Rivals | Through the Shattered Lens

Christine (Joan Hackett) is a young single mother and widow who lives in New York City. She has a son, Jamie (Scott Colomby, playing a ten year-old even though he’s obviously a teenager). Jamie is an aspiring director who make a film of his classmates running around the playground while wearing Richard Nixon masks. Jamie, who is described as having a genius IQ, is also unhealthily obsessed with his mother, which the film, via flashback, links to her taking a shower in front of him while he was still potty training.

Jamie is not happy when Christine meets Peter (Robert Klein), a loudmouth who gives tours of the city to New York residents only. If you’re from out-of-town, don’t even try to get in Peter’s microbus. Peter and Christine start to date and then, eventually, they get married. Despite the fact that his older babysitter wants to have an affair with him, Jamie remains obsessed with his mother and refuses to accept Peter as his stepfather. Peter knows that Jamie doesn’t like him and eventually gives up on trying to win him over. What Peter doesn’t know is that Jamie has come up with an elaborate scheme to murder him.

Rivals is the type of strange and messy film that could only have been made in 1972. I guess it would be considered to be a mix of a horror movie and a psychological thriller but the tone of Rivals is all over the place so it’s hard to know what the film is trying to say about Jamie or his mother. Throughout the film, there are sudden montages that seem to have little to do with the plot. For instance, the film comes to a halt so we can spend several minutes watching as Peter attempts to harangue people into getting in his bus. Peter is supposed to be likable but he comes across as being so obnoxious that it is easy to see why Jamie would not want him for a stepfather. As for Jamie, he’s supposed to be ten but looks like he should be starting middle school so his obsession with sex is never as shocking as it should be. The ludicrous subplot about his babysitter goes nowhere and just seems to disappear. The one bright spot in the film is Joan Hackett as Christine. Hackett does the best she can with her inconsistent role and she’s the one person in Rivals who you will actually care about.

Rivals is a mess, perhaps worth seeing only for the location footage of New York in the early 70s. Otherwise, this is a forgotten film that does not need to be remembered.

So, last night, I was feeling a bit down for a number of reasons so my BFF Evelyn came over and we had a little slumber party of sorts in my living room. And before everyone does a double take and accuses me of trying to be all like Paris Hilton, let me just explain that when we refer to each other as being “BFFs,” we’re not just being sincere but we’re being postmodernly satiric. It’s kind of the same principle behind why me and my sister Erin tends to casually toss around the word “bitch” whenever we’re having a conversation. Of course, “BFF” doesn’t inspire quite the same reaction from the older folks at the family reunion as “bitch” does but that’s a whole other story.

Anyway, as I informed everyone earlier on twitter, Evelyn and I did all the usual things that you do at a slumber party. We stripped down to our underwear, watched horror movies, ate food that we shouldn’t have eaten, had a violent pillow fight, and swore that we would never reveal the divine secrets of the ya ya sisterhood. I also recruited her to look through all the possible picks for the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers and help me narrow them down to just 6 trailers.

This, she helped me down without (too much) complaint. Though it may not always be apparent, deciding which 6 trailers to feature each week is actually a pretty long and thorough process and it’s one that can be very tedious if you’re not a fan of these movies. I think a lot of people would have said, “Who cares? Just toss up 6 random trailers and be done with it.” Not Evelyn. Even as I forced her to watch some really odd and kinda disturbing trailers, she stuck with it until we had this week’s 6 trailers. She even put up with me explaining to her why a certain trailer was more grindhouse than another. And that is one of the many reasons why I love Evelyn and why she’ll always be my BFF.

And here’s the 6 trailers that she helped me pick for this week…

1) Stigma (1972)

Okay, Evelyn and me both literally fell in love with this trailer from the minute we heard that narrator say “The curse that begins with a kiss.” Needless to say, we both jumped to a conclusion as to what that curse was and let’s just say it wasn’t syphilis. But anyway, this appears to be some sort of cross between an old educational short and a blaxploitation film. I haven’t seen this film yet and hadn’t even heard of it until I came across the trailer but now, it has become one of my obsessions. I must see Stigma. I must find out about the curse that begins with a kiss…

2) The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart (1970)

Wow, isn’t that just the most annoying title ever? It just screams “FILM SCHOOL GRADUATE!” at the top of its trust funded lungs. Still, this trailer does have one line that made me laugh out loud and that line was: “Where am I going?” Otherwise, this trailer is also memorable for the horrid “gingerbread” song that plays over the first few clips . Evelyn claims that the song is now stuck in her head, which is pretty bad since the entire song is basically “something something gingerbread something something gingerbread…” Evelyn thinks that Stanley (played by Don Johnson of A Boy and His Dog and The Harrad Experiment) looks hot in this trailer. I think he’s a little bit too much of a pretty boy. Neither one of us can believe that he later grew up to be the redneck in Machete.

3) Death Journey (1976)

Fred Williamson is …. Jesse Crowder! Despite our different feelings concerning the appeal of Stanley Sweetheart, both Evelyn and I agreed that Jesse Crowder would kick his scrawny little ass. That said, I objected to the “I’m going to bruise you up a little” line towards the end of the trailer but Evelyn defended it, making the argument that Crowder would have bruised up a man with a knife as well.

4) Rivals (1972)

“It could have been … a love story.” Much like Stigma, this is a case of us just falling in love with a overdramatic tag line. Apparently, the film itself appears to be a grindhouse version of Cyrus.

5) Zachariah (1971)

We had to include Zachariah because, as the trailer explains, this was the world’s first electric western. Add to that, Don Johnson looks a bit less fancy here than he did as Stanley Sweetheart.

6) Get Carter (1971)

We saved the best for last. Now, I know that the original Get Carter is such a classic (especially when compared to the Stallone version) that you might wonder if it really belongs here. Well, trust me, it does. Get Carter is pure grindhouse art and this trailer proves it. Plus, both me and Evelyn were surprised and delighted to discover that once upon a time, Michael Caine was quite the sexy beast. When, at the end of the trailer, we were told to “Get Carter before he gets you,” we both responded with, “Carter can have us.”