Aaron Yap’s back with another batch of hardly-seen, or at the very least, barely-remembered films consigned to the dusty shelves of history – sometimes watching them so you don’t have to… In this edition Aaron checks out a perennial villain turned leading man in Johnny Cool, makes half-hearted apologies for cranking through a lot of sleazy thrillers recently while talking Scalpel and assesses whether stuntman Evel Knievel managed to land starring vehicle Viva Knievel!.
JOHNNY COOL
If you’ve seen your share of ‘70s and ‘80s action movies, you might have come across this face at some stage (if you haven’t just go watch Above the Law now or something and come back):
This is Henry Silva. He has one of the most magnificent faces ever, the kind that could just look at you and make you poop your pants.
Though usually relegated to supporting bad guy roles, in 1963 Silva tried his hand as a leading man in Johnny Cool, a — yes — cool hardboiled crime flick produced by Rat Packer Peter Lawford, whom he starred with in Ocean’s 11 a few years earlier. It’s not exactly a revelatory performance, and it’s apparent why he’s never been top-billed material, but he does an agreeable job of straddling dapper charm and gangster swagger as Salvatore Giordano, a Sicilian Robin Hood-type outlaw who, in an elaborately faked death, is hired by exiled mob boss Colini (Marc Lawrence) to take out Telly Savalas’ organised crime ring in America.
His quick reinvention into the smooth-talking ‘Johnny Cool’ maybe a little too quick to be believable, but hey, it’s good enough to seduce Elizabeth Montgomery (pre-Bewitched), who plays his naive, bar-hopping socialite love interest/partner-in-crime of sorts.
Directed with frills-free, functional punchiness by TV veteran William Asher — who was also married to Montgomery at the time — the film is practically devoid of blood, but the implied violence is shocking enough, especially for its period. Silva’s awkward karate chopping is the only odd, out-of-place touch, but elsewhere he’ll be stabbing and shooting dudes with ice-cold fervor, or throwing a suitcase of dynamite into a pool with children around like it’s just something you do. Montgomery’s early off-screen assault leaves a bad taste in the mouth (the film never addresses that moment again), but as if to compensate, the ending wraps everything up with a particularly nasty sting that might surprise even if you’ve been desensitised to modern-day Scorsese/Tarantino-esque levels of gangster brutality.
For those who like to play Spot-That-Guy, there are lots of well-known faces in the cast, including two other Rat Pack members, Joey Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr. (who also did the swingin’ soundtrack), and Elisha Cook. Jr and Robert Armstrong, both who have little to do as second-fiddle mobsters.
SCALPEL
It might seem like I’ve been gravitating to these sleazy psycho thrillers lately, but I swear I do watch other things, and it’s definitely not intentional… Anyhoo, Scalpel (aka False Face) is a fantastic slice of queasy Southern gothic trash in the scuzzy PG-rated ‘70s mold (see also: Embryo). Still unreleased on DVD, this seedy little Georgia-set psycho-drama of incest, doppelgangers and facial disfigurement stars Robert Lansing (4D Man) as Philip Reynolds, a brilliant plastic surgeon who’s also a deeply unhinged murderer. Obsessed by the mysterious disappearance of his daughter Heather (Judith Chapman), who’s in line to receive a massive inheritance, he decides to recreate her face on an unidentifiable, horribly disfigured dancer (“Jane Doe”) so she can claim it and split the fortune with him. This wacky scenario, cooked up by producer Joseph Weintraub, gets even weirder when the actual Heather re-appears.
Chapman, later a mainstay on soaps like General Hospital and The Young and the Restless, handles dual roles laudably, with Jane serving as a brasher, louder counterpoint to the more elegant, poised Heather. She’s no Tatiana Maslany, but at least it feels like we’re watching two characters most of the time, and the clever blocking and compositions from director John Grissmer, who only ever made one other film (Blood Rage), help too. Not that anyone would be able to tell, but Scalpel was photographed by acclaimed DP Edward Lachmann (Erin Brockovich, Ken Park). Someone get this gem out on DVD/Blu-ray stat!
VIVA KNIEVEL!
Being something of an American icon, you’d think that maybe — just maybe — stunt performer extraordinaire Evel Knievel would be perfect to star in his own motion picture vehicle. Not really, as Viva Knievel! proves in embarrassing spades. In this entertainingly awful 1977 ego-stroking turd — the last film directed by journeyman Gordon Douglas (In Like Flint, Them!) — Knievel plays Knievel in his own inane action narrative, which involves a mind-bendingly complicated plan by corrupt promoter Leslie Nielsen to smuggle drugs across the border. Here’s how he hopes it’ll work out: get Knievel to do some stunts in Mexico, sabotage his bike so he’ll die in action, then hide the dope in the trailer that’ll be part of his funeral procession back to America. The cops won’t even THINK about stopping Knievel’s funeral, geddit?
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Anyway, it takes an eternity to get to that bit; in the meantime, Knievel is — unfortunately for the audience — given many opportunities to demonstrate what an utter charisma-void he is on screen, instead of the stuff that, you know, he’s actually good at, like jumping his bike over a bed of caged lions.
There’s a bunch of phony subplots to pad out the runtime, including a dash of non-romance with Lauren Hutton, whose tough photographer can’t wait to shoot Knievel on his last ever stunt (read: the one where he dies), and some cheesy father-son melodrama with Gene Kelly, profoundly slumming it as Knievel’s crusty, hard-drinking mentor/mechanic who has to deal with the reappearance of his son Tommy he never knew. Marjoe Gortner, Red Buttons and Cameron Mitchell are also somewhere in there, keeping Viva Knievel! on the endearing side of wall-to-wall polyester-smeared vanity dreck, plus the soul-funk theme song is bloody infectious.
