Movie Review: Barbarella (1968)

Genre: Campy Science Fiction

Director: Roger Vadim

Starring: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg 

Running Time: 98 minutes

Synopsis: In a peaceful future, Earth's President tasks space adventurer Barbarella (Jane Fonda) with finding dangerous weapons inventor Durand Durand. She crashlands in the Tau Ceti planetary system and heads to the city of Sogo, receiving help from the blind angel Pygar (John Phillip Law) along the way. Barbarella finds a civilization consumed by villainy and meets the Catchman, the Concierge, Professor Ping, rebel leader Dildano (David Hemmings), and the Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg), before uncovering Durand Durand's identity and evil plot.

What Works Well: Barbarella's opening striptease out of an astronaut suit is iconic, and the weird mash-up of psychedelia, eroticism, and cardboard-level science fiction is often imaginative. Whether naked or in a succession of revealing outfits, Jane Fonda embraces the adventure and exudes wide-eyed curiosity, and the futuristic palm-on-palm pleasure exchange is a hoot.

What Does Not Work As Well: The nonsensical plot is disjointed and quickly boring, stretching for content and only finding successively less impressive set-pieces. The swirly special effects are repetitively over-used to cover the narrative weaknesses. Barbarella is less of an instigator and more an observer, happy to discover the pleasures of old-fashioned coupling but lacking any actual plan or ability to save the universe.

Conclusion: Fanciful visuals and an irreverent attitude fizzle within space debris. 



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Movie Review: The Love Machine (1971)

A drama set in the world of television executives, The Love Machine is an emotionally hollow crawl towards trashy fun.

In New York City, Robin Stone (John Phillip Law) is the young and handsome local news anchor at the IBC television network owned by Greg Austin (Robert Ryan). Stone starts a romance with fashion model Amanda (Jodi Wexler), but he is not interested in the long-term commitment she eagerly seeks. Stone is also good friends with openly gay fashion photographer Jerry Nelson (David Hemmings), but rebuffs his advances for a relationship.

Greg's wife Judith (Dyan Cannon) spots Stone's potential as a woman magnet and therefore a ratings booster. Greg responds by rapidly promoting Stone, causing friction with seasoned executive Danton Miller (Jackie Cooper). Judith starts an affair with Stone and seeks to become his permanent lover. When Greg suffers a health crisis, Stone's career appears unstoppable, but happiness will prove elusive.

An adaptation of the Jacqueline Susann best-seller, The Love Machine carries the whiff of glossy ambitions hampered by budget constraints. In the hands of director Jack Haley Jr. and writer Samuel A. Taylor, the exotic sex-saturated world of network television power brokers and fashion models is reduced to the level of, well, a cheap television show. Despite two Dionne Warwick original songs (one bad, the other worse), the available talent is nowhere near good enough to convey the intended cut-throat connivance and jet-set glamour.

A big part of the problem is the central character of Robin Stone, who remains a stiff emotional vacuum sucking energy out of the screen. John Phillip Law was a late replacement in the role and never settles, and the script does not help by providing no context for Stone's cold-blooded lust for power and narcissism. And yet every woman in the movie falls in love with him at first sight, and in a questionable interpretation of feminism, both Amanda and Judith (and other peripheral women) are sexually liberated but rush to define their self-worth by craving a man's immediate commitment.

Meanwhile, the storytelling shortcomings are further exposed in a barely relevant but time consuming sub-plot. Stone's rival Danton Miller finds a surprise hit in a low-brow show featuring comedian Christie Lane (Shecky Greene). He is catapulted from second-rate lounge act to national stardom, and rapidly falls in eternal love with the model Amanda. Having fulfilled the role of obstructive non-entity, Christie summarily drops out of the movie.

Entertaining snippets lurk within the various cluttered corners. In fashion photographer Jerry Nelson, The Love Machine features a well-rounded and prominent gay character. The visuals obsess over close-to-bizarre representations of leading-edge fashions, the women valiantly trying to pull off looks normally reserved for the runway. A bedroom is set on fire while a threesome heats up in the shower.

The tone finally flirts with unintended slapstick by somehow contriving a wacky four-way fight between two gays, one heterosexual, and one woman. Then the drama ends without ending, a suitable send-off for an exercise in blunderous ogling.

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Movie Review: Tigers Don't Cry (1977)

A B-movie thriller, Tigers Don't Cry (also known as Target Of An Assassin) cannot overcome a perforated script and poor production values.

Gumba's President Lunda (Simon Sabela), who is black and a critic of South Africa's apartheid regime, arrives in Johannesburg for medical treatment. Colonel Albert Pahler (Marius Weyers) is assigned to ensure his security. Hired assassin Shannon (John Phillip Law) takes sniper hots at Lunda's motorcade, but the President makes it to the hospital unscathed. Undeterred, Shannon checks into the hospital as a patient.

Ernest "Sailor" Slade (Anthony Quinn) is an American nurse and part of the hospital's medical team caring for Lunda. Slade himself has a terminal illness he keeps hidden from his 15 year old daughter Ginny (Janet du Plessis). Intent on securing his daughter's financial future, Slade hatches a plan to kidnap the President and hold him for ransom.

A South African production, Tigers Don't Cry is an adaptation of the novel Running Scared by Jon Burmeister. The limited resources are evident in stiff dialogue, poor sound quality, numbingly repetitive music, and most sequences running on for longer than needed to camouflage the lack of content. Director Peter Collinson nevertheless does mount a few impressive action highlights, and invests in a prolonged climax at a cable-car operation, jump stunts and multiple helicopters combining to maintain a basic level of engagement.

Anthony Quinn throws himself into a different kind of role, Simon Sabela contributes sturdy support, and both actors work hard on the unlikely friendship developing between Slade and Lunda. But despite demonstrating some courage to tangentially criticize apartheid, writer Scot Finch succumbs to a fundamentally flawed plot. The idea of an ailing and aging nurse acting on a whim and selecting the most guarded man in the country as his kidnap target never latches.

More troubling and even less rational is Lunda's transformation into a willing hostage to aid Slade's cause, layered on top of a bewildering and unresolved subplot hinting at incestual urges between Slade and Ginny. Meanwhile, the evil forces behind the assassin Shannon are barely defined, leaving second-billed John Philip Law to fire mostly wayward bullets, his projectile count exceeding his words of dialogue.

Tigers Don't Cry, and nurses don't convince as presidential kidnappers.



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