The Cross and the Switchblade (1970)

Pat Boone! And Erik Estrada! They're (Christian) Fish & CHiPs!

The Cross and the Switchblade (1970)
Director:  Don Murray
Written by:  Don Murray and James Bonnet

Our movie begins with a twilight shot of the Williamsburg bridge and a voiceover from the producer, who tells us that if the story we’re about to see were the mere product of a writer’s imagination, we would be entitled to call bullshit. But we must believe that these events really happened, because if we’re watching this movie then chances are we’ve already agreed to spend the evening at a Baptist Youth Center, so we can probably be talked into just about anything.

We join a PF Flyers commercial already in progress. A young hoodlum runs his fastest and jumps his highest through Central Park, with The New Christy Minstrels in hot pursuit. But even with the patented Posture Fitness insole, the clean-cut, fresh-faced thug can’t evade his tormentors, and the Glee Club throws him down and surrounds him. Armed with switchblades, bike chains, and baseball bats, they proceed to administer the most listless beating in movie history; it looks less like a wilding and more like a pajama party pillow fight sponsored by Quaaludes. On the bright side, they’re the most racially diverse group of juvenile delinquents since Kid Power, including Al Pacino’s stand-in from Panic in Needle Park, that guy from the Dry Look ads, a Cowsill, Fareed Zakaria, and Jeb Bush. But since they can’t be bothered to actually hit the kid they’re supposedly beating to death, Officer Krupke steps in and arrests the entire cast for loitering.

In court, the judge, who gave up a guaranteed 5-and-under on a soap opera to do this stupid movie, grumpily admonishes counsel to hurry up and prosecute the New Christy Gangstas, because those slices of honeydew melon on the craft service table aren’t getting any fresher.

Suddenly, Pat Boone bursts into the room and says, “May I have a word with—” But before he can finish, the judge leaps to his feet and screams, “Get him out of here!” Which is, frankly, the only sensible reaction to seeing Pat Boone when you’re not ready for it. Two cops instantly seize him by the scruff of the neck and violently eject Pat from the court room. Okay, I’ve changed my mind: to hell with Midnight Cowboy. This is the Best Picture of 1970.

Out in the hall, the cops frisk Pat, demanding to know where “the weapon” is. But since they’re patting down his upper pants area, their time might be better spent searching Harry Reems (who plays “Uncredited Gang Member”), since Pat doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s…heavily armed. In fact, Pat holds up a Bible and insists, “This is my only weapon!” It turns out he’s a hep young street preacher from Nowheresville, Pennsylvania, who’s come to help the gang and get some hair care tips from the Dry Look guy, because his own tortured combover lacks body.

The cops tell Pat to get lost. He literally hangs his head to indicate sadness, then trudges off toward the elevator while the Mike Curb Congregation croons:

You’ve got to face the fact,
Oooo-oooo,
You’re just one guy.
But on the other hand the fact is,
You’ve got to try.

I don’t have a lot of experience with auditory hallucinations, but can’t help feeling that if you have to suffer from voices in your head—no matter how easy listening—they should be a lot less wishy-washy.

Cut to the next morning. Pat has covered the windows of his car with depressing headlines from the newspaper, and is asleep inside. Some 12-year old black kids noisily begin stealing his hubcaps and stripping the car for parts. Two of the kids pause for the following colloquy:

Thug: There’s a dude asleep in the back seat.
Girl Thug: I dig.
Thug: What if he wakes up?
Girl Thug: He look bad?
Thug: He don’t look too bad. But he don’t look too good either.

As urban contemporary patois goes, this doesn’t seem to drip with authenticity, but it’s the best description of Pat Boone I’ve ever heard. Anyway, Pat eventually notices that a racially integrated group of children are dismantling his car and steps outside so they can stab him. Instead, Girl Thug, who is wearing hand-me-downs from Huggy Bear and Mushmouth, commands him to “lay it on me.”

He attempts to shake hands, but the thugette demurs, and offers Pat his first lesson in Applied Badness. “Don’t wrestle with me, baby. Just lay it in the sky.” They slap palms, and the girl introduces herself as “Bo,” short for Little Bo Peep. Pat immediately pries into her religious affiliations, but Bo Peep rolls alone, and doesn’t worry about God, “just about the pigs, and hustling bread.” She does offer to hook him up with the Mau Mau gang, which involves acquainting Pat with what I can only assume is the World’s Least Successful Hooker, since she’s dressed like a Mennonite hausfrau.

Sister Wife makes the introductions, though, and inside the gang’s clubhouse, it’s one freaky scene, man. The Mau Maus (a Puerto Rican group) are waiting for a pow-wow with the Bishops, an association of African-American youths. Pat is trying to avoid toking on the plentiful Maryjane (”Smoke my peace pipe” commands a hippie who apparently wandered into the movie from a Dragnet episode) when suddenly the door bursts open and Linc from Mod Squad announces, “The Bishops are here!” in the voice of Dudley Do-right. (Look, actors make choices. Sometimes just as the drugs are kicking in…)

Linc and his warlord, dashiki spokesmodel Abdullah, have come to parlay with Israel, the Mau Mau’s leader, and his warlord, Erik Estrada (playing real life gangbanger-cum-evangelist Nicky Cruz). Erik is quite the bad dude, even if, like all the other Mau Maus, he gads about in a Tyrolean hat and a red pleather windbreaker. The two factions are cordially negotiating the terms of their upcoming rumble, when suddenly Pat jumps between them and shouts, “You guys talk about getting high. God’ll get you high. But he won’t let you down!”  Inexplicably, no one shoves a handmade shiv into his liver. But it’s implied that Pat’s rap was received cooly, because we cut to an exterior shot where he sulks around Spanish Harlem while Up With People sings about what a loser he is.

Eventually, Pat is adopted by Hector Gomez, pastor of the Mean Streets Storefront Congregation. This allows Pat to stop living in his car and taking whore’s baths at the bus station; it also means Pat has access to a telephone, which is convenient since his wife back in Pennsylvania is about to give birth. (”All right, honey, I’m gonna drive up to New York now and go irritate some hoodlums. Give me a ring when you’re crowning.”)

Finally the Mau Maus and the Bishops meet in the park to battle over which group is dressed more like the Partridge Family. But it’s sort of a Guitar Hero version of a street fight, since they’re just bouncing around and brandishing Wiffle bats, while the Ray Conniff Singers harmonize:

Na na na na na,
Naaaaaaaa,
We got a rumble,
Gettin’ it onnnnnn.

Pat is devastated. Not only did his inspirational message about the hallucinogenic effects of God fall flat, but when heroin-addicted hooker Rosa comes to the storefront church and seeks his help, he has to admit that he can’t actually do anything about her problems, like getting her off the street, or kicking the junk. “Then why did you come here,” she asks, clearly puzzled. Why, it’s simple, young horse-addled doxy. He came to get away from his pregnant wife, and to translate the Gospels into jive.

Pat and the Apostle Bo-Peep stand on a street corner, where she plays the trumpet to gather a crowd. Granted, it doesn’t attract a friendly crowd, but Pat starts preaching anyway, until a cop orders him to shut up, and the crowd to move along.

“Officer,” Pat whines, “don’t I have a constitutional right to speak on any street corner in America?” The cop retorts, “Only if you’re standing under an American flag!”

Really? This is the first I’ve heard of this clause, and it makes me think I probably should have read the entire First Amendment and not just skipped to the parts with sex. But Linc, the Dudley Do-Right-voiced leader of the Negro gang, snaps off a car aerial with a tiny American flag ornament and gives it to Pat. Then he uses the rest of the antenna to make a zip-gun so he can kindly give Pat one of his bullets, too.

Warlord Erik Estrada and Mau Mau CEO Israel stumble upon Pat’s soapbox sermon. The preacher offers his hand to Erik, who spits into it. Pat turns the other cheek and oozes, “God loves you, Nicky.”  Erik responds to this behavior in the only logical way by screaming, “If you come near me, I’ll kill you!”

“Yeah, you can do that,” Pat replies. “You can cut me up in a thousand pieces and lay them in the street. And every piece will still love you.”

Erik stares at Pat with what we imagine is the same look you’d give a man standing next to you in an elevator if he suddenly set his own pants on fire and began to juggle fetal pigs.

It’s three o’clock in the morning and Erik is asleep in his cramped, shabby room at the YMCA, when there’s a loud pounding at the door. He gets up, wearing nothing but his tighty whiteys, and leans back against the wall with his groin jutting into the camera as if he thought the film was 3-D. He opens the door, revealing singer, actor, and stalker Pat Boone. Erik recoils and shrieks, “Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?!”

Pat says, “You didn’t really mean that.” Then, as the swarthy, sweat-glazed youth stands there in his underpants, breathing heavily, Pat murmurs, “Aren’t you lonely, Nicky?”

It’s the next day, and The Association is singing:

Love is only a word to me,
A word you use when you’re not sure what to say

Rosa, the remarkably wholesome junkie streetwalker, finds Erik moodily enjoying a phosphate in Ned Glass’s candy store from West Side Story. She tells Erik that although she was gang property and had to share her favors equally with all of the Mau Maus, it was Erik whom she always loved, for he was the Mau-Mauiest in bed. Then she tries to cadge 10 bucks for a fix. But Pat’s late night visit has gotten under Erik’s skin and into his tighty whiteys, and Erik is suddenly having trouble relating to the other hoodlums his age. Instead of having quick, grunting coitus in a trash-choked alley in exchange for a dime bag, Erik hands her a switchblade and subcontracts her to kill Pat.

Back at the storefront church, Pat’s mission to the Mau Maus has apparently been having some amazing, if off-screen success, with everyone abuzz about how the gangsters all flocked around him today. But the joy of saved souls is tempered by the sting of an unsuccessful booty call, as Pat pouts, “I didn’t see Nicky.”

Rosa and her borrowed switchblade (the depressing sequel to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel) arrive at the storefront church. She doesn’t want to kill Pat for some reason, but she really needs that ten-spot Erik promised her, so she tries to bargain with Pat—10 dollars for a fix in exchange for some overacting. But Pat gets up on his high horse to the junkie and says, “I’m no easy touch. I’m a man of God.” Yeah, what was she thinking?  If she wanted Christian charity, she should’ve gone to a libertarian. Reminded of her bootstraps, and that business is business, Rosa belatedly tries to fulfill her contract by shanking the Randian prick.

Pat defends himself by fighting like a girl, but he’s not woman enough to take Rosa, and we’re seconds from seeing the strapping young Preacher filleted by the frail, strung-out junkie, until a bystander tells Rosa that God wants Pat to help her get off Horse. Oh, really? Okay. We instantly dissolve to a montage of Rosa writhing and moaning as she goes through the agony of a cold turkey withdrawal from heroin. Or maybe she’s just reacting to the weirdly sappy score, which sounds like “Jackie Gleason’s Music To Have The DTs By.”

Meanwhile, the Mau Maus throw a lovely funeral for Mingo, a gang member Erik accidentally murdered for chickening out of the last rumble. But the solemn proceedings are crashed by the Bishops, who want to pick up the fight where they left off. Floral arrangements get crushed. Somebody gets pushed into the open grave. Erik gets stabbed. It’s (sniff!) just how Mingo would have wanted it.

A bleeding Erik manages to stagger home. But Pat, to whom restraining orders mean nothing, barges in and continues to pester him. “Can’t you give a poor spic a break,” pleads Erick. Good question, but I think we all know the answer to it . . .

Pat replies, “Some day you’re gonna stop running. And when you do, I’ll be there.”  The great thing about this motto is, it works for both youth ministers and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

Having completed her 3 Step Program (Step 1: Admit that you are powerless over drugs and your life has become unmanageable. Step 2: Attempt to knife Pat Boone.  Step 3: Have a montage), love-sick Rosa shows up at Erik’s apartment and coos that she’s clean now. But when Erik learns that she’s drug-free because of Pat, he shouts, “The Preacher! The Preacher! All I ever hear is the Preacher! I’m sick of the Preacher!” Hey, man, we feel your pain.

Erik rejects Rosa because of her Preacher-taint, so she immediately scores some H from a handy central casting pusher. However, thanks to Pat’s rehab program, the drug no longer has the power to get her high. It’s a miracle! (Or it was cut with too much baby laxative.)

In any case, it’s finally time for Pat’s big anti-gang preach-a-thon at a local movie theater. The police, who are still peeved about that toy flag stunt, are boycotting the event, thus making it the perfect locale for the Rumble-to-End-All-Rumbles planned by the M&Ms and the Bishops. But the power of Pat compels them, and when dashiki supermodel Abdullah asks the gangbangers if they’re ready to rummmmmble, Erik, who was deeply touched by Pat’s words (whatever they were—I kinda nodded off at this point) interrupts.

Erick advises everyone to “cool it” and listen to the Preacher. He adds, “He’s here, in this room, and He wants to touch you.” Erik was either talking about God, or Pat’s nocturnal visits to the YMCA, but in either case you can understand why Abdullah tries to stab him. However, Erik manages to grab the knife from Abdullah—and to show that he has completely fallen under Pat’s spell, he spares the Bishop’s life and tells him that that God loves him. Erik then announces that he’s “gonna give my life to God, baby.” He chirps to Rosa, “I’m two-minutes old.” Smiling through her tears, she grabs him and hugs him and gently pats his back to make him burp on the spit-up towel.

Meanwhile, the gang members all eagerly take the free Bibles Pat is passing out.  Israel opens his and declares, “Hey, my name is all over this book!” Wow! In addition to being the inerrant word of God, the Bible is also a rap sheet!

Pat intones something about how this was just the start of his ministry, and that there would be “more Nickys, more Israels, more Rosas,” for . . . (get ready for it!) “The Cross is mightier than The Switchblade.” And judging by this screenplay, both of them can beat the shit out of The Pen.