Cinema Speculation

Second-String Samurai

An Appreciation of Kevin Thomas

Like they did with Angels Hard as They Come and The Hot Box, Jonathan Demme and Evelyn Purcell killed themselves making the women-in-prison drama Caged Heat for Roger Corman. Only this time it’s Jonathan as the director and Evelyn as the producer (and second-unit director). And now the day had finally come when their little WIP potboiler would finally be released to theatres and drive-ins around Los Angeles (where it played citywide alongside Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song as its supporting feature).

But after all the hard work, there was a little fatalism among the married filmmaking team. According to longtime Demme associate Gary Goetzman, yeah, they knew they made a good little picture for Roger. But ultimately, so what? Who’s going to see a sleazy little New World Pictures film called Caged Heat, other than the drive-in crowd it was made for? Even when Jonathan and Evelyn met people around town and mentioned they just made a movie, people would ask what was it called.

When they said Caged Heat they’d see the contemptible expression on their faces, what, is it a porno?

The couple were still happy and excited, but they understood the reality of making exploitation movies in Hollywood.

When it came to Caged Heat opening in Los Angeles, Hollywood wouldn’t care, the industry wouldn’t care, the press wouldn’t care, and the public (save for a few teenage drive-in patrons) wouldn’t care.

In fact, the only person who would care would be Roger Corman.

And to get Corman to offer them another flick is about all they could hope for.

So imagine Demme and Purcell’s surprise, when the day after the film opened they paged through the Los Angeles Times and read a rave review by Kevin Thomas of their punky little prison picture.

After making clear his contempt for the women-in-prison subgenre (especially the Jack Hill–Eddie Romero Filipino variety), Thomas wrote about Demme’s first film as a director:

“With wit, style and unflagging verve, writer-director Jonathan Demme, a youthful and talented exploitation veteran, sends up the genre while still giving the mindless action fan his money’s worth. Demme, best known for ‘Angels, Hard as They Come,’ manages not only to have it both ways but also, in pointing up the absurdity of the genre, points up the absurdity of the often cruel and inhuman conditions of real-life prisons.”

Then he ended his review the way all New World Pictures directors wished the Los Angeles Times would end the reviews of their pictures: “In every aspect Caged Heat attests to Demme’s virtuosity—and to [cinematographer Tak] Fujimoto and [composer John] Cale’s as well—and thereby demonstrates that all three of them are ready for major projects.”

If you’re going to speak about the early career of Jonathan Demme, you need to speak about his biggest champion, second-string critic for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas. Later (post–Citizens Band), Demme had a whole host of critics acting as a cheering section. But before Vincent Canby, before Richard Corliss, before Kenny Turan, before Pauline Kael and her “Paulettes” fell in line behind Demme, the critic most responsible for the young filmmaker’s career progression was Kevin Thomas.

One of the things that I had forgotten, but reading those reviews of The Outfit was quickly reminded of, was what Elvis Mitchell called the “Institutional Indifference” to even studio-backed genre product by the newspaper-based critics of the day.

It would appear most critics writing for newspapers and magazines set themselves up as superior to the films they were paid to review. Which I could never understand, because judging from their writing, that was clearly not the case.

They looked down on films that gave pleasure, and on the filmmakers who had an understanding of the audience that they did not.

And we’re talking about The Outfit! A solid studio film, based on a good book, with sensational actors. Forget about the beneath-contempt treatment actual exploitation flicks received at their hands.

As a kid who loved movies and paid to see pretty much everything, I just thought they were snide assholes. Today as a much older and wiser man, I realize the extent of how unhappy they must have been. They wrote with the demeanor of somebody who hates their life, or at least hates their job.

For twenty years, almost comically, the Los Angeles Times—the newspaper of the motion picture industry—hired critical laughingstocks for their first-string movie critic positions.

The New York Times had Vincent Canby, a good voice for that publication. The Chicago Sun-Times had Roger Ebert, who, when inspiration struck him, would examine an offbeat aspect of the film under analysis, like the fact that the Frank Perry film Diary of a Mad Housewife was told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator by virtue it was a diary. And, despite him and his high-minded colleague Gene Siskel’s showboating hissy fit against slasher films in the eighties, Roger was a friend to exploitation films, giving good reviews to The Last House on the Left, Electric Boogaloo is Breakin’ Too, and Inframan, as well as writing the screenplay for the all-time classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

But in the seventies the LA Times had blurb-whore Charles (Chuckie) Champlin, who reviewed movies the way Ralph Williams sold cars.

In Los Angeles he was known as the “Will Rogers of film criticism—Charles Champlin, never met a movie he didn’t like.” Champlin wrote as if appearing in as many movie ad pull quotes as possible was an editorial imperative. Also for years he hosted an interview show on local L.A. television called At One With, where he’d sit across from actors like Gene Hackman and filmmakers like John Frankenheimer. So he wouldn’t do himself, or his local L.A. celebrity status, any favors by being rough with the Hollywood citizens in their hometown newspaper.*

Nevertheless, Champlin was preferable to the person who took his spot in the eighties, Sheila Benson. Benson pretty much ruined the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times for a decade. Her movie reviews read closer to book reports written by a housewife for a night school class on modern American lit.

Back then I only cared about critics’ opinions and personality, I never judged their actual writing ability, except Sheila Benson.

Myself and my first girlfriend, Grace Lovelace (both of us Pauline Kael devotees), used to quote Sheila Benson’s reviews to make the other one smirk. During dinners together in the nineties, film critic colleagues Manohla Dargis and John Powers drew hearty laughs from everyone at the table by mocking Benson’s writing style.

But it’s not like Benson didn’t have her constituency. To give the devil her due—in a strange way—Sheila Benson was rather an appropriate voice for the Hollywood studio films coming out of the miserable eighties. The middle of the road successful films of that era were right up Benson’s alley. The Big Chill, Out of Africa, Ordinary People, Diner, Gandhi, Stand by Me, those films were Benson’s cup of weak tea.

The problem was her first-string critic position. Writing for another venue other than the Los Angeles fucking Times, Benson could have been a perfectly acceptable critic. If Benson—with her PTA mentality—had been writing the movie page for McCall’s magazine (did Redbook have a movie page?) the writer and her readers would have found a happy home. Pauline Kael was fired by McCall’s for her opinions. Benson would have been so beloved by the readership, they probably would have issued a movie coupon with a picture of her face in the middle of it.

They could have been called Benson Bucks.

In the nineties Benson went bye-bye and was replaced by Kenny Turan. Now compared to Champlin, who might as well have worked for the advertising department, and Benson, who was simply unfit for her position, Kenny Turan was a real critic. But not a real critic you really wanted to read.

Now, it must be noted for the length of my career—at my hometown newspaper—Kenny set himself up to be my nemesis. Turan wasn’t the only critic to give Pulp Fiction a bad review. But his review wasn’t just a pan of a movie he didn’t care for, it had an agenda.

To counteract Todd McCarthy’s and Janet Maslin’s once-in-a-lifetime raves in Variety and the New York Times.

I thought maybe I’d get him with Jackie Brown, but no such luck.

Then for the next few years, Kenny made it a point to bring me up as a negative example of what was wrong with current cinema in every think piece he wrote. In one about Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, he didn’t just run me over, he drove around the block to run me over. Turan’s animosity towards my work has persisted throughout my career. To such a degree, when he finally responded positively to my film Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, he felt the need to explain to the readers the degree to which he had dismissed my work in the past (though by that time the only one keeping score was me). When you share an antagonism with one critic for as long as Kenny and me, you end up having a strange personal connection with each other.

The few times we bumped into each other at an event, we’ve shared a moment of professional mutual rejection that bordered on intimacy.

But through that entire time, through Champlin, through Benson, through Turan, sitting over there at the Los Angeles Times in his second-string critic spot was Kevin Thomas.

Kevin’s job as second-string critic was to see the studio-wide releases that the first-string critic couldn’t get to. Then see all the art house/independent movies. Then all the foreign films to play Los Angeles. Which in the mid- to late seventies, during the time of Lina Wertmuller, Claude Lelouch, Giancarlo Giannini, and Laura Antonelli was a pretty cool beat. The first time many of us Los Angeles residents ever read about Wertmuller, Fassbinder, and Oshima was in Kevin Thomas’ writing. But along with making foreign movies more palpable to regular L.A. moviegoers, the other big job Kevin Thomas had was reviewing most of the new exploitation movies coming into town for the LA Times.

And in regard to both positions, nobody in the country did it better.

Consequently, the first time I ever read about Russ Meyer, Jess Franco, and Dario Argento was in Kevin Thomas’ writing. On most daily newspapers, the reviews of exploitation movies usually weren’t written by the first or even the second-string critic, but pawned off on some staff underling, oftentimes the assignment carrying the sting of punishment. And the pieces they wrote about these flicks displayed a vindictiveness towards the film itself (they weren’t just mad they had to write a review, they were mad they had to watch the movie in the first place). That was not how Kevin Thomas practiced his profession or how his aesthetic worked. He always approached every new film from American-International Pictures, or New World Pictures, or Crown International Pictures, or Cannon Pictures, or Empire Pictures with an openhearted optimism and a measure of respect.

Roger Corman received a lot of credit (deservedly so) for launching a lot of young filmmakers from his drive-in pictures to the major studios.

Did Corman deserve the credit for finding these directors? Of course he did. But what really facilitated these directors moving up to studio assignments was if they received a positive notice in the Los Angeles Times from Kevin Thomas. The LA Times was the morning newspaper most agents and studio executives read. And if Kevin Thomas gave a positive notice to one of Jonathan Demme’s flicks for Corman, or Joe Rubin’s flicks for Crown International, or Sam Firstenberg’s flicks for Cannon Pictures, or Stuart Gordon’s flicks for Empire, or Joe Dante’s The Howling, or Lewis Teague’s Alligator, or Michael Laughlin’s Strange Behavior, or John McTiernan’s Nomads the industry took notice.

Say you’re a junior agent at William Morris and you’re trying to build up your client list, or you’re a junior executive at Warner Bros. trying to pull in promising talent that the senior executives weren’t hip to yet. When you read the Los Angeles Times over coffee in the morning and Kevin Thomas praised some filmmaker or actor in some exploitation movie that just hit town, you paid attention.

So when Thomas said Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat was a good movie, you tracked down a print and watched it in the company screening room. If you agreed, you signed him up as a client, or pitched him at your next meeting of the upcoming films on your slate.

And when your bosses asked “Who the hell is Jonathan Demme?” you answered, “His last movie got a great write up in the LA Times.”

That is how those directors broke through to the studio level. Corman’s position as the movie minor leagues to the studio’s major leagues stopped once he sold New World Pictures and opened up his new company in the eighties, Concorde-New Horizons. It stopped earlier than most, because Corman read the writing on the wall that theatrical exhibition for the type of movies he made was becoming a thing of the past. The real market for these movies was home video. So as opposed to in the past, when theatrical box office was the primary concern (right next to the eventual television sale), theatrical exhibition simply became a contractual obligation, so the video advertisement could proclaim “Straight from its theatrical release.” Oftentimes in Los Angeles that meant a dumped booking at the Egyptian 3 (a shoebox-sized third screen attached to the historic Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard) or the Lakewood One & Two.*

But with the new Corman product bypassing theatrical exhibition and going straight to home video, it also meant it was bypassing a chance to be reviewed by the local press. So with only a few exceptions (Carl Franklin and Louis Llosa), without Kevin Thomas to act as talent scout, Corman’s pipeline to the major studios stopped.

Kevin Thomas wrote about exploitation movies the way a devoted sportswriter might write about a good high school team. Looking for that one player who might possibly possess the talent and potential to take themselves to the next level. And then when they moved up to the college level, he followed them, and wrote whether or not they realized that potential. Then when they made the pros, followed them to the minor leagues, till finally, they made it to the majors. With Kevin Thomas, standing on the sidelines, rooting them on the whole way. When Jonathan Demme finally made his first film out from under the wing of Roger Corman, Citizens Band for Paramount Studios, Thomas praised the production, writing, “Most gratifying of all, the film marks the graduation of Demme, one of the most talented young directors in Hollywood from the ranks of exploitation after a substantial apprenticeship with Roger Corman that yielded that witty exploitation classic, Caged Heat.”

If Kevin Thomas were female it would be easy to make a case that his seemingly permanent position as second-string critic at the LA Times was a form of misogyny. But in Thomas’ case, I think his editors knew no one in the business could cover his beat half as well as he did.

There were a few areas where Kevin and I parted company. Thomas had a real distaste for mean-spirited violence. He didn’t mind graphic violence when woven into a tapestry like George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead or Richard Compton’s Macon County Line. But one of my favorite movies of the seventies is John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder. Years later at the Torrance Public Library when I looked up his review, I was shocked at the opening paragraph.

“Well into the press preview of Rolling Thunder someone shouted, ‘At least it’s not dull.’ To give the devil his due, it isn’t, but otherwise it’s one of the most revolting exploitation pictures to come along in some time.”

Damn, Kevin!

But he wasn’t through.

“Now the point to be made about Rolling Thunder is that it’s not just another cheaply made piece of junk—although junk it most assuredly is. It has been very well directed by John Flynn and superbly photographed by Jordan Cronenweth. . . . Rolling Thunder is some kind of ultimate in cynical calculation. The whole numbing predicament of the returning POW is perceptively, credibly depicted—but only to set up the carnage that follows.”

Then he ends the review:

“Of course it could be argued that [William] Devane is only reaping what we sowed in Vietnam, but it will take a much less shallow picture than this to make the connection between American violence abroad and at home.”

Obviously, I disagree. But if I had read that review, his emphasis on the film’s dynamic carnage would have made me pretty gung ho to see it.

Consequently, when his golden boy Jonathan Demme did his own Revengeamatic for Corman, Fighting Mad (with Peter Fonda), Thomas took him to task as well. Starting off his review: “In Fighting Mad, Jonathan Demme, one of the most promising young writer-directors in exploitation pictures, has allowed violence to outweigh ideas to such a degree that the picture becomes a turnoff, little more than a blatantly obvious play to the yahoo mentality.”

In my opinion the climax of Fighting Mad isn’t violent enough.

Is my taste in cinema more bloodthirsty than Kevin Thomas’? Clearly (I’m trying to not take that “yahoo mentality” crack personally).

But one man’s turnoff . . .

But the review I disagreed with the most (after Rolling Thunder) is his critical take on John Carpenter’s Halloween.

“Although Carpenter and producer Debra Hill’s plot may be full of holes, Carpenter draws upon the resources of the camera to overcome them with ease. Also, his victims are well drawn and well played. With his cinematic flair, Carpenter therefore knows how to generate fear (rather than suspense) and how to make us feel like voyeurs (which makes the film a complete turn-off about halfway through). So what, then, is the point of all this realistically depicted slaughter and terror? With its tree-shaded small-town American setting, Halloween does function metaphorically for the insecure times in which we live. But since it offers nothing more, Halloween becomes yet another in the seemingly endless series of films that simply exacerbate our increasing paranoia—and what is the good of this?”

It’s almost comical in retrospect to read Thomas bemoan “the seemingly endless series of films that simply exacerbate our increasing paranoia,” knowing the endless wave of slasher movies yet to come that will owe their very existence to Halloween. But again, even a Kevin Thomas negative review reads like a positive review until it gets to the point where Thomas takes psychological umbrage. As with the Rolling Thunder review, despite the vehicle, filmmaking craftsmanship always is noted, appreciated, and singled out for praise. And besides, everybody (especially a film critic) is entitled to their opinion, and if he didn’t dig Halloween and found it a turnoff, so be it. But it would be interesting to see if Thomas’ mind would have been changed if he saw Halloween not in a practically empty screening room but in a packed cinema of teenagers hooting, hollering, screaming, laughing, and basically having the time of their lives, like most of us experienced when Carpenter’s picture first opened.

But then there were the times—and this never happened with his colleagues—when I felt Thomas overpraised an exploitation picture. This happened when I purchased a ticket, after his enthusiastic review, for the early Sarah Jessica Parker film Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which I didn’t like at all. Same thing for his positive notice of the bad South African martial arts flick Kill and Kill Again. Which was the sequel to the equally bad Kill or Be Killed, which I saw and thought was so lousy that I walked out after forty minutes (I’d do that from time to time, but I didn’t make a habit of it). After reading Kevin’s well-written appreciation of the sequel, I took a chance the film would be different than the godawful original. Nope.

It was just as bad (a friend of mine named Craig Hammon dubbed the films “designer jeans kung fu” due to the Sergio Valentes that star James Ryan wore throughout). After twenty minutes, I walked out of this one too. But I never begrudged Kevin Thomas his enthusiasm.

Did I waste money?

Yeah, but I’m not going to pretend I ever gave a shit about that.

I liked Kevin Thomas so much, I was glad he at least had a good time. One of Thomas’ gifts was pointing out tender moments from some unlikely sources. In his review for the silly and forgettable computer comedy Electric Dreams, Thomas notes that the film’s two leads, Lenny von Dohlen and Virginia Madsen, were bland when compared to Bud Cort, who voiced the suddenly conscious computer Edgar, and of whom he wrote, “Bud Cort reminds us of what radio acting at its best was all about.” But then points out the scene where the two young leads finally grabbed him.

“Von Dohlen and Madsen really catch hold of us—and each other—when he comforts her on the loss of her beloved cello, crushed by the elevator doors. By way of comfort, he points out that what’s important, and not lost, is what’s inside of her—that the cello, after all, is only an instrument.”

Usually, when you finally saw the film in question, these moments weren’t as affecting as Thomas’ description of them. But still, you knew what he meant, and you appreciated his efforts in trying to distinguish something like a piece of fluff calling itself Electric Dreams.

One of my favorite Kevin Thomas reviews was for Russ Meyer’s Supervixens.

Like he was for Demme and Romero, Thomas was a champion of Meyer, even once acting as master of ceremonies at a festival of Russ Meyer’s movies in L.A., where he introduced the auteur as “the only director outside of Alfred Hitchcock whose name above the title means anything.”

“In its first few minutes Supervixens comes on like vintage Russ Meyer, a hilarious, rambunctious combination of fast action and busty babes. But quite abruptly Meyer, the original King of the Nudies, freezes the smile on our faces with a dazzlingly staged, truly terrifying sequence that, in making a direct connection between sex and violence, is truly one of the most impassioned expressions of the battle of the sexes ever filmed. SuperAngel (Shari Eubank), the spoiled incredibly voluptuous, incredibly insatiable wife of a nice-guy gas station attendant (Charlie Pitts), begins taunting a super-macho crooked sheriff (dynamic, jut-jawed Charles Napier) for his impotence. The more she teases him the more she unleashes in him a sadistic streak—and a masochistic one in herself—so that the tension that builds between them must inevitably be resolved in an orgy of either sex or violence. In the increasing suspense, as either alternative momentarily hangs in the balance before SuperAngel finally pushes the sheriff too far, we are able to see how both are tragically trapped by their sexual stereotypes: As a sexpot SuperAngel is expected to demand nothing less than perfection from her lovers; as a he-man the sheriff must be the ultimate in virility. Anyway, she incites him to such rage that she ends up stomped then electrocuted in her bathtub. Even though this sequence moves as lightning-fast as the famous shower scene in Psycho it is too grisly not to exact its toll. So shocking, so visceral is it in its impact that it’s impossible—unless you’re pretty unthinking or insensitive—to laugh heartily at the subsequent lusty adventures of Pitts, now on the run since he’s the prime suspect in his wife’s brutal murder. However, Meyer himself is more serious than ever before. The pioneer and now past master in projecting all-American male sex fantasies on the screen is in Supervixens reflecting the reverberations of women’s liberation. Before our very eyes sex goddess dreams turn into nightmares. Indeed, so powerful is SuperAngel that she reincarnates herself as Supervixen, now as good as she was previously evil. With her Pitts finds idyllic bliss—until the sheriff reappears for a final battle with the couple.

A blue-collar surrealist, Meyer used a camera as expressively and rigorously as Hitchcock or Antonioni. In his adept hands a vast desert expanse—virtually the entire setting for Supervixens—becomes a moral landscape. In this film it’s as if he had gone and explored, as never before to such an extent, the dark underside of his erotic myths. It’s Supervixens, not Day of the Locust, that’s genuinely apocalyptic.”

After I read that description of the bathtub murder scene, I thought, I hafta see that! And sure enough, the scene between Charles Napier and Shari Eubank is one of the great violent sequences in seventies cinema. Right up there with the climax of Straw Dogs and the rape in Deliverance, as well as the only legitimate rival to Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho.*

Did the power of that scene “freeze the smile on my face” like it did Kevin? No. At least not for the same reason that Kevin wrote. In fact, that scene does derail the picture, but more because nothing else in the movie can compete with its power. Also, like a lot of Meyer’s seventies movies, the final act dissolves into a brand of silliness that I’m not a fan of. But so what? The Napier and Eubank scene is so fucking incredible, if you exited the movie theatre once it was over, you’d received more than your money’s worth for your entertainment dollar. I considered writing about Supervixens for this book, but I knew I couldn’t match the verve and insight that Thomas brought to bear on the picture.

Also I included that review pretty much in its entirety because it’s one of my favorite of Kevin’s pieces. But also because it’s classic Kevin. Supervixens is really, really good, but it ain’t that good.

That scene is incredible, the rest of the movie—not so much.

Oftentimes the movies Kevin rhapsodized about couldn’t live up to his prose. Caged Heat is really good, but it’s not as good as Kevin Thomas said it was.

I love Macon County Line, but it’s not as powerful as Kevin suggests it is (and Max Baer Jr.’s performance is no way as good).

Was Kevin Thomas writing about the movies he wished they were? Maybe. Hey, I did that all through the terrible eighties or else I wouldn’t have liked anything. But sometimes if you read Kevin’s review first, the qualities Kevin attributed to the movie, he actually bestowed on the film by virtue of suggestion. There is a depth to Caged Heat if you see it after reading Kevin’s review that is simply not there if you watch it cold. And even though Supervixens is more spectacular and doesn’t need Thomas’ help quite as much, same goes for it too (excuse me while I rhapsodize about a time when the Los Angeles Times applauded “the king of male sexual fantasies” for “exploring the dark underside of his erotic myths”).

Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite pieces that Kevin Thomas wrote about some of my favorite exploitation flicks of the seventies.

Death Race 2000

“A fine little exploitation picture that not only beat the similarly themed Rollerball to theaters but proved to be more coherent and pertinent of the two pictures, although made for far less money in far less time.”

The Pom Pom Girls

“No wonder The Pom Pom Girls has been setting records for Crown International in various cities. . . . It’s an upbeat, sexy, action-filled tale of contemporary high school life that embodies perfectly what most teen-agers wish their lives were like. . . .

Talented young writer-producer-director Joseph Ruben, in projecting this postadolescent fantasy, observes the rules. His young people raise hell, but they aren’t vicious, cruel or destructive. Even though vehemently anti-intellectual they’re a pretty likable bunch, possessing some dimension and, most important, vulnerability. As a result—and because it has an abundant sense of humor—The Pom Pom Girls succeeds as an evocation of the kind of freedom that youth symbolizes but practically no one, today or in the past, ever really gets to enjoy.”

The Lords of Flatbush

“With poignant perception, The Lords of Flatbush suggests that growing up in the ’50s was pretty much the same in Brooklyn as it was in San Rafael or Modesto (American Graffiti) or even a dying Texas town (The Last Picture Show).

In each instance we’re shown high school kids fighting off boredom and struggling with the conflict between their sexual frustrations and an arbitrary, hypocritical moral code. . . .

That The Lords of Flatbush was shot in 16mm (for $380,000) and then blown up to 35 serves only to heighten its sense of reality’s harshness. Closer in spirit to Mean Streets—but not as despairing—than to American Graffiti, it is a very New Yorkish film, with its emphasis on characterization and dialogue rather than visual style. . . . Its creators clearly know their people well and care for them deeply, inviting us to share their feelings. A film of acute observation and telling nuances, The Lords of Flatbush is full of devastating vignettes.”

Hollywood Boulevard

“At least as far back as Merton of the Movies (1924) Hollywood has been turning its cameras on itself, generally with satirical and often savage intent.

But there’s never been anything quite like Hollywood Boulevard, an outrageous, often hilarious spoof of the zany world of low-budget exploitation film-making. And what better company to produce such an effort than Roger Corman’s New World Pictures?

To be sure, New World knows its audience too well to attempt anything like an authentic glimpse of the actual hectic, often ruthless and desperate existence of aspiring young talent. Rather, it has played everything very, very broad, making certain there’s plenty of fast action and above-the-waist nudity to satisfy the fans of the very films it’s making fun of. Yet it is also sufficiently imaginative and knowledgeable to amuse film buffs.”

Malibu High

“The title Malibu High suggests a bouncy summer romance featuring sand, surf and bikinis.

Actually, it’s anything but that. It tells of an 18-year-old girl (Jill Lansing, an inexperienced but intense young actress) who hates school and is on the verge of flunking out and despises her nagging mother whom she blames for her father’s suicide. When her boyfriend (Stuart Taylor) throws her over for a rich girl, that’s the last straw. In revenge, she decides to seduce her teachers into giving her A’s, turns hooker to get money to buy the luxuries she craves and discovers she gets a kick out of killing people.

All this is as sordid as it sounds, but whether by accident or design director Irv Berwick and writers John Buckley and Tom Singer so identify with their heroine that the film becomes a surprisingly compassionate study in obsession.

They never make fun of the absurdity of her determination to graduate from high school merely as a fierce point of pride nor do they satirize her complete naivete as she becomes a pawn for her underworld pimp (Garth Howard), who gets her to kill for him but treats her with unfailing—and therefore seemingly authentic—tenderness and respect.

This girl brings to mind the frustrated nurse of that B classic The Honeymoon Killers, who would never have turned murderer had she not fallen for a greasy little gigolo, and also Truffaut’s equally obsessive Adele H. in her extreme reaction to Taylor’s rejection of her.

Produced at the age of 18 by Lawrence D. Foldes, who claims to be Hollywood’s youngest producer—and he may well be—Malibu High is often awkward and crude yet is too oddly compelling to be dismissed as the trash it would seem so clearly to be. The girl’s story may be utterly improbable but her corruption is persuasive; in this, she’s not so unlike Louise Brooks’ Lulu in Pandora’s Box. Malibu High is a seedy, sleazy little gem best appreciated by cineastes.”

When I read his review of Malibu High I ran out and saw it that very night. And he was entirely correct. As cruddy as this little tawdry flick was, it had an undeniable power. And the lead actress, Jill Lansing (who never appeared in anything else again), proceeded to get better and better as the film unspooled, till by the final reel, when she’s standing naked, towering over the body of one of her victims, she delivers a disreputable tour de force on par with Georgina Spelvin in The Devil in Miss Jones.

One review Kevin Thomas wrote in 1980, that I read when I was eighteen years old, was to have a significant impact on my film work seventeen years later. It was a review for the Lewis Teague–directed, John Sayles–scripted Jaws rip-off, Alligator.

At the time, Sayles had just made his directorial debut with the minuscule-budgeted independent film The Return of the Secaucus Seven. Which, as opposed to the films he was paid to write, was not a genre film. In fact, it’s the story of a reunion of some sixties former college student radicals, predating Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. In his review of the giant alligator movie, which he referred to as “well made and lots of fun,” Kevin focused on the two lead performances of Robert Forster and Robin Riker, who, he wrote, “are delightful and relaxed under Teague’s direction.” But then he wrote the line that was to stay in my mind all those years later.

“There’s an easy going naturalness to Forster and Riker that makes them seem like one of the couples in Return of the Secaucus Seven.”

Now that people barely remember The Return of the Secaucus Seven, that might not read as such a big deal, but then Secaucus Seven was the critical darling of the year. And to imply the genre characters in a Jaws rip-off about a giant alligator contained the same verisimilitude as the independent hit of the season was a bold proclamation.

I saw Alligator three times that year (one of those times was on a triple feature with Rolling Thunder and a Canadian trucker flick called High-Ballin’ with Peter Fonda and Jerry Reed), and I agreed wholeheartedly with Kevin Thomas about the charm of Forster and Riker. So much so, when I did my top ten movies at the end of the year, and wrote my little awards (best actress, best actor, best director) it was Robert Forster who was my choice for best male performance of that year (Robert De Niro for Raging Bull was number two).

Fifteen years later, I was writing my adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch (which I retitled Jackie Brown), and I had to consider who was to play the novel’s likable lead male character, bail bondsman Max Cherry. I had a few choices. Gene Hackman was an obvious choice, as was Paul Newman. I also considered John Saxon. But there was something about Forster in Alligator that really stuck with me. I watched the movie again and felt that the character from Alligator could be Max Cherry, just fifteen years earlier. So I started writing the script as if he was, right down to the discussion with Jackie about his thinning hair. Would I have done that without Kevin Thomas’ highlighting Forster so positively in his review?

No.

In the end, what made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of seventies and eighties film criticism, he seemed like one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently, their life. I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend.

In 1994 I won an award for Pulp Fiction from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. When I stepped up to the podium and looked out before the audience of L.A. critics, my first remarks to the room were: “Gee, thanks, now I finally know what Kevin Thomas looks like.”