Movies
Even in This Terrible Chuck Norris Action Film from the late 1970s, Beauty Can Exist
by Tag W.R. Hartman-Simkins
Good Guys Wear Black is the 1977 Chuck Norris CIA action thriller which finds a young mustachioed Norris as the retired commando leader of an elite squadron of assassins known inventively as the “Black Tigers.” Norris just wants to get on with his post-Vietnam life of souped-up race cars, foxy blonde girlfriends and teaching college students the dark truth about how Vietnam disobeyed “all rules of logic.” Then the remaining members of the Black Tigers start turning up dead, alerting Norris to a conspiracy plotted against him (probably because he’s present for most of their deaths).
Or so it goes to that tune. I managed to blank out on this one after about an hour, having put it on because I was in the mood to rewatch Body Heat, the steamy 1981 potboiler kinda-adaptation of Double Indemnity starring the salacious pairing of John Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Body Heat is a lurid wet dream of south Floridian heat waves, mustaches, short shorts, ice cube rubdowns and chairs being thrown through windows in the pursuit of base sexual pleasures.
Good Guys Wear Black is no such pleasure, and that’s probably because it’s an action flick intended for duuudes and mostly because Norris has absolutely no sexual charisma. It is, on most levels, a very mundane example of late-1970s action hero filmmaking, the kind of rote genre exercise that would excite the young minds of Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney, who later cast Anne Archer as the mother of Dennis and Dee Reynolds in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It also features a skiier being shot in the chest mid-jump, which is its highest point.
Regardless of your opinion on the film, however, if you are a fan of the 1970s, there are moments of exquisite decor and fashion choices throughout its 96-minute runtime that are worth cataloging.
And here they are, presented in the form of 11 images pulled from the film, along with some commentary:
Director Ted Post was going for some weighty symbolism in this shot by framing the three men between the kitschy ceramic busts of cartoon Lincoln and JFK staring us down in judgement (?). Get a load of the dark German gothic setting going on, though: the dark wood, the stained glass windows, the unorthodox decision to include what appears to be a dracaena in the corner. I’m sure those tchochke ceramic busts mean something vital to our understanding of the film’s themes here, but man are they weighed down by the era they spring from.
This was the shot that made me think, “huh, I like what’s going on here.” You get those modern flourishes of the 1970s lost in the mix of otherwise hideous ugliness — the textured fabric on the sofa armrest, the avocado green stove, those chartreuse folded drapes that run along the entire window, and whatever the hell that crazy wooden wall ornament is hanging behind Norris in the kitchen. There’s a fireplace you can’t see, which of course there’s a fireplace, because the 1970s.
The 1970s are, at times, a mess of patterns (see the next image), and there’s a moment in this bedroom where Norris is sitting in front of that wallpaper with a patterned robe on. That wallpaper is reminiscent of that which hangs in the kitchen of Betty Draper in Mad Men, albeit the steroidal, amped up post-Vietnam version. One can only imagine waking up to it, cocooned in chartreuse and chocolate plaid.
Yikes. From left to right we’re getting: 1.) The asterisk pattern of concrete structure outside the the window, 2.) the vertically stripped burst of Norris’ chic turtleneck, 3.) the brown-and-white floral pattern of the nested drapes, 4.) the dangle silver epaulettes on the concierge’s navy blue uniform, 4.) the repetition of the surveillance camera tv screens, 5.) the red and blue floral arrangement, and 6.) the brown and white hatch-patterned field of wallpaper leading us out of frame.
The 1970s are frequently presented in a limited palette of earthy reds and browns, oranges, off-whites and amber yellows, avocado greens and dark chocolates, etc. The decade almost always looks subdued, but there seem to be moments — skiing, for example — when brilliant, saturated color is allowed. These are the kind of winter jackets I go trolling for on Etsy and eBay — the red fitted jacket with the thin blue and yellow strip across the chest, or its near-opposite in the right third of the frame, standing next to the girl with the blue and green Han Solo tights.
Something about this scene struck me as a, “Golly gee, the 70s have given us so much!” moment. It takes place in the renovated husk of a 1960 Winter Olympics stadium in the Rockies. Here you get some very modern color-blocking, even for the pattern-obsessed 70s. It’s a gorgeous shot, and part of me also wonders if USSR hats were even a thing in the late ‘70s, because that doesn’t seem possible, and yet there it is. Certainly when Target was putting out USSR track jackets in the early ’00s, there were some very unhappy parents.
The first of two images involving the Colorado cabin in which both Norris and Archer stay before she is tragically blown up on an airplane during takeoff. If there’s one thing I think the 1970s got right, it’s the mood lighting, and it’s abundant here. They’re difficult to see, but the room is decorated with two of those super-large cardboard mass-printed paintings featuring horses and the wild west that were produced in the 50s and 60s. With the colors subdued, you can see where the 70s did run into some trouble, though — garish accents. That lamp and that table. Yeesh.
I really, really, really want this shower curtain. Who doesn’t want this shower curtain?
Again with the brilliant, saturated colors — I think of a line from a Protomartyr song, off their 2014 record Under Color of Official Right: “Adults dressed as children, throw them from the cliff!” Or something along those lines. People my age sometimes receive criticism for dressing as though they were still 10, but then I see examples such as this, on 37-year-old men, and I think that everything is going to be just fine. Also, the dude in the yellow was shot in the chest mid-bunny hill wearing that outfit. He died looking like a bottle of Pennzoil.
Here we are again, back in the hotel room, but this time it’s to explore that rusty brown floral wallpaper, which seems like more of a regional touch within the decade than something entirely indicative of the era itself. The headboard and the lamp both seem like inclusions from the 1950s. What is up with the light switch on the wall next to the bed, though?
Our final still takes place inside the back of a van, but you wouldn’t have guessed it with the wood paneling, the desk with alternative white and cream drawers, the canvas director chairs, or that bizarre tuft of brown and tan carpet that lines the entire edge of the ceiling. This is some criminal dec-a-dence. If there’s one lesson to learn from the 1970s, it’s that we do not have to forgo comfort and luxury even while we spy on former CIA commandos.
