I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #233 - Candy (1968, dir. Christian Marquand)

            French actor Christian Marquand’s 1968 directorial debut Candy is a film that could only have been made in the late 1960s. It’s one hundred percent a product of its time. It’s a largely plotless, psychedelic hullabaloo with enough gratuitous sexual misadventures to satisfy even the cultiest of cult movie fans or the perviest of sexploitation fans. It’s the type of hippie counter-culture film that seemingly oversaturated this era in cinema but has almost completely disappeared as a style in subsequent decades. It’s been a favorite film of mine ever since I first saw it as a very young man and I’m confident it will soon be one of yours too.

What I love about Candy is not necessarily that it’s such a great film. In fact, the screenplay, written by The Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry, and adapted from the Terry Southern novel of the same name, is for the most part meandering and lackluster. And it’s not even the fact that a strangely large number of amazing, high-profile actors threw caution to the wind and decided that the script wasn’t total schmaltz either (more on this later). No, for me, this film’s role and influence on my life has everything to do with being in the right place at the right time. In fact, if there was ever a moment that I could pinpoint in my life that was my absolute coaxing, albeit perhaps too early, into manhood, I may cite the time that I inadvertently (but intently) watched Candy for the first time. I must have been ten or eleven years old. I don’t really even remember how I stumbled across it. It could’ve been one of those deals where Cinemax was offering a promotional free weekend, or maybe just a routine viewing of USA Up All Nite (for you younger readers, that was a delightful late night trashfest that aired on the USA cable network, hosted by either Elvira or Gilbert Gottfried depending on the night, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which played wonderfully horrible B-movies and exploitation films). All I remember is that I happened upon it quite by accident and even now, in my 40s, I still feel like maybe I’m doing something wrong when I watch it.

            Of course, I, like every male character in the film, was immediately transfixed by the film’s lead, the mesmerizingly beautiful Swedish actress and model Ewa Aulin. Aulin, just 18 years old at the time Candy was filmed, was not very adept at acting in general yet, let alone portraying an American girl, so her acting seems a bit flat. Ultimately though, this doesn’t matter. Contrary to the rest of the cast, this isn’t a film to be watched for its brilliant thespianism. Candy should be watched because it is incredibly sexy, totally weird and beautifully shot by famed Italian cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno.

As I mentioned, there isn’t much to sift through plot-wise. Candy is a young ingénue who materializes from space (because: drugs). She then sets off on a series of bizarre adventures where she encounters a range of different men, each weirdly needy and pervy in their own way. Her first encounter is with a drunk, lecherous celebrity poet named McPhisto (Richard Burton) who, after a speaking engagement at her school, coerces Candy to get into his car where he proceeds to make grabby sexual advances at her. This sets off a string of similar confrontations. Among Candy’s conquests are a depraved army general (Walter Matthau), a depraved hunchback (Charles Aznavour), a depraved surgeon (James Coburn), a depraved bullshit-artist calling himself an Indian mystic (Marlon Brando) and a (you guessed it: depraved) Mexican gardener played by the decidedly non-Mexican Ringo Starr at his most delightfully (and not-so-subtly) racist best. Candy struggles her way through all these encounters in an almost dreamlike - or, more accurately, drug-induced - state, evidently learning more and more about the nature of life and love as she goes along. Candy seems blissfully unaware of the power she has over these men, which to the chagrin of her parents (John Astin and Elsa Martinelli), leads her into increasingly more troublesome situations the more men she meets. Her sojourn concludes in a large field populated by the entire cast, (which looks remarkably like the last Pitchfork Festival I went to, but I digress), Candy makes her way through everyone and on to the desert where she eventually dissolves, presumably back into space.

            What Candy lacks in narrative structure it more than makes up for in charm and aesthetic feel. The film was undoubtedly made for a ‘60s audience, but if you’re a fan of the look and feel of that decade, or the sound for that matter (among the contributors to the killer soundtrack are The Byrds and Steppenwolf), or if you’re familiar with the films of, say, Roger Corman or Russ Meyer, then Candy might be right up your alley. It’s an incredible piece of ‘60s exploitation celluloid that fits totally at home alongside any of those cult classics.

            - Jonathan Eagle

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #137 - The Missouri Breaks (1976, dir. Arthur Penn)

Think about the extraordinary turn Marlon Brando’s career was taking in the 1970’s.  After stalling a bit in the late 60’s he came roaring back in 1972 - jowly, greying at the temple and more potent than ever in The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris. Two braver explorations of middle age could not be imagined, then… silence, until 1976 when he returned – greyer still, jowlier yet, but no less intense and seeming to have tapped into some sort of cosmic awareness that made him a real-life cross between con-man, genius, artist, shaman and fool. It was also impossible to take your eyes off of him in what could be considered his last great role of substance in The Missouri Breaks (I love Apocalypse Now, but it is hard to call what Brando did in it as “substantive.” Memorable yes, substantive maybe less so.).  Director Arthur Penn created a stylish western in the classic mode, which is elevated to something truly memorable by Marlon Brando’s inexplicable performance. From the moment he appears on screen as Robert E. Lee Clayton he is magnetic - both compelling and terrifying at the same time. He is a regulator (a legal assassin) who has been brought from Wyoming to Montana to help rancher David Braxton (John McLiam) and his attractive daughter Jane (Kathleen Lloyd) deal with a band of horse rustlers (Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid and more) who have been causing trouble. Brando enters the action as an exotic swashbuckler; fringed leather jacket, long hair and an Irish accent. He immediately shows himself as a man not to be trifled with, appraising Nicholson as the thief and beginning to exact punishment on the gang. His speed and deadly accuracy prove his reputation as an uncontrollable, but ultimately successful executioner.

With the central conflict established, Penn goes about turning the movie into a philosophical treatise on the difference between being a thief and a killer, and if either of those is morally worse than being a bad person on the right side of the law. David Braxton, it turns out, is a world-class creep who deserves whatever he gets, while Nicholson seems to be a more three-dimensional man than his designation as horse rustler might indicate. He yearns for the honest life - or at least the love of a woman who has lived the honest life - available in the person of Braxton’s daughter. Brando’s character Clayton appears more and more like a scorched earth psychopath, hell-bent on destroying his prey as violently as possible, letting no one - including those who hired him - stand in the way. His inhumanity grows with each scene as Nicholson becomes an increasingly sympathetic protagonist. As Clayton’s killings take on greater cruelty with each victim, Clayton’s personality takes on more complexity. He begins shifting accents from Irish to Southern, to female (complete with unforgettable drag costume) and back to Irish. His performance is always on the edge of hallucinatory, the cutting edge of menace and hilarity. In spite of it being one of his least famous movies, I believe The Missouri Breaks contains one of Brando’s most beguiling performances. By the end of the movie, he is a truly frightening presence - unpredictable, deadly and unstoppable - beyond the control of laws or bullets. The shocking twist at the end remains a great cinematic trick, never failing to surprise.

In the 34 years that have passed since I last saw this movie, I had forgotten almost everything about it. So the panoramic cinematography, realistic take on the Old West setting, excellent music and funny dialogue were all a welcome re-acquaintance. It is Marlon Brando’s terrifying depiction which I had not forgotten, and it was, in fact, even more potent than I remembered. He has had one of the most terminally appraised careers in the history of film, yet his depiction of Robert E. Lee Clayton does much to justify his genius reputation.

-         Paul Epstein