FORGOTTEN FILM: R.P.M. (1970)

Years ago, one of my local video stores (that no longer exists) had a video sale, selling off a lot of old tapes. Many of them were 99 cents, so I bought a few too many. In the decade or so since, there are still many that I have never gotten around to watching.

I finally watched one of them, bought without having seen. It was a film from 1970 called R.P.M. The fact that it was directed by Stanley Kramer and written by Erich Segal (LOVE STORY) didn’t scare me away as it should have. And, I hadn’t read the reviews before seeing it.

A group of students (led by Gary Lockwood of 2001 and Paul Winfield) take over a campus building. The college President resigns under protest, not wanting to deal with them. The students send out a list of demands of who should take over as President. On the list is sociology professor F.W.J. “Paco” Perez (Anthony Quinn). A radical (who dates grad students) the students think they can work with him. But Perez may just be in over his head.

This is a pretty terrible film. The first 80 minutes are extremely dated, with dialogue along the lines of “You’re one of them, man” or “Pig!! Pig!!”. Sure it was written in the 60's, but it felt like it was probably dated back then.

And then the editing, direction and camera angles are shockingly bad. The final ten minutes features cutting between extreme close ups of Quinn’s eyes, along with out of focus and slow motion shots. The effect doesn’t work at all, and has the feel of a bad student film.

Plus, it features one of the most unintentionally hilarious bits of editing I have seen.

There is a big crowd. The camera cuts between many different shots of people standing in the crowd. Every single person in the crowd is chewing gum!! It isn’t even a gum related scene, but they are all chewing gum. They then cut to a shot of a cop watching the crowd. He is even chewing gum!! Was 1970 a big year for gum chewing? In later crowd scenes, everyone is gumless, so it was just a very strange editing choice.

The one saving grace is Ann-Margret as Quinn’s girlfriend. Not that her performance is very good. She does one dialogue scene with food in her mouth so you can’t even understand what she is saying. But she looks beautiful throughout, and is frequently asked to wear skimpy clothing (or less). In the scene where she is eating, she is wearing a see through top so I’m sure everyone on the crew was distracted and didn't realize you couldn't understand what she was saying.

The RCA / Columbia video was dated 1985, so that must be the last time the film was issued in any format. I haven't seen it on TV. It hasn’t been issued on DVD.

Is it a loss? No. Other than to Ann-Margret fans, or Anthony Quinn and Stanley Kramer completists, there is really no reason to see this film.