Ron Thompson | Through the Shattered Lens

whitebuffalo1977 The year is 1874 and James Otis (Charles Bronson) is traveling through the Dakota Territory. Everywhere that James Otis goes, someone tries to shoot him. This is because James Otis is actually the infamous Wild Bill Hickcock and everyone this side of Deadwood has a reason to want him dead. Hickcock has returned to the territory because he is losing his eyesight and he fears that he may be dying. Hickcock has been having nightmares about a giant albino buffalo and believes that it is his destiny to either kill it or be killed himself.

Meanwhile, a young indian chief (Will Sampson) is also seeking the White Buffalo. The buffalo previously attacked his village and killed his son. The chief must now get revenge or lose his power in the tribe. He is now known as Worm. Before the buffalo attack, his name was Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse eventually teams up with Hickcock and a one-eyed hunter named Charlie Zane (Jack Warden). They work out an uneasy alliance but who, of the three, will finally get the chance to kill the buffalo?

When Dino De Laurentiis produced The White Buffalo, he was hoping to combine the popularity of Jaws with the star power of Charles Bronson. It should have been a hit but instead, The White Buffalo was one of the many flops that temporarily killed the western as a commercial genre. (Before there was Heaven’s Gate, there was The White Buffalo.) The reason why is obvious: while audiences loved to watch Bronson shoot muggers in New York, they were less willing to sit through a pseudo-intellectual western version of Moby Dick that featured more conversation than gunplay. The obviously fake buffalo did not help matters.

I still like The White Buffalo, though. Because of the movie’s cheap sets, fake snow, and some inconsistent rear projection work, The White Buffalo is sometimes so surreal that it could pass for a Spaghetti Western. (When I saw Bronson, Sampson, and Warden huddled in a cardboard cave while it fake snowed outside, I immediately thought of Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence.) Charles Bronson, always an underrated actor, gave one of his best performances as the haunted Hickcock. The White Buffalo was, up until his small role in Sean Penn’s The Indian Runner, the last time that Bronson would allow himself to appear as anyone other than Charles Bronson on-screen.

When watching The White Buffalo, keep an eye out for several Hollywood veterans in minor roles. Kim Novak plays a prostitute. Stuart Whitman is a thief. Slim Pickens drives a stagecoach. Clint Walker’s an outlaw and Ed Lauter plays the younger brother of Gen. Custer. The town’s undertaker is John Carradine. The cameos don’t add up too much but it’s still good to see everyone.

American Pop Long before South Park, The Simpsons, and Pixar, there was Ralph Bakshi. At a time when animation was considered to only be good for children, Bakshi shocked audiences and critics with animated films that dealt with mature themes and were definitely meant for adults. His first two films, Fritz the Cat (1972) and Heavy Traffic (1973), was the also the first two animated films to receive an X-rating. Bakshi satirized racism in the controversial Coonskin (1975) and Bakshi’s adaptation of The Lord Of Rings (1978) beat Peter Jackson’s by 23 years. It was after the critical and commercial disappointment of the heavily flawed but interesting Lord of the Rings that Bakshi decided it was time to make a film that would be more personal to him. The end result was American Pop.

American Pop tells the story of four generations of a family of Jewish immigrants and how music affects their lives. In typical Bakshi fasion, this animated film deals with issues of violence, sexuality, drug abuse, and poverty. American Pop may be animated but it is definitely a film meant for adults.

In the 1890s, Zalmie (Jeffrey Lippa) and his mother escape from Russia after Zalmie’s father, a rabbi, is killed by the Cossacks. Zalmie grows up in New York and after his mother is killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he is raised by a vaudeville comedian named Louie (Jerry Holland). Zalmie wants to be a singer but is shot in the throat during World War I. His voice ruined, Zalmie marries a stripper named Bella (Lisa Jane Persky) and manages her career. His partnership with the mobster Nicky Palumbo (Ben Frommer) leads to Bella dying and Zalmie going to prison.

Zalmie’s son, Benny (Richard Singer), is a jazz pianist who, as a favor to his father, marries Nicky’s daughter. Benny has a son named Tony and tries to pursue his career without using his father’s influence. Then World War II breaks out.

Benny enlists in the army, seeking redemption from the crimes of his father and father-in-law. Serving in Europe, he misses his piano and, when he finds one in a bombed-out house in Nazi Germany, he plays a few bars of As Time Goes By. When a Nazi walks in on Benny, Benny plays Lili Marleen. For a few seconds, Benny and the Nazi share the common bond of music. “Danke,” the Nazi says before shooting Benny dead.

Growing up without his father, Tony (Ron Thompson) becomes a beatnik and eventually runs away from home. He ends up in Kansas, where he has a one-night stand with a waitress and becomes a songwriter for Frankie Hart (Marya Small), a stand in for Janis Joplin. Both Tony and Frankie start using heroin and Frankie dies of an overdose right before she is supposed to open for Jimi Hendrix. Abandoned by Frankie’s band, Tony ends up as an addict and dealer in New York. Accompanying him is his son, Pete, the result of his hookup with the waitress.

After being abandoned by his father, Pete (also played by Ron Thompson), follows in his footsteps and becomes a successful drug dealer. He is dealing cocaine to all of the big rock bands but, after discovering punk rock, he realizes that he wants something more out of his life.

After announcing that he will no longer sell anyone cocaine unless he is given a chance to record a demo, Pete is given a band and a recording studio. With the drug-craving record company execs watching, this tough and cocky punk grabs the microphone and sings…

…BOB SEGER’S NIGHT MOVES!?

The use of Night Moves, which is one of the least punk songs ever written, is one of the few false notes in American Pop. Otherwise, this is one of Ralph Bakshi’s best films. The majority of the film’s animation was done through rotoscoping, a technique in which animation is traced over live action footage. (For the gang war scenes, scenes from The Public Enemy were rotoscoped, as was footage of the Nicholas Brothers used in the Sing Sing Sing With A Swing montage.) Seen today, the technique is crude but effective at showing the contrast between the fantasy of music and the grim reality of life. Though it has its flaws (*cough* Night Moves *cough*), American Pop is an engaging look at the history and development of American music.

American_Pop