Reeling Backward: "Joe Kidd" (1972)

Later generations knew Elmore Leonard primarily as a novelist whose books often were turned into movies ("Out of Sight," "Get Shorty"), but during the 1970s and '80s he was fairly busy writing original screenplays. This includes, God help him, "High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane," starring Lee Majors in the Gary Cooper role.

Goes to show that even the best of us sometimes do stuff just for a paycheck.

In that vein, I'm not sure what to make of "Joe Kidd," a 1972 Western actioner starring Clint Eastwood. By all accounts Leonard was inspired by a real-life Mexican movement to reclaim their ancestral lands from Anglo hands, which led to the storming of a New Mexico courthouse. Leonard switched it around to the turn of the century in fictional Sinola County and introduced the main character, a former bounty hunter who gets caught up in the conflict between Mexican revolutionary Luis Chama (John Saxson) and rich land baron Frank Harlan (Robert Duvall).

In 1972 Eastwood was so big he practically had his own gravitational pull, so I have no doubt the story got shifted around considerably from its original script. Although it starts out on a twist, with Kidd dressed up like a dandy and rotting in jail for a drunken binge, he soon takes on the prototypical Eastwood mantle: a man of few words and considerable skill at killing ... and humiliating others.

Plot-wise, there's not much there there. Chama rides into town and briefly holds the sheriff (Gregory Walcott) and judge hostage, burning up the deeds held by settlers to what they claim are their land. A posse is formed to catch him and his gang, but returns unsuccessful -- largely due to the absence of Kidd, a seasoned tracker.

Harlan arrives with a large entourage of men carrying high-end rifles with scopes and other newfangled weapons. He takes over the entire second floor of the hotel, throwing out the existing guests in the process, and tries to enlist Kidd as his guide for $500. Sensing a murderers' row, he declines. But upon learning that Chama raided his own farm of some horses, he returns and accepts the offer (after doubling the price).

Along their way they encounter Helen (Stella Garcia), who participated in the courthouse invasion and would appear to be Chama's squeeze. Kidd keeps silent about his knowledge of her relationship to their quarry, apparently willing to go along so he can get his own revenge on Chama and collect $1,000 in the process.

But when they happen across a small village of Mexicans, Harlan takes the entire town hostage and threatens to shoot five people every few hours until Chama gives himself up. The egotistical Chama refuses to do this, claiming their movement will die with them, but Kidd "convinces" him to turn himself into the sheriff, offering his help to get him there safely. This leads to the final, inevitable and rather dull shootout.

Kidd has a tendency to get into hassles over nothing, which keep coming back to bite him. He assaults another prisoner while in jail because the man refused him coffee during his hangover, and later has to kill him when it comes back on him. (He turns out to be one of Chama's man, another reason for tension between them.)

He also has a running feud with Lamarr, one of Harlan's junior flunkies played by Don Stroud. Lamarr, referred to as "Kid" by his fellows, is a hot-headed ingrate whose combat skills aren't on par with his ability to antagonize. He carries around a fancy repeating pistol to which he can attach a wooden stock to turn it into a serviceable long-distance rifle. Kidd, after showing up Lamarr several times and finally dispatching him for good, uses it to scatter Harlan's men while making good his escape.

(The Internet Movie Firearms Database, with which I have recently become acquainted, claims this to be a C96 "Broomhandle" Mauser, and also that it can only hold a 10-round clip -- though the movie depicts it as being able to spray an entire village several times.)

There's also a totally superfluous love interest played by Lynne Marta, Harlan's kept woman whom he keeps around for sex. There's a funny, goofy scene where she and Kidd meet in the hotel, and he just saunters into her room and starts kissing her with barely a few words passing between them. I know Eastwood was a big sex symbol 40 years ago, but you've got to at least provide some semblance of an invitation before he starts mackin' on the ladies. Otherwise it's just creepy.

Director John Sturges knew a thing or two about Westerns ("The Magnificent Seven"), but his and Leonard's storytelling skills are strangely flat here. None of the characters really makes any sort of impact -- Chama only gets a couple of dialogue scenes, Duvall gives Harlan a sort of matter-of-fact ruthlessness that's not really hateful, and Kidd is just another empty vessel for Eastwood to inhabit with his squinty glares and pistol-work.

By Leonard's own account the actors were intimidated by the legendary director and didn't initiate any of the regular push-and-pull of the collaborative filmmaking process. Personally, I don't think Leonard just wanted to admit that his script stank. According to legend the finale where Kidd drives a train through the Sinola saloon was a lark suggested by a producers as a joke, and not part of anyone's plan.

I believe it, because to watch the film it's hard to believe there was ever much of a scheme at all.

Reeling Backward: "The Eiger Sanction" (1975)

Watching "The Eiger Sanction," I haven't been this embarassed for Clint Eastwood since the chair speech at last year's GOP convention.

This 1975 spy thriller is like a time capsule of every misogynistic, racist and fascist impulse going around the country at the time, an ego buffer for a big movie star. It's the sort of picture where every single female the protagonist encounters wants to sleep with him, and all the male characters are opponents who must be defeated and/or sexually humiliated.

It's like two hours and nine minutes of gooey testosterone slathered across the screen.

In 1975, Eastwood was already 45 years old. He was an established star who didn't break out until his mid- to late 30s -- a pretty common phenomenon in Hollywood. (See Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, etc.) He'd already been an iconic Western gunman and brutal cop Dirty Harry, and was starting to direct his own pictures. I wasn't very familiar with this section of his oeuvre, and thought I'd take a peek.

"The Eiger Sanction" was his fourth stint behind the camera and, I hope, his worst.

The screenplay by Hal Dresner, Warren Murphy and Rod Whitaker was based on the novel by Trevanian, Whitaker's pen name. It involves a college professor/art collector/mountain climber/assassin by the name of Jonathan Hemlock -- which must represent some sort of pinnacle (or nadir) for Ridiculously Conceived Fiction Characters With Even More Ridiculous Names.

It seems that, at the ripe old age of 35, Hemlock has retired from a storied career climbing mountains to teach art at the local university, where he's hit on by an endless stream of co-eds who are willing to trade favors for better grades or whatnot. On the side he buys up famous paintings by Matisse and Pissarro off the black market for $10,000 a pop, which is a pretty good discount even nigh on 40 years ago.

It also seems Dr. Hemlock is a dual retiree, having hung up his wetboy credentials for C-2, a mysterious quasi-government agency headed by a man named Dragon (Thayer David), who is a "pure" albino who can't abide any light whatsoever and must have his entire bodily supply of blood replaced every six months. His number two is Pope (Gregory Walcott), a clownish creep who's always smiling at the wrong things and spouting hateful insults, preferably against blacks and women.

Hemlock is arm-twisted into performing two last "sanctions," or assassinations. He's convinced to do so because these men killed an old spy friend of his, plus the $20,000 he's getting paid. (I guess spies, like paintings, went for a lot cheaper back then -- even adjusted for inflation, that's only about 85 grand.)

The first hit is carried out relatively painlessly, a standard fight scene in a European hotel that ends with some guy taking a short walk out a tall window. What's interesting about it is that Hemlock pretends to be a swishy deliveryman -- if you ever wanted to hear Eastwood do a coquettish accent, here it is -- to scope out the place. Then he goes outside, daringly climbs a drain pipe to an apartment window next door, so that he can then ... walk through the exact same door he just knocked on.

Somewhere in here, Hemlock gets seduced by another C-2 agent named Jemima Brown, which immediately knocks Jonathan Hemlock down a peg on the Ridiculously Named Characters list. Vonetta McGee as Jemima is one of the film's few high points, drawing some real sparks in her scenes with Eastwood. Jemima beds him and then betrays him, but reappears in the final act to cheer him on.

Also showing up is Jack Cassidy as Miles Mellough, an old Hemlock chum-turned-traitor who helped sell out the dead spy friend. Even for 1975 Miles is an egregious homosexual caricature, right down to wearing a reflective shirt unbottoned down to his navel, and carrying around a little frou-frou dog named, I am not making this up, Faggot. Hemlock seems to take a special delight in taking Miles out.

This brings us to the finale of "The Eiger Sanction," the inspiration for its title and the only reason I'm not giving this giant turd one star.

It seems that C-2 can't pinpoint the other killer, other than he's a member of an international team of mountain climbers set to tackle the north face of the Eiger -- one of the most notoriously hard climbs in the world. The idea is to slip Hemlock onto the team, let him figure out who the killer is, and then take him out, making it look like an accident.

Now, think about that for a second. How could a spy agency know the killer was a member of the climbing team, but not know which one? There's only three other guys besides Hemlock, so it's not like they have to investigate an entire troop of suspects. One of the story's many problems is that the spooks, from Dragon on down to Hemlock, seem to be absurdly ineffective at their spycraft.

The mountain climbing scenes are pretty spectacular, featuring some gorgeous cinematography and a few harrowing sequences. "The Eiger Sanction" was one of few Hollywood films before 1980 to depict mountain climbing -- 1956's "The Mountain" with Robert Wagner and Spencer Tracy being one of the rare exceptions. It became something of a fad in the late 1980s and '90s, mostly in awful thrillers just like "Eiger."

I'm just glad Clint Eastwood survived the early, tawdry portion of his career behind the camera long enough to learn better.

1.5 stars out of four