Christopher Jones as President Max Frost, WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)
This A.I.P. exploitation classic from the hippie era predates the lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Here, a presidential candidate played by Hal Holbrook courts the youth vote by promising to lower the mandatory voting age and turns to rock star Max Frost (née Max Jacob Flatow, Jr.), the voice of his generation, to help him with his campaign. Max startles everyone by publicly demanding that fourteen-year-olds be given the right to vote, then, after Holbrook is elected, starting a national drive to lower the minimum age for election to public office to fourteen as well. Inevitably, Max runs for president himself, and after his youthful hordes propel him into the White House, he decrees that thirty is now the mandatory retirement age and has everyone over thirty-five bused to "re-education camps" to spend the rest of their days forcibly blitzed on LSD. But Max's reign may not last long; the movie ends with ominous shots of children giving the fish-eye to their teen-aged overlords and murmuring that they, too, will soon get theirs.
Biff McGuire as The President, THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON (1973)
This extremely low-budget film — long on under-lit sets and expository narration — stars Dean Stockwell as a presidential cabinet official who comes down with a bad case of lycanthropy and spends his full-moon nights rampaging around the nation's capitol in a furry Halloween mask. The Nixonian president and his advisers (including Michael Dunn as a dwarf named "Dr. Kiss") conspire to blame the werewolf's bloody killings on left-wing radicals. In the end, Stockwell is killed, but not before mauling the president, who, having thus been contaminated, is heard turning into a howling monster during a broadcast address to the nation.
John Ritter as President Chet Roosevelt, AMERICATHON (1979)
This busy, wilted satire, based on a play by Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor of the Firesign Theater but co-written and directed by Neil Israel, of Bachelor Party and the Police Academy movies, is set in a "future" 1998 when the United States has exhausted its energy reserves and is near bankruptcy, with a running-shoe cartel headed by Chief Dan George threatening to foreclose on the country. President Roosevelt, who operates out of a Marina Del Ray condo known as "the Western White House" and who permits his live-in girlfriend to sit in on cabinet meetings, decides to try to raise enough money to pay off the national debt by sponsoring a thirty-day telethon organized by Peter Riegert and hosted by Harvey Korman. Things get complicated when the president is kidnapped by terrorists while enjoying a tryst with a Vietnamese rock singer (Zane Busby), but in the end everything turns out all right: the telethon is a success, Riegert wins the faithless president's girlfriend, and the presidential hulking, dim-witted bodyguard, Jerry (Richard Schaal) is sworn in as chief executive.
HONORABLE MENTION: Two Real-Life Presidents Who Might As Well Have Been Fictional
Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon, SECRET HONOR (1984)
Playing an iconic figure like Dick Nixon is hard enough, particularly when the script calls upon you to portray him both as a sympathetic figure and a self-deceiving monster. And when you're the only guy in the movie, it becomes next to impossible. But if anyone is up to the challenge, it's the always-outstanding Philip Baker Hall. In this little-seen but compellingly watchable Robert Altman film, Hall portrays a fictionalized, almost mythological Nixon, recording what are putatively notes for his next book but which, with the aid of alcohol and encroaching paranoia, become a confession to the American people and a titanic, defensive apologia, a referendum on a man's entire life. As an impression of Nixon, it's only partially successful, but as an evocation of him, it's perfect — truly a titanic performance, alternating between enraged ranting, deceptive resentment, touching memories of childhood, and total re-invention; as Hall's Nixon raves, spews, laughs, bellows and accuses for an hour and a half, we get a sense of both his mammoth ego and his homely humanity, often in the same speech. The final scene, where a defiant Nixon screams "Fuck ‘em!" to everyone who ever crossed him — his enemies, his allies, the American people — seems both outrageous and inevitable.
Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt, THE WIND AND THE LION (1975)
John Milius has always has a soft spot in his heart for Teddy Roosevelt, who in his eyes was the ultimate hard-living American man's man. Milius re-created Teddy's famous charge up San Juan Hill in his 1997 made-for-TV movie The Rough Riders, and in 1975's The Wind and the Lion he shows us Roosevelt (played by Brian Keith) after his rough ridin' days were over. President Roosevelt, more than a little weary of politics and diplomacy, suddenly springs into action after the abduction of American heiress Eden Pedicaris (Candice Bergen) by the Berber prince Raisuli (Sean Connery). Proclaiming the need for "respect for human life and respect for American property," he mobilizes the Army to find Eden, questionable ethics be damned. In Teddy's words, "Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?" Sure, the fact that it's an election year may partly explain his motivation, but it's more likely that Roosevelt relishes another chance to embark on a ballsy mission in an exotic, especially one against a worthy opponent like Raisuli. But Roosevelt's finest moment in the film comes when he states: "The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times. . . but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous — loneliness. The American grizzly lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered — but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them as great as he." It's a rousing and eloquent tribute by Milius, both to the man he so idolizes and to the country they both love.
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov