THE AMITYVILLE HORROR 1979

Generally, I can think back to my adolescence and recall with relative clarity what it is I felt about most of the movies I saw at the time. What's perplexing is how often I fail to be blessed with the same level of recall when it comes to movies I've seen during my adult years. I was 21 when The Amityville Horror came out (not exactly yesterday, we're talking 39 years ago, folks); but thinking back on it, I can’t seem to remember exactly what I thought of then. I mean, did I find it even remotely scary? Did I buy into any of that “Based on a True Story” hype? Did I find it then, as I do now, to be an entertaining parade of haunted house clichés and hoary horror film tropes?

Worse, is there something metaphysically suspicious about my inability to remember? Hmmm….

James Brolin as George Lutz

Margot Kidder as Kathleen Lutz

Rod Steiger as Father Delaney

Don Stroud as Father Bolen

I have only the haziest memory of The Amityville Horror as the bestselling 1977 novel heavily promoted as being a fictionalization of the purported-to-be real-life story of a family beset by a series of paranormal events in their Long Island home which was at one time the site of a bloody mass murder. I had no interest in the book, nor do I even recall having paid much attention to news stories about the real-life DeFeo Murders which gave that distinctive-looking house its horror reputation. (On November 13, 1974, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo, Jr. killed his parents and four three siblings in the home they shared in Amityville, Long Island).

What I do remember is that the film version of The Amityville Horror opened in the summer of 1979: two months after Ridley Scott’s mind-blowing Alien; one month after the hotly anticipated (by me), but wholly disappointing John Frankenheimer monster movie Prophecy; and two weeks after the bloodless Dracula re-up with Frank Langella.

My rapturous fondness for Alien—a film that reminded me of how much fun it is to be scared at the movies—had put me into a horror film frame of mind that summer. Unfortunately, the diminishing scare returns proffered by the above-listed roster films left me looking forward to the opening of The Amityville Horror with an enthusiasm drastically disproportionate to my actual interest in the movie. 

The Amityville house lays out the unwelcome mat for Kathy's Aunt Helena (Irene Dailey)

Propelled by a hope for a replay of the kind of jump-out-of-my-seat thrills Alien served up so plentifully, plus a desire to see what actress Margot Kidder had chosen for her follow-up vehicle to her star-making turn as Lois Lane in the blockbuster Christmas 1978 release Superman: The Movie (still playing in second-run theaters at the time); I stood in a long line on Hollywood Blvd on Friday, July 27^th, to catch The Amityville Horror on opening night. The house was packed and the theater was abuzz with the kind of amped-up excitement only an R-rating, “Based on a True Story”-hype, and saturation marketing can produce (“For God’s Sake, Get Out!” screamed posters from billboards and bus shelters all over town).

Unspooling under a cloak of collective audience goodwill that began to dissipate around the film’s 60-minute mark—when animated squeals of delight and nervous giggles began to take on the hollow timbre of blatantly derisive laughter—The Amityville Horror made it clear that as a horror movie, it was devoted to treading familiar haunted house/demonic possession ground. In due time it became clear that the film was going to lean heavily on its claims of “This really happened!” as a means of mitigating the fact that the episodic screenplay was less a cohesive story and more of a laundry list of “Things that make you go hmmm…” events taking place in a creepy old house.

This House Pays For Itself
Kathy's brother (Marc Vahanian) preps for his wedding as the house preps for a little self-help

Although The Amityville Horror was a more polished and technically tricked-out film than I’d come to expect from the traditionally low-rent American International Pictures, for all its sound and fury (a disproportionate amount both coming from the grievously miscalculated performances of Rod Steiger and Helen Shaver) I grew aware of the fact that The Amityville Horror was in no danger of posing any threat to the legacies of The Exorcist or The Omen. The audience I was with seemed to enjoy the film’s low-wattage fright delivery system (regular as clockwork...3:15am to be exact) and didn't seem to mind that the film was serving up equal doses of laughs and frights. I was disappointed, but I was also entertained. I just wish I could remember if any aspects of the film actually scared me. What I do recall is that I returned to see The Amityville Horror the following week with a friend, and his conclusion was that the film was more of a “fun” scary movie (escapist and diverting) than a legitimately frightening one.

In chronicling the strange occurrences that befall cash-strapped newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz (Brolin & Kidder) and their three kids (Kathy’s from a previous marriage) when they move into the spacious, obscenely affordable house--that just so happens to have been the site of a brutal mass killing the year before, The Amityville Horror goes for the semi-documentary approach. Events are charted with title cards highlighting dates and times, a device serving both to chronicle the escalating "hauntings" and to further suggest what you're watching has been documented as fact. By doing so, The Amityville Horror is able to dispense with a lot of time otherwise devoted to establishing character and plot, and can simply dive headlong into the horrors its title promises.

Wasting no time, the film opens with graphic depictions of the shotgun murders of the DeFeo family (although they're never named in the film) following this up whenever possible with closeups of characters “feeling uneasy” in the presence of odd camera angles and an intrusive musical score. The house, distinctive, camera-ready, and treated to a great many jack-o-lantern closeups, is filmed from so many flattering angles, it becomes the Barbra Streisand of haunted houses: always at the dead-center of the action.

Since the Lutz family only lived in the house for a month it’s imperative that weird things start to happen to them right off the bat. Events unfold at such breakneck speed that only after the film has ended does it dawn that those nondescript Lutz kids never attend school and that George’s surveyor business suffers financial setbacks curiously disproportionate to how brief is his period of neglect. 

While George obsessively continues to chop logs for the fire,
Kathy laments the sudden wood shortage in their bedroom
...if you get my cruder meaning.

Because a haunted house/possession story is nothing without religious subtext, our Kathy is Catholic. Or, more precisely, Hollywood Catholic. Which means she doesn’t actually go to church or display any discernible traits of spiritual devoutness, but she does paint Virgin Mary figurines, hang ginormous crucifixes all over the house, has an actual nun in her immediate family, and is given to grocery shopping in a fetish-y Catholic School Girl uniform.

Kathy’s Catholic background occasions her inviting priest and friend Father Delaney (Steiger) to come and bless the house. A bad idea for the puffy priest, but a bonanza for lovers of uncured ham and unbridled scenery-chewing. The somber seriousness accorded Rod Steiger’s appearance is ostensibly meant to signal the graveness of the Lutz’s situation and escalate the film’s drama, but the actor's emoting is so over-the-top it merely opens a hell-gate of hilarity.

Fathers Delaney and Bowen, badly in need of a St. Christopher medal

The horror gauntlet is thrown down via a series of mysterious-to-life-threatening events which place the Lutzes in a race against time, the forces of evil, and their own thick-headedness. And if the objectives of these forces are conveyed in the vaguest terms possible (Revenge? Demonic possession? The endless reenactment of a violent past?), rest assured that the scope and severity of these paranormal assaults (Gates of hell? Native-American burial ground? Devil-worship? Bad juju?) are mind-bogglingly elastic, inconsistent, and convenient to plot contrivance.

In the end, the scariest thing about The Amityville Horror is that this family of five occupying a three-story colonial doesn’t seem to own a television set. The rest is a comfortably conventional, enjoyably cheesy, surprisingly by-the-numbers haunted house tale with its fair share of jump-cut shocks (hissing cats, loud noises, the old “I wake up screaming” trope, flashes of gore); a few genuine creep-outs (the shotgun murders, the locked closet door, that weird little girl who looks like Robert Blake in a wig); and more than a few unintentional laughs (Brolin’s eye-popping mood swings, the cut-rate haunting special effects, the cartoonish reactions of visitors to the house).

While Kathy & George stare aghast at the front door that's been mysteriously blown off its hinges,
viewers get to stare at James Brolin's cobblers

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I have a hunch that both my infatuation with Margot Kidder and my initial ignorance of the story behind The Amityville Horror made that 1979 opening night screening an enjoyable one. But I’m just as certain that subsequent viewings of the film have been rooted in how enjoyably routine a movie it is. That’s certainly the case today. When I look at the film now, it plays like an end-of-the-decade “best of” medley of all the supernatural horror films of the 1970s. 

You could make a drinking game of the clichés.

The malevolent demon, ineffectual cop, the invisible friend: The Exorcist

The too-inexpensive-to-be-true, parasitic house: Burnt Offerings

Religious mumbo-jumbo: The Omen

House built over the gates of hell: The Sentinel

Serial killer possession: The Possession of Joel Delaney

Going back for the pet: Alien

And for good measure, you have a movie with an axe-wielding dad that predates The Shining by one year, plus a hyperactive house built above a burial ground that predates Poltergeist by two.

Creepy Amy (Natasha Ryan) consults with Jody, her invisible friend

The overall effect is of The Amityville Horror being something of a goulash horror creation. Everything but the kitchen sink (or bile-spilling toilet) seems to have been thrown into this mechanical mix of sure-fire horror standbys. Nothing wrong with that, but the film is so overcrowded with disparate ideas that it ends up with a ton of loose threads and setups introduced that fail to pay off. Happily, the whole undertaking manages to be repetitious without ever really being boring, so the film ends up as being inoffensively watchable as one of those Creature Features horror programmers aired on TV when I was a kid.

PERFORMANCES

No matter the relative quality of the end results, no one associated with The Amityville Horror can be accused of phoning in their performance. A fact that proves to be both a blessing and a curse.

Screenwriter Sandor Stern and director Stuart Rosenberg both come from television, which may account for every dramatic scene seeming to be structured to end in a fade-out and commercial break. As though to compensate for the halting, stop-start pace, the entire cast performs at near-operatic pitch. 

Mr. Groovy Guy
Full beards and big, pouffy hair were all the rage in the '70s.
Here's Brolin with his gay porn doppelganger George Payne  

Although easy on the eyes, I can’t say James Brolin (he’ll always be Mr. Barbra Streisand to me) had ever made much of an impression on me during his days as "the young guy" on TVs Marcus Welby, M.D. Here, however, as the possessed George Lutz, Brolin has so many scenes where he gets to bellow, shout, and bug his eyes out, he quickly became my favorite character in the film. He's so consistently bitchy and surly, it's like watching a hirsute Joan Crawford.

Margot Kidder, something of an early scream queen what with her roles in Sisters, Black Christmas, and The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, is the film’s bright spot. Unfortunately she's saddled with a role that has her doing what bad writers always have women do in horror movies: screaming and going around asking everybody if they’re OK. I love watching her though, and she remains a natural and charismatic presence even in the film’s most absurd moments. 

Rod Steiger, praying for an Oscar nomination

In what I can only hope was a Karen Black-like bid on Rod Steiger's part to invest The Amityville Horror with a little emotional gravitas (Black approached her role in the nonsensical Airport ’75 with intense solemnity because she felt no one else in the film was taking it seriously), Steiger—never a particularly subtle actor—in trying to convey spiritual anguish and fear, only succeeds in going full-tilt Neely O’Hara/Mommie Dearest on us.

As the concerned priest who becomes the target of the malevolent forces inhabiting the house, Steiger invests every moment onscreen with such ferocious overacting, I seriously thought in one scene his head was going to explode like that fellow in Scanners. Perhaps Steiger should be given credit for taking risks and being committed to the role, but it simply feels far too strenuous and undisciplined. His priest is off the rails before we get a chance to know anything about him.

Helen Shaver and Michael Sacks (Slaughterhouse Five) as family friends Carolyn and Jeff.
Playing a New-Age type, I'm not sure whose idea it was to have Shaver pitch her performance so high on the weird-o-meter, but her big scene in the Lutz's basement is listed in the dictionary under "overkill" 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Amityville Horror is guilty of not being very scary, which is a bit of a crime given that “horror” is part of the title. But, as someone once said about life (and goes double for motion pictures): “The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.” I could call this movie a lot of things, but boring isn't one of them; for what The Amityville Horror skimps on in thrills, logic, and coherence, it more than makes up for in unintentional laughs.

In 1979 when The Amityville Horror had its best chance of being taken seriously, public appetites were still so hungry for the next The Exorcist that the film became one of the highest grossers of the year. But that didn’t stop the opening night audience I saw it with from still appreciating the occasional laugh at the film’s expense.

Nauseous, sweating profusely, covered in flies, and witness to a door opening all by itself, 
Father Delaney has second thoughts about priests making house calls 

Margot Kidder and Lalo Schifrin's Oscar-nominated score work like Trojans trying to convince us that Kathy Lutz has seen something unspeakably terrifying outside of her daughter's second-story bedroom window. Regrettably, a cut to Kathy's POV reveals "glowing red eyes" that look for all the world like outdoor Christmas lights

Amity meets Amityville
Actor Murray Hamilton, who played the Doubting Thomas mayor of Amity in Jaws, this time out plays a Doubting Thomas priest. His brief scene in the film is memorable for the manner in which he commands a (still) frothing at the mouth Rod Steiger to sit down. It's like he's training an overgrown Bullmastiff 

Over the years, The Amityville Horror has spawned something like 15 Amityville-related sequels, remakes, and spinoffs. I don't know if this qualifies the original as some kind of minor classic or a mere franchise fluke; but for whatever reasons, The Amityville Horror (even with its always dubious claims to reality since debunked) has proved to be a movie that endures.  

Copyright © Ken Anderson

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD 1975

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay, not a review, so key plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion.

The success of The Exorcist (1973) left Hollywood scrambling to grab up the rights to any and all novels even remotely related to the occult and the supernatural. Having exhausted the whole demonic possession thing, and with indestructible serial killers still a few years off, studios—spurred on by the burgeoning '70s New Age movement and Me-Generation interest in navel-gazing mysticism—turned to the relatively benign philosophy of reincarnation as the next hoped-for trend in cinema scares.

Employing the same, questioning, nosy-parker tact in its ad copy as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud ("Suppose you knew who you had been in a previous life. What Then?"),  1977's Audrey Rose was a classier, pedigreed big studio reincarnation release, but due to a preposterous plot, it too fared poorly at the boxoffice

With its case-history title reminiscent of 1972s The Possession of Joel Delaney, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, a popular 1973 supernatural suspense novel by TV-writer Max Ehrlich (Star Trek, The Untouchables, Suspense) was snapped up by Bing Crosby Productions (of all things) to be made into a film for release in 1975. This independent television production company (responsible for Ben Casey and Hogan’s Heroes) had recently branched out into motion pictures and enjoyed a string of sleeper successes with the low-budget thrillers Willard (1971), You’ll Like My Mother (1972), and the redneck vigilante opus Walking Tall (1973).

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was BCPs ambitious move into the mainstream. Ehrlich was hired to adapt his book for the screenplay (misstep #1), and directing chores were handed over (promisingly) to Hollywood vet and Hitchcock fan, J. Lee Thompson. Thompson had been nominated for an Academy Award for The Guns of Navarone back in 1961, but what augured well for Peter Proud was his direction of the intense thriller Cape Fear (1962). He was also the director of the marvelously atmospheric but little-seen suspense drama Return from the Ashes in 1965. 

But alas, in order for one to consider the hiring of this 60-year-old director a boon to the making of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, one has to conveniently overlook the TV-level mediocrity of his more recent output. Specifically, the unexceptional Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). Still, there was always the lure of the film’s talented and attractive cast; no top-tier A-listers, but a definite step-up from the unknowns and TV-Q talent usually associated with BCP films. And all at intriguingly varied stages of stardom/relevance in their respective careers.

Cast in the title role was Michael Sarrazin, whose career had stumbled a bit after the brilliant They Shoot Horses,Don’t They?  (1969), but things appeared to be on the upswing, what with landing this role after co-starring opposite Barbra Streisand in For Pete’s Sake (1974). 

Michael Sarrazin as Peter Proud

Former Cover Girl model Jennifer O’Neill, who’d made such a splash as the dream girl in 1971s The Summer ’42, was perilously close to having Hollywood invoke its unspoken three-flops-you’re-out law (Such Good Friends, The Carey Treatment, Lady Ice) when cast as the male fantasy-object in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Her prominent billing, despite making her entrance nearly 60 minutes into the film, a fair indication that her leading lady marquee gold hadn’t completely tarnished.

Jennifer O'Neill as Ann Curtis

Margot Kidder, still three years away from global superstardom as Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie (1978), was still something of a promising up-and-comer after her attention-getting turn in Brian DePalma’s cult hit Sisters (1973). Small but memorable turns in Black Christmas (1974) and The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) gave the uniqueness of her role in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (coeval costars Kidder & O'Neill play mother and daughter) an emerging star-of-tomorrow feel.

Margot Kidder as Marcia Curtis

Rounding out this feminine trifecta of talent was Cornelia Sharpe, a name sure to inspire a lot of “Who?” these days, but back in the ‘70s she was the new blonde on the block; heavily touted in the press for her Faye Dunaway cheekbones (minus the acting chops), and appealing malleability in any number of underwritten “girlfriend” roles of the sort so prevalent during the male-dominated decade (most famously, Serpico-1973). Sharpe’s part in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud doesn’t really buck this trend, her presence in the largely female cast merely adding to the hopeful speculation that the R-rated suspenser was going to have a sizable overlay of ticket-selling sex and nudity with its supernatural shocks.

Cornelia Sharpe as Nora Hayes

Heterosexually speaking, if Peter Proud’s prominently publicized passel of pulchritudinous performers primed potential patrons with the prospect of a little T&A with their ESP; the film’s provocatively homoerotic poster art worked wonders for drawing the attention of the gay contingent. 

The memorable ad campaign and sole identifying graphic for the promotion of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was this lava-lamp soaked image of muscled, heavily-striated, and (most significantly) naked actor/model Tony Stephano screaming in pain after (as we come to learn) being hit in the schnuts with a wooden boat oar. A fashion model for Givenchy seen frequently on the pages of GQ magazine at the time, Stephano makes his film debut in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud as Jeff Curtis, Peter Proud's earlier, not-so-nice incarnation.
A common promotional practice of the day was for a film with a racy theme to appear in the pages of Playboy magazine or similar skin rag as part of an advance-publicity pictorial (my eyes still burn from the sight of a naked Robert Culp in the Penthouse magazine pictorial for the forgotten 1973 haunted house flick, A Name for Evil). However, in the age of Women's Lib, Playgirl magazine, and the advent of equal-opportunity flesh-peddling, two months before the release of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud Stephano promoted the film and his chiseled assets by gracing the cover and centerfold spread of the short-lived Foxylady magazine (below, albeit sans the oar - that's just my addition in the twin interests of providing modesty and a helpful visual-aid for those who haven't seen the film).  

I’ve no idea of the production budget for The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (it has that underpopulated, TV-movie look, so my guess is minimal) but the impact its publicity machine had on me was considerable. Intriguing radio and TV spots (“Who are you Peter Proud?”); a paperback book tie-in; pervasive newspaper ads; and an R-rating which hinted at the possibility of a return to Exorcist-style shake-‘em-up explicit horror (back then I considered the recently-released PG-rated The Stepford Wives far too tame) ‒ I was stoked.

All except for two red flags:

1. It didn't bode well for the quality of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (also known hereafter as TROPP) that it was being distributed through American International Pictures; the self-proclaimed “Woolworth’s of the movie industry” known for exploitation cheapies and bungling its rare stabs at legitimacy (Merchant/Ivory’s The Wild Party- 1975).

2. TROPP was slated to open at the movie theater where I worked. By rights, this news should have thrilled me to the core, but the theater where I was employed as an usher, The Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in San Francisco, was the sister-theater to the ritzier Regency Cinema on Van Ness. Both were first-run theaters, but the mid-town Regency got all the anticipated sure-fire hits while the Alhambra (viewed as a neighborhood theater) was given the leftovers. There was the occasional miscalculation (like when Jaws was sneak previewed there and Martin Scorsese’s sleeper hit Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore opened to consistently, wholly unexpected, sold-out business), but for the most part, if the Alhambra got it, industry buzz on the film tended to be mild.

Nora (described in the film's press material as a "sensuous grad student") attempts
to awaken Peter -as sensually as she can, I suspect- from one of his violent recurring nightmares. 

The topic of reincarnation hasn’t had a particularly good track record on film. Whether played for smarmy laughs (Goodbye Charlie -1964), set to music (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever -1970), or staged as romantic melodrama (Dead Again - 1991); reincarnation may intrigue in real-life, but in the assumed identity, anything can happen, make-believe world of film, it has credibility issues.

Peter Proud (Sarrazin), a University of California Professor of Anthropology, is plagued by vivid recurring dreams he comes to learn are actually past-life memories. In his dreams, he is inhabiting the body of another man—a man who is murdered by an unknown woman while he swims in an icy lake. Curiosity turns to obsession as Proud ventures to Springfield, Massachusetts, the city in his dreams, on a quest to discover who he was in an earlier life and to unearth the circumstances surrounding his violent death.

With the help of old newspapers and his own dream-recognition of specific locations, Proud uncovers evidence that he once existed as Jeff Cutis (Stephano), a former war hero married unhappily to banker’s daughter Marcia Buckley (Kidder). Three months after the birth of their daughter Ann, Jeff was found dead in the local lake, cause of death unknown. Only it isn’t—not for Peter Proud. He knows that Jeff was an abusive husband and serial womanizer killed by his wife that cold dark night out on the lake 35 years ago.

Getting To Know You

Intrigued by the thought of meeting both the wife and daughter of his former self, Proud rather recklessly insinuates himself into the lives of the now-grown Ann (O'Neill)--a sweet-natured divorcee with sad eyes--and 60-year-old widow Marica, the pretty, smiling brunette in his dreams who's matured into something of a morose, guilt-ridden sot.

Before long, Proud’s fevered obsession with his past life is supplanted by a desire to build a future of his own as he finds himself falling in love with Ann, who is, metaphysically speaking, his daughter. Meanwhile, Proud’s subconscious similarities to her late husband arouse mounting suspicions (and a few other things) in Marcia, leading to a violent reenactment of a past tragedy that was perhaps always fated to be.

With its not-uninteresting premise, combining elements of the psychological suspense film with the supernatural thriller and crime/detective mystery; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud had the potential to mine some of the same dreamy, eerily perverse terrain of erotic fixation as Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) or Brian De Palma’s 1977 Obsession. Unfortunately, Ehrlich’s plot-driven, exposition-heavy script and Thompson’s lacking-in-nuance, indifferent direction give TROPP the feel of a dramatically compelling TV Movie of the Week. With lots of nudity.

What Did I Have That I Don't Have?

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 
In a film as promising, but ultimately lacking, as The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, it’s difficult to pinpoint just where, among so many gross miscalculations, things went most wrong. But for me, problems with the script seemed evident from the film’s first frames. Max Ehrlich (often taking sizable chunks of dialog from his novel) shows no flair for the rhythms and tones of natural conversation. Revealing his TV-based roots, nearly every word spoken is designed either to propel the plot forward or provide expository information.

Character development (helpful in getting audiences invested in the emotional stakes behind Proud’s obsessive quest) takes a backseat to the writer’s efforts to propel the story forward along its inexorable path. The result is what often befalls rote disaster films and poorly-made horror movies: the characters’ actions and motivations are solely in service of plot machinations and rarely seem to emanate from personality or normal human behavior patterns.

After driving throughout Massachusetts in search of the unknown city he sees in his dreams,
Peter finally comes upon a recognizable landmark

For example: sure, the whole reincarnation angle of the plot is known to the audience before the film even begins, but Ehrlich's overdetermined script never allows the characters to consider any other explanations for Peter's strange behavior (like demonic possession or schizophrenia, for example). Once it's suggested that reincarnation is behind Proud speaking in another man’s voice, suffering phantom pain attacks, and being plagued by detailed visions of a life imagined or remembered, the abrupt and unquestioning acceptance of that theory by everyone turns what could have been a mysterious journey of discovery into a protracted lecture on New Age mysticism. In short, a more creative adapter of the material might have strived to make the film's title potentially ambiguous, with Peter Proud a perhaps unreliable narrator misleading the viewer (something Roman Polanski did beautifully with the literal-minded novel that became his ambiguous screen adaptation of Rosemary's Baby).

The premise of The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is already fairly fascinating fodder for a suspense thriller, I just wish someone had thought it worth the effort to supplement the story with more fleshed-out characterizations.

In the novel, the whole metaphysical incest angle is skirted by having Peter remain chastely in love with Ann. The film controversially has Peter and Ann consummate their love in a sequence intercut with shots of Ann's mother and father (uh...Peter, sort of) making love on the same spot 35 years hence.

PERFORMANCES

Which brings up the film's other problem. In spite of what I might have hoped for in the way of mainstream seriousness from the ads and advance publicity, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is an exploitation movie, and as such, the sensational aspects of the plot are the film’s real stars.

Still, that doesn’t excuse what passes for acting by a large portion of the film’s cast. Michael Sarrazin, always a rather likable but vague screen presence (which is perhaps why the amorphous Robert of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? remained the most memorable work of his career) fails to capture any of the dark nuances of a character fixated on knowing his former self, yet willing to have sex with the daughter of the man he knows he once was.

The appealing Jennifer O’Neill is mostly cast and used for her beauty and blank-slate personality (she’s like Mary-Ann on Gilligan’s Island; the perfect, non-threatening, girlfriend male fantasy).

Mother and Child Reunion

Margot Kidder, in what might be called a double role (although her 1940’s persona is sliced and diced to snippets) gives the film’s best performance. Although never once physically convincing as a 60-year-old woman (makeup is a little too junior college theater dept.), Kidder emotionally inhabits her character in a way that renders realistic the toll taken on a broken woman weary from carrying around a burdensome secret for too many years. Her scenes with same-age O'Neill (both 26) are particularly interesting to watch.

Debralee Scott as Suzy
Scott's bit role as a helpful teen (almost all of her dialogue is exposition) cements the film in the 1970s. Debralee Scott seemed to be all over the place during the decade, memorable as Louise Lasser's sister in TVs Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Donna Pescow's sister on Angie, and as a regular on Welcome Back, Kotter. Scott passed away in 2005, but these days she's highly visible on the Buzzr network on several game shows. Should it ever show up on YouTube, I recommend you catch her in the 1973 TV movie A Summer Without Boys.

Worst performance is an overcrowded category finds the lovely but tone-deaf Cornelia Sharpe (she sounds as though she learned her dialog phonetically) outpacing both pipe-smoking parapsychologist Paul Hecht (saying his lines and hitting his marks without projecting much through that forest of hair on his face), and the ever-nude Tony Stephano, whose Arrow Collar Man profile is perfect for the era, but whose voice I suspect is dubbed.

If you didn't grow up in the hair-helmet '70s, you're forgiven for assuming actor Paul Hecht
 (as parapsychologist/sleep-researcher Samuel Goodman)
 is wearing one of these contemporary crochet bearded-beanies 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud sought to distinguish itself in the horror/supernatural movie market by being explicit, but not in the head-spinning, vomit-spewing way. TROPP promoted itself as an erotic thriller, and its many controversial scenes were geared for maximum shock effect.

Marcia masturbates recalling the sexual assault she suffered at the hands of her late husband

A tiresome '70s trope (Peckinpah's Straw Dogs) was the rape that morphs into sex

Reflecting perhaps the film's lack of a cohesive point of view, Peter's metaphysically incestual relationship with Ann is depicted in romantic terms. If Peter does indeed believe he's the reincarnation of Ann's father, his taking the relationship to a physical level comes off as irresponsible at best, amoral at worst.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is one of those curious movies from my past where, after the initial disappointment of unrealized potential has settled (taking years to do so), nostalgia turns flaws into assets, and the film’s ability to perfectly evoke a particular time and place overrides its general weakness.

I can’t fully separate my reaction to The Reincarnation of Peter Proud from my nostalgic memories of my life in 1975. Nor do I want to. TROPP is, in my eyes, a film not wholly successful as either an erotic thriller or supernatural suspenser; yet it can't be denied that the film still manages to strike a chord with those who were of a certain age when they saw it (adolescent to late teens). The film obviously works on some level for me, perhaps one better suited to a Night Gallery or Twilight Zone episode, but its minor effectiveness can't be denied..
There’s plenty of ‘70s weirdness about it, which I like, but it suffers because it lacks the kind of crazy you find in the dark corners of the works of Hitchcock, Polanski, and other directors with demons they use film to exorcize. And a movie as offbeat as this NEEDS that kind of crazy.

One of the film's more eerily effective scenes is when Peter accompanies Ann to the convalescent home to visit her paternal grandmother. The woman, who hasn't spoken or acknowledged another person for years, suddenly sees Peter and recognizes her son, Jeffrey.

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, with its pedestrian direction and bland cinematography (surprising given that its cinematographer is Victor J. Kemper, the man who shot Xanadu and the stylish Eyes of Laura Mars) flattens out what really is a pretty loopy yarn that could have been an eerily sexy, metaphysical mind-bender. It’s not the film it could have been, but when I look at it now, I find myself increasingly grateful to it for being what it is.

Everything about its look just screams 1975 (the fashions, color scheme, washed-out appearance), as does its sober approach to the material (the dead-serious attitude about reincarnation is naively preachy), and the slightly-off feeling of the performances (on par with what you’d see on '70s TV or in big-screen genre films like Earthquake).

So I look at The Reincarnation of Peter Proud and marvel at the many things mainstream movies wouldn’t think of trying to get away with today. I poke fun at the risible dialog and plot contrivances, the poky acting, and the dated milieu. But I also allow myself to be taken back to my youth by the abstract, almost metaphysical notion that the enjoyment derived from certain movies is often untethered to the particulars of said film’s quality, but rather, wholly connected to the nostalgic pleasure to be found in (safely) revisiting one's past.

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2016

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE 1978

In writing about films, I'm afraid I'm guilty of coming down pretty hard on the recent spate of comic book movies. My usual gripes:

1. The cloak of self-seriousness they've shrouded themselves in of late.

2. The need for each successive film in a franchise to be busier, noisier, and more frenetically-plotted than the last.

3. The gradual usurpation of the kid-friendly genre by adult males (college-age to middle) willing to come to social media blows and death threats over plot points, casting, trivia, and fidelity to source material. Which, it bears repeating…is a Comic Book.

4. There just being so darn many of them.

Despite their obvious popularity and profitability, I still stand by my assertion that glutting the market with so much ideologically and stylistically similar "product" may be good business, but it's lousy art. But whenever I find myself being too much of a curmudgeon about the ceaseless hype surrounding the latest cookie-cutter entry in the DC or Marvel franchise, I only have to remind myself of what a flurry of hoopla and excitement I happily allowed myself to get swept up in way back in 1978. 

I don't think there was a soul on earth more charged-up about the release of Superman: The Movie. A film that was then, and remains today, my absolute favorite superhero movie of all time.

Christopher Reeve as Superman / Clark Kent

Margot Kidder as Lois Lane

Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor

Valerie Perrine as Eve Teschmacher

Like many people my age, Superman comic books and reruns of The Adventures of Superman TV series (1952-1958) were an inextricable part of my childhood. And, outside of a few Saturday morning cartoons, they were also the only Superman I knew. (The less said about the 1975 TV version of the 1966 Broadway musical, It's a Bird… It's a Plane… It's Superman the better). So while I dearly loved the TV series, when it was announced in 1976 that a mega-budget, all-star Superman film was going into production, I was overjoyed at the prospect of any form of updating of that program's '50s sensibilities (gangsters and crime lords), cheesy flying effects, and George Reeves' baggy-kneed Superman tights. 

Interest and excitement intensified as I opened myself up to being subjected to nearly two years of pre-production hype and advance publicity. I ate it up. By the time the film was set to open, I had whipped myself into a proper frenzy of anticipation.  

Marlon Brando and Susannah York as Jor-El & Lara

Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter as Ma & Pa Kent

Superman: The Movie opened Friday, December 15th, 1978, at Grauman's Chinese Theater in LA, and, of course, I was in line opening night. The pre-release press reviews were near-unanimous raves. The film's marketing strategy—minimalist teaser ads dramatically highlighting the Superman insignia and little else—left everyone intrigued yet completely in the dark. In those pre-internet days, it was easier for movies to keep much of their content under wraps before release, so buzzing through the waiting crowd that night was the thrill of expectation, wonder, and the sense of being present for an "event." 

The first weekend of release saw the theater adding late-night screenings to accommodate the overflowing masses. The line I stood in (formed at 4pm to get into an 8pm show) wrapped almost around the block. Camaraderie born of the shared battle fatigue of waiting so long revealed that all any of us could talk about was how Superman: The Movie was going to stack up, special effects-wise, to the previous year's megahit, Star Wars. That, and speculating on how the film intended to make good on the promise of its tagline: "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly." 

The makers of Superman had a knack for setting up and meeting audience expectations.
The first time Reeve unveils the "new" Superman outfit (no baggy knees!)
 is also the first time the audience finds out how this particular Superman will fly.
The audience I saw it with started cheering the moment they saw that cape and blue tights. But when the Man of Steele took off in graceful flight, throwing us a literal curve by banking the wall of the fortress (no prior Superman had ever flown in any directions other than horizontal and vertical) ...the cheers and applause reached stadium levels. 

George Reeves, the Superman of childhood.
Christopher Reeve, my favorite Superman of all time.

Whenever I rewatch Superman, I can still remember, clear as a bell, what it was like seeing it that first time. First, there was that familiar rumble of excitement that passed through the packed theater as the lights dimmed and everyone sat higher in their seats and got in their last-minute shushes. Then, that moment when the square aspect ratio of the B&W prologue is literally pushed into 70mm widescreen color (and MAJOR amplified Dobly sound) by those laser-like "flying credits" whooshing towards us. The loudest boom (which sounded like a jet plane taking off) was reserved for the appearance of the Superman insignia, which seemed to zoom in over our heads onto the screen from somewhere at the back of the theater. 

Next came the first trumpeting of horns of composer John Williams' majestically heroic score, and with this, absolute pandemonium in the auditorium. The biggest collective gasp I've ever heard in my life filled the Chinese Theater, followed by applause and thrilled exclamations all around. 

Superman wasn't even two minutes old and already had the audience eating out of its hand.

Otis (Ned Beatty) and Miss Teschmacher read about the Man of  Steel. I think Otis moves his lips.

Although production on Superman had begun before Star Wars was released, Superman: The Movie arose from the same cultural zeitgeist. In concept and execution, it was another affectionate update and tribute to the kinds of films that kids of my generation grew up seeing at Saturday matinees. The cynical and disillusioned '70s—whose attitudes echoed the Great Depression of the 1930s—were searching for hope and heroes. (That other Depression Era optimist, Annie, had opened on Broadway just a year before in early 1977.) The simplicity of Superman's motto: a belief in "truth, justice, and the American way," struck a social chord.

Superman: The Movie accomplished the miracle of being something totally new, yet comfortingly nostalgic. Something sophisticated, yet charmingly corny. Something spoofishly fun, yet respectful of both the Superman legend and its legions of fans. And, for once, a film had lived up to its massive hype. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

When action films and summer blockbusters come under critical fire for being moronic, shoddily written, or just a series of explosions and car chases strung haphazardly together (directors Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich come to mind), I always take umbrage when their lazy defense is: "It's not supposed to be taken seriously," "It's pure escapism!", or "It's intended for kids!"

As children's book authors Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl could tell you, kids aren't stupid, and escapist fare doesn't mean mindless.  

Jackie Cooper as Perry White

What I love about Superman: The Movie is how smart it is. Correction: make that ingenious. It's the canniest transfer of a comic book character to the movie screen I've ever seen. The script is witty and sharp, the tone is winkingly arch, and there are many thrills to be had in the film's masterfully-handled action sequences. But best of all, the film never plays down to the audience. 

Expertly balancing ever-shifting tones of adventure, romance, drama, and comedy, Superman: The Movie employs a classic, three-act story structure and finds ways to lend dimension to its comic-book-originated characters. 

Jeff East as Young Clark Kent

Though the budget for Superman: The Movie tipped at $55 million, an element that plays out nicely over time is the human-sized scale of the film's narrative. Hewing closely to the simplicity of the original comic books and TV series, the villainous stakes of Lex Luthor and his henchmen may come across as modest compared to the overcrowded, overplotted, mass-mayhem destruction noise fests of today. But for me, the film's accessible scale is a significant part of its charm.
I like a Superman who has time to rescue cats from trees and apprehend common thieves. I find the whole "global destruction" angle of contemporary superhero films just too emotionally distancing.

Jor-El sentences Ursa, Non, and General Zod to the Phantom Zone
Villains Sarah Douglas, Jack O'Halloran, & Terence Stamp
don't really make their presence felt until Superman II (1980)

PERFORMANCES

During the entirety of my childhood George Reeves and Noel Neill were the only Superman and Lois Lane I knew. Now, rather spontaneously, when I think of Superman and Lois Lane, I can only see Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder. Their performances have blotted out all prior and subsequent incarnations of the characters. Both actors are such spot-on, visually witty, temperamentally ideal incarnations of the characters that they have become Superman and Lois for me. 

Lke Jeremy Irons in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, Reeve's dual performance
 involves subtle shifts in body language that transform his features right before my eyes

I've loved movies all my life, but I've never fully understood that imperceptible, interdependent alchemy the camera captures that accounts for screen chemistry and star quality. It strikes me as a most elusive, ethereal factor, yet the fates of multimillion-dollar movie projects are tethered to it. Both Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder are fine actors in their own right, but for me, they've never registered as effectively in any other film or with any other co-star. They are magic together, and I treasure every scene they share. 

The casting of Marlon Brando was a central thrust of Superman's early publicity, but time has revealed his contribution to have been simultaneously significant (the Brando persona adds gravitas to the whole "Father of Superman" thing) and negligible (any number of competent actors could have done as well).

However, I've nothing but unqualified praise for the rest of the marvelous cast assembled.  

I sense a great deal of the credit is owed to director Richard Donner (The Omen), who, after setting the right tone and creating a kind of cartoon reality, then has his actors pitch their performances to just the right level of believable and comic. Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter play their scenes with a beautiful, relaxed naturalness that perfectly sets up the "comic book" style acting that takes over when Clark moves to Metropolis. Jackie Cooper's excitable Perry White is one of my favorite performances, and I am particularly delighted by Gene Hackman and his barely-up-to-the-task minions Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty.

Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Swoon alert. One of the top reasons Superman: The Movie is my fave rave superhero movie is because I am absolutely enchanted by the Superman/Lois Lane romance. And as embodied by Reeve and Kidder, they make for one of cinema's most charismatic and charming screen couples. I'm a sucker for corny romance anyway, but in taking the time to create a Lois and Clark that are quirky, imperfect, and endearing, Superman made the pair so likable that you're practically rooting for them to fall in love. 
*Spoiler Ahead*
I'm well past middle age, I've seen this movie dozens of times, and it's a movie adapted from a comic book for Chrissakes; but when Lois dies at the end, I get waterworks each and every time. Christopher Reeve's performance is just remarkable (I love that bit when he tenderly places her body on the ground and winces, as if afraid to hurt her even in death). The entire sequence is a tribute to what writers can achieve in a big-budget genre film if they remember a film's audience comprises human beings, not market analysts. Superman made me believe in these fictional characters by getting me to identify with them and care about what happens to them. Today, I think superhero films are out to get their audiences to have a relationship with the stunts, gadgetry, and special effects. .

The Effects Are Fake, The Characters Are Real
Since the relationship between Lois and Clark looms so large in my fondness for the film,  it never bothers me that the special effects in Superman look so dated. In an ironic twist, today's superhero films have special effects that are eye-poppingly real; only the characters are cardboard.

Clip from "Superman: The Movie"  1978

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I'd be remiss in praising Superman without making special mention of the indispensable contributions of famed cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (Murder on the Orient Express, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cabaret) and composer John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind). A master of light with an eloquent eye for composition, Unsworth gives Superman a distinctive sheen (evident in the screencaps used here), its degree of impact made all the more conspicuous by how significantly subsequent Superman films suffered due to their lack of visual distinction.  

And what can I say about John William's epic Superman theme? Absolute perfection! It deftly strikes the right chord of nostalgia by recalling the classic TV show theme, yet feels like a wholly new take on those soaring themes from serials and adventure films of yesteryear. Williams' score is one of those real goosebump-inducing anthems that absolutely MAKES the film. As far as I'm concerned, John Williams is as responsible for Superman's success as Richard Donner.

Past Meets Present
The best joke in the film, and the one that got the absolute biggest, loudest laugh of the evening, was the sight gag featuring Clark Kent, in full retro "This looks like a job for Superman!" mode, encountering his first modern phone booth.

After 1980's Superman II (which I very much enjoyed), it's fair to say I haven't liked a single Superman incarnation—film or TV—since. I do intend seeing Man of Steel (2013) when it comes out on DVD*, although I admit, my expectations aren't very high. 

*Update 2014: Watched Man of Steel and my jaw never left the floor, stunned as I was for how epic a miscalculation the whole costly enterprise was.

So, the point of this post is that, despite my grousing, I really do "get it" when it comes to the public's fascination with comic book movies today. Even without needing to call them 'graphic novels." I appreciate that illustration is a valid narrative medium and doesn't instantly brand a work as lightweight or intended only for children. 

It's natural to want to recapture the sense of wonder movies had for us as kids. And I can't think of a better reminder of that fact than Superman: The Movie. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013