Cooper and Turner will eventu- ally clash. Fracturing of the nar- rative means this happens twice, with variant outcomes—though the final propped-up-in-the-gut- ter scene, which parallels many ’70s paranoia films and ’30s gangster films, is inevitable. Jor- dan Cronenweth’s cinematogra- phy gives Los Angeles locations a depopulated, bypassed look (that empty block is an eerie, pre- haunted place) while Dave Grusin’s sparse score ramps up the ’70s feel which might earn this a place in the nostalgia catalogue. John Frankenheimer’s 99 AND 44/100% DEAD! (aka CALL HARRY CROWN in the UK, where the Marilyn Chambers Ivory Soap ad the title riffs on was, and re- mains, unknown) is more self- consciously cool. Robert Dillon, a screenwriter on his way from William Castle (13 FRIGHT- ENED GIRLS, THE OLD DARK HOUSE) and AIP (X THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES, MUSCLE BEACH PARTY) to the main- stream (REVOLUTION,WAKING THE DEAD), had already essayed a Jean-Pierre Melville-like gang- ster charade for Michael Ritchie (PRIME CUT), but here goes fur- ther out, coming up with the nearest Hollywood has ever come to a Seijin Suzuki yakuza comic strip. With pop art influences sig- nalled by Liechtenstein pastiche credits and some strange inci- dental sculptures, this is a styl- ishly cynical, self-consciously eccentric exercise.
In an unnamed city (played by Seattle), old time crime boss Frank (Edmond O’Brien) is at war with upstart challenger Big Eddie (Bradford Dillman) and calls for skilled hit man Harry Crown (Ri- chard Harris) to tip the scales. Accompanied by white-suited apprentice Tony (David Hall, for- merly Zooey Hall of I DISMEM- BER MAMA), Harry stalks the city, surviving shoot-outs and beatings,
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pulling his rose-and-chrysanthe- mum-decorated automatics and prissily fiddling with big glasses. (Harris seems to be joshing Michael Caine with these bits of business.) Crossing his path are various well-dressed dames (HU- MANOIDS FROM THE DEEP’s Ann Turkel, THE THING WITH TWO HEADS’ Kathrine Baumann, DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE’s Janice Heiden, THE CABINET OF CALIGARI’s Constance Ford) and a grinning nemesis, Marvin “Claw” Zuckerman (Chuck Connors), who replaces the hand Harry chopped off with snap-on appliances rang- ing from a bottle-opener to a machine-gun. Corpses drift down in concrete overshoes to a sub- marine graveyard, souvenir alli- gators have grown to “the size of wrestlers” in the sewers and end- less murderous criminal activity takes place in broad daylight with no interference from the authorities—though thousands of uniformed cops parade down the street. Men dress as if it were the 1940s while women sport ’70s fashions, and Henry Mancini’s score similarly strays from rinky-dink to funky. Deadpan absurdity is hard to maintain at feature-length, and Dillon’s basic gang war scenario doesn’t offer as much to play with as the twisted narratives of TO- KYO DRIFTER or BRANDED TO KILL. Nevertheless, 99 AND 44/ 100% DEAD! is full of memorable things. Connors and Dillman take advantage of the set-up to go even further over the top than usual, endearingly playing child- ish and evil at the same time, far more in the spirit of Dick Tracy’s rogues’ gallery than any official Tracy movie has managed. Dillman has a marvelous death scene opposite O’Brien, when the rival ganglords express a deep affection for each other that hasn’t been hinted at in the rest of the film and Dillman titters as
he delivers a parting shot. It also features an early instance (if not the origination) of the now-hoary moment of cool as the hero walks away from a huge practical ex- plosion without flinching; as with many other set-ups in the film, Frankenheimer uses a split di- opter effectively to sell this. Ralph Woolsey, whose ’70s credits run from THE STRAWBERRY STATE- MENT to THE PACK, had been one of the principal photogra- phers on the BATMAN TV show: the trailer cuts sound effects pan- els into fight scenes the way that did, but the film comes up with other ways of evoking both clas- sic crime comics (the grotesque forest of drowned, decaying crooks is very EC horror) and the pop art appropriation of such imagery.
Both films appear in good- looking 2.35:1 anamorphic trans- fers (not 1.78:1 as listed on the case) that outshine the taken- from-TV broadcasts or prehis- toric VHS releases bootlegs that have popped up occasionally (of 99 AND 44/100% DEAD!, at least). The only extras are grainy, hard-sell trailers.
NIGHTMARES
aka STAGE FRIGHT 1980, Severin,
89m 21s, $19.98, DVD By Shane M. Dallmann
Under the original US release
handle STAGE FRIGHT, this Aus- tralian giallo variant is not to be confused with the works of either Alfred Hitchcock or Michele Soavi. And as NIGHTMARES, it is not to be confused with the Universal anthology from 1983, nor any number of movies sport- ing a similar moniker.
A little girl named Cathy, ex- tremely resentful of the hands-on attention a nameless boyfriend shows to her mother, inadvert- ently causes her own mother’s
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