EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

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Stanley Kramer called his movies heavy dramas but they’re what are often called message films. A liberal, he brought issues to the public eye through his movies like the dangers of nuclear war (On the Beach), fascism (Judgement at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools), creationism against evolutionism (Inherit the Wind), greed (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) and racism (The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner).

While Pauline Kael saw his movies as “melodramas,” and “irritatingly self-righteous,” she also had to realize that they had “redeeming social importance.”

But in 1970, maybe he was past his expiration date.

Did he feel like Professor F.W.J. “Paco” Perez (Anthony Quinn) does in this movie? For years, Paco has been the radical, the one that stood outside the mainstream. He says at one point that he fought Franco and McCarthy and has learned so much, but the young people don’t want to learn anything. Did Kramer feel that way, an old man in the New Hollywood that was so much more in touch with the youth?

Is Paco just a fifty-year-old fanny chaser, as out of touch with the time as the administration he’s been asked to be a part of?

Radical student activists — Paco is impressed that the blacks and whites have worked together — occupy the administration building with a list of 12 demands. President Tyler (John Zaremba, who spent the 70s and 80s wandering the Earth searching for the best beans for Hills Brothers Cofee) resigns and the Board of Trustees looks at the list that the students have written up of the presidents they would be happy with.

Top on the list? Paco.

It’s after midnight and he’s asleep with his grad student girlfriend Rhoda (Ann-Margret). Yet he’s urged to rush out and fix things. The next day, he starts his new job, showing up on a motorcycle.

Paco reads their demands and many of them, like inner-city scholarships, a college reinvestment program, no military research on campus and adding an African American to the all-white Board of Trustees make sense. But the idea that students can hire and fire faculty doesn’t work for him. He’s already reached the first time where his theory and reality begin to not work together.

With Rossiter (Gary Lockwood) and Steve Dempsey (Paul Dempsey) leading the students, Paco tries to be the person between them and the Board of Trustees. But when Rossiter says that he will destroy all of the campus’ computers, Paco has to make the tough decision to call in the police. They come charging in with tear gas, turning their hero professor into just one of the old people never to be trusted. When the cops round up the students, Rhoda is one of them.

What they don’t know is that Paco has signed off on their bail. Yet he still walks past the crowd and is screamed and booed at. He has learned the hard way that the lessons of books and classrooms often mean little in the real world.

I really liked the songs by Melaine, “We Don’t Know Where We’re Goin’” and “Stop! I Don’t Wanna Hear It Any More,” that were in this. It’s quite preachy, but it also feels like this movie was Kramer attempting to determine where he fit in any longer. Then again, Kramer would say that this was his least favorite film that made the lowest amount of money. The dialogue may get silly sometimes, but that’s because it’s written by Erich Segal, who also did Love Story.

After this movie, however, I understand why my dad and other older male relatives would say Ann-Margaret’s name with the reverence they otherwise reserved for the saints.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

When this movie was first released, at the dawn of what would be porn chic, Andy Warhol and Vincent Canby both spoke highly of it. Today, it wouldn’t seem so incendiary. In 1970, it was mind blowing.

An adult movie is watched by a wealthy couple played by Frank Wolff (The Great Silence) and Erika Remberg (Cave of the Living Dead) and their son (Paolo Turco, What Have They Done With Your Daughters?). That night, at a carnival, they meet a woman who they think is the actress — it’s actually Annie Carol Edel (Crazy Desires of a Murderer) — they’ve just watched. She’s played by Silvana Venturelli and she soon seduces the entire family, forcing them to admit their desires and secrets.

Shot Italian style — a plan to use live sound didn’t work out — and with a score by Stelvio Cipriani, this all becomes an exercise in style, like the scene in a library where words are zoomed into and books are thrown. I also am amazed that the girl who may or may not be the actress is willing to spend any time with the son, who seems devoted to magic tricks and telling people his strange myth-based dreams, much less making love to him in a field outside the castle he lives in.

Director Radley Metzger, who wrote the script with Michael DeForrest, this movie just hints at how far things would be taken in the future. As it is, in Pittsburgh, it played at The Guild, a theater in Squirrel Hill that became Gullifty’s, another place that is gone.

Also known as Space Amoeba and Gezora, Ganime, Kamēba: Kessen! Nankai no Daikaijū (Gezora, Ganimes, and Kamoebas: Decisive Battle! Giant Monsters of the South Seas), this Toho movie is all about aliens that come to Earth and create gigantic monsters from a kisslip cuttlefish, stone crab and mata mata. It’s like the best sushi menu ever except it wants to eat you.

The Helios 7 space probe has an incident near Jupiter — alert Pittsburgh news stations, Hell is full — and comes crashing back down here, bringing the space amoeba with it. It first creates a creature called Gezora, which is the cuttlefish. The humans have a bunch of weapons left over from World War II and set it on fire, killing it.

The stone crab, which is called Ganimes, is next and the humans defeat it as if it were the Tall Man or the Car. They lure it into a pit and blow it up.

The amoeba gets smart and makes two monsters at once, another Ganimes and a mata mata named Kamoebas. Humans grab some bats — a lot of bats — and the space amoeba loses control over the monsters, who start to fight one another. Then a volcano is made live and everything alien dies, all at once.

Never doubt the humans capacity for killing, whether you are a kaiju, space amoeba or some other monstrous being.

Directed by Ishiro Honda, this was written by Ei Ogawa who intended for it to be called Great Monster Assault and have entire continents be destroyed by alien monsters.

This was also the last science fiction film made under Toho’s studio system, which established a subsidiary called Toho Eizo to specialize in tokusatsu films. Most of the actors were released from their contracts, Eiji Tsuburaya’s — who died days before filming started — special effects department was closed and even Honda’s contract ended.