Michael York, mack daddy; or, why I still love the '70s...

So I was out and about earlier today, hanging at my favorite street-date-violating DVD emporium, discussing the State of Things with a friend of mine whose generation is at least one prior to my own, and we were contemplating purchases.

"You think I should get the Blu-ray of Logan's Run?" So he asked.

I raised an eyebrow. Once or twice. "There's a Blu-ray of Logan's Run? Oh, yes, I see. Well I don't know if you should get it, but I sure as hell am gonna get it..."

"Well, the movie's not so good, is it?"

"The movie's hardly any damn good at all. Let's just say that I'm getting it for...sentimental value."

The thing about today's young people is that, God love 'em, they're never able to leave well enough alone. What's the sentimental value of the thing? How does that sentimental value subsume the fact that the movie's not terribly good? And so on. Yeesh.

Of course those among my readership who are around my age know what I'm talking about. I'm hoping they'll be nostalgically cosseted by a little reminder. Back in the '70s, the MPAA ratings board was quite a bit more lax than it is today. Which is to say that it staunched incidental female nudity to the extent of giving "GP" or "PG" ratings to certain films wherein said nudity was contained. While in these times, you so much as flash a nipple and you're good for an "R." This did not obtain back in the day. Necessarily. But because the ratings themselves weren't obliged to list a group of wherefores, we weren't privy to the reasons for any given rating. So surprises could abound.

So. Logan's Run. Whose so-half-assed vision of a dystopian future was such that its male leads were seen pretty much right off the bat patrolling what were, unmistakably, unretouched 1970's shopping malls. But which also features the incredibly gorgeous Jenny Agutter, whom us Jersey boys had failed to catch in Walkabout five years before, as the initially resistant love interest of Michael York's hero Logan. And she's walking around in translucent green gauze semi-togas much of the time. The fifteen-year-olds under-17-year-old-boys in the theater around July of 1976, of which I was one, just sat there going "Homina homina homina." Or, rather, "Agutta agutta agutta."

And then York's Logan began his titular run, taking Agutter's character with him. They go through a rainstorm, or a river, or some body of water...after which they come upon a cave. A conveniently frozen cave, with icicles and everything. And in the cave there are animal pelts that they can wear. Only they're already in these very wet futuristic, and in Agutter's case, gauzy clothes. And York's Logan, with an utterly straight face, delivers this line after appraising the pelts: "Let's take our clothes off first, before they freeze on us."

 

And Agutter, or, to be fair, I should say her character, Jessica 8, FALLS FOR IT, and strips down right there. 

Um, holy crap, we 15-year-olds (or so) thought back then. And, not to sound like a dirty old man or anything, but I'm still pretty impressed.

My Lovely Wife is impressed too, not so much with Agutter's split-second stripping, but with York's nonchalant delivery. "He really does make it sound like the freezing thing is his main concern, which of course is complete bullshit," she notes. "I didn't know Basil Exposition had it in him."

Thus, I sum up the sentimental value of Logan's Run, a thoroughly cheesy-looking picture whose cheesiness is, I have to say, almost too-convincingly punched up in Blu-ray.

Comments

[Aaron Aradillas]

From Blue Velvet to Logan's Run. So, that's how it is in that marriage.

Not to be all George W. Bush and get hung up on details, but wouldn't the summer of '78 make you 16-going-on-17?

No need to shave off a year, Glenn. You'll always be young @ heart.

[Tim Lucas]

Your Lovely Wife continues to be my Hero.

[S. Porath]

It strikes me as cruel to put these films out in Blu-ray, though this one I'll watch just for Goldsmith's score.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Aaron A: July of '76 it was, but yes, it still made me 16-going-on-17. FIxed.

[bill]

Yes, well, that's the movie, right there. That, and those cool guns, or rather, the guns we used to think were so cool, but now realize are just cigarette lighters.

I'm a bit younger than you, Glenn, but the MPAA allowed nudity into PG films well into the 80s, as well. Witness the wonderful Judi Bowker in CLASH OF THE TITANS. I believe her bath scene in that film instilled in me a certain particular fondness for a certain particular something that I carry with me to this day.

[Daniel L.]

PG movies with nudity were my raison d'etre in my early 80s childhood. CLASH OF THE TITANS, SHEENA, SPLASH. I was about to say that today's children are deprived, but then I remembered they have access to god-knows-what via the internets.

[Tony Dayoub]

Can't wait to see this again on Blu. One of my favorite guilty pleasures because of Agutter, Goldsmith's score, the Farrah Fawcett-MAJORS cameo, and the lead turn by the then ubiquitous Michael York (is there a seventies movie he didn't appear in?).

But the best thing about the film is Richard Jordan's perf as the villain.

[bill]

"is there a seventies movie he didn't appear in?"

CABARET. Oh wait, no...

[otherbill]

@ bill. God bless- Judi Bowker was the very first thing that popped into my head while reading this entry. I don't see how the pending remake can hope to succeed without Bowker, Meredith, and Harryhausen.

If memory serves, that LOGAN'S RUN line got reused in the immortal THE PERILS OF GWENDOLINE IN THE LAND OF YIK-YAK. Tawney Kitaen and the male lead are caught in a downpour in the jungle and he literally says something like "It's raining! Quick- take off your shirt!". I'm pulling this memory from high school but... well... it left an impression.

[Tom Russell]

I think the last movie that got away with nudity (and quite a bit of it, at that!) and got a less-than-an-R rating was TITANIC.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Tom: Yes, I always wondered about that. I imagine that Fox and/or Cameron made sure the ratings board members all got really nice Christmas baskets that year.

[Vadim]

I don't know why, but I've always found this kind of hypnotic. Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, and protein from the sea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKROeWxZHfg

[Tom Russell]

@Glenn: Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I always took that scene to be a reward for sitting through the rest of TITANIC. Kinda like the Al Pacino scene in GIGLI.

[Aaron Aradillas]

Did someone justcompare sittingthrough TITANIC to sitting through GIGLI? Surely you can't be serious?

[Tom Russell]

I'm not really a fan of TITANIC. I don't find it to be particularly gripping, well-acted, well-written, or otherwise intelligent. I have a taste for spectacle as well as sentiment, but TITANIC is not to my taste in either department. While we might differ about it, I don't think that difference should be surprising; surely, I'm not the first person you've come across to find TITANIC over-blown and gushy?

And-- as my habit of making comparisons seems destined to continue getting me in trouble-- I do hasten to add that I'm only comparing the place of Kate Winslet's breasts and Al Pacino's yelling in the structure of each film. Both provide oodles and oodles of aesthetic pleasure in their own right, but both are surrounded by films from which I don't derive aesthetic pleasure. By watching the rest of GIGLI, I earn the right to watch Late Period Al Pacino at his most Late Period Al Pacino-esque, and by sitting through TITANIC, I get to stare at naked Kate Winslet for several long minutes.

I think in both cases it's a more than fair trade-off.

[arkasas tech university]

what the line doesn't work for you guys?? I use it all the time... Kidding! This is a real funny post though.

[Cadavra]

I'll take GIGLI over TITANIC any time, if for no other reason than it's 1 1/4 hours shorter.

[James Rocchi]

Actually, I don't know if the Blu has it or not, but there was a DVD of Logan's Run with FULL COMMENTARY by Mr. York. Which is simultaneously heartening and delusional. Like when he says "You know, a year before Star Wars -- these weren't bad effects." And, of course, you think: Yes, they bloody were. Or during the above-rhapsodized scene, wherein all York can say as Ms. Agutter disrobes is "Oh, Jenny. ...."

And, if you were not of the Logan's-Run-in-Theaters-generation (I was, uh, 8), Ms. Agutter's work in American Werewolf in London did much the same thing. For several generations, Ms. Agutter's like a nude Zelig.

[Dylan P.]

Hands-down the best use of Michael York in a film is FEDORA.

I am only half kidding.

[Griff]

Regarding Jenny Agutter... Summer 1971: WALKABOUT. Rated GP, and praised by Parents Magazine! You guys have no idea.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Griff: Oh, I had an idea. Unfortunately I was twelve and the picture never played at a Theater Near Me.

@ Dylan P.: As an unapologetic "Fedora" fan, I'll laud your theory, without the qualification.

@ James Rocchi: The commentary's on the Blu ray. Full quote: "Oh Jenny! I had forgotten about this shot...[audible shrug]...well, there you go..."

[LondonLee]

Is there a film where Jenny Agutter DOESN'T get her kit off?

God love her.

[Nick]

Seeing as everyone is talking about their Walkabout experiences, I'll throw in this one. I saw Walkabout in high school. Literally, in my high school. The AV guy in my school was a major cineaste and he showed Walkabout in the school auditorium, during a free period or something, just drop in and watch. I saw On The Waterfront for the first time that way also. This was 1974 or 1975. All I remember about Jenny Agutter from the film is that she was brunette, although I recall liking the movie. One afternoon later in the term I surprised the AV guy by bumping into him at a showing of King Vidor's The Big Parade at the Detroit Institute of Art. Movies were pretty much my curriculum in high school.

[JF]

@ Griff: That's probably because some/all of the nudity was cut on Walkabout's initial release, or so I've gleaned.

Wouldn't a good alternate title for this post be Mind In Agutter?

[Dan Coyle]

I owned and treasured my copy of Club Dread. And it wasn't for the comedy stylings of Jay Chandrasekhar, I can telll you that much.

[Michael Adams]

Saw Walkabout in its initial release in Atlanta. Jenny went skinnydipping at end. Seeing Agutter or Winslet in anything (with the notable exception of The Holiday) is always a great pleasure, seeing them unclothed even better.

[jbryant]

Another 70s teen here, whose mind was all a-gutter. HBO was a big help, with its frequent screenings of EQUUS and CHINA 9 LIBERTY 37.

In my memory, LOGAN'S RUN is a two-hour loop of that ice cave scene, but surely there was more to it.

[hamletta]

I read this entry a couple of days ago, but coming back and seeing "Michael York, mack daddy," again flashed me back to 9th grade, '76/'77. We read Romeo & Juliet in English class, and our super-cool teacher got the movie theatre in the mini-mall nearby to screen Zeferelli's version.

I remember my friend Belinda gasping with lust every time Michael York appeared on screen.

I didn't get the fuss at the time, but years later, watching The Three Musketeers on TCM, I had just one word: dahayum!

[D Vertino]

Man... I was 11 seeing this in the theater (on a double-bill with 2001 at the dollar theater!), and boy, I can tell you, it's one of my favorite movie-going memories.