woman living at a secluded beach house. After her airman husband ships out to join the war, Hermie helps Dorothy with errands and develops a serious crush. Meanwhile Oscy and Hermie are also frolicing with two girls their age, the playful Miriam (Christopher Norris) and more cerebral Aggie (Katherine Allentuck). Before the summer is over, the boys' sexual yearnings will evolve into different realities, testing their friendship.

Written by Herman Raucher and based on his childhood experiences (also novelized after the movie was filmed), Summer Of '42 strikes chords of nostalgia for a generation that came of age in the shadow of a global war. The Michel Legrand soundtrack leans on the dreamy song The Summer Knows, and director Robert Mulligan does the rest with scenic beaches, rugged sand dunes, crashing waves, glorious sunsets, houses on stilts and the prototypical cute main street.

It's all a perfect setting for two teenagers to test their friendship and tip toe into adulthood. Oscy is more brash and solely interested in gaining knowledge and courage towards physical fulfillment. Hermie is more sensitive and instinctively aware of the role of emotions, and the boys' different attitudes cause a growing rift. 

Although he holds his own with just some awkwardness, Hermie is utterly beguiled during and after his encounters with Dorothy, her kindness and allure sending him into raptures where intimacy means much more than lust. She is lonely but stops short of leading him on, Raucher capturing a fine balance where Hermie's racing mind conjures a one-sided romance wild enough to fill a beach house otherwise resonating with innocence.

Despite slow pacing, Mulligan's sometimes ponderous staging, and wooden but mercifully limited narration (an uncredited Mulligan as the adult Hermie), the highlights are plenty. Hermie's first encounter with a hot cup of black coffee offered by Dorothy is a mini-suspense movie, while his attempt to purchase condoms at the town's one convenience story is an epic rite of passage. And when Hermie and Oscy go to the movies with Miriam and Aggie, the grappling and counter-grappling to get a feel for new body parts upstages Now, Voyager, playing on the screen.

Sentimental without being schmaltzy, The Summer Of '42 is when the heartaches of adulthood start to nudge childhood innocence into the past. 



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Movie Review: Seven Notes In Black (1977)

An eerie giallo film, Seven Notes In Black (also known as The Psychic) gets most of the creepy elements right. The tale of a clairvoyant dealing with mysterious visions of death travels along a tightening spiral of enticing tension.

When Virginia was a child, she had a vision of her mother throwing herself off a cliff in a gory suicide. Years later, the adult Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) is a clairvoyant and newly married to Italian industrialist Francesco (Gianni Garko). While driving on her own, she has a disjointed and disturbing vision of a skeleton hidden in the wall of a mysterious room, an old woman dying in a bloody mess, a broken mirror, an unknown assailant, the photo of an attractive young woman on a magazine cover, a precious painting, a man with a limp, and blackness interrupted by a haunting seven note tune.

As a surprise gift, Virginia decides to redecorate an old and long-abandoned farmhouse belonging to Francesco's family. Sure enough, at the farmhouse she finds the room from her vision, breaks through the wall and uncovers a skeleton. Francesco is promptly arrested for the murder of a young woman reported missing years ago. But Virginia is intent on proving her husband's innocence, and her investigation leads her to art museum curator Emilio (Gabriele Ferzetti), who seems to have something to hide. But as more clues emerge to explain her vision, Virginia begins to realize that what she saw may not have been a recreation of the past, but something much more sinister.

Seven Notes In Black does flub its lines late in the proceedings. A critical explanation of a theft that became a murder is presented through the garbled dialogue of a sedated man in a hospital bed, and the impact of his story is lost in the laboured mumbling.

But otherwise, director Lucio Fulci presents a foreboding puzzle and plays with it to good effect. Virginia's vision is a rich tapestry of fragmented images that promise much pain, and Fulci unveils the meaning behind each piece with flare. Along the way he drops tantalizing hints that the assembled pieces do not quite fit, and something is dangerously amiss from the working assumption that Virginia saw a past event. The true meaning of her vision breathlessly arrives as events catch up with theories to shed a stark new light on Virginia's waking nightmare.

Fulci uses gore sparingly, wringing tension from the adroit sequencing of events rather than sudden shocks. His gets good help from Jennifer O'Neill, who carries the film in a central role and does a lot of work with her eyes to convey the controlled determination of a woman bedeviled with a gift compelling her to pursue an interpretation of a reality that no one else perceives. Gianni Garko as Francesco and Gabriele Ferzetti are a bit more predictable and have less character transformation to navigate. Marc Porel has a small role as a psychiatrist Virginia confides in.

The seven notes of the title, used years later by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol. 1, gain increasingly macabre prominence as the film progresses, and their association with a bleak black screen in Virginia's vision only heightens apprehension that she is racing to uncover a sombre fate. The notes form a simple tune both melancholy and threatening, and associated only with fortune most dark.

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