(1971)
Dir - Clint Eastwood
Overall: GOOD
Clint Eastwood's directorial debut Play Misty for Me is one of the more effective obsession thrillers from the 1970s; one that has a sinister uncomfortableness aided by Jessica Walter's finely-tuned, unhinged performance. Right from the offset, Eastwood exhibited a tight, no-nonsense approach from behind the lens, turning the finished product in ahead of both budget and schedule due to meticulous planning and his ability to crystalize his ideas to the cast and crew. As has usually been the norm, Eastwood is in front of the screen as well, playing the Carmel-by-the-Sea radio DJ who takes a stab at cooling down his promiscuous love life just as a deranged fan enters into it. Walter has the much showier role, coming off as a wack-job almost from the moment that we meet her and exhibiting frighteningly dramatized BPD tendencies that are counter-balanced by the sincere presentation. Jo Heims and Dean Riesner's script does a better job than most in allowing us to buy into the disturbing set pieces, even if we know where the story is going far more than Eastwood's character obviously does, so ergo, we may find fault in the initial lackadaisical approach that he takes to his predicament. Still, it is a meticulously crafted work, ideally performed and with a hip soundtrack including actual footage of the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival to boot.
(1973)
Dir - Bernard Girard
Overall: MEH
Despite the fact that Penthouse stepped in on the production end and there is full frontal male and female nudity, A Name for Evil has all of the stylist trappings of a television film, with the personnel to boot. Writer/director Bernard Girard and actor Robert Culp mainly cut their teeth on the small screen, the nearly incessant, stock quality musical score was done by Dominic Frontiere of Outer Limits fame, and the whole thing runs a measly seventy-four minutes long. Mixing ancestral possession, haunted house, and psychological horror aspects together with a nonsensical plot line involving an underwritten architect and several other half-baked at best ideas, (as well as a full-blown hippy orgy), the movie is all over the place and resolves itself in an increasingly clumsy manner. This is likely do to the film allegedly being made by MGM at first, who shelved it for several years where the more naked and exploitative elements were presumably added by Penthouse. In any event, it has some fascinating tranwreck qualities to it, that is if one can be forgiving of its incomprehensible narrative and instead bask in unresolved character arcs and surreal sequences that seem to be there just to keep the viewer from tuning out of a story that goes absolutely nowhere.
(1975)
Dir - Sutton Roley
Overall: MEH
One of the earliest of several Bermuda Triangle-themed films made in the later part of the decade, Satan's Triangle was the January 14th ABC Movie of the Week for 1975, directed by career television man Sutton Roley. Atmospheric in some parts with one or two genuinely freaky bits thrown in, it unfortunately cannot sustain its reasonably seventy-four minute running time as the entire second act resorts to a lengthy flashback that introduces and then does away with a handful of uninteresting characters. Kim Novak plays a hussy that falls in instantaneous love with two different men, or so we are led to believe as the finale rug-pull sheds some creepy light on the proceedings. Performance wise, Novak and Doug McClure, (both our main protagonists),
are wooden, but the the final few moments offer up some melodramatic
posturing, particularly where Alejandro Ray's mysterious Father is
concerned. Considering that the Bermuda Triangle myth was widely speculated upon until being universally debunked, screenwriter William Read Woodfield could have went anywhere with such a concept, choosing to focus on the Devil as a physical presence that seems to perpetually lure anyone to their doom that crosses his oceanic path. The themes of rational explanation vs the supernatural are arguably the most tired in the genre though and the story does not offer up any unique variations to such a formula.
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