Convoy (1978)

Rubber Duck (Kris Kristofferson) was a trucker when the speed limit was changed to 55 miles per hour.  Between the new speed limit and the regulations on how many hours per day could be spent driving, some truckers were having trouble staying solvent.  This was made all the worse by sheriffs like Dirty Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine).  Dirty Lyle used CB chatter to set up speed traps where he would let the truckers go for a bribe; that way their insurance premiums wouldn't increase.

Rubber Duck was at an Arizona truck stop when Dirty Lyle started rousting Spider Mike (Franklyn Ajaye) and threatening to arrest him.  The Duck moved to intervene and a fight broke out.  Soon, all the truckers joined into a brawl against three police officers.  The truckers skedaddled, disabling the police cars on the way out of the lot.  Soon, a line of trucks drove east across Arizona and into New Mexico and Texas.  Many others got word and soon more trucks joined.  It was a convoy!

The movie doesn't make a lick of sense.  Somehow, the states are powerless to stop the convoy and the governor of New Mexico (Seymour Cassel) wanted to negotiate with Rubber Duck.  Negotiate about what?  When Spider Mike heads home - leaving the convoy - he got arrested and jailed.  Well, he did participate in that brawl.  In response, many of the truckers went to the town where he was jailed and flattened buildings, destroyed a police car, and crashed through the jail.  Um, okay.

Now they knew they were in big trouble.  Duck suggested crossing into Mexico.  So, he led the way but all the other trucks were cutoff by an ice cream man accident.  Alone, Duck approached the dinky bridge that crossed a river - presumably the Rio Grande - but Dirty Lyle was waiting on the other side with an armored vehicle.  In Mexico?  Huh?  Nonetheless, Duck raced across the bridge and the machineguns opened fire.  The wreckage plunged into the river.  So much for Rubber Duck?

Melissa (Ali MacGraw) was a traveling photographer who had a run-in with Rubber Duck in the opening and then encountered him again at the Arizona truck stop.  She needed a ride.  Despite the brawl, she climbed into Duck's truck and became part of the convoy, often nagging Duck about the ongoing events.  She repeatedly declined offers to get out.  Like most of the other characters, she also acts like some great injustice is occurring and Duck should make demands.  Huh?

Amazingly, this was Sam Pekinpah's most financially successful movie.  Of course, trucker movies were all the rage in the mid to late 70s (e.g., Smokey and the Bandit) and CB culture was everywhere for a time.  However, the movie has not aged well.  It's thin on plot and often inexplicable.  Why are the police so stymied by the convoy?  It feels like a chunk of the movie that explained the grievances of the truckers ended up on the cutting room floor.

Mediocre.  Skip.

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Pilot Frank Towns (James Stewart) and Navigator Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough) are bound for Benghazi with 13 passengers from a remote Libyan oil site.  Their plane is an old WWII cargo carrier that is held together by elbow grease and wishful thinking.  On this trip, the radio is out.  Though the weather report was favorable, they instead fly into a sandstorm.  Efforts to climb above it fail and soon the engines are dying.  Towns lands among the sand dunes of the Sahara and the cargo tumbles through the passenger cabin, killing 2 and seriously injuring 1.  A survey of the damage confirms that the plane will not be taking off again.  A hundred miles from the nearest water, they can only hope that a search party discovers them.  Of course, they are well off course, which means the search will likely be in the wrong place.

After several days, the survivors realize that they are not going to be found.  Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger) proposes using the intact parts of the plane to construct a new plane.  Frank thinks this is madness but Lew is interested.  Dr. Renaud suggests that, even if the new plane won't fly, it's better to have hope than to sit around and watch one another die.

The story of Sgt. Watson (Ronald Fraser) is peculiar.  When Captain Harris (Peter Finch) is determined to march through the desert to the nearest water, Watson 'injures' his leg.  As such, another volunteers to go with Harris; that volunteer dies somewhere in the desert.  Harris managed to stumble back to the plane.  Not long after, Harris proposes to meet with a mysterious band of Arabs beyond a sand dune.  Watson flatly refuses to accompany the captain, threatening to use a revolver.  Harris marches off with someone else, resulting in more deaths.  Watson's repeated insubordination resulted in his surviving, while those who went with Captain Harris all died.  Here is a man who repeatedly shirked his duty, which proved the wise course.

It is a well-told story with excellent performances from a great cast, but it isn't all that entertaining.  It's okay.  I can definitely see why it was a box office failure, especially since it was released in the same month as Battle of the Bulge, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Doctor Zhivago, and Thunderball.

Vera Cruz (1954)

It is 1866 and many Americans have traveled across the Rio Grande to become mercenaries in the Franco-Mexican War.  Colonel Benjamin Trane (Gary Cooper) of Louisianna is one of those.  Unfortunately, his horse has broken a leg.  However, he encounters Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) who has a horse for sale.  It is not a particularly good horse and the price is steep.  Trane accepts.  No sooner has he purchased the horse than a column of troops approach and give chase.  Trane is perplexed by this until Erin reveals that the horse he just purchased belongs to them.  Despite their difficult start, Ben finds himself joining with Joe and his band of mercenaries, an impressive crew that included Pittsburgh (Charles Bronson), Tex (Jack Elam), and Donnegan (Ernest Borgnine).  They are hired by Marquis Henri de Labordere (Cesar Romero) to escort the Countess Marie Duvarre (Denise Darcel) from Mexico City to Vera Cruz, where she will set sail for France.  Of course, there is something more valuable than the countess in the wagon - 3 million in gold - and Joe has notions of getting his hands on it.  The road to Vera Cruz is crowded with Juaristas, who seek to unseat Maximillian I and want that money to fund their efforts.

Joe Erin is a black hat to the core.  He never misses an opportunity to cheat or steal.  When offered the commission from the Marquis, a couple of men decline the offer so he shoots them.  Nice.  I'll bet that does wonders for morale.  He repeatedly makes plans that don't include his cohorts and is then startled when they turn on him.  When his goal is in sight, he gladly abandons allies or even shoots them.  There's very little nuance to him.

Ben Trane is mostly a white hat.  Sure, he shows a willingness to abscond with the gold, but decides that's not the right thing.  He's always rescuing ladies from Erin's band of brutes, showing his noble attitudes, proving to have culture and grace, and helping anyone in need, even Joe Erin.  For a guy who made a living by owning a plantation full of slaves and fought to keep that state of affairs, he's a pretty cool guy.  Despite being the good guy, Lancaster scene-chewing overshadows Cooper's subdued performance.

There is plenty of action, usually in the form of an ambush on the road to Vera Cruz.  The incompetence of the Marquis by riding down narrow defiles that have not been scouted is embarrassing.  In the final battle, it was dumbfounding how easily Ben and Joe were able to flank and take out a key gun emplacement, showing a catastrophic - and obvious - hole in the Marquis' defense.  Don't let our heroes win because the bad guys are abysmally stupid.  It would have been nice if Joe weren't quite so bad and Ben wasn't quite so good.

As for the history, it's pretty weak.  Vera Cruz was the entry point for Spain, France, and England during the 1861-1867 Mexican Adventure.  This was the main port for all support and the port where France made its exit.  It was not captured by Juaristas in a mass attack in 1866.  By 1866, the United States was providing arms to the Juaristas and was intent on kicking the French out of Mexico, per the Monroe Doctrine.  Also, the Gatlin gun that appears in the final battle is not yet in service.  Many of the guns seen were not yet available in 1866.  Maximillian I was only 34 at the time of the film, but is portrayed by the 54 year old George Macready.

Entertaining and fast-paced, but too predictable.  Good popcorn fun.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) and her husband are living a happy life when the Clemens brothers ride onto the scene.  Emmet (Ernest Borgnine), Rufus (Strother Martin), and Frank (Jack Elam) murder her husband and then gang rape her.  On their way out the door, they light the house on fire and leave her to burn.  Unsurprisingly, she escapes the inferno and swears vengeance.  Soon thereafter, noted bounty hunter Thomas Price (Robert Culp) comes across Hannie.  She hires him to teach her to shoot.  Though he advises her not to seek revenge, he agrees to train her and also take her to a gunsmith, Bailey, to make a revolver more suited to her.  Bailey (Christopher Lee) lives in Mexico and hosts the pair while Hannie is trained.  While they are with Bailey, some bandits attack.  Hannie finds herself unable to gun down a man who is about to kill her.  Again, Price advises her to abandon her plans for revenge.  Instead, the two part company though it is clear that he has fallen for her and she him.

Here is a Spaghetti Western with ketchup for blood and filmed in Spain.  The Clemens brothers prove to be hapless bumpkins who spend most of their time berating each other.  They're like the three stooges at times.  With the exception of their initial murder/rape/arson, these guys seem more like they are in some campy comedy western.  Very odd.  As a character, Hannie isn't well-developed.  If not for stupidity or outside intervention, she would have been killed by 2 of the 3 brothers.  Why is she so intent on letting them know she's after them or even scheduling where to meet.  Hey, they are wanted criminals; just shoot them without warning.

Mediocre.

The Black Hole (1979)

The USS Palomino is returning from a long exploratory mission when they pass near a black hole.  To their surprise, the long lost USS Cygnus is located nearby.  Dr. Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux) is particularly interested since her father served on the ship when it went missing.  They fly in to take a closer look, fighting the increasing gravity of The Black Hole all the way, but suddenly enter a zero gravity field around the Cygnus.  There appear to be no signs of life.  No sooner have they made a pass of the ship than the gravity takes hold again.  The Palomino suffers damage fighting back to the null gravity field of the Cygnus and must make repairs before they can continue.  They land on the Cygnus, which suddenly shows signs of life.

Boarding the ship, they are disarmed by unseen forces and then 'led' by opening doors to the ship's bridge. There they meet Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and his robot enforcer, Maximilian. Reinhardt spins a tale about a damage ship unable to return. The crew left - never making it back - while he stayed to repair the Cygnus and continue his research. In the intervening years, he has constructed faceless androids to crew the ship. Captain Holland (Robert Forester), Reporter Harry Booth (Ernest Borgnine), and Vincent the Robot (Roddy McDowell) all encounter things on the Cygnus that contradict Reinhardt's telling.

There are some oddball facets to the movie.  Vincent has a fully developed personality and is entirely unlike a robot.  He provides snarky banter and certainly doesn't follow Asimov's laws of robotics.  Bob (Slim Pickens) even has a western twang.  Meanwhile, all other robots are mute, including Maximilian.  Oddly, Maximilian seems able to speak with Reinhardt.  Perhaps they shared ESP, like Kate did with Vincent.  It was strange that she could only use her ESP with the robot and not her fellow humans.  Does Vincent have a special ESP circuit installed? 

There are a lot of crazy problems with the movie. The Cygnus has been here for 20 years and, on the very day it plans to fly through the black hole, it is smashed to bits by a meteor storm. What, they didn't see them coming? They were glowing red! Why did Reinhardt turn against the crew of the Palomino? If he had just let them go, all would have worked out fine, except for that meteor storm he didn't see coming. After seeing what happened to the fully-crewed Palomino last time it was beyond the null gravity field of the Cygnus, what made Harry Booth think he could pilot it solo? The ending is truly bizarre, with Reinhardt melding with Maximilian and ending on a fiery landscape, presumably hell. Hardly a sci-fi ending. Meanwhile, the survivors of the Palomino find themselves traveling through the black hole, flung to some distant and unexplored region. Happy ending? Hardly! That scout ship isn't going to support them for long and the odds of finding a habitable planet are extremely slim.

When I originally saw this - as a 12 year-old - I thought it was mostly cool.  I loved Vincent and Bob most of all and made them out of Legos.  Today, it's a movie that had potential but was poorly executed.  The effort at some 2001: A Space Odyssey ending was misguided.  Vincent and Bob are now my two least favorite characters.