CHARLEY VARRICK (1973)

Director: Don Siegel

Writers: Howard Rodman, Dean Riesner, adapted from John H. Reese’s novel The Looters

Producer: Don Siegel

Cast: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andy Robinson, John Vernon, Sheree North, Felicia Farr, Jacqueline Scott, William Schallert, Benson Fong, Woodrow Parfrey, Marjorie Bennett, Norman Fell, Kathleen O’Malley, Tom Tulley, Albert Popwell, Colby Chester, Rudy Diaz, Christina Hart, Charlie Briggs, Craig Baxley, Scott Hale, Priscilla Garcia, Hope Summers, Charles Matthau, Monica Lewis, Al Dunlap, Virginia Wing, Don Siegel, James Nolan, (and uncredited cast) Bob Steele, Joe Conforte, Fred Scheiwiller, Robert D. Carver, Carol Daniels, Art Cribbs, Thomas Dunbar, Richard R. Hogan, Walt Wallace, Holly Nutter, Fred Little, Carlos Valesquez 

Crop duster and former stunt flier Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) leads an armed robbery of a small town New Mexico bank. Things don’t go according to plan when shooting starts and two members of his gang are killed. Varrick and his surviving accomplice (Andy Robinson) are surprised to find over three-quarters of a million dollars in the moneybags they stole. Since the loot happens to be a secret stash of Mafia money, both the Mob and law enforcement are after the thieves. 

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Unlike most heist movies, Charley Varrick is not a film that details the elaborate planning of the crime building up to the climax of the robbery’s execution. The film opens with the bank robbery that leads to the rest of the story’s conflict and complications. This is a heist-gone-wrong movie. In addition to some cops getting shot, two of Charley Varrick’s accomplices are killed during the robbery. Varrick and his surviving partner, Harman Sullivan, seem to have hit the jackpot with a much larger pile of dough than they could have expected. But Varrick, figuring that so much money has no legitimate reason being stashed in such a small bank, correctly assumes that it is money being laundered by the Mafia. The rest of the film concerns Varrick trying to figure out how to survive the Mob’s retribution for his dumb-luck, criminal payday. 

Despite the recent success of The Godfather (1972), another film about criminal protagonists, Charley Varrick was probably a bit before its time for a mainstream movie. The Godfather film also had the advantage of being based on a best-selling novel. Director Quentin Tarantino would later popularize crime thrillers without any redeeming characters as protagonists in the 1990s, but back in 1973 this was usually a much harder pill to swallow. That is why director Siegel’s frequent star Clint Eastwood turned down the title role and probably why the film’s lead, Walter Matthau, was displeased and a bit confused with the finished movie. Ultimately, many people will ask, “Where’s the hero?” 

Most American movies still seem to have the need for a moral center to them. If they focus on the evil or amoral motives and actions of the main characters, we expect those characters to get their just desserts. Failing that, the criminal-centric story usually has to be about bad guys vs. bad guys. Once an audience gets past the lack of a moral center in a film, they can engage with criminal characters’ backgrounds and motives, yet that audience is still usually picking sides and deciding which law-breakers should prevail against their more despicable adversaries. 

In Charley Varrick, the title character is whom we are almost traditionally bound to root for. He is the main protagonist and has admirable and unflappable stealth and intelligence. However, he masterminded a bank robbery that got some innocent people shot. He spends the rest of the movie trying to save his own skin. His defining character trait is pragmatism. The only sentiment we ever see him express is some sorrow for his late wife (Jacqueline Scott). In spite of his criminality, we admire his quick thinking and ingenuity. He confides in no one and manages to be one step ahead of everyone, including the audience. 

Despite Matthau’s dissatisfaction with the finished production, his performance as Charley Varrick is what really holds the film together. This is not Matthau in comedy mode. His offhand decisiveness and total lack of swagger creates a peculiar confidence and authority for his character without diminishing the sense of danger that he faces. Since Matthau’s Varrick is a criminal, we are even more uncertain of his eventual fate than we would be for a more honorable protagonist. 

Andy Robinson plays Varrick’s partner in crime, Harman Sullivan. He turns out to be an added risk for Charley Varrick. The younger and hotheaded Sullivan is overjoyed with the surprise of a much bigger haul of cash than expected from the bank robbery. The older and more cautious Varrick has his hands full trying to keep his impulsive partner from recklessly spending the money too soon and exposing them to the Mafia or the law. Robinson will forever be one of the most reviled movie villains ever as the Scorpio Killer from director Siegel’s classic Dirty Harry (1971). Had Clint Eastwood not turned down the role of Charley Varrick, it would have been a real kick to see him in a criminal alliance with Robinson in this film just two years after Eastwood’s iconic hero ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan faced off against Robinson’s psychopath. 

Joe Don Baker threatens to steal the show as eccentric mob enforcer Molly. With his Texan accent and western-styled apparel, the big, pipe-smoking thug has an amiable and dignified manner that seems contrary to the brutality he enjoys inflicting. Molly has been sent to track down the bank robbers and retrieve the stolen money. He is the clearest example of how the offbeat characters maintain our interest in this film without true heroes to root for. 

Another Dirty Harry cast member, John Vernon, appears here as crooked bank president Maynard Boyle. Despite knowingly stashing money for the Mafia in one of his bank branches, and as a result being under suspicion by the Mob of possibly arranging the robbery, Boyle manages to remain cool and controlled. 

In her small role as Jewell Everett, a photographer and passport forger, Sheree North contributes her world-weary sex appeal with just a touch of kink. Her amusing scene with Matthau’s Varrick raises our expectations for something to develop between these two. She has a couple surprises for us that seem all too likely in this film’s cold, cruel world. 

Elderly Marjorie Bennett is very funny as Mrs. Taft, Charley Varrick’s trailer park neighbor. She is convinced that she has to be on her guard at all times against sex-crazed men. 

It is this assortment of odd characters and the satisfaction we derive from how Varrick copes with his criminal predicament that keeps us involved with director Don Siegel’s neo-noir film. Perhaps its protagonists were too amoral to rake in much loot at the box office, but if approached with an expectation of a crime thriller just about criminals, Charley Varrick really takes off.

PHANTASM (1979)

Director: Don Coscarelli

Writer: Don Coscarelli

Producer: D.A. Coscarelli

Cast: Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm, Kathy Lester, Bill Cone, Terrie Kalbus, Mary Ellen Shaw, Ken Jones, Susan Harper, Lynn Eastman, Ralph Richmond, Laura Mann, Myrtle Scotton, Dac Coscarelli (uncredited), Kate Coscarelli (uncredited) 

Pals Jody Pearson (Bill Thornbury) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister) are attending the funeral of their friend Tommy (Bill Cone) at Morningside Cemetery. Jody’s little brother, 13-year-old Mike (Michael Baldwin), is eavesdropping on the burial. After the mourners have left, Mike sees the tall and intimidating funeral home director (Angus Scrimm) lift Tommy’s coffin back into a hearse and drive away. Mike knows that something is wrong and thinks that he is in danger, but he can’t get his older brother to believe him. 

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Once those genre film juggernauts Star Wars (1977) and Halloween (1978) bulldozed through the world’s box offices, the path to mainstream movie success had been forged for sci-fi and horror. There was the profitable proof that a vast, new audience existed for movies of extravagant fantasy and visceral fright. 1979’s Phantasm is a film that tries to have it both ways and creates its own eerie vibe. 

Phantasm seems like a late ’70s variation on Invaders from Mars (1953). Again we have an adolescent hero privy to a weird menace. Being a kid, he has trouble getting an adult to believe him. Most of the perceptions and concerns of the film are those of a young boy: despair for the loss of parents, fear of his adult brother leaving, curiosity about sex, and an ongoing dread of death. 

This film is not so much a storyline as it is a series of spooky incidents interspersed with touches of humor that are never forced or take us out of the narrative. There is a deliberately dreamlike impression that this film leaves one with. At times some of the strange things that occur seem to be fragments of nightmares. Our perceptions are challenged and we are made to arrive at our own interpretation of the events we have witnessed. All of this is calculated to take the viewer on an unsettling flight of fancy. The themes of death, abandonment, and mourning play throughout. 

Where Phantasm differs most from its fright flick ancestor of the ’50s is in its sense of isolation. There are absolutely no comforting authority figures to be found. Mike’s parents are already dead and the proof of the menace threatening Mike gets destroyed before it can be shown to the police. 

To confront the threats facing him, Mike resorts to the direct means that seem typical for an adolescent boy: a big brother with guns and a fast car. What is surprising is that Mike seems daring and resourceful beyond his years. Mike displays great determination exploring the creepy Morningside Cemetery and funeral home, he maintains his older brother Jody’s muscle car and is allowed to drive it, Mike knows how to handle firearms, and he can quickly improvise a way to escape a locked room. 

Despite all of this character’s ability, Michael Baldwin’s performance still makes me believe in Mike as a real kid. He is gutsy, but he can cry, be scared, and swear a blue streak when he’s angry. His fear of abandonment is why he follows and spies on his older brother, which also leads to his fear of death embodied by the Tall Man. 

Bill Thornbury’s Jody seems like a pretty laid-back dude that provides a funny counterpoint to his younger brother Mike’s alarm. Jody’s usually mellow manner is an interesting contrast to his trigger-happy tactics when finally acknowledging the threat that his younger brother is facing. What I like is that this regular guy never indulges in unbelievable action-hero antics. Jody just does what needs to be done with a gun in dangerous situations. 

Reggie is the ice cream vendor, family friend, and hapless nice guy who stumbles into the weird plight facing the Pearson brothers and becomes their ally. This role was written with Reggie Banister in mind to play it, and he has become the most endearing of the characters in this film and its sequels.

The fearsome face of Phantasm belongs to the Tall Man. Angus Scrimm’s performance as the menacing mortician has created a screen bogeyman as iconic as Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger. Scrimm’s villain is pure, unfathomable evil. His stony expression only changes when he gloats and chuckles. His few lines of dialogue are delivered with a voice that sounds like a whispered roar. 

After harrowing encounters with a blonde seductress (Kathy Lester), hooded dwarfs, flying silver spheres, and the evil undertaker, our heroes Mike, Jody, and Reggie can only surmise what awful motive is behind all of the ghoulish goings-on around Morningside Cemetery. Many of the weird spectacles in Phantasm remain unexplained, which contributes to the nightmarish atmosphere of the disjointed narrative. All we need to know is that damned Tall Man is responsible. 

This was writer-director Don Coscarelli’s third feature film. By this point he was quite an accomplished filmmaker and it shows. As his own cinematographer and editor, Coscarelli knows how to light, frame, and edit his shots for conveying action, fixating on an eerie visual, or timing a jump scare. 

The fantastic music by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave plays a huge role in making Phantasm creepy and thrilling. The “Main Title” theme is an all-time favorite of mine. 

The main appeal of horror films is that they vent anxieties in their audience by dealing with their fears in usually abstract ways. The most universal of human anxieties, which probably all horror films include, is the fear of death. That is the main topic in Phantasm. It not only shows us threats to character’s lives, it also makes us realize that learning the reasons for death and what lies beyond may not be comforting. This is pretty grim stuff that still manages to be great, creepy, and occasionally disorienting fun. Phantasm’s lack of complete explanations and resolutions may be frustrating to some, but that is the technique through which horror can seem the most haunting and leave us with a lasting sense of unease.

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932)

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Writers: Cyril Hume, Ivor Novello, based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Producer: Irving Thalberg

Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Neil Hamilton, C. Aubrey Smith, Forrester Harvey, Doris Lloyd, Ivory Williams, (and uncredited cast) Jiggs (Cheetah the chimp), Ray Corrigan, Johnny Eck, Billy Curtis, Franz Balluck Eddie Buresh, Charles Becker, Joseph Herbst, Johnny Leal, Jack Leonard, Angelo Rossitto, Gus Wayne, Johnny Winters, Tanner (the lion) 

Explorers James Parker (C. Aubrey Smith) and Harry Holt (Neil Hamilton) are leading an African safari to search for the legendary elephants’ graveyard full of valuable ivory tusks. Parker’s daughter Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) accompanies the expedition. The safari ascends a range of cliffs known as the Mutia Escarpment. Passing this boundary brings them into a remote jungle region filled with dangerous beasts. It is also home to a strange being; a savage white man called Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) living with a tribe of apes. Tarzan takes an immediate interest in the beautiful Jane Parker. 

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When Edgar Rice Burroughs had his 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes serialized in the pages of The All-Story pulp magazine, he laid a foundation for the 20th-century superhero genre. Here was a bizarre character endowed with incredible abilities by his upbringing with apes in a jungle environment. The ongoing series of Tarzan stories would pit the jungle lord against the strange civilizations and creatures of his wild African habitat as well as dangers from modern society. 

The enormous popularity of Tarzan resulted in the 1914 publication of Tarzan of the Apes in a hardcover edition. Soon other media were also making a home for the jungle man. Tarzan would be adapted for films, newspaper comic strips, radio programs, comic books, and television series. Tarzan has become one of the most famous fictional characters in the world. 

Tarzan’s first motion picture appearance was in 1918’s silent film Tarzan of the Apes starring Elmo Lincoln. More silent film adaptations would follow. Once the era of the talkies began, Hollywood’s most prestigious film studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, would produce the classic take on Tarzan in the wake of their successful 1931 jungle film, Trader Horn. Tarzan the Ape Man would not only employ Trader Horn’s director (W.S. Van Dyke) and scripter (Cyril Hume), it would also use African stock footage from that previous film. It is probably the success of these two films that established jungle adventure as a popular film genre for decades. 

The story of Tarzan the Ape Man takes the unusual approach of not providing any explanation for the Tarzan character. Our introduction to the hero is alongside the members of the Parker expedition. This provides a dramatically satisfying buildup to Tarzan’s first appearance. We relate to the Tarzan character with a sense of awe and mystery, as do the explorers venturing into his jungle home. Many in the audience were probably already familiar with the character’s origin as a human orphan raised by jungle apes. Tarzan’s background and presence in the African jungle is never explained or even surmised about in this film. The filmmakers may have assumed that the audience did not need that backstory rehashed. 

MGM was also contractually prohibited from using many story elements found in Burroughs’ original novel. Many disgruntled Tarzan fans don’t realize that MGM had the rights to do a film with the Tarzan character and not much else. Therefore, we have MGM’s very streamlined Tarzan narrative in this film. We don’t have any reasons provided for Tarzan living in the jungle, he is never brought back to civilization and educated, and he never learns of his birthright as an English nobleman. Since Tarzan the Ape Man became a big hit, MGM was content to stick with what worked and continue with their style of story and character. 

Burroughs is supposed to have been disappointed by the way Tarzan was portrayed throughout the Weissmuller films, yet MGM was not just making arbitrary, high-handed Hollywood changes; they were probably just playing it safe by the terms of the contract. Since their version worked at the box office, MGM was not about to mess with success. Hence, there was no eventual sophistication of their Tarzan character. 

The Burroughs purists are always nitpicking about the interpretation of the Tarzan character in the Johnny Weissmuller-starring films. I think that this first film is actually a respectful take on the Burroughs character. This is Tarzan’s first encounter with the white race and before he was taught to speak their language. In the subsequent film series, Weissmuller’s Tarzan would learn more English, but would always remain unsophisticated. This was simply a character trait that made him unique from all other movie heroes, endeared him to the public, and became entrenched in the Weissmuller portrayal. Rather than bemoan the alteration to the Burroughs source material, I appreciate these films for their escapist thrills and the heroic counterpoint to so-called civilization that Weissmuller’s Tarzan provides. 

Over the past century, the Tarzan character has been portrayed by a long succession of actors. Without a doubt, the most famous Tarzan of the movies is Johnny Weissmuller. The success of Weissmuller’s debut in MGM Pictures’ Tarzan the Ape Man led to his starring in a series of five MGM sequels and a further six-film series at RKO Radio Pictures. To the moviegoing public for 12 films over 17 years, Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan. 

Despite the fact that by Weissmuller’s own admission he was no great actor, his performance as the jungle hero is very effective. Of course, as with any Tarzan actor, the celebrated Olympic swimming champion was chosen for the role because of his physique and athleticism. But Weissmuller not only looks right, he also behaves right. His Tarzan has no self-consciousness. Weissmuller’s raw earnestness without wild gesticulation makes his Tarzan seem perfectly natural. His performances would continue to improve in future installments of the series. 

This film also debuts the lovely Maureen O’Sullivan as the most endearing of all the movie mates of Tarzan. Her Jane is petite, sexy, spirited, and has the most charming giggle in cinema history. O’Sullivan would go on to co-star with Weissmuller in the rest of the MGM Tarzan films and cement her status as the Jane with the public. 

In regards to the change of Jane’s surname from Porter of the novels to Parker and her nationality being changed from American to English, that is probably due to some more legal gobbledygook in the contracted adaptation rights that MGM had with Edgar Rice Burroughs. Apparently, the character was changed enough to ensure it was different from the Jane of Burroughs’ stories. 

C. Aubrey Smith plays Jane’s father and trading post operator James Parker. Smith had been an English character actor with a long résumé of stage and film appearances. He has us immediately on his side as we see his affectionate and humorous interaction with Jane when they reunite before embarking on their safari. 

Neil Hamilton is best known to the boob tube generation as Commissioner Gordon in the Batman television series (1966-68). As James Parker’s young partner Harry Holt, he is understandably immediately smitten with O’Sullivan’s Jane Parker. He seems like a stand-up sort of guy and shows smarts and nerve in some tense situations. One expects that Holt will be set up as a contentious plot point in a love triangle with Jane and Tarzan, but that angle is never really exploited. However, we are left to wonder if a bit of jealousy on Holt’s part results in some of his trigger-happy behavior. 

The film takes its time establishing its African setting and introducing us to the characters of James Parker, Jane Parker, and Harry Holt. Once their safari begins, they encounter one danger after another while being teased by Tarzan’s presence. The jungle man’s eerie and powerful cry is first heard from a distance and eventually dispels a threat from jungle beasts. That Tarzan yell is probably the most famous movie sound effect ever. There has been much speculation (and probably plenty of disinformation) about just how that mighty yodel was created, but it is perfect. 

Once Tarzan makes the scene, things stay varied and interesting. Between the bouts of ape-man action, there are playful and intimate moments between Tarzan and Jane as they get acquainted. This is all building up to sex that is proposed without dialogue; only O’Sullivan’s sensitivity and Weissmuller’s simplicity and body language are needed to tell us what happens next. 

Other pre-Code highlights are of the grisly kind. There are rampaging hippos seemingly conspiring with the voracious crocodiles to make the river run red with safari-member munchies. The nightmarish climax features a hostile tribe of dwarfs lowering their captured victims one-by-one into a pit containing a huge, gorilla monster. 

MGM’s Tarzan the Ape Man set a high bar for adventure films, and Tarzan films in particular. Hollywood’s grandest film studio spent plenty of money to lavish a lot of action, violence, effects, exotic animals, and expansive jungle sets on this first installment in their iconic series. Their follow-up, Tarzan and His Mate (1934), was probably the best Tarzan film ever made. It was a tough act to follow for competing Tarzan productions of the 1930s and ever since. The Weissmuller-starring Tarzan films were a major factor in the character’s lasting rank as a world-famous pop culture hero.