Howard W. Koch Movies

The story of Philadelphia-based rock 'n' roll starmaker Bob Marcucci is given a pointed a clef treatment in The Idolmaker. Ray Sharkey plays Vincent Vacarri, who takes a couple of raw young kids (Peter Gallagher and Paul Land) and molds them into teen idols. If Gallagher and Land seem at times to be clones of Fabian and Frankie Avalon, then you've gotten the point. As played by Sharkey, Vacarri comes off as both maven and monster: he gives his boys everything they need professionally and everything they want personally, but it's subliminally clear that his interest is purely mercenary (incredibly, Bob Marcucci is the film's technical advisor). An excellent, clear-eyed view of show biz mechanics, The Idolmaker falters only in its anachronisms, notably the style of music performed by Vacarri's proteges. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Opting for light entertainment after the critical satire of Shampoo (1975), producer-director-writer-star Warren Beatty remade the 1941 comic fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Dimly amiable L.A. Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Beatty) is prematurely called to Heaven by an over-eager escort (Buck Henry, who co-directed) after a traffic accident. When archangel Mr. Jordan (James Mason) discovers the error, he offers to return Joe to his body, only to find that it has been cremated. On the verge of playing in the Super Bowl, Joe demands a fit body rather than the old about-to-be-murdered industrialist Farnsworth he has been offered, but he reconsiders when he sees environmentalist Betty Logan (Julie Christie) in Farnsworth's house. Assuming Farnsworth's body while keeping his sweet self, Joe hires his beloved coach Max Corkle (Jack Warden) to get him in shape (after convincing Max who he really is), sets Farnsworth's business on an eco-friendly path, and romances Betty. Farnsworth's homicidal wife (Dyan Cannon) and secretary (Charles Grodin), however, are still determined to succeed in their plan to kill him. When Mr. Jordan finally finds the Super Bowl body Joe wanted, Joe has to trade his old self for the new life -- but will he remember his love for Betty? Heaven Can Wait offered contemporary yet old-fashioned escapism and tapped into the late-1970s vogue for nostalgic fun, becoming one of 1978's most popular summer movies after Grease. Updating the original while following its blueprint, Beatty and co-writer Elaine May switched Joe's sport and turned Joe into a man of his '70s moment, adoring Betty for her convictions and favoring "green" policies over corporate greed. Gently breathing life into a classic form, Heaven Can Wait found romantic innocence in a jaded time, and it went on to receive nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) is an American secret agent who has been running interference between the U.S. government and escaped Nazi war criminal Szell (Laurence Olivier). Believing that Doc has stolen a valuable cache of gems, Szell emerges from his South American hiding place and heads for New York. He has Doc killed, then kidnaps Doc's in-the-dark brother, Babe (Dustin Hoffman). Repeating the phrase "Is it safe?" over and over, Szell, a onetime concentration camp dentist, tries to extract information from Babe by performing sadistic "oral surgery" upon him. Babe, who still doesn't know about the gems, escapes, breaking his own self-imposed rule of nonviolence to defend himself against his pursuers and gearing up for sadistic revenge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paul Newman returns as private detective Lew Harper is this tale of blackmail and murder based on a novel by Ross MacDonald. Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), the wife of a wealthy oilman from Louisiana, hires Harper after she receives a threatening letter. A blackmailer is threatening to tell Iris' husband James (Richard Derr) about a recent extramarital affair; she claims this indiscretion never happened, though she has been unfaithful in the past, and years ago had a brief fling with Harper. Matters become more complicated when Iris' mother-in-law Olivia (Coral Browne) is found murdered. Eventually, Harper traces the blackmail letter to Kilborne (Murray Hamilton), another bayou oil baron, and along the way encounters Schuyler (Melanie Griffith), Iris' young but ripe daughter; Pat Reavis (Andy Robinson), Olivia's former chauffeur and a key suspect in her murder; and Detective Broussard (Tony Franciosa), a police investigator who, like Harper, was once involved with Iris. This was Coral Browne's first film after her marriage to actor Vincent Price in 1974. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," warns water baron Noah Cross (John Huston), when smooth cop-turned-private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) starts nosing around Cross's water diversion scheme. That proves to be the ominous lesson of Chinatown, Roman Polanski's critically lauded 1974 revision of 1940s film noir detective movies. In 1930s Los Angeles, "matrimonial work" specialist Gittes is hired by Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to tail her husband, Water Department engineer Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). Gittes photographs him in the company of a young blonde and figures the case is closed, only to discover that the real Mrs. Mulwray had nothing to do with hiring Gittes in the first place. When Hollis turns up dead, Gittes decides to investigate further, encountering a shady old-age home, corrupt bureaucrats, angry orange farmers, and a nostril-slicing thug (Polanski) along the way. By the time he confronts Cross, Evelyn's father and Mulwray's former business partner, Jake thinks he knows everything, but an even more sordid truth awaits him. When circumstances force Jake to return to his old beat in Chinatown, he realizes just how impotent he is against the wealthy, depraved Cross. "Forget it, Jake," his old partner tells him. "It's Chinatown." Reworking the somber underpinnings of detective noir along more pessimistic lines, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne convey a '70s-inflected critique of capitalist and bureaucratic malevolence in a carefully detailed period piece harkening back to the genre's roots in the 1930s and '40s. Gittes always has a smart comeback like Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but the corruption Gittes finds is too deep for one man to stop. Other noir revisions, such as Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975), also centered on the detective's inefficacy in an uncertain '70s world, but Chinatown's period sheen renders this dilemma at once contemporary and timeless, pointing to larger implications about the effects of corporate rapaciousness on individuals. Polanski and Towne clashed over Chinatown's ending; Polanski won the fight, but Towne won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Chinatown was nominated for ten other Oscars, including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes, and Score. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

"Gorgeous goyish guy" meets Jewish radical girl in Sydney Pollack's glossy romance. In 1937, frizzy-haired Red co-ed Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) briefly captures the attention of preppy jock Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) with her passionate pacifism, while the writing talent beneath his privileged exterior entrances her. Almost eight years later, the two are reunited in New York, when well-coiffed leftist radio worker Katie spies military officer Hubbell snoozing in a nightclub. Through her force of will, and in spite of his smug rich friends, the two opposites fall in love, sparring over Katie's activist zeal and Hubbell's writerly ambivalence after a failed first novel. They head to Hollywood so that Hubbell can write a screenplay for his buddy-turned-producer J.J. (Bradford Dillman). But the House Committee on Un-American Activities' Communist witch hunt in 1947 tears the pair apart, as a pregnant Katie refuses to keep silent about the jailing of the Hollywood Ten, while a faithless Hubbell decides to save his career. When the two meet again at the dawn of the '60s, TV hack Hubbell and A-bomb protestor Katie feel the old pull, but they have to decide if it's worth the grief. Although blacklisted writers had returned to Hollywood -- and won Oscars -- by the early 1970s, the HUAC sections of Arthur Laurents's screenplay were still considered dicey, resulting in substantial cuts; Laurents reportedly blamed star Redford for not fighting them hard enough. Regardless of the edits, and critics' complaints about the film's schlockiness, 1973 audiences went for the well-executed and still politically tinged weepie, turning The Way We Were into one of the most popular films of 1973 and Redford into a major heartthrob. Streisand won an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and the Streisand-sung title tune won for Best Song. Despite the eviscerated politics, The Way We Were poignantly captures the insoluble dilemma of reconciling private desires with public awareness. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Set during the Civil War, Bad Company stars Barry Brown as a Northern boy, Drew Dixon, who heads West to avoid getting drafted. He falls under the spell of Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges), an easygoing young con artist. Drew joins Jake's gang of boy bandits, who live by their wits and try to avoid confrontation with adult criminals like Big Joe (David Huddleston). It is Drew who must eventually save Jake from hanging, even though he realizes that his intervention could lead to his own execution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Just as they did for 1965's Shenandoah and 1968's Bandolero!, director Andrew V. McLaglen and screenwriter James Lee Barrett team up with actor James Stewart for this Western about a band of ex-convicts trying to go straight. Stewart stars as Mattie Appleyard, the leader of the group. After serving his time, Mattie retrieves a 25,000-dollar check from a banker who looked after his funds while he was in prison. Along with his two pals, Mattie intends to use the money to open up a general store and make a fresh start. Unfortunately for them, the banker and a former jailer both look to stand in the way of their dreams. George Kennedy, who also had roles in Shenandoah and Bandolero!, co-stars as Dock Council, the former prison official, and a young Kurt Russell appears in one of his first non-Disney films. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Jerry Paris's Star Spangled Girl (1971), based on Neil Simon's play (a notorious Broadway flop), never made much of an impression in theaters, which is understandable with a cheap, overlit television look to most of it and Davy Jones singing the song "Girl" over the main titles (which got a lot more visibility from its use in the Brady Bunch episode in which Marsha has to get the singer to appear at her school), it looked too much like a small-screen production blown up; it was dated from the first frame of its opening credits. Tony Roberts and Todd Susman play Andy Hobart and Norman Cornell, a pair of self-styled political radicals living in California, beating the system by stealing as much as they can from neighborhood shops and conning the rest out of anyone around, all for the greater goal of keeping their underground newspaper alive and kicking. Their lifestyle is a cross between the ideas in Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Max Bialystock's dalliances in The Producers. Into their midst moves a transplant from rural Florida, Amy Cooper (Sandy Duncan) (who was called Sophie Rauschmeyer in the play), a perky aspiring Olympic swimmer and old-fashioned, patriotic Southern girl, and as corn-fed a hick as you found in movies in 1971 without a cynical bone in her body. Norman, a hopelessly neurotic and sexually dysfunctional writer, falls in love with her almost instantly upon encountering her; not, mind you, based on her personality or even her looks, but her smell. Andy is, at first, oblivious to her charms and content to maintain his relationship with their libidinous landlady (Elizabeth Allen, totally wasted here), paying their rent with all-night barhopping and trysts involving skydiving. At some point, however, Amy decides she has to have Andy (based on his smell...), and he feels the same way. Andy and Norman end up -- Odd Couple-style -- in conflict over their differing approaches to life; the Odd Couple allusions are further amplified by Roberts' remarkable resemblance to Walter Matthau in his manner and delivery of dialogue. The story is resolved as unconvincingly as it's played. It's also a sign of just how unfunny the play was in that the funniest moment in the movie is new to the screenplay and comes just a minute after the opening credits with a gag referring to a certain John Schlesinger movie from 1969. It's not much of a gag, but it's funnier than anything in the main body of the movie, which otherwise plays like a terminally extended version of a Love American Style episode. The original Broadway production, incidentally, starred Richard Benjamin, Anthony Perkins, and Connie Stevens. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

It is not uncommon for actors to double and triple in roles while appearing in the "omnibus" plays of Neil Simon. Plaza Suite was the first film version of a Simon play to carry over the multiple-role device to the screen. Walter Matthau appears in all three one-act playlets comprising Plaza Suite, with a different leading lady in each. First we see Matthau as the husband of Maureen Stapleton, nostalgically returning to the same hotel suite where they'd spent their honeymoon 24 years earlier. Times have changed, however, and the twosome spend more timing sniping at one another than pitching woo. The second vignette casts Matthau as an effusive movie producer (lavish toupee and all) who hopes to seduce his old sweetheart Barbara Harris. The third and best sequence finds Matthau and Lee Grant playing the parents of a bride who steadfastly refuses to leave her locked room to attend her own wedding. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Vincente Minnelli directed, and Alan Jay Lerner adapted the stage musical he had written with Burton Lane, for this this feature film version. Barbra Streisand stars as Daisy Gamble, a chain smoker who, at the urging of her uptight fiance Warren (Larry Blyden), seeks help in kicking the habit from a psychiatrist, Dr. Marc Chabot (Yves Montand). While undergoing hypnosis, however, Daisy and Dr. Chabot discover that she is clairvoyant and can remember a past life as a 19th century heiress named Melinda. As their sessions continue, Dr. Chabot falls in love not with Daisy, but Melinda, while Daisy begins to fall for Chabot and decides she's had enough of Warren. Excised from the final cut of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) was a musical number performed by Jack Nicholson, who costars as Daisy's stepbrother. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Barbara Hershey stars as the "baby maker" of the title. Tish Gray (Hershey) hires herself out to married couple Jay and Suzanne Wilcox (Sam Groom and Collin Wilcox-Horne), who've been unable to conceive a child of their own. Tish agrees to bear the child for them, assuming that her hippie boyfriend, Ted Jacks (Scott Glenn), will go along with the plan. The problem is that Tish must allow Jay to impregnate her, causing severe strains on both couple's relationships. In 1970, the notion of surrogate motherhood was radical in the extreme, so The Baby Maker seemed quite progressive and daring. This served as the theatrical-feature directorial debut for screenwriter James Bridges. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The President's Analyst is James Coburn, whose position makes him privy to any number of delicate government secrets. Thus Coburn becomes a most desirable prize for several secret-agent organizations, including the CEA and the FBR (we know who these folks are really supposed to be, even though the phony names were crudely dubbed onto the soundtrack after the film was completed). When Coburn becomes expendable, he finds a pair of strong allies in the form of likeable political assassin Godfrey Cambridge and gay Soviet spy Severn Darden. The main plot involves an insidious, unnamed concern that wishes to harness Coburn's talents in order to brainwash the president -- and everyone else in America -- into submission. The President's Analyst is a terrific, on-target satire of virtually every sacred cow of the late 1960s; the satire was so potent, in fact, that when the NBC network broadcast the film in the early 1970s, it was compelled to remove the picture's punchline. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide