And no better (or hotter) a hot-button topic to poke than racism.
Ahhh, racism. Where would we be without you? If writers can't be bothered with a script, they always have you to fall back on for forward momentum, a reason for their characters to react to something (ANYthing) and for grudging popularity at the box office.
Grudging? Oh yes, because it's not like you want to want to admit that you like seeing the fires of racial hatred stoked, fanned and a-blazin'; it's all done for the sake of dramatic thrust, so it's okay. But still: it's racial hatred.
That was certainly the logic behind D.W. Griffith's own Birth Of A Nation, wherein the Klu Klux Klan were not only featured - they were the HEROES of the piece! Played big in the South, lemme tell ya. And latter-day films also benefited by centering on the segregation of, subjugation of and degradation of any race who was a different color than the Anglos who wrote, produced and directed such...works.
Please don't misunderstand: there are plenty of examples of film that speak eloquently of race relations and how we all must live together in a brotherhood of man. We have classics such as The Defiant Ones, Lillies Of The Field. In The Heat Of The Night, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, For Love Of Ivy and To Sir With Love. Uhh, just ignore the fact that they all star Sidney Poitier; that's just a coincidence. Really. Anyway, these are all rightly regarded as important films because of their message, their style and what they have to say.
There are, however, other films; films that play the race card in order to get some good-old down-home racial exploitation off the screen and into y'all's neighborhood.
One that immediately jumps to mind is Hurry Sundown, an Otto Preminger-directed film (presumably conceived of on down times from such films as Anatomy Of A Murder and Exodus), where race and color are treated in terms of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", albeit transplanted into the Southern United States of 1967. Oh, it was a huge success and why not; it was exploitative, had a huge cast of recognizable faces (Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, George Kennedy, John Phillip Law, Burgess Meredith) and incited riots almost everywhere it played - at least it did in Louisiana. For the purposes of this site, Hurry Sundown also contained some of the worst, most overblown, stereotypical acting ever in a filmed work that wasn't directed by D.W. Griffith. It is, as I've said before, another review for another time.
Not that Hurry Sundown is the only example I have to cite. There is also Mandingo, Drum, Farewell Uncle Tom and the ever-charming Africa Addio, which treats us to the ever-delightful prospect of tribal slaughtering, as filmed by Italian film-makers Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi. Yay, race relations.
The subject for today, however, has all of those beat. All of 'em. In terms of tactlessness, stupidity, over-acting, over-reaching, and widening the gap between the races instead of bringing them together, this particular flick wins. Hands down. It even has a cast nearly as impressive as the one in Hurry Sundown, but do you want to know what seals the deal? Its director. This is a man who has directed some good films but, as John Frankenheimer has proven, that doesn't mean anything.
But first things first: we need a title before we go any further, don't we? Okay: the title for our little sojourn into the understanding of different races and how all of us must get along is...The Klansman.
yyyyyyyyeah.
This is not going to be a peek under the collective hood of the KKK ad an unbiased understanding of the "hows" and "whys" of racism, however. Are you kidding? With a title like that? Might as well do a documentary on the fight for the Amazon Rainforest and call it Landfill! - same difference. You do not name your film The Klansman then go for "fair and biased"; that just don't wash. And neither does this.
ESPECIALLY in 1974.
Anyway, the plot: A small southern town in Wallace County (Where is that? It's in the Deep South, don't worry) has just been rocked by a tragedy: young Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) has been violently raped. The white town fathers immediately declare that the attacker had to be black, and place the blame on a young black man named Garth (O.J. Simpson). Sheriff Track Bascomb (Lee Marvin) already has his hands full trying to keep the peace in this small town but when Garth takes to the woods, the local Klansmen set up a lynching party to hunt him down and Bascomb must keep things from getting to a head.
Soon, activist Loretta Sykes (Lola Falana) returns to her hometown - whatever the heck its name is - and tries to foster the rights of colored people. You can imagine how well that goes.
Meanwhile, Breck Stancill (Richard Burton) lives a simple life on his small farm where he lets some colored people live with him and believes in the "live-and-let-live" policy. But many people in town, including the bigoted mayor Hardy Riddle (David Huddleston) and white trash redneck Butt Cutt Cates (Cameron Mitchell), refuse to live by that rule and soon everything comes to a head with guns, torches and racial slurs lighting up the screen in a finale that strikes - ironically enough - in the black of night.
It makes my head hurt that Richard Burton is in this movie. He's not Southern (although he's supposed to be, within here), he doesn't successfully essay a Southern accent, wouldn't cut it as an expatriate and doesn't even play up the fact that he is, after all, The Prince Of Players. This is the man who owned the legitimate theater stage in his day, plus was in such great films as Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, The Taming Of The Shrew and Equus. However, he was also in films like Boom!, The Assassination of Trotsky and The Medusa Touch, as well as Exorcist II: The Heretic, which pretty much owns all the medals in the Bad Movie Decathlon, we all agree.
A movie about Southern Racial Tension does NOT befit Richard Burton - he simply walks through (or limps through , in this case) as if he can't be bothered. And is that a hint of alcoholic haze I see in his eyes with each close-up? Nah, certainly not.... Yet as a man driven to violence when his life and the life of those he loves is threatened, Burton is supposed to evoke John Wayne, and instead evokes Jim Beam.
Look at one scene where sneering Cameron Mitchell picks a fight with our man, who proceeds to unleash his best kung-fu moves on ol' Butt Cutt Cates (what a name). This forces Cameron to do Burton the honor of throwing himself away from his mighty fists and going hither and yon, into boxes, luggage, through windows, down to the sidewalk and other hard, unyielding objects. Then he has the nerve to look surprised at the pugilistic prowess of the Mighty from Old Blighty. It's entertaining, but not because of the fighting - because of the feinting.
Besides, when it comes to action films, we don't want Richard Burton - we want Lee Marvin. Thank God he's here, too, if just for the sake of having an action film with Marvin's name in the credits. The Dirty Dozen, The Professionals, Point Blank, The Killers and Emperor Of The North all benefited from his efforts. But here? As an over-worked sheriff overseeing the fiery powder keg hot bed mosh pit of emotions, prejudices and violence? I'd swear that Marvin and Burton both hit the local bars pretty hard from the looks of things, but that's just an assumption. An easily arrived-at assumption, you gotta give me that much.
One of their first scenes together has Burton asking Marvin if he'd like a drink, to which Marvin takes a bottle of whiskey and starts chugging from it. Not that I didn't expect that, but while cameras were rolling?
You know, Lee, just because being drunk got you an Oscar for Cat Ballou doesn't mean it was the right acting choice for every single movie role since.
(ehh, who am I talking to; he's dead...)
As far as interacting between the two men goes, they kinda waver in place and kinda focus on each other and kinda speak words to each other. It's negligible as to who turns in the better performance between the two of them, however - guess it passes back and forth as to who had the most coffee before cameras rolled.
I already mentioned Cameron Micthell being in this movie, and why not; here we have an actor who's been in just about every kind of movie imaginable, and probably drank as much as either Marvin or Burton combined. He was in rom-coms (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), musicals (Carousel) and horror (Nightmare In Wax). But as your typical grade-A homogenized bigot from the deep deep deeeeep South, Mitchell makes with a credible Southern accent, glares with those eyes of his, does that sneer thing with his lips he made his signature move in 1979's Supersonic Man and spews racial hatred so believably that you'd have been surprised to hear his normal speaking voice has not a hint of Southern aggression in it. Not surprising, though: Cameron Mitchell could do no wrong...though it looked like he did at least try to do wrong. Many times.
OJ Simpson. Accused of a crime. This being 1974, we can just take this as being another brick in the Blaxploitation wall as OJ wears his cool bellbottom jeans, his cool denim cap, lugs a handgun into the woods and swears to get back at all these stupid white folk who are down on him. Before the events of 1994, though, Orenthal had quite a prolific film career in movies such as The Towering Inferno, The Cassandra Crossing, Capricorn One, Firepower and The Naked Gun movies. The Klansman was, in fact, his big screen debut as a major player. And while he plays the angry black man effectively, it's unfortunate that no one watching it now can erase from 1994 on from their mind and see past the implications and what was to be. Suffice it to say, his is the best performance here.
Poor Linda Evans is stuck with the thankless task of being the rape victim in question and, as a result, is pretty much played up for pity. I'm sure ex-hubby John Derek would never have stood or this, but he wasn't directing this, either. And Linda had quite a way to go before commanding the respect she had as Krystle Carrington on TV's "Dynasty". No catfights in mudpits here, either.
The other main actress here, Lola Falana, portrays someone whose biggest asset is her hair. Barely raising her voice, batting her big eyes and being a cute widdle wady in da Big Bad Souf, Lola look as as if she would much rather be back in Vegas belting out songs than in The Klansman bleating out lines. Wow: from being the darling of Italian cinema, Broadway musicals, TV specials and The Liberation of L.B. Jones to this? Seems as if Lola wanted Blaxploitation fame, Lola didn't get it.
I'm sorry; I've gone this far and not even mentioned our director by name - might as well implicate his guilt too. Terence Young is his name and if it sounds familiar then congratulations; you've seen a lot of James Bond movies.This man could direct a good movie if he wanted to, but he also directed The Poppy Is Also A Flower, The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, Bloodline and, yes, Inchon. If you go your whole career directing great films like Thunderball, Wait Until Dark and The Valachi Papers (which is a good film, really) then turn around and direct choppy, unhoned junk like The Klansman, people are gonna talk. Is it Young's fault that some people only know him for the bad he's done? Well, it's not like he asked to do this.
Seems that Sam Fuller was set to direct this movie from his own script - and yes, that's the same Sam Fuller who gave the world The Naked Kiss, Pickup On South Street and Shock Corridor. But then the studio got all involved and started chopping out scene after scene and Sam got all in a tizzy and stomped out. So Young had to step in and direct. That's the way it is in HollywoodLand. And the script, co-authored by a still-credited Fuller and Bad Day At Black Rock scribe Millard Kaufman does its best with the William Bradford Huie novel. But if your book's gonna get crosses burned on your lawn and rocks thrown through your window, what do you think's gonna happen to those who try and adapt your book?
So much overwrought melodrama...so many bulging eyes...so much racial tension for racial tension's sake...and not a bit of it reflects anything but screaming banner headlines of COLORED HATRED! FIERY SOUTHERN BIGOTRY! PEOPLE RUNNING WITH GUNS! OJ SIMPSON ACCUSED OF A HORRIBLE RACE CRIME! If you go into a movie expecting modulated storytelling, you're really missing the point.
The Klansman is not here to tell us a story - The Klansman is here to be a sensationalist screech of celluloid that all but shouts its intentions from scene one to scene last. Even in the end, when everyone - including klansmen, Marvin, Burton and OJ - has a gun and begin shooting at each other, you're not watching the end of a movie: you're just watching another exploitation setpiece where a nihilistic ending is supposed to make a point about racial hatred.
To hell with that. If The Klansman really believed half of what they were babbling on about, both director and writers could have found a better way to go about it, rather than killing off 85% of the cast in the last minutes of the film. But alas, you can't give hints of Southern bigotry in the first frame and not end with loads of violence in the last frame. It'd be like saying you're gonna light up the sky then setting off one sparkler. If you promise it, you gotta follow through.
Follow through or not, this $5 million event picture was probably about as successful as many others of its ilk were. In the Seventies, we had our choice of 'em and, whether or not they made their budget back wasn't the point - it was all about getting their message across.
Really, though, was The Klansman a movie we really cared whether or not its message came through? We got it already - if you're black, don't live in the South. If you're a sheriff, wear a flak jacket constantly. If you're a man who lives on a hill with black people at least take some damn accent-hiding classes, for God's sake.
And the most important lesson of all: if you want to witness the toils and pains of racial hated in America...watch The Long Walk Home. But if you watch The Klansman, don't blame me if all you get out of it is the desire to name your first-born child Butt Cutt.
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