mchattiefest evening one: a triple feature

Von Richthofen and Brown (1971. dir: Roger Corman) 1971 seems like a strange year to make a film about World War I dogfights, until you figure Corman was using leftover planes and sets from the garish (but oddly endearing) Julie Andrews musical Darling Lili. It's the genius of the man: if it's sitting around, he'll put it on film. And so Corman can add Stephen McHattie to his list of extraordinary discoveries; this was McHattie's second film, after the (as far as I can tell) unattainable anti-drug rant the People Next Door.

The moral of this tale of war (and what aspect of war is more glamorous than Sopwith Camels and Fokkers dancing together across the sky?) seems to be that war today is not the honorable and lovely thing it once was. John Phillip Law is surprisingly warm and human as the uberaristocratic Baron, a believer in ethics and boundaries in battle. Don Stroud is lumpen, dour, and without charisma as the Canadian who brings him down, making himself unpopular amongst his own with his constant eeyorisms about how warfare must be total, unrelenting, and soulless in order to be effective. Once the Baron has been killed, the point is hammered home when one Hermann Goering takes over command of the German squadron.

Stroud is an interesting fellow. He was one of that group of near-stars who had a moment in the sun in the early '70s then a lifetime of TV spots. You'll recognize him as the OTHER priest in the original Amityville Horror or the mod-ly dressed gunman who pisses Clint Eastwood off in Joe Kidd. He grew up surfing Waikiki,-- indeed, according to IMDB, was once ranked fourth best surfer in the world. He started as a stunt double for Troy Donahue then moved to L.A. where he was a bouncer at the Whiskey A Go-Go before finding his footing in front of the camera.

McHattie plays Werner Voss, has about ten minutes of screentime speaking in a heavy accent, and I'd swear at least part of it is dubbed. It's not a terrible film, and the dogfighting can be fun, although it's edited in such a slapdash manner that it's hard to tell who's getting killed and who's on whose tail. On a scale of one to five,

MOVIE: 2 stars
MCHATTIE FACTOR: 1 star (not enough screentime)


Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976. dir: Sam O'Steen) You didn't know there was a sequel, did you? Believe me, it must be seen to be believed. Patty Duke Astin is the histrionic Rosemary, Tina Louise takes a glamorous turn as a dark convert, but mostly Ruth Gordon and Ray Milland have a barrel of cantankerous fun as those satan-loving old Castavets. McHattie plays the devilspawn himself, just coming of age, and if he weren't so interesting to watch, this might be a long haul, indeed... unless you're stoned, I mean, in which case I suspect it's hilarious. Highlights include Donna Mills dressed in a Big Bird suit (it's supposed to be scary) and McHattie in what I lovingly call his Evil Mime Birthday Dance. Nonsensical, ultra-low budget, quite possibly made by people who were dropping acid throughout the shoot. The director was one of the great Hollywood editors, who'd worked not only on the original but on such classics as the Graduate and Chinatown. Go back and look at those. Fantastic editing. Some of the best ever. Proof, I guess, that genius in the one field doesn't necessarily carry you in the other... or possibly it was the acid holding him back.

MOVIE: 1 1/2 stars
MCHATTIE FACTOR: 4 stars
CAMP VALUE: through the roof


Salvation! (1987. Dir: Beth B) Possibly the worst film either McHattie or Viggo Mortensen have made, and that's saying quite a lot. It's a mean-spirited punk-hipster joke about a woman who blackmails a Pray-TV minister into letting her perform on his show. McHattie is the malevolent preacher, Exene Cervenka the evil-minded woman, Mortensen her belligerent husband. There's not a spark of humanity in it, not a single moment of insight. McHattie puts his back into it, finding just the right tone and bearing for his evangelist, but nothing can lift the leaden and entirely unfunny script by Beth B and punk extraordinaire Tom Robinson. Viggo was just snapping into full-focus at that time: the Reflecting Skin was still three years in the future. And the lovely and talented Exene cannot, alas, list acting skills among her many creative achievements. The sole upside of this waste of matter and energy is that this is where Mortensen and Cervenka met and fell in love. Which brings up that age-old Shanghai Surprise question about why films in which stars meet and fall in love are rarely any good.

MOVIE: no stars.
MCHATTIE FACTOR: 3, but not worth the slog.


AND AN AFTERTHOUGHT: It occurs to me that a sizable wedge of humankind will know McHattie best as the manipulative psychiatrist that Elaine dated for four episodes of Seinfeld in season four. He's also the guy on the alien autopsy train in the third season of X-Files...