The world of Little Murders (1971), a dark absurdist comedy, is one of subverted traditional values (they’ve been “murdered”) and of hope swallowed up by anomie. Actor Alan Arkin turned Jules Feiffer‘s off-Broadway play into a film, which is for a long time delightfully intelligent and mostly skillfully acted. Plus, this is one of the few movies concerned with big-city violent crime. Feiffer’s writing is impure, however. He doesn’t know how to end Little Murders. All he can do is rub out noses in human depravity, then the film’s over. This isn’t good enough.

(All reviews are by Earl Dean)

The 1971 Western, A Gunfight, ought to have been better but is still a modest pleasure. Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash star as gunslingers with little money and arid lives, who contrive to get prosperous by selling tickets to their own gunfight to the death. No one is horrified by the idea except Douglas’s wife (Jane Alexander), but she simply doesn’t want to lose her inadequate husband. The contest is popular, with plenty of wagers made.

Although A Gunfight can be obtuse, it’s also sinewy and even unique. Cash means business but is an unsatisfying actor. Douglas is just Douglas, which is okay. Alexander is true and distinguished. Her serious face is pretty, her clothed breasts lovely. Most Western fans won’t regret seeing this forgotten flick.

Directed by Lamont Johnson.

The Sydney Pollack film, Jeremiah Johnson (1972), is very involving as it tells of a war veteran who becomes a mountain man. He fights one Indian after another, which to him is no problem. No wonder. The script makes him indestructible. What would cause terrible physical injury, and undoubtedly death, to an actual man leaves Jeremiah feeling essentially okay. The film is far less realistic (or naturalistic) than A Man Called Horse and it shouldn’t be. It is not quite settled on a point of view. Really, it is a bit leftist—like Robert Redford, who plays Jeremiah—as original scriptwriter John Milius is not, except Milius’s screenplay was rewritten by Edward Anhalt.

As usual, Redford’s acting shines, and JJ is well-made. In fact, congrats to all the actors. I like them better than the movie.

I’ve never read John Steinbeck’s novel The Wayward Bus and won’t be doing so. I did wish to see the 1957 film version of it and am glad I did. It is an entertaining piece about a driver and his passengers on a problematic, life-changing bus ride. The driver, Chicoy, for example, needs a better marriage to one who eventually becomes a passenger: his perturbed wife, Alice (Joan Collins). The bus ride is one of infatuation, growing or potential love, and reconciliation. Ably screenwritten by Ivan Moffat, the film is about when relationships represent hope—and it’s about waywardness.

Beautiful Collins is not quite beautiful, for some reason, until near the end of the flick. Her acting is a trifle too much on the surface, although the scene where she is at the door of her diner after her frustrated husband zips away in the bus is a poignant one. Rick Jason is pretty effective as Chicoy, and at least passable is gorgeous Jayne Mansfield as a stripper. Dan Dailey never disappoints as a traveling salesman who gets fresh for a while with Mansfield, and elderly Will Wright is a character actor par excellence. The Wayward Bus had an un-wayward, Russian-born director in Victor Vicus, whose work I don’t know.

Spike Lee‘s Jungle Fever (1991) is about an interracial illicit romance, and it’s an overwrought joke. Most, but not all, of the black characters here are estimable; including the less than believable architect, Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes), who cheats on his wife with a white woman (Annabella Sciorra). Nearly every white character is foolish and/or mean. The best sequence in the film presents a group of black young women discussing black men and their relationships. In one of the worst sequences, several Italian-American dudes are blabbing hysterically and are like profane, monstrously racist Jersey Boys. The movie is stupid—with, however, a nifty credit sequence—and even features constantly inappropriate music.