Cinema: Homemade Bomb

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The Happening. "Is it real, is it fake?" yammer the Supremes over the picture's titles. "Is this game of life a mistake?" Indeed it is, at least in this film. Three fun-burned Miami boys and a girl in search of the beach goddess, Kicks, decide to kidnap a wealthy racketeer (Anthony Quinn). As it happens, Quinn is unredeemable. Desperate phone calls reveal that his wife and partner are cuckolding him ("For $200,000 you can keep the son of a bitch," she snarls). His Mafia associates refuse to extend their black hand; even his mother would rather help him with warm advice than cold cash.

Quinn plans a counterattack. Conning the kids, he becomes the head rodent of the rat pack. From a hideout in a swamp, he sends them out with numerous blackmail messages threatening to expose the gangland's deepest secrets, his wife's extramarital capers, his partners' tampered tax returns. By hook and crook, he manages to mulct $3,000,000 in hush money. In a shabby shack, the kids rejoice around the suitcase full of loot; but while they grow frenetic, Quinn turns splenetic. Money, he decides in a jolting flash of insight, isn't everything, and in the end he sets the cash on fire. The kids—like the viewer —wind up with nothing.

With luck, The Happening might have happened to be a passable picture. But Director Elliot Silverstein, forgetting everything he learned on Cat Ballou, makes his players move with galvanic gestures and broad grimaces that would be too gross for a marionette show. Moreover, the script's idea of wit consists of having George Maharis, as one of the bums, end most of his sentences in the same way: "Bam! Et cetera." "We're all in this together. Et cetera."

The Happening bears all the errmarks of the amateur effort. Yet the man responsible is Sam Spiegel, producer of such impressive hits as Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai —both overseas productions. The Happening is a homemade bomb. Next time, Spiegel should reapply for foreign aid. Et cetera.