By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Richard T. Heffron, who helmed Trackdown, Outlaw Blues and Futureworld.
Late director Richard T. Heffron shares much in common with many of the under-celebrated, near-unknown filmmakers who have featured in the Unsung Auteurs column. Like neglected helmers and fellow Unsung Auteurs such as Paul Wendkos, Lamont Johnson, Robert Butler, Jerrold Freeman and many more, Richard T. Heffron worked principally in television, but also had a small clutch of very interesting and highly enjoyable feature films to his credit. Also like those filmmakers, Heffron was incredibly versatile in his small screen work, but when it came to his feature filmmaking, he certainly had a sense of thematic and stylistic run-through.
In the case of Heffron, it was a bent for straightforward stories with a strong sense of pacing and action. He could wedge in just about the right amount of characterisation to hook the viewer and make them care, and then delight them with well-crafted and ingenious scenes of action. Though most would likely tar Richard T. Heffron with the much-maligned brush of being a “journeyman”, we believe that (a) there’s a quiet dignity about that kind of director anyway, and (b) there’s a quality that binds Heffron’s work together.
Born in 1930 in Chicago, Richard T. Heffron (the T appears and disappears at different points through his career for reasons unknown) began his career as the screenwriter and associate producer of 1959’s The St. Louis Bank Robbery, a tight, taut little crime B-film now notable principally for the presence of future superstar Steve McQueen. Heffron then re-emerged in 1971 to direct the telemovie Do You Take This Stranger? before stepping sideways for 1972’s Fillmore, a dynamic concert film capturing the final five nights of shows leading up to the closing of the legendary Fillmore West on July 4, 1971. As well as featuring blazing performances from acts like Santana, The Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, Elvin Bishop Group and New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Fillmore is also a fitting tribute to iconoclastic concert promotor and venue boss Bill Graham, a famed and suitably polarising figure in the American music industry.
Though the high quality of this concert film may have suggested a move into similar 1970s rock territory, Richard T. Heffron instead slid very comfortably into the world of television, directing both episodic TV (including Banacek with George Peppard, and the mighty Rockford Files) and extremely strong telemovies like 1973’s Outrage (in which Robert Culp goes all urban vigilante), and 1974’s The Morning After (a searing look at the sad, bleary tragedy of alcoholism starring Dick Van Dyke) and The California Kid (a tidy slab of vehicular carnage pitting Martin Sheen’s hot-rodder against Vic Morrow’s corrupt, sadistic smalltown sheriff).
Obviously a very busy guy, Heffron also made his big screen debut in 1974 with Newman’s Law, a tough cop thriller toplined by Banacek’s George Peppard. Very much in the Dirty Harry mould, this forgotten flick features Peppard’s floppy-haired but hard-hitting police detective Vince Newman hammering down on both crims and his fellow cops, most of whom are corrupt and involved in all manner of malfeasance. Fast paced and tightly jammed with impressively hard-charging action sequences, Newman’s Law is also something of a template-setter for Heffron in that it features bristling action while never devolving into outright brutality or nastiness, like so many of the crime flicks of the 1970s were guilty of doing.
After more quality telemovies (1975’s elegiac western I Will Fight No More Forever, which told sensitively of Native American Chief Joseph and his tribe The Nez Perce; 1975’s chilling Streetkill, which charted the notorious and sickening case of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered while her neighbours failed to raise the alarm), Heffron returned to the big screen with 1976’s excellent thriller Trackdown. Treading similarly seamy territory to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (but without the cerebral intellectualism), this compelling B-grader stars Jim Mitchum as a cowboy rancher who hits grungy, immoral LA when his innocent little sister (Karen Lamm) is cruelly drawn into a web of prostitution. Mitchum is helped in his heroic quest by a Hispanic gang member (yes, Erik Estrada) and a tough social worker (yes, Cathy Lee Crosby), with all three endangered when they take the fight to a nasty crime boss (Vince Cannon).
Though the acting is a little ropey (Estrada is wholly loveable in his compromised good guy role, but he’s undeniably theatrical) and the narrative frequently strains credulity, Trackdown is an incredibly enjoyable and undeservedly forgotten flick. Big Jim Mitchum is a little wooden in the lead, but he’s so much like his famous father that it’s almost like actually watching Robert Mitchum in a seedy 1970s actioner…and that ain’t no bad thing! It’s great fun watching Mitchum’s tough but gentlemanly cowboy beat the shit out of LA lowlife types who have it coming, and Heffron also stages a great climax in a high-rise elevator shaft that highlights the director’s skill with action. Heffron also sensitively and sensibly refuses to wallow in the film’s potential nastiness, always cutting away before things get too insufferably unpleasant. Trackdown is a rock-solid B-film of the very first order, and stands tall as Heffron’s best work.
The busy director followed it up immediately with 1976’s Futureworld, the largely forgotten sequel to Michael Crichton’s 1973 sci-fi classic Westworld. No mere retread of the original, this unusual follow-up features Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner as reporters who uncover an elaborate conspiracy that exists behind the slick façade of Delos, the company responsible for a collection of robot-populated adult theme parks. Bearing little connection to the original film (except for Yul Brynner’s rather bizarre appearance in a dream sequence as his memorably malevolent robot Gunslinger), Futureworld is a wonderfully odd curio that trades in a swathe of wacky sci-fi tropes including cloning, robot-human relations, and political intrigue. It’s filled with freaky visuals, and though a failure upon its release, Futureworld has much to recommend it, especially its bravery in taking its existing IP into refreshingly different territory.
Heffron reunited with Peter Fonda on 1977’s Outlaw Blues (written by Unsung Auteur Bill Norton), a highly entertaining romp about an aspiring country singer and convict (Fonda) who has one of his songs stolen by a narcissistic music star (James T. Callahan) while performing a concert in prison. When Fonda’s nice guy Bobby Ogden gets out, he fronts the music superstar about his cruel act of song theft, which sets in motion a loopy tale of revenge featuring high-speed chases, fights, shoot-outs and lots of excellent country music. The very sexy Susan Saint James is excellent as Bobby’s sassy love interest, and the duo enjoy a lot of oddball banter. Filled with curiously strange dialogue and engagingly peculiar characters, Outlaw Blues is another fun fast-mover from Richard T. Heffron.
Spending most of his time on the small screen, Heffron directed more strong telefilms (1978’s See How She Runs, starring Joanne Woodward as a plucky divorcee who changes her life when she enters The Boston Marathon; 1978’s True Grit: A Further Adventure starring the great Warren Oates as author Charles Portis’ classic western character Rooster Cogburn; 1980’s epic Vietnam mini-series Rumor Of War), and then went sideways again with 1980’s enjoyable Foolin’ Around, a superior teen flick which eschews T&A in favour of proto-John Hughes class examination as Gary Busey’s working class kid falls for Annette O’Toole’s upper crust gal. With a fresh, funny script, engaging performances (Busey was once a fine actor, and the lovely and talented Annette O’Toole deserved to be a much, much bigger star, while vets like Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman and Eddie Albert all do solid work), and a rich theme, Heffron does a great job with this little gem, which remains just as sadly forgotten as his other films.
Unfortunately, Heffron’s only other film would be 1982’s I, The Jury, an adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s novel written by cult hero Larry Cohen (Q The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To), who was heartlessly fired from his pet project by the film’s financial backers. While Heffron did a typically professional job in bringing it altogether and finishing the film, this oddball crime actioner is so unmistakably the work of the wonderfully idiosyncratic Larry Cohen that it’s difficult to give the late-call director too much credit (or blame) for this messy, loopy, bombastic effort starring a miscast Armand Assante as tough guy private eye Mike Hammer, who becomes embroiled with Barbara Carrera’s sinister sex therapist and her very weird clinic.
Though Richard T. Heffron would not direct again for the big screen before his sad passing in 2007 at the age of 76, he did helm many more top-tier telemovies, with highlights including 1983’s crime drama A Killer In The Family (in which Robert Mitchum’s hardened convict persuades his teenage sons James Spader, Eric Stoltz and Lance Kerwin to bust him out of prison…and yes, it’s just as good as it sounds!), 1985’s epic Civil War drama North & South (an absolute belter starring everyone from Patrick Swayze and Kirstie Alley to David Carradine and Johnny Cash), 1986’s Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story (starring an impassioned Martin Sheen as the titular homeless advocate), and 1988’s Pancho Barnes (featuring Valerie Bertinelli as aviator Florence Pancho Barnes). Our metaphorical hat is well and truly tipped to the late Richard T. Heffron, who deserves to be spoken of with much greater fondness than he is today…
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
