SHORT TAKES
THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS — (MGM): On the eve of this movie’s screening, CREEM’s guard dog turned on the publisher/trainer who was friendly feeding it milkbones. Twenty-seven stitches later... James Garner and Katherine Ross are involved with each other and a Doberman named Murphy.
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SHORT TAKES
THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS — (MGM): On the eve of this movie’s screening, CREEM’s guard dog turned on the publisher/trainer who was friendly feeding it milkbones. Twenty-seven stitches later... James Garner and Katherine Ross are involved with each other and a Doberman named Murphy. Garner, who plays “Able” Abel Marsh, the Eden Landing Chief of Police (a mixture of Philip Marlowe and Columbo) and Ross, a veterinarian’s assistant, are supposed to kill the dog, who’s the primary suspect in a woman’s death at the onset of the movie. Through a slow, humorous series of events the dog is released and the real murderer of the dead, pregnant lesbian is revealed. Masters is custom-made for TV. One of the openers, “Don’t be nervous Mr. Marsh, they only kill their masters,” must be CREEM’s assurance that their editor is safe. Neat.
THE MECHANIC - Slick, fast-paced, chock full of violence and great shots of fancy homes, and not much else. Charles Bronson is cool, suave, a neat and cautious murderer, but The Mechanic never really gets going. Sorry, you’ll just have to get by with the Valachi Papers.
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE -(20th Century Fox): A sinking ship flic that’s better than the usual lukewarm variety, but not as classic as Ship of Fools. Gene Hackman (as a renegade priest leader), Roddy McDowell, Carol Lynley, Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine serve as the few star survivors who take a tour through the guts of the boat and turn your guts inside out. The movie’s preview has some of the greatest shots, as the U.S.S. Poseidon overturns, like the aerial view of the guy falling off the table to his crashing doom into a stain-glassed lit ceiling. But it’s rather shallow; the heaviest it gets is the captain’s rap about Poseidon, the liner’s namesake, who is the Greek god of sea, storm and natural disasters. Otherwise, it’s an absorbing extravaganza.
SAVAGE MESSIAH - Ken Russell -(MGM): “Art is dirt!” said French sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Truth is conflict!” said Polish writer Sophie Brzeska-Gaudier. The movie is about them and their affair, a brother-sister relationship. It follows the couple through Henri’s development from a student drawing forgeries to the height of his shortened career with friend, Ezra Pound at “The Vortex” (a London avant-garde club in the early 1900’s). Kinda captivating but not enthralling, this artist version of Russell’s The Music Lovers has received much adverse criticism. But despite that and the movie’s limited appeal, this is a fine piece of dirt.
