THE
KLANSMAN (1974) Blu-rayDirector: Terence Young
Olive Films
THE
KLANSMAN (1974) Blu-rayOne of the holy grails of
trash exploitation, finally available uncut. Olive Films and Paramount Pictures
have released on Blu-ray THE KLANSMAN, the 1974 racial potboiler from Paramount,
directed by Terence Young, written by Millard Kaufman and based on William Bradford
Huie’s novel (with maybe a wee bit of Samuel Fuller left over from the
initial script), and starring the absolutely one-of-a-kind cast of Lee Marvin,
Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell, Lola Falana, David Huddleston, Linda Evans,
and double murderer (according to the civil trial) O.J. Simpson. Ditched by
Paramount after loads of bad pre-production press, and as a smattering of protests
erupted during its initial release, THE KLANSMAN gained almost instant cult
notoriety as an artistic failure of epic proportions—a reputation further
burnished today due to all those public domain copes out there that tease our
sick hopes with fuzzy, edited, fullscreen prints. Seen today, THE KLANSMAN’s
not nearly as bad as our imaginations made it out to be, but it is
a wonderfully bizarre exercise in conflicted intentions, with the saving grace
of all good exploitation—it wallows in its own grotesqueries. In other
words: must-see viewing for lovers of deeply wrong moviemaking. Olive
delivers up no extras here, not even a trailer, but the uncut 1080p 1.78:1 anamorphically
enhanced widescreen transfer for THE KLANSMAN is way, way ahead of
any previous DVD version.
Crackertown, USA, in Atoka County, Alabama. “Hands off” county sheriff
Track Bascomb (Lee Marvin, THE DIRTY DOZEN, PRIME CUT) has his hands full keeping
a lid on the town’s simmering racial tensions. The local Klan membership,
headed up by Mayor Hardy Riddle (David Huddleston, BLAZING SADDLES, SANTA CLAUS:
THE MOVIE), is jess itchin’ for some action against them uppity negroes,
since they’s goin’ to be a big voter drive commencin’ soon,
and you know what that means for the minority whites in the county.
Riddle advises caution to the pent-up peckerwoods—no killin’, maimin’,
or blowin’ up any black churches, less it affect business—but iffn
you have to muss up a couple of black bucks to let everyone knowd what’s
what, well...so be it. Hated local gentry Breck Stancill (Richard Burton, THE
MEDUSA TOUCH, THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC), generational enemy of the Klan
since his great grandpappy was hung for resisting succession (and thought a
Commie by the general populace of Atoka because...he ain’t got a TV and...he
reads books), will maintain a “dignified neutrality” when questioned
by Track if he’ll offer shelter on his mountain to the city negroes and
Commie agitators bused in for the voter drive. That neutrality should last all
of about five minutes after his gorgeous protégé, upwardly mobile
Loretta Sykes (Lola Falana, THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES, LADY COCOA), returns
home from Chicago, ostensibly to visit her ailing grandmother who lives rent-free
on Breck’s mountain, along with the town’s other poor blacks. When
pretty white lady Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans, BEACH BLANKET BINGO, AVALANCHE
EXPRESS) is raped by an unseen black man, the racist town goes into hyper drive,
with her fellow good Christian townspeople spurning her, while the Klan goes
apesh*t, castrating one young man while another, Garth (O.J. Simpson, THE TOWERING
INFERNO, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING), barely escapes with his life. Turned into
an instant Black Power revolutionary, Garth begins a deadly guerilla-style war
against the Klan, while Breck ditches insanely hot meter maid (or something)
Trixie (Luciana Paluzzi, THUNDERBALL, THE GREEN SLIME) for Nancy, whom he takes
under his wing. After cretinous Deputy Sheriff “Butt Cutt” Cates
(Cameron Mitchell, SLAUGHTER, THE TOOLBOX MURDERS) viciously rapes Loretta,
and Garth keeps picking off white hoods, it’s up to the conflicted Track
to decide which side he supports: the Klan or Breck, in a final bloody showdown.
My only childhood memory of THE KLANSMAN was seeing the ad for it in our local
newspaper, and wondering what the hell were big, big stars Marvin and Burton—at
least they still seemed big to me in ‘74—doing in a relatively cheapo
piece of AIP-like Southern-fried drive-in action-movie trash? It’s a good
question, then and now, and their presence only adds to the strange, off-putting
mix of the movie. Watching it today, you have to give credit to THE KLANSMAN
just for having the balls to be notably offensive during a time in movie history
when the field was crowded with mainstream movies unfettered in their bad taste.
Today’s SJW critics will no doubt wring out their panties at THE KLANSMAN’s
geegaw grotesqueness, but exploitation cinema has always been about enjoying
what makes the squares uncomfortable—and what could possibly be more uncomfortable
to today’s mainstream snowflake audience (today’s squares, through
and through) than a movie like THE KLANSMAN, with its slobbering racist goons
shouting “nigger!” every five minutes, in-between horrors like rape
and castration, and a central message that reads: the only possible outcome
of race relations in America is senseless violence?
Of course what those other critics will purposefully ignore in their write-ups
of this new Blu-ray of THE KLANSMAN, is that this racially offensive movie (it’s
belligerently offensive to all races...) was produced by an African-American,
William D. Alexander, a noted documentarian who in 1974 was shepherding the
highest-budgeted movie a black producer had ever delivered for Hollywood. If
you’re one of those people who think it’s just awful that THE KLANSMAN
exists in the first place, then talk to Alexander (a neat trick since he passed
in ’91). He was in charge of the production; he gathered the money needed
to film it, and he oversaw the filming of the script he and Paramount approved.
I don’t think that fact alone explains why THE KLANSMAN turned out the
way it did...but it sure makes it harder for critics looking to score brownie
points with their perpetually outraged and offended readers, to claim an abomination
like THE KLANSMAN was all “racist” Hollywood’s fault (there’s
some question over whether or not Paramount actually had any say in the production—Sam
Fuller, the original screenwriter/director who was canned in pre-production,
said yes, but AFI and other sources state that THE KLANSMAN was strictly an
indie pick-up for Paramount, which had no skin in the game. So to speak).
What’s truly weird about THE KLANSMAN isn’t its tawdry exploitation
elements, but rather the genuinely interesting tangents that are hidden in the
movie...or rather buried there through incompetence and gaucherie. You may hate
the method of delivery, but THE KLANSMAN does give voice to some of
the more uncomfortable aspects of racial unrest in America, and does so in a
remarkably crude, boorish way that occasionally works. Marvin’s sheriff
, the “hero” of the movie, is a shadowy creation that looks and
talks like a likeable, authoritative anti-hero—until we realize he’s
seriously deluded. He thinks he’s “smoothing things over”
in the town, but he can’t admit the truth: he’s allowing crime and
degradation and humiliation against the town’s blacks to continue, in
order to maintain his job, his authority, and his way of life (in a few scenes,
such as Marvin’s visible self-disgust at what he must make Falana do after
she’s raped by Mitchell—agree to lie it wasn’t Mitchell or
he Marvin will let Falana bleed to death—underrated actor Marvin shows
there might have been pure gold among the dross here). Burton’s character
is poorly drawn, but there are possibilities there, too, such as a country brahmin
who’s completely out of touch with reality in terms of what his noble
ideas are actually costing everyone. When Marvin tells Burton no one is going
to help defend “Breck’s blacks” against the Klan, because
Burton’s letting them live rent free on his mountain while collecting
government checks doesn’t sit well with the tax-paying whites, it’s
another example of Kauffman’s script bringing up economic aspects of racism
that sure weren’t discussed in most blaxploitation movies at that time
(the script tries to play fair, occasionally giving the other side of the coin:
blacks who finally rise out of Atoka County create a workforce vacuum for exploiters
like the Mayor, who then can’t pay whites the chicken feed rates they
used to force on black laborers, who had no legal means of redress).
With interesting elements like those in the script, if producer Alexander and
scripter Kauffman (who penned other racially-themed movies like BAD DAY AT BLACK
ROCK and RAINTREE COUNTY) had originally intended THE KLANSMAN to be a serious
statement on race, they and director Terence Young (WAIT UNTIL DARK, THE POPPY
IS ALSO A FLOWER) ultimately failed, due to a surreal mishmash of tones and
intents that bury any potential cohesive meaning. With its obvious California
topography subbing for Alabama, and its strange time warp feeling (events depicted
seem like from ten years earlier, during the hot civil rights voter registration
troubles of the 1960s—not 1974), we’re immediately off our footing.
Subplots flood over us—its certainly busy Southern-heat melodrama, if
nothing else—in-between the heartless, over-the-top violent scenes (Mitchell’s
rape of Falana takes the cake for graphic repugnance, only topped by the once-in-a-lifetime
movie moment of a disgusted Marvin contemptuously smearing menstrual blood on
the crying rapist’s face). Almost immediately there are story problems,
and as THE KLANSMAN rolls along, more head-shaking tangents are introed and
dropped: not one but two pointless scenes about Marvin’s son going to
West Point; the notion that rape victim Evans needs to be seen as sexual desirable
again to “save” her (I dare anyone to diagram that discussion with
Burton and the voter registration reverend and make sense of it); Burton’s
instant, inexplicable affair with Evans (we totally forget she’s even
on his mountain), leading to a marriage proposal, no less; Burton’s heretofore
unseen purebred dog getting killed (the only time he looks genuinely upset),
and so on. By the time you realize they’re never going to explain the
central crime that’s THE KLANSMAN’s catalyst—the rape of Evans—you’re
long past caring (you can guess at the reasons why the moviemakers pull no punches
explicitly showing white Mitchell raping black Falana...after demurely cutting
away from an unseen black man raping white Evans). You’re just waiting
for THE KLANSMAN’s next crazy moment to come up.
And boy howdy are there a lot of them in THE KLANSMAN. Jaw-dropping lines come
left, right, and below the belt in seemingly every scene, from someone describing
Evans’ rape as “a black peg in a white hole,” to Falana referring
to herself as Burton’s “private piece of brown comfort.” That
kind of “color” analogy continues throughout the movie, such as
when insanely hot Paluzzi—whose presence in THE KLANSMAN is laughably
unmotivated—asks a seemingly mummified Burton if he’s “getting
his chocolate milk from [Falana]?” (looking at Burton, formaldehyde seems
more likely). Action scenes are choreographed for maximum laughs (why is fugitive
O.J. sitting on a park bench, putting together his sniper rifle, while oblivious
couples sit just a few feet away? Better yet: why are those benches on the side
of a mountain?), with the highlight being the single worst karate fight
in major motion picture history. An immobile Burton and a visibly embarrassed
Mitchell fall around on their asses as Burton slowly lashes out trembley rubber
hose arms at a flailing Mitchell, all to paralyzingly funny effect (three quarts
of vodka-a-day Burton, who literally almost died from alcoholism during THE
KLANSMAN, recounted a notorious story where, years after the pic’s shoot,
he met Marvin for what he thought was the very first time...and had to be reminded
by an incredulous Marvin that they had actually shot a picture together). The
insane finale, with the local Klansmen’s huge, bulky white robes and hoods
providing hilariously inadequate camouflage during a nighttime assault on Breck’s
mountain, is a treat of pointless nihilism, as Marvin strikes a DIRTY DOZEN
pose with a machine gun as he mows down the Southern knights...and poor, inebriated
Richard Burton—possibly the greatest movie actor of the 20th century—struggles
to lift a tiny little rifle with his arthritic hands (reportedly, they had to
lash the drunken actor to the tree with unseen ropes, to get the shot). When
Paluzzi has THE KLANSMAN’s last word—“What a stupid waste,”—she
is so right. And thankfully, so, so wrong.
THE KLANSMAN’s 1080p HD 1.78:1 anamorphically enhanced widescreen Blu
transfer is a huge improvement over the way you’ve probably seen
this before (like all those 3rd and 4th generation fullscreen public domain
copies). That isn’t to say it’s perfect. The biggest complaint is
a soft-ish image that’s only noticeable in some of the longer shots (I’m
betting that’s the fault of the original materials they’re using
here). Otherwise, there’s a big uptick (over previous DVD releases) in
terms of image detail, color values (the movie’s a little blah in that
department, anyway—lots of browns and yellows), and contrast. Grain is
relatively tight, and I spotted no significant compression issues. All in all,
short of a restored camera negative 35mm print at MOMA, this is the best you’re
going to experience THE KLANSMAN. The DTS-HD mono English audio track isn’t
the crispest, but again—I doubt the original materials used in the re-recording
were perfect (and I suspect the original on-set recording wasn’t the hottest,
either, considering all the looping I noticed). English subtitles are included.
No extras, unfortunately, not even an original trailer (next time you want a
commentary track for a taboo title, Olive, I’ll give you one that will
move units!). (Paul
Mavis)