Clifton James as Sheriff JW Pepper – ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’ (Guy Hamilton, 1974)
James Bond has had various love interests over the years, but it’s been much harder to develop a recurring ally for the character. In 1973’s Live and Let Die, Roger Moore’s James Bond is introduced to the Louisiana Sheriff JW Pepper, who helps him during his adventure in the Bayou.
Pepper was initially a fairly grating character, but his role was small enough that it didn’t ruin the film. However, EON decided to beef up his part in the next The Man With The Golden Gun, which otherwise was more serious with the lethal assassin Christopher Lee’s Francisco Scaramanga trying to kill 007.
Bond films tend to have a dry, witty sense of humour, but Pepper is a character who provides physical comedy and gross-out jokes, turning any moment into a slapstick comedy. Clifton James seemingly thought it was a good idea to be even more over the top the second time around, and it was to the detriment of the film.
Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy Earnshaw – ‘Wuthering Heights’ (Robert Fuest, 1970)
Wuthering Heights has been subjected to adaptations that are good, bad, and highly controversial, but none of them has been as dull and uninspired as the 1970 version directed by Robert Fuest.
While Timothy Dalton does have the stoic, stony gravitas needed to play Heathcliff, there’s little he can do when paired with Anna Calder-Marshall’s take on Cathy Earnshaw. This is a literary character known for her unbridled passion, venomous rage, and repressed sexuality, but Calder-Marshall depicts her as a soapy hero only defined by the tragedy that the story concludes with.
Even if the G-rated version was not going to go to the extremities seen in the Andrea Arnold and Emerald Fennell versions of the story, it still needed to be interesting as a romantic drama. Sadly, Calder-Marshall doesn’t even have a dose of chemistry with Dalton.
Marlon Brando as Lee Clayton – ‘The Missouri Breaks’ (Arthur Penn, 1976)
Marlon Brando had made his comeback in the early ‘70s when he won his second Oscar by appearing in the ‘Best Picture’ winner The Godfather, but he squandered those opportunities by returning to the schtick that had gotten him booted out of Hollywood in the first place.
The revisionist western The Missouri Breaks was intended to be the meeting of two generations, as it paired Brando off with Jack Nicholson, who had just won an Oscar of his own, but it soon became clear that the veteran didn’t want to take the role of Lee Clayton seriously at all.
He demanded scenes to be shot in the bathtub, and implored director Arthur Penn to include far more crude humour in an otherwise fairly downbeat and meditative film, which he clearly wanted to treat as irreverent.
Michael Jackson as Scarecrow – ‘The Wiz’ (Sidney Lumet, 1978)
Michael Jackson is a polarising figure who will always invite some sort of controversy, but there’s no doubt that his talents as a singer did not match his acting skills.
He was incapable of not being hammy and childlike; while this was effective for his music videos, it didn’t work when he was asked to play a real character on an arc. The Wiz is admittedly a flawed film that suffers from structural issues, but it does feature strong performances from the rest of the cast, especially Diana Ross as Dorothy.
Jackson didn’t seem to understand that the Scarecrow was a character who was humorous, as his performance is whiny, meek, and far too self-serious. The Wiz was supposed to be a slightly more serious take on The Wizard of Oz, but his performance was seemingly lifted from a children’s theatre production.
Richard Burton as Father Philip Lamont – ‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’ (John Boorman, 1977)
The Exorcist was not only a box office and cultural phenomenon, but a film that showed that the horror genre could be taken seriously, and Exorcist II: The Heretic is equally as unscary, such that it’s hilarious, and much of it has to do with Richard Burton’s portrayal of Father Phillip Lamont.
One of the reasons that the original was terrifying was that William Friedkin demanded a level of realism that was almost documentary-esque, but Burton seemed to be conjuring up a Shakespearean stage performance with his hammy portrayal of an investigative priest.
He had developed a reputation at this point for signing on to any project, regardless of quality, and it’s obvious in Lamont’s monologue deliveries that he has no idea what any of it actually means. It could be more different than the sensitive, mature performance turned in by Jason Miller as Father Karras in the first film.
James Mason as Col Eduard Seibert – ‘The Boys From Brazil’ (Franklin J Schaffner, 1978)
The Boys From Brazil is one of the strangest films of the ‘70s, as it’s a pretty goofy exploitation thriller that somehow managed to get A-list talent like Laurence Olivier, who earned an Academy Award nomination for playing a ruthless Nazi hunter, and Gregory Peck, who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the German war criminal Josef Mengele.
Peck and Olivier take the material seriously enough that it’s possible to buy into the premise, as absurd as it is, but James Mason just chews the scenery with his role as a Nazi colonel. If Peck was actually trying to play a real Nazi, then Mason’s performance seemed to be based on the type of villains that would have appeared in World War II B-movies.
Mason is obviously a great actor, but he’s never been good at doing accents, and his attempts to emulate Germans are completely laughable.
Stephen Collins as Willard Decker – ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ (Robert Wise, 1979)
Star Trek has never been a franchise celebrated for its ‘great acting’, but the cheesy, woody performance style of William Shatner has always been somewhat charming. The same could not be said of Stephen Collins, who joined the cast of Star Trek: The Motion Picture as William Decker, a young Starfleet officer who could become Kirk’s replacement.
Although the film tries to suggest that he has some of the same qualities that Kirk did when he was younger, Collins comes across as arrogant and self-serving, never showing the same dignity that Shatner brought to the role, and his storyline goes off the rails when he gets involved in a romance with Ilia (played by Persis Khambatta), where it’s clear that he does not have the same womanising qualities as Shatner either.
Unsurprisingly, Decker wasn’t a character who popped up again in any of the subsequent Star Trek films.
Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo – ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ (Ronald Neame, 1972)
It’s easy to forget that the disaster films of the ‘70s carried the same weight as contemporary superhero films, as they were massive events that gathered A-listers, so The Poseidon Adventure is memorable because of the terrific performance by Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott, who brings the passengers of a luxury liner to safety.
Ernest Borgnine was cast as Detective Lieutenant Mike Rogo, but the character becomes more of a burden than an effective law enforcement officer. It would have been interesting to see the conflict between a man of faith and someone on the side of the law, but Borgnine is never believable as a crime fighter, and doesn’t show the same commitment to physicality as Hackman did.
Although by the end of the film, there’s an attempt to turn Rogo into a sympathetic redemptive hero, Borgnine comes across as entitled and obnoxious, rendering the conclusion emotionally flat.
OJ Simpson as Commander John Walker – ‘Capricorn One’ (Peter Hyams, 1977)
It goes without saying that casting OJ Simpson was always going to age poorly, but it is understandable that there was a time when getting a popular athlete to co-star in a film seemed logical, and Simpson had displayed skill when giving comedic performances, as best shown in The Naked Gun films.
However, he can’t help but mug the camera, making him ill-suited for a dramatic role, so when he starred alongside Sam Waterston and James Brolin as astronauts who get caught up in a conspiracy, he stuck out like a sore thumb when asked to recite scientific dialogue.
There’s also no getting around the fact that Simpson can’t act defenceless, even if he tried; there are times in which Commander John Walker is supposed to look like he is in danger, but Simpson is too imposing to suggest that he would ever lose a fight.
Bea Arthur as Ackmena – ‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’ (Steve Binder, 1978)
Star Wars is a franchise filled with controversies and bad performances, but there’s no instalment in the series more embarrassing than The Star Wars Holiday Special, an anthology that aired only once on ABC in 1978. Audiences tuned in to see the characters from the original film, but the special ended up heavily featuring guest stars, including Bea Arthur in the role of Ackmena.
At no point does she ever feel like she is part of the Star Wars universe, as she plays the part of Ackmena like it was any other sitcom role. It’s most obvious when she is interacting with alien characters created using masks and makeup, as Arthur doesn’t even meet the eyeline of her co-stars.
A scene in the middle of the special where she performs a musical song in the Mos Eisley Cantina might be the single worst moment in the entire history of the galaxy far, far away.