BREEZY (US - 1973) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Jo Heims. Cast: William Holden, Kay Lenz, Roger C. Carmel, Marj Dusay, Joan Hotchkis, Jamie Smith Jackson, Norman Bertold, Lynn Borden, Shelley Morrison, Dennis Olivieri, Eugene Peterson, Lew Brown, Richard Bull, Johnnie Collins III, Don Diamond, Scott Holden, Sandy Kenyon, Buck Young. (R, 106 mins) It remains a popular notion that Clint Eastwood wasn't taken seriously as an actor or a director until 1992's UNFORGIVEN established him as a genuine auteur and put him back on top after a string of box-office disappointments that found him in a major slump for the first time in his career. But anyone who'd been paying attention over the years already knew that Eastwood was doing more substantive and creative work that was commonly believed, whether it was 1971's influential proto-FATAL ATTRACTION psycho-thriller PLAY MISTY FOR ME, the same year's Southern gothic period piece THE BEGUILED, 1973's disturbing supernatural revenge western HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, or 1974's offbeat heist/buddy/road movie THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT. Eastwood was never afraid to tackle unusual projects outside of his comfort zone, and he was proving that in the years leading up to UNFORGIVEN, when he was forced to compromise and do junk like THE DEAD POOL, PINK CADILLAC, and THE ROOKIE in order to get a green light for personal passion projects like BIRD and WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART. The first real surprise of Eastwood's career after he became a superstar (unless you count PAINT YOUR WAGON), 1973's BREEZY was an odd outlier in his filmography, at least back then in the pre-BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY days when we weren't privy to his softer side. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), BREEZY was his third film as a director, and the first where he was just the director (unless you count a fleeting Hitchcockian cameo where he can be glimpsed standing on a pier), and it's a low-key, sometimes overly sentimental May-December romance that plays like a conservative guy's idea of the era's counterculture scene.
Eastwood was 43 when he directed BREEZY, and it's surprising he didn't sit on it for another decade so he could play the lead role himself. Instead, he got the legendary William Holden to star as Frank Harmon, a successful Laurel Canyon real estate agent in his mid-50s who's divorced, aloof, and enjoys no-strings-attached evenings with blind dates and hookups he has no intention of ever calling back. He's introduced getting a cab in the morning for his latest one-nighter, and can barely hide his eye-rolling disinterest when she gives him her phone number, which he immediately tosses in the trash the moment she gets in the cab. He's leaving for work when he sees a young woman hanging out at the end of his driveway. She's Edith Alice Breezerman, aka "Breezy" (Kay Lenz), a 19-year-old drifter from Pittsburgh who's been hitchhiking and free-loving her way out to California and going wherever the day takes her. Frank has neither the time nor the patience for this chatty hippie whose only possession is an acoustic guitar, but she cracks his hard-shell exterior and the "black cloud" around him gradually dissipates. They form an unlikely bond and eventually fall in love, and Frank feels happy and alive for the first time since his divorce from the bitter, sloshed Helen (Joan Hotchkis), though he's still second-guessing his decision to give the cold shoulder to Betty (Marj Dusay), a friend-with-benefits that he pushed away when she wanted to get serious, only to have her marry the guy she began seeing when Frank started giving her the brush-off.
Though he didn't write BREEZY (it was scripted his PLAY MISTY FOR ME scribe Jo Heims), it's not hard to imagine a well-documented serial womanizer like Eastwood seeing much of his current and future self in Holden's character. To that extent, he understands Frank and lets Holden really explore the psychology of a solitary man who wants things uncomplicated, wants to be untethered, and shuts people out to avoid the risk of getting attached. He's at first appalled by Breezy's carefree nature and cruelly accuses her of seeing him as a financially secure meal ticket, then very slowly falls for her once he gets to know her. That is, until he runs into his disillusioned, lives-vicariously-through-him, midlife-crisis buddy Bob (Roger C. Carmel) and his wife and some mutual acquaintances when he and Breezy go see a movie (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, of all things) and he's visibly embarrassed about their discovery of his secret 19-year-old girlfriend. Bob's later remarks about how he'd feel like a child molester sleeping with a girl that young prod Frank into doing what he always does when he starts feeling close to someone: he pushes Breezy away by acting like a total prick. Holden is at his jaded, cynical, late-career best here (Bob: "I ran into your ex-wife the other day." Frank: "I hope you were in your car doing 80"), and Lenz is fine with what she's asked to do, which is essentially be a too-good-to-be-true Hollywood version of a hippie drifter. She's more of an early incarnation of the Nathan Rabin-coined "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" than anything resembling then-contemporary youth. She's perpetually cheerful, teaches curmudgeonly Frank some heartfelt life lessons, hangs out with other homeless hippies but is the only one who doesn't do drugs, and when Frank takes her to a swanky restaurant, she orders a Shirley Temple. It's almost like Eastwood was already an old soul looking to argue with a chair when he made this, because the only real emotional honesty comes in the film's depiction of Frank's side of the relationship and his mindset as his world is turned upside down by his infatuation with Breezy.
Clint Eastwood on set with
William Holden and Kay Lenz
Released by Universal in November 1973, BREEZY remains a relative deep cut in the Eastwood catalog that came near the end of a busy year for him, having HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER in theaters in April and MAGNUM FORCE out in December. But BREEZY fell through the cracks in a rare instance of a studio lacking confidence in him. A skittish Universal pulled the film from release after its limited NYC engagement bombed with critics and audiences. They shelved it for several months before doing some re-editing, eventually relaunching it in the summer of 1974, starting in Utah of all places, another sign that they still weren't seeing much commercial potential for it. It moved slowly around the country throughout the rest of 1974, eventually barely turning a profit, but Eastwood felt Universal never really gave it a shot and was offended by their treatment of it after he delivered huge hits as a star and director with PLAY MISTY FOR ME and HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER. Eastwood was dividing his time between Universal and Warner Bros. during this period, and their handling of BREEZY was but one instance of his escalating disgruntlement with Universal that led to him working, with rare exceptions, almost exclusively with Warner Bros. after 1975's THE EIGER SANCTION.
By his own admission, two-time Academy Award winner Michael Caine has done horrible things for money. He was infamously unable to accept in person his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1986's HANNAH AND HER SISTERS because he was stuck in the Bahamas shooting the atrocious JAWS: THE REVENGE, of which Caine once said "I have never seen it, but by all accounts, it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Caine developed a reputation for being a bit of a sell-out who would do anything if the price was right, thanks largely to junk like THE SWARM (1978), BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979), THE HAND (1981), JAWS: THE REVENGE (1987), and his over-the-top performance as the villain in director/star Steven Seagal's misfired vanity project ON DEADLY GROUND (1994). But it wasn't all garbage: aside from his HANNAH AND HER SISTERS Oscar win (the first of two), DRESSED TO KILL (1980), EDUCATING RITA (1983), MONA LISA (1986), THE FOURTH PROTOCOL (1987) and THE WHISTLE BLOWER (also 1987) were critical favorites, with EDUCATING RITA getting Caine the third of his six (so far) Oscar nominations.
A never-before-published photo of Michael Caine being offered the
starring roles in ASHANTI and THE ISLAND
Caine said around the mid-1990s that he had enough money and would only be doing quality projects from then on and he's more or less stuck to it (it's interesting that his change in attitude came about after being directed by Seagal), with his Oscar win for THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (1999), an Oscar-nominated starring turn in THE QUIET AMERICAN (2002), his work for Christopher Nolan (the DARK KNIGHT trilogy, THE PRESTIGE, INCEPTION), and his powerful performance in the British vigilante thriller HARRY BROWN (2010). Caine will be 80 this March and shows no signs of slowing down, and as his work in this year's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES showed, he's as vital a screen presence as he was in ALFIE back in 1966. A career that spans half a century is bound to have peaks and valleys, but perhaps his 1970s/1980s reputation as a hack actor whose film projects seemed to be dictated primarily by how nice of a working vacation they would provide stems from Caine being so self-deprecating about it. Really, his hits-to-bombs ratio was no worse than any other busy actor in that period. Caine has been particularly critical of some of his films between 1978 and 1981, and two films from that era have just been released on Blu-ray: the 1979 modern-day slave-trading epic ASHANTI, and the high seas horrors of 1980's THE ISLAND.
You know it's a 1970s all-star cast with
the classic "faces in boxes" poster design.
ASHANTI (Switzerland - 1979)
Directed by Richard Fleischer. Written by Stephen Geller. Cast: Michael Caine, Peter Ustinov, Kabir Bedi, Beverly Johnson, Omar Sharif, Rex Harrison, William Holden, Winston Ntshona, Zia Mohyeddin, Akosua Busia, Eric Pohlmann, Marne Maitland, Johnny Sekka, Jean-Luc Bideau. (R, 117 mins)
At various times, Caine has referred to ASHANTI as either "the worst" or "the third worst" movie he's ever made (he's also cited, apparently depending on his mood, either THE SWARM or 1968's THE MAGUS as his other worsts). It's really not bad at all, and Caine's feelings about the film may have more to do with its troubled production. Producer Georges-Alain Vuille fired original director Richard C. Sarafian (VANISHING POINT) at some point during production and replaced him with Richard Fleischer. Fleischer was an experienced journeyman who had a reputation as a guy who got the job done on time and on budget, and whose long career found him helming films as varied as 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954), FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), THE BOSTON STRANGLER (1968), SOYLENT GREEN (1973), MANDINGO (1975), AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983) and RED SONJA (1985), among many others. Caine stars as Dr. David Linderby, on a humanitarian mission vaccinating villages in remote parts of Africa. When Linderby's wife and colleague Anansa (Beverly Johnson), who was part of the nearby Ashanti tribe in her childhood, is abducted by nefarious Arab slave dealer Suleiman (Peter Ustinov), he finds the authorities unwilling to intervene. Through a human rights activist (Rex Harrison), Linderby meets up with Malik (Kabir Bedi), whose wife and children were abducted and killed by Suleiman years earlier, and the two are off in hot pursuit of the slave dealer, who is planning on Anansa netting him a retirement-sized payday when he sells her to top client Prince Hassan (Omar Sharif).
ASHANTI was part of the short-lived "slave trading" exploitation craze brought about by the trash classic MANDINGO (I hope that's not what got Fleischer the gig) and its offshoots, like the 1976 sequel DRUM, and the 1978 German ripoff SLAVERS. The classic TV miniseries ROOTS (1977) gave the subgenre some much-needed respectability and ASHANTI falls somewhere in between. It has some occasionally lurid moments, such as some gratuitous Johnson nudity and Suleiman's depraved henchman Ansok (Winston Ntshona) having a thing for little boys and being warned by Suleiman to "Be gentle...I'm not into selling damaged goods!" but never ventures into the territory of, say, EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE (1978). A Swiss production, shot in Kenya, Israel, and Sicily with a mostly Italian crew, ASHANTI looks fantastic on Severin's new Blu-ray, framed at 2.35:1. The big-name cast seems to be going through the motions, with Caine mostly looking bored, a bloodshot-eyed Harrison mostly looking drunk, and a glassy-eyed Sharif looking like he's been on an all-night bridge jag. William Holden turns up for two scenes as a mercenary helicopter pilot who agrees to help Linderby and almost instantly gets killed for his trouble. Ustinov hams it up pretty mercilessly, and only busy Bollywood fixture Bedi (best known as Louis Jourdan's henchman in the 007 film OCTOPUSSY), then a young actor trying to make it big, seems to be fully invested in the film. There's some signs of the problematic shoot, such as occasionally choppy editing, Johnson sounding dubbed (she was fired about 2/3 of the way through filming), and the filmmakers apparently forgetting about Sharif's character. The Blu-ray features an interview with Johnson, who seems like a nice lady with many fond memories of the production (pregnant at the time of filming, she named her daughter Anansa after her character) but some of her stories have more than a slight whiff of bullshit, and she too frequently uses the forum to bash her philandering ex-husband. Michael Melvoin's score sounds like it belongs in a 1979 Aaron Spelling TV show, and Jimmy Chambers' closing credits tune "Don't Lose the Feeling" screams "last call at the Regal Beagle." While no classic, ASHANTI is never dull, looks great, and at least has some hammy and/or intoxicated actors to keep things lively, and it's hardly the worst thing Caine has done. ASHANTI opened in the US in April 1979 and flopped, and Caine had his other 1979 dud BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE in theaters just a month later.
THE ISLAND (US - 1980)
Directed by Michael Ritchie. Written by Peter Benchley. Cast: Michael Caine, David Warner, Angela Punch McGregor, Jeffrey Frank, Frank Middlemass, Colin Jeavons, Don Henderson, Dudley Sutton, Zakes Mokae, Brad Sullivan, Reg Evans. (R, 114 mins)
After BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, Caine was back with more nautical nonsense in the summer of 1980 with THE ISLAND. Written by JAWS author Peter Benchley, who adapted his novel, and filmed in Antigua and the Bahamas, THE ISLAND has to rank as one of the most batshit major-studio summer releases of the 1980s. Benchley was big business after the game-changing JAWS in 1975, so much so that 1977's THE DEEP became a huge blockbuster--due entirely to Jacqueline Bisset's skimpy swimwear--despite no one liking it (it's boring as hell; I'm 0-for-3 at trying to make it all the way through--have you ever met a fan of THE DEEP?). Perhaps anticipating another DEEP-like snoozer, audiences stayed away from THE ISLAND, and coupled with blistering reviews from critics, it ended up being a major box office disappointment and Benchley never again had a novel adapted for the big screen (though BEAST and CREATURE became a pair of TV miniseries). Nobody associated with THE ISLAND really liked it, but it's developed a huge cult following over the last 30 years.
Caine is NYC journalist Blair Maynard, traveling to Florida with his son Justin (Jeffrey Frank) to investigate reports of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle (a popular film and TV subject in the late '70s). Chartering a cargo plane to the distant island of Navidad, the Maynards are eventually abducted by a crazed band of inbred buccaneers led by John David Nau (an anorexic-looking David Warner). Justin is tortured and brainwashed into believing he's Nau's son, and Maynard is forced to "make the beast with two backs" with fertile buccaneer babe Beth (Angela Punch McGregor) in order to plant the seed for a family tree that actually forks. The whole thing is as crazy as it sounds and has "cult movie" written all over it. It's no wonder audiences expecting JAWS soundly rejected it.
Parts of THE ISLAND are so ridiculous that it's easy to mistake it for a comedy at times: huge 1980 Michael Caine glasses; the over-the-top gore; the utterly berserk machine-gun climax (SPOILER) that has to be seen to be believed; the completely inappropriate score by Ennio Morricone during grim and violent scenes that's more suited for a grand, swashbuckling adventure; a guy in super-tight shorts having a kung-fu freakout; gratuitous buccaneer nutsack; stunningly inept day-for-night shots; and one hilariously sloppy shot of Maynard running that's obviously not Caine and no effort seems to have been made to hide it. Universal had director Michael Ritchie (THE BAD NEWS BEARS, FLETCH) under the gun to get this completed in time for summer 1980 and at times, it's all too obvious. THE ISLAND is a pretty bad movie, but it's a great bad movie. Like in a "they really thought this would be a commercial summer hit?!" kind of way. Every few minutes, something awesome happens thanks largely to a terrific cast of very game British character actors (Frank Middlemass, Colin Jeavons, Dudley Sutton, Reg Evans, and Don Henderson being the standouts) who are having a blast even if Caine isn't. I don't know how THE ISLAND got made, but I'm glad it did. This is guilty pleasure insanity at its guiltiest.
Uh...yeah. Not Michael Caine. Not even close.
Shout! Factory's Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, part of their new "Scream Factory" horror line, presents the film in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. No extras, not even a trailer. Ritchie died in 2001 and Benchley in 2006, and they probably knew better than to request an interview with Caine. But come on...David Warner wasn't available? It's awesome that THE ISLAND is on Blu-ray, but the backstory of this mind-boggler needs to be told.
Directed by Peter Collinson. Written by David Osborn and Liz Charles-Williams. Cast: Peter Fonda, Cornelia Sharpe, John Phillip Law, Richard Lynch, Albert Mendoza (Alberto De Mendoza), William Holden, Helga Line, May Heatherly, William Layton, Frank Brana. (R, 101 mins)
A regular fixture on the bootleg and torrent circuit, OPEN SEASON was never released on VHS in the US and frequently turns up on a lot of "Why isn't this on DVD yet?" lists. Shot in Spain, England, and Italy, with some exterior work done in Michigan (the old Tiger Stadium is briefly glimpsed along I-75 in downtown Detroit, and there's a drive across the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula), OPEN SEASON (aka RECON GAME) is a Spanish thriller with a British director and mostly American stars that mixes elements of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, DELIVERANCE, and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and is an early example of the "insane Vietnam vet" subgenre made popular a few years down the road.
John Phillip Law, Richard Lynch, and Peter Fonda
Ken (Peter Fonda), Gregg (John Phillip Law), and Art (Richard Lynch) are three suburban Michigan family men who went to college and to Vietnam together and now live in the same neighborhood. Their wives and kids are all friends. Every year, the three of them leave their responsibilities and go to a secluded cabin in the middle of nowhere in the Upper Peninsula for a week of hunting. And, enjoying a bit of freedom away from the wives, Ken and Gregg pick up a couple of truck stop waitresses and take them back to a motel before heading to the cabin the next day. At a gas station, Gregg spots a couple in a car: Martin (Alberto De Mendoza) and Nancy (Cornelia Sharpe). Following them down a deserted road, the three force Martin to pull over and proceed to kidnap them, taking them to the cabin and dumping Martin's car in the lake. What follows is a week of psychological, manipulative mind games with the three tormenting the couple--who are themselves away on an adulterous getaway from their own spouses--turning Nancy against Martin by emasculating him, making him their maid and housekeeper (Gregg, groping the drunk Nancy, turns to a glaring, helpless Martin and asks "Did you finish the dishes?"), and showing Nancy how weak he is. After a round of drunk Monopoly and a near-threesome, Ken has sex with the intoxicated Nancy, while Gregg and Art watch and Martin is forced to listen. With Martin now against Nancy, the three friends reveal their true intentions and the reason for the annual trip: find a couple, systematically break them down, then release them in the woods (it's 25 miles to the highway) with a 30-minute head start while the three ex-military men hunt them down like animals. As Ken says: "It's not the same with animals once you've hunted humans."
Directed by Peter Collinson (1969's THE ITALIAN JOB), OPEN SEASON takes a while to get going and the psychosexual games and Sharpe's shrieking get to be a little grating at times. The same goes for the goofy antics of Fonda, Law, and Lynch, who often seem more annoying than frightening. But all of that changes and Collinson really kicks it into gear when the hunt begins. With a combination of Ruggero Cini's strange, unsettling "Euro-banjo" (for lack of a better term) score, the use of very quick cuts, and a few instances of grindhouse freeze-framing, the last half hour of OPEN SEASON is an extremely tense and grueling experience. One thing Collinson and the writers don't handle well is a clumsy prologue and an unexpected appearance by William Holden. It probably would've been more effective to keep Holden offscreen until his character really matters, because he shows up for ten seconds at the beginning of the movie, and you know he's legendary Hollywood actor William Holden and he wasn't hired to play a guy dropping a kid off at a birthday party. The twist and the big reveal are telegraphed in the opening scene and it's a big mistake on Collinson's part because you keep waiting for Holden to reappear and then, from a logical standpoint, wondering what kept him from intervening when things were starting to get unpleasant. However shaky the opening is, it does have the not-very-good, yet still weirdly effective and strangely haunting theme song "Casting Shadows," by John Howard, that really sticks with you.
"Yes, young man. I AM William Holden. And
no, I don't know why I'm in this."
Overall, once it finds its groove, and logic lapses aside, OPEN SEASON is a grim, effective survivalist thriller that brings to mind future subgenre outings like THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE (1977) with Brenda Vaccaro and Don Stroud, RITUALS (1978) with Hal Holbrook, and WOLF LAKE, aka THE HONOR GUARD (1980) with Rod Steiger. It's strange seeing name actors like Fonda and Holden in such sleazy European fare, and there's even a rumor that's circulated for years that Sharpe (who had a brief career as a leading lady in the 1970s and is best known as Al Pacino's girlfriend in 1973's SERPICO) was so embarrassed by OPEN SEASON that her husband, high-powered Hollywood producer Martin Bregman (SERPICO, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, SCARFACE) strong-armed US distributor Columbia into keeping the film off the radar and unavailable on home video. It's difficult to gauge how true that is, but it does seem odd that with a cast like this, the film has gone unseen (legitimately, that is) for so long. There's a butchered print on YouTube that comes from a long-ago TV airing, but for the most part, OPEN SEASON continues to generate curiosity because of a combination of its unusual cast and its general obscurity. With the MOD programs of Sony and Warner Archive being as popular as they are (assuming Columbia still has the rights to it), I wouldn't be shocked to see OPEN SEASON turn up as a Sony/Columbia MOD offering at some point.
