THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE 1972

Warning: Spoilers galore

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe that I first came to know of the existence of The Poseidon Adventure only after it had already opened in theaters. It was in December of 1972, I was 15 years old, and my folks were treating my sisters and me to our first visit to Disneyland over the Christmas holidays. Disneyland and Universal Studios were, of course, a blast for a film fan like me (this was back when Universal was ONLY a tour, not an amusement park, and the main attractions were Lucille Ball's dressing room, the props from the Land of the Giants TV show, and that bridge Shirley MacLaine got pushed off of in Sweet Charity). But that was for the daytime.
My favorite part of our trip was in the evenings. At night we were treated to a driving and walking tour of Los Angeles, Hollywood, to be specific. Of all the places we visited, I especially loved seeing Hollywood Boulevard. Hollywood Boulevard was always kind of tacky, but not to my utterly overwhelmed and enthralled eyes. In the early 1970s, it was still a place to go to see first-run movies, where premieres were held, and where they had their annual Christmas parade populated with actual movie stars you've heard of. Hollywood Blvd...all decked out in Christmas decorations, stars on the sidewalks, overflowing with one lit-up movie palace after another…to my eyes, it looked every bit as magical as Main Street in Disneyland.

Who Will Survive--In One Of The Greatest Escape Adventures Ever!

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott

Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo 

Stella Stevens as Linda Rogo

All of the 1972 holiday season movie releases were playing in the local theaters: Grauman's Chinese had Streisand's Up The Sandbox, Diana Ross was at The Pantages in Lady Sings the Blues, the Cinerama Dome had the Patty Duke thriller You'll Like My Mother, the Pacific was showing The Getaway with Steve McQueen & Ali MacGraw, and Paul Newman was at the Hollywood (currently a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum) in The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean.

Back then, movie theaters still went all out with marketing gimmicks and displays. Every theater was bathed in colorful neon, aglow with bright and flashing lights, and everywhere you looked were banners, streamers, oversized posters, and colossal cardboard promotional cutouts for movies now playing or coming soon. My eyes were popping out of my head.

As we strolled along Hollywood Boulevard that night, what really stopped me in my tracks was when we came upon the opulent and enormous Egyptian Theater. There, towering at least two stories high above the theater's massive, winding marquee, was the poster art for a film I'd somehow not heard a single thing about: The Poseidon Adventure. The Egyptian, then every bit as glamorous as Grauman's Chinese, was in the middle of an exclusive run of The Poseidon Adventure after hosting the film's premiere a week prior. The remaining evidence of the event was the massive cast portraits adorning the sprawling marquee, taller-then-me cutout posters, hanging banners, production stills, posters, and lobby cards filling every inch of available display space. Suddenly I was surrounded by images of what looked like the most exciting film I'd never heard of.

Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen 

Jack Albertson as Manny Rosen

Red Buttons as James Martin

Carol Lynley as Nonnie Parry

To understand how a dyed-in-the-wool film fan like myself managed not to hear a single advance word about a movie that not only became one of my all-time favorites, but the second highest-grossing film of the year, it helps to know what kind of year 1972 was for the movies. In both fan magazines and the legitimate press, the lion's share of 1972 movie coverage/publicity centered around these high-profile titles: The Godfather (Brando's comeback!), Cabaret (Judy's daughter makes good!), Last Tango in Paris (Le Scandale!), Lady Sings the Blues (a Supreme film debut!), The Getaway (behind-the-scenes adultery!), and What's Up Doc? (Streisand meets New Hollywood wunderkind!).

With no nudity, sex, drug use, violent bloodshed, or profanity, The Poseidon Adventure—an old-fashioned throwback to the Grand Hotel-style "all-star cast" melodrama—couldn't really compete with the more daring, youth-oriented releases of the season, so it pitched itself more to the market largely ignored by New Hollywood: families and the older demographic. 

Roddy McDowall as Acres

Pamela Sue Martin as Susan Shelby

Eric Shea as Robin Shelby

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison

Arthur O'Connell as John, the ship's Chaplain 

The Poseidon Adventure opened on December 15^th in Los Angeles and opened a week later back home in San Francisco, where I saw it on Friday the 22^nd at the Alexandria Theater. I sat through The Poseidon Adventure twice that weekend and went back to see it two more times over the Christmas holiday. Every bit as exciting as I'd hoped it to be, I absolutely loved the film, and it definitely left its mark--for weeks afterward, I couldn't enter a classroom, library, store, or friend's home without imagining what it would look like upside down.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

It says a lot about the traditionalism of TV and studio-era films that by the time I was 15, I'd already grown pretty well-versed in recognizing movie clichés. While I'd not yet seen many of the films that established the familiar tropes from which so many '70s disaster movies would later draw (The High and the Mighty, Zero Hour!, The Last Voyage), I was familiar enough with combat movies (dangerous situation + dissimilar people from all walks of life + hero = everyone discovers what they're really made of); all-star ensemble flicks (the aforementioned Grand Hotel, Tales of Manhattan); and waterlogged melodramas (Lifeboat, A Night to Remember), for The Poseidon Adventure's high-concept upside-down ocean liner premise to seem intensely original yet reassuringly familiar.

Reverend Scott, not looking exactly pleased to have someone besides himself talking.
Far left is actress Frieda Rentie, sister of 227 actress Marla Gibbs

On New Year's Eve, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon (significantly, at least in terms of ironic poignancy, making her final voyage before the scrap heap) is capsized by a tidal wave. While several passengers survive the breathtakingly entertaining catastrophe, only nine of the ship's most stock and photogenic passengers ultimately elect to follow the long-winded Reverend Scott (Hackman) on a perilous climb to safety by navigating their way up to the ship's bottom.

All involved—save for the resourceful reverend, who oozes so much self-reliance and leadership qualities he can't help but grow tiresome—are spectacularly ill-suited to the task. Still, any life-or-death struggle that begins with a ragtag group of "types" having to climb a big, tinselly Christmas tree to salvation is my kind of calamity. And so, armed with little more than pluck, guts, body-shaming, and tight-fitting hot pants, our intrepid troupe begins their adventure.

Meet The Players / Character Shorthand

He's a Rebel 'Cause He Never, Ever Does What He Should
Rev. Scott--who's such a hip, throw-out-the-(Good)book type that he wears a turtleneck instead of a clerical collar--assists in moving the plot along by simply telling us what we're not trusted to discover for ourselves

The Bickersons
Common-but-decent police detective Mike Rogo and his foul-mouthed, former-prostitute wife Linda are a kind of Bronx George and Martha. Never afraid to say what's on their minds, Mike thinks Rev. Scott is a loudmouth, and Linda refers to Mrs. Rosen as "Ol' Fat ass." So, of course, they are my favorite characters in the film

Oh, My Papa and Yiddishe Grandmama
As though their borscht-belt accents weren't a dead giveaway, the film makes sure we know Belle & Manny are Jewish by introducing Manny with his nose in an Israel travel brochure while Belle knits their grandson a sweater with prayer shawl stripes.

Coded and Fabulous
James Martin--the real hero of the film due to his being the one who comes up with the idea to climb to the hull--is gay. No one can tell me otherwise. And the 50-something bachelor haberdasher might have actually said so, had Belle, the Hasidic Heteronormative Buttinsky ("It comes from caring"), not interjected that "What you need is a pretty wife" business in front of a table full of guests. In any event, it's not likely anyone bought his "I'm too busy" line anyway. Mr. Martin's character was happily out and proud in the 2006 Poseidon remake, but the movie itself was so lousy no one cared.

Damsel in Distress
My real-life experience has been that in moments of crisis, most men & women act more like Nonnie than Rev. Scott. But that doesn't mean her fraidy-cat, easy-listening songbird character isn't still something of a pill. She's genuinely sweet, though, and as one of cinema's most high-profile fag hags (you didn't honestly think she and middle-aged Mr. Martin became a post-rescue romance, did you?), I like to imagine Nonnie and Mr. Martin became friends: she tagging along on his visits to The Mine Shaft or meeting up for Sunday brunches in the Village

Susan Being Polite To Mr. You're-Not-Reverend-Scott (Ernie Orsatti)
Although I don't ever recall a brother actually calling his sister "Sis" instead of her given name in real life, I suppose it was important for the film to establish lovesick Susan and "all boy" Robin (so much the kid stereotype I expected him to say "Jeepers!") as siblings instead of some kind of Susan Anton/Dudley Moore couple.

Where Am I From?
Sure, his role is brief, but after three Planet of the Apes movies, I'm sure Roddy McDowall was happy just to have his actual face seen in a movie again. More a plot device than a character...what exactly is Acres' accent? I thought he was British (with a Liverpool lilt), but someone told me he's supposed to be Scots (maybe due to that bagpipes crack?)

In the 1972 shout-fest X, Y and Zee, Elizabeth Taylor has the line: "I may be the worst thing in the world, but I carry it in front where you can see it!" Well, if The Poseidon Adventure could speak, that would be its mantra. It's old-fashioned, schlocky, and loaded with what director Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) labeled "cardboardy" characters; but the film carries it all out in front where you can see. 

The Poseidon Adventure proudly wears its corniness on its sleeve. As a 20th Century Fox production, its asserted broad-market, family-friendly appeal feels like a purposeful shift in direction from Fox's rather desperate attempts to stay afloat in the early part of the decade by courting the youth market: Myra Breckinridge (1970), The Panic in Needle Park (1971), and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1972).

Sure, The Poseidon Adventure is hokey, soapy, cliché ridden, and terribly contrived, but (miracles of miracles) it works. And rather magnificently, at that! I loved the premise, enjoyed the archetypal characters, and was thrilled as all get out by the upside-down sets and visual effects. But, most surprising of all was that the filmmakers somehow not only got me to care about these characters, but to respond emotionally to their fates. Who knew a cheesy movie could be so moving?

The terrible remake (which Carol Lynley called "The biggest piece of shit I've ever seen") cost 32 times more and had CGI wizardry up the ass, but I never gave a whit about what happened to anyone in it, and cannot clearly recall a single scene. The Poseidon Adventure was ripped apart by many critics in its day, but it has aged remarkably well. What seemed corny in 1972 looks rather sincere today. And creators of today's largely disposable and indistinguishable action films could take a lesson from how The Poseidon Adventure takes the time to get us to know/care about the characters before the mayhem starts. The Poseidon Adventure is now 45 years old. Despite its well-earned reputation as a campy favorite, I can't help but think that in the realm of disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure is some kind of a minor classic of the genre.

As both Beyond The Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm proved, any movie Irwin Allen decides to direct is a guaranteed disaster from the get-go. The Poseidon Adventure is directed by Ronald Neame, with Allen on hand only to handle the action sequences

PERFORMANCES

One of the peculiarities of the disaster film genre is that things don't actually improve when "good" actors are cast. Due to the unique demands of a film dominated by fast plotting and special effects, personality tends to win out over performance. Nothing bogs a disaster movie down more than a so-called serious actor trying too hard. For example, for all their innate talent, you'd have to look to an Ed Wood movie to find performances worse than Olivia de Havilland in The Swarm or Rock Hudson in Avalanche.

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison
Younger viewers tend to be surprised to see the star of Airplane and Naked Gun in a serious role. However, those of us of a certain age know that for decades, THIS Leslie Nielsen was the only Leslie Nielsen there was.

No, with the genre's emphasis on action and expediency, it's often a matter of finding actors with distinct, identifiable, almost over-emphatic screen personas, capable of projecting a level of conviction appropriate to the arch dialogue and bigger-than-life exploits.
Much in the manner that Vincent Price became the master of schlock horror sincerity, disaster film actors who take their roles too seriously come off as ridiculous. Meanwhile, the most compelling performances are often given by those who seem to operate on a level of magic realism that hovers somewhere between authentic and artificial.

The distinction I'm trying to make is that while the cast of The Poseidon Adventure may be quite accomplished actors in their own right, what they're called upon to do in the film doesn't require "good" acting so much as "effective" acting. To make material like this believable, it matters more to strike the right tone; in which case, performances ranging from hammy to hoary can prove to be 100% on the money.

My absolute favorite shot in the entire film, and also my favorite moment.
No matter how often I see The Poseidon Adventure, Linda Rogo's death remains the most shocking and heart-wrenching. Winters' Belle Rosen was set up from the beginning to be nobly tragic, but Mike and Linda Rogo were the couple I identified with. They weren't know-it-alls, they weren't noble, and they responded to the fantastic circumstances of their situation in a way that felt realistic. They were funny, sweet, and a life force in the film. Linda's death reverberated like no other. Ernest Borgnine just breaks my heart in this scene, and I always get waterworks from his reaction. To me, he was always the film's most valuable player.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
By no means all, but just a few of my favorite things:

I don't care how dated the special effects are; the capsizing of The Poseidon is epic moviemaking
(Gotta love Red Buttons during this part. That's not acting!)

No one on the Poseidon faced a bigger challenge than these two trying to find the beat of the music

I love Mrs. Rosen

Even in 1972, the Hot Pants Under The Gown Reveal drew gasps and laughs.
Loving Linda's reaction

That Dive!
The biggest shock of the film. It got laughs, applause, and cheers

I love Linda Rogo

The Poseidon Adventure is a favorite. You'll never hear me call it one of the best films ever made; I don't buy into revisionist assessments ranking it a genuine classic (it's great for what it is, but let's not forget what it is); nor do I harbor illusions about its depiction of women (save for Belle and her big moment, the men are all active while the women are reactive) and the lack of People of Color in the principal cast. (Akers & Belle occupy the stereotypical roles of ethnics in action films: "first to die" and "noble sacrifice.")

Yet there's no denying The Poseidon Adventure is one of those imperfect films that achieve a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of excellence. From script (dialogue, primarily) to characterizations, to outlandish (albeit exciting) premise; it shouldn't really work as beautifully as it does. But you'd have to look hard and long to find a disaster film that does it better. I've come to regard it with such fondness. I've noticed that over the years, my laughs of derision have turned into laughs of affection. Despite its flaws, I fully understand why it has endured and why so many people have taken it to their hearts.

Clip from "The Poseidon Adventure"  1972

BONUS MATERIAL
In 1973, MAD magazine once again produced a movie satire that hit the nail on the head. In "The Poopsidedown Adventure," the characters are Reverend Shout, Hammy & Bellow Roseman, Snoozin & Rotten, Mr. Martyr, Ninny, Mr. Rougho, Limber, and Apers.

Though it's nothing compared to U.S. obesity norms today, in 1972, Shelley Winters' weight gain for The Poseidon Adventure was a major source of comedy and comment. Winters was Oscar-nominated that year for Best Supporting Actress, and when the list of nominees was read, Winters had the alphabetical misfortune of having her name come up right after Cloris Leachman reads the title of co-nominee Susan Tyrell's film, Fat City. The film's title resulted in an associative coincidence that caused Robert Duvall to lose it. When questioned later about his laughter, Duvall professed that James Caan was making faces from the audience. Few (certainly not me) believed him. See the Oscar sequence HERE.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017

THE BABY MAKER 1970

In 1970--decades before the topic of surrogacy became a standby staple of Lifetime TV thrillers, mediocre comedy fodder (Paternity, Baby Mama), or a nightmare vision of a dystopian future (The Handmaid’s Tale)--it was considered a subject so unique and unusual that critics and audiences alike were at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to a movie proposing surrogacy as a legitimate alternative for a couple wanting a child but unable to conceive.  

Barbara Hershey as Patricia "Tish" Gray

Sam Groom as Jay Wilcox

Collin Wilcox as Suzanne Wilcox

Scott Glenn as Tad Jacks

The Baby Maker, the debut film of Oscar-nominated screenwriter James Bridges (The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome) tells the story of a Los Angles hippie (Barbara Hershey, the then go-to flower child of the movies) who, for a substantial amount of money and because she just loves being pregnant (“Proof of the reality of my own existence”), agrees to bear a child for a square-but-nice, well-to-do Brentwood couple (Sam Groom & Collin Wilcox). Combining as it does—with varying degrees of success—elements of the well-intentioned Generation Gap TV movie (Maybe I’ll Come Home in The Spring); the quickie cash-in counterculture youth flick (1969s natural childbirth gimmick comedy Generation); the racy and “with it” social exposé (The Christine Jorgensen Story); and the indie character drama (Five Easy Pieces), The Baby Maker proved a hard picture to categorize and an even tougher film to market.

"The kind of film that makes talk!" 
This ungrammatical tagline underscores the overall
please-don't-let-me-be-misunderstood tone of this newspaper ad (click to enlarge) 

Young audiences deemed The Baby Maker "too straight" and mainstream, just another example of a major studio depicting hippie counterculture inauthentically on the screen (a valid criticism considering The Baby Maker has a scene depicting Hershey's tree-hugger character literally hugging a tree). Meanwhile, mainstream critics labeled the film “bizarre”(The Miami News) and tripped over their words as they tried to frame the movie's then-daring themes in ways that didn't suggest simple exploitation and sensationalism. On that score, The Baby Maker's marketing campaign didn't help matters much.

 

Audiences titillated by the film’s teasingly salacious ad copy: “She’ll live with a couple. Share the husband. They get a baby that’s at least half theirs. She gets the joy of making it” (Time capsule note: the term "making it" was also '60s slang for having sex, so the ad engages in a bit of double entendre) were inevitably disappointed. 

Imagine expecting a movie about a hippy-dippy tie-dye three-way and instead find yourself watching a thoughtful, often clinical, nearly two-hour character drama contemplating the permanence of decisions in the era of "If it feels good, do it." 

Lili Valenty as Mrs. Culnick, the sweet little old lady go-between who
 facilitates the pairing of the childless couple with a willing surrogate

It also didn't help marketing matters much that America's love affair with the hippie was on the wane. A few months prior to the release of The Baby Maker, John G. Avildsen released a low-budget social melodrama titled Joe that climaxed in a vigilante massacre at a hippie commune by a pair of ultra-conservative working-class reactionaries. The film struck an odd, cathartic chord with a public still reeling from the hippie violence detailed in the ongoing Manson trials, and became a controversial sleeper hit. In this social climate, The Baby Maker’s positive depiction of hippie culture and the idealism of youth started to look a tad dated and cliché.

All of which contributed to The Baby Maker enjoying only the briefest of theatrical runs before promptly disappearing from both movie screens and people's memories. This in spite of it having received a good share of favorable notices for its performances. Barbara Hershey attracted a lot of Best Actress Oscar nomination buzz in the trade papers, the film ultimately garnering an Academy Award nod for its original song score by composer Fred Karlin. (Karlin did win the Oscar that year, but in another category for a different film: Best Song “For All We Know” from Lovers and Other Strangers.)

"I was just looking at your records. You have an awful lot of Frank Sinatra."
The surrogate mother meets (and sizes up) the father

Although I recall when The Baby Maker was originally released, I don’t recall it ever appearing on television or even coming out on video. My reaction to the newspaper ads at the time was likely in line with how they appeared to most people: the film looked like cheap exploitation Drive-In fare. Not that that had ever proved a deterrent to my interest in a movie before. It's just that with both Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls hitting the screens at the same time that year, my reasoning was that if I was going to see vulgar trash, it might as well be big-budget vulgar trash from a major studio.

The opportunity to see The Baby Maker came in 1975 when I was still in high school and working as an usher in San Francisco's Alhambra Theater. The Baby Maker played as the bottom half on a double bill with The Happy Hooker, of all things (although, as the guy who also set up the outdoor advertising, I have to say this was one of our more eye-catching marquees). By this time Barbara Hershey had officially changed her name to Barbara Seagull (an ill-advised phase which lasted about two years), and hippies in movies were starting to look as quaint as beatniks. Nevertheless, for the week of the film's run, I saw it about three times. And absolutely loved it. 

Tad and Tish
One of the things I like about how the character of Tish is conceived is that she never thinks twice about treating her body as her own property to do with as she wishes. Although she is in an open relationship with her boyfriend Tad (for all of six months), when she decides to be a surrogate she doesn't seek his permission or approval. The scene where she finally tells him is touching and beautifully played. It feels light years away from how I imagine the scene would be written today. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

Before making his directing debut with The Baby Maker, James Bridges was a successful screenwriter who got his start working in television (Bridges wrote one of my all-time favorite episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: “The Unlocked Window”) and had a background of acting and directing for the theater. Dissatisfied with the quality of the films made from his scripts (The Appaloosa, Colossus: The Forbin Project), Bridges decided that he’d try his hand at directing direct his next screenplay  -“I can fuck ‘em up as good as they can!” The Baby Maker's lead character is based on a woman he and life-partner/business partner Jack Larson knew from a Venice Beach bar called The Carousel. A bohemian, free-spirit type who enjoyed the feeling of being pregnant and made extra money by serving as a surrogate mother for childless couples. 

It's Complicated

The Baby Maker is a twist on the classic triangle, the third party in this instance being recruited in a most impersonal way to participate in a most personal form of interrelation. In those pre-in vitro days, the fact that the surrogate is to be impregnated “the old-fashioned way” may have served as the film's principle gimmick and marketing hook, but The Baby Maker distinguishes itself in the manner in which its sensational premise actually serves as a springboard for a thoughtful examination of culture conflict. The film's humor and heart arise out of the clash of generations, personalities, backgrounds, and the unanticipated emotions arising out of what ostensibly is--in form and function--a business arrangement.

In all, Bridges set a heady task for himself in his first outing as director. And while he’s not always successful in balancing the film's varying shifts in tone or in sustaining the narrative thrust of the story over the length of the film’s running time (sometimes it feels up in the air as to which character's story the film is trying to tell); it does feel as though he's telling a story he believes in. 

 Collin Wilcox made her memorable film debut as Mayella in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

PERFORMANCES

Critics were divided over The Baby Maker’s overall merits, but the quality of Barbara Hershey’s performance was undisputed. And without a doubt, her performance is the single most distinguished takeaway from the entire film. Barbara Hershey’s real-life hippie-dippy reputation may have blighted her early career (and indeed may have cost her a much-deserved Oscar nod for her role here), but it’s precisely her naturalness in the role that grounds the film. Though her character may have been written as an archetype, it's Hershey who comes across as the real thing. Hers is the film's defining voice and ultimately its saving grace.

Hershey, who just the year before gave a truly chilling performance as a sociopath in Frank Perry's shattering Last Summer (1969) gives another incredible performance in this, her 5th film. Always an underrated actress, she is The Baby Maker's Most Valuable Player. In scene after scene, whether it be some bit of dialogue that would sound hokey or laughable coming from someone else, or a moment when the film feels to be veering into soapy waters, Hershey’s unselfconscious and nuanced performance moors potential contrivance to truth.

Making his film debut, actor Scott Glenn is very good as Tish's sweet but immature boyfriend. 
In 1980 Glenn would go on to have a featured role in James Bridges' Urban Cowboy

As the middle-class couple, Collin Wilcox and stolidly handsome Sam Groom supply more traditional performances which, by comparison, feel more generic, but both are quite good. (Groom's sizable head and chiseled features made him a natural for the closeup-heavy medium of television, where he found success in the '70s as the star of the syndicated program Police Surgeon). Wilcox is a standout as Suzanne, playing the character as a pragmatic but somewhat neurotic woman. The Baby Maker actually excels in making women the dominant players in the film by placing their unique bonds and relationships front and center, and having their actions move the narrative forward. A young Jeannie Berlin is wonderful as Tish’s outspoken, activist best friend.

Tish uses some of her money to help support her single mom (Phyllis Coates) and her grandmother (Madge Kennedy) who both live in a Venice trailer park. In a sea of post-Easy Rider male-centric buddy films, The Baby Maker is unique for its dominant female perspective. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I’m a big believer in the tenet that the engagement of different voices can’t help but result in different stories. The subject matter of The Baby Maker couldn’t be more heterosexual, but as a story written and produced by two gay men, I feel it qualifies as a keen example of Queer Cinema.

For all its progressive ideas, the youth movement and hippie counterculture (at least as it has been depicted in films) has always been woefully male-centric, conventional, and in most cases downright misogynist in its attitudes towards women. For example: The Strawberry Statement, a 1970 film about campus protests, couldn't conceive of anything more important for its female activists to do beyond making Xerox copies of protest pamphlets and doing the marketing. To the best of my recollection, The Baby Maker is one of the few hippie-themed films to present the a woman's point of view as the dominant perspective. A genuine woman's perspective, not a fetishized, free-love, heterosexual male gaze fantasy of the sort depicted in films like Chastity, Candy, or There's a Girl in My Soup.

The Baby Maker producer Jack Larson (l.) & director James Bridges met when both appeared as actors in the film Johnny Trouble (1957). Openly gay, they remained lovers/partners till Bridges' death in 1993. Larson passed away in 2015

For its time, The Baby Maker’s feminist perspective, non-sexualized heroine, and unorthodox domestic relationships were a subtle challenge to the heteronormative status quo; something I wholly attribute to the gay sensibilities of its creators. Like the works of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, I think what’s brilliant about Bridges’ screenplay is that it looks at heterosexuality through the projected outsider insights of Queer perception.

In a reversal of a common youth film trope, the male bodies are the
ones exposed and made the object of the female gaze in The Baby Maker

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Being that I was just a child when my family lived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the late ‘60s, I tend not to be a very good judge of what passes for the authentic or inauthentic representation of hippie culture in movies. Largely shielded from the sex and drugs side of it all, my kid's-eye-view memory of the era consists largely of its pop-cultural trappings. My nostalgia buttons can be pushed by the most superficial signposts of the era, so even though The Baby Maker takes place in Los Angeles, one of its major perks for me is how often it triggers moments of "I remember that!" memory-jogging that take me back to my San Francisco roots.

Fringed suede/leather jackets were all the rage, and everyone seemed to know how to tie-dye but me.  My elder sister (who really caught the hippie bug) was a whiz, but I tended to use so much bleach that my garments actually disintegrated. Hitchhikers were visible all over San Francisco, but my family was so large (me & 4 sisters) that picking up thumb-trippers was never a practical option even if my parents were open to it. Which they weren't. This suited me just fine, for The Doors' Riders on the Storm  was being played on the radio at the time and I'd had the holy hell scared out of me by the lyric "There's a killer on the road..."

War Is Not Healthy For Children & Other Living Things
I remember the many protests and picket-sign slogans of the day, the above being so ubiquitous as to have been used as the poster graphic for the 1971 film Bless the Beasts and the Children. In this scene, Jeannie Berlin (daughter of writer/director Elaine May) leads a protest against a store selling toy guns.

Pop-Top Fashion
From roughly 1965 to 1975, beverage cans came with disposable pop-tops. Hippies, being ecology-minded and all, took to using these aluminum tabs to create fashion and "art." Everything from hats, dresses, and vests were made out of these things. I hope she'll forgive me for ratting on her, but my older sister (Yes, Ms. Tie-dye) made herself a pop-top headband just like this. 

Home Decor
The days of gigantic stereos, door-size coffee tables, and sofas that seat 20

Candles, Candles, Everywhere
Candle stores and vendors were like the Starbucks of the Sixties; you couldn't take two steps on Telegraph Avenue without bumping into one. I had a beloved star-shaped rainbow candle in my room (back when they were, y'know, just rainbows and not my way of coming out to my parents) and, of course, my sister made her own 

The Single Wing Turquoise Bird
How's that for a '60s name? Psychedelic light shows and avant-garde multimedia theater was all the rage. Not only did every youth-culture movie feature at least one sequence of freak-out visuals, but the phenomenon went mainstream with 2001: A Space Odyssey. In The Baby Maker, Tish and friends attend a light show performance by The Single Wing Turquoise Bird, a real-life performance troupe that is still in existence.

Although it’s one of my favorites, I don't mean to paint The Baby Maker as some kind of undiscovered classic. It’s shot in the flat, undistinguished style of a TV movie, the hippie trappings and dialogue can be a bit distancing, and modern audiences may find the tempo a tad sluggish. But it's notable now for its "my body, my choice" attitude about a woman's personal freedom and pregnancy.

A consistent theme in many of my favorite films is the human need for contact, so I'm a sucker for movies about people who misguidedly assume that independence means the absence of emotional attachments. Lastly, anybody who knows me knows how much I love a good cry at the movies, and the ending of The Baby Maker never fails to get the ol' waterworks going.

 BONUS MATERIAL

The Superman Connection

The Baby Maker producer Jack Larson was best known as cub reporter Jimmy Olson on the TV series The Adventures of Superman from 1952 to 1958. That show's original Lois Lane (1st season only) was actress Phyllis Coates. Larson and Coates remained friends over the years, leading to her being cast in The Baby Maker in the role of Barbara Hersey's mother.

Phyllis Coates, Jack Larson, and Ann Doran in The Adventures of Superman

Phyllis Coates as Patricia's mother

Brenda Sykes (Cleopatra Jones) appears in an unbilled bit part as a woman
with whom Tad shares a joint and a flirtation

In 1985 I got a job as a dance/exercise extra in the virtually unwatchable James Bridges film Perfect, starring John Travolta & Jamie Lee Curtis. Although the aerobics class scenes were shot on location at the Sports Connection gym in West Hollywood, this particular scene was shot months later on a set designed to look exactly like the gym. These reshoots were necessitated by the feeling from the higher-ups that the previously shot aerobic class scenes weren't "sexy enough,"
Aside from having to do something like six hours of pelvic tucks, what's most memorable about this particular sequence is that, after filming had begun, shooting halted in order for the costume people to figure out a way to sew up the legs to Travolta's shorts in order to give him a more pronounced package. When Travolta returned a half-hour later with a more camera-ready crotch, it also appeared that a bit of filler had been added. Jack Larson served as producer on this film as well and was often present on what proved to be a very gay (and happy) set.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017

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