Chicago cop Chuck Norris and his sidekick Calvin Levels go to Israel to track down the immortal supernatural satanist Christopher Neame. Not knowing whether to be a cop thriller or a horror movie, this is slackly handled by Chuck’s younger brother, Aaron. Neame is the only one who tries to raise the level of acting above bad. Sheree J. Wilson, who also starred with Chuck in the WALKER: TEXAS RANGER television series looks nice, straight from her stint on DALLAS.
This was the final outing from the Cannon group, they provided scores of pulp exploitation movie fare, and for that we should be grateful, unfortunately this was a sad end to bow out on.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
A silly Irish comedy-romance that succeeds purely through its heart-on-your-sleeve performances and an old-fashioned air of grace among non-sophisticates. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, an ex-heavyweight boxing contender who, following a bout during which he killed his opponent, returns to claim the family cottage in County Mayo, Ireland, and runs into a whole bundle of fiery red-headed trouble in Maureen O’Hara’s Mary Kate Danaher. Love blossoms quicker than a leprechaun can dance, but thrifty brother-in-law Victor McLaglen, who happens to be the local squire, attempts to dismantle the relationship before it even gets started.
Good natured, although the humour is dated, and ably played by a cast of Irish locals and relatives of the stars and director John Ford, the whole episode gets labelled rather unfairly as a load of blarney. It’s a but more special than that, touching on the ridiculousness of in-bedded cultural Catholic norms and the equally base notion that love always eventually conquers wealth. Bad attitudes though seem to be the norm in Ireland. Wrapped up in so much beautiful countryside the screen virtually drips with viridescent emerald grasses and forests, sparkling blue skies and deep sucking reds, noticeably Maureen O’Hara’s auburn hair and her crimson petticoats. Winton C. Hoch always made the Utah deserts look hotly bronzed and he makes Ireland look like sparkling fields of roses. John Ford doesn’t do anything special behind the lens, he doesn’t need to when the actors nail their roles, big or small, so effectively. Both lensman and director won Academy Awards. The film was the only production from Republic Studios ever to garner a nod for Best Picture [it lost to Cecil B. De Mille’s gargantuan circus epic The Greatest Show On Earth].
John Wayne is excellent, cast very much against type, displaying a deft hand at comedy as well as some nuanced straight drama. Maureen O’Hara spars wonderfully with him, as she did in several films. McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald, wed constantly to his jaunty carriage, his whiskey bottle or his tote book, offer sterling comic support. The scenes of out-dated courtship are charming. The battle of wills and wits watchably daft. Even the extended comic fist fight that seems to solve everyone’s problems all at once is heroically amusing.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste, and I won’t be rushing to watch it again – it is over forty years since I first saw it – but The Quiet Man certainly strikes that rare balance between comedy and drama while not forgetting the central spiky romance. It’s elegantly, beautifully staged, looks wonderful and bright and has top notch performances. You can’t say fairer than that now…
A hillbilly musical duo and their nervous business manager en route to a jamboree, are forced to take a night's shelter in a supposedly haunted mansion. In the basement, a quartet of spies including John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Basil Rathbone are preparing to steal secrets from the missile plant in a neighboring town. The spies attempt to scare off the hillbillies, but with the help of a secret agent and a real ghost, the hillbillies thwart the plan.
Hillbilly music, horror and espionage merge together in this amateurish, but not un-entertaining 60’s mash-up. The respective lineups of singing and horror stars are first class, even if the movie itself doesn't come within a country (& western) mile of reputability. Most movies of this type have the heavies play it straight but the director allows Carradine, Chaney and Rathbone to indulge in a bit of welcome spoofing. All three appear to be having a good time. Rathbone probably didn't know he would be the bottom-billed of the trio, though!
John Carradine was quoted as saying "I suppose it was crap but we had to do it."
‘Nuff said.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
That sounds like a good romp! Was it Rathbone's last film?
Mad Max 2
Little known sequel to A View to A Kill in which a waterlogged and simply furious Max Zorin goes on the rampage... okay, okay, I'd seen this film some decades ago and it doesn't date, being a beat-up futuristic film; they tend not to. Monsosyllabic Mel Gibson is visually quite Simon Le Bon, and it's good to see an autogyro again - aside from Bond, I can only think of The 39 Steps as featuring one. I suppose with all such films where the hero doesn't say much we get much of our entertainment from the supporting troupe, such as Copter Pilot, and I enjoyed that character's evolution, esp given that the leading man doesn't and isn't meant to evolve much. Some good smash-ups, not sure what happened to the hostages sprayed out on the front of the cars however, do we ever see their fate?
It's funny how enjoyable a simplistic film like this can be, whereas a Bond film usually has to turn cartwheels to keep us interested, via different locations, elaborate plots, supporting cast and so on...
I've never really seen the first or third Mad Max.
MAD MAX and MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME are both worth seeing. MAD MAX is much more raw and low budget but is quite effective in its 'crazy Aussies doing insane stunts' kinda way. THUNDERDOME is a Hollywood production and has much more of a budget and overall sense of polish about it. It's the weakest of the three original Gibson films but there's quite a lot there to enjoy.
I'm pretty sure the hostages were strapped to the vehicle that crashes head on into the tanker truck during the final chase. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they probably don't make it.
After what happened to our own David Hedison in THE FLY (1958) it’s maybe a little strange that twenty years later (but only one in real time) that Hedison’s now grown-up son has resumed work on the molecular device which turned his father into a half-man-half-fly. Aided by his uncle Vincent Price, they work hard to perfect the process. But a lab assistant, a wanted killer, is waiting to steal the machine’s secrets. The two get into a fight and the son is put into the device, and like father, like son…
RETURN OF THE FLY is like most sequels, a re-hash of the original, and there isn’t anything in it that equals the spider-web climax of the first one. The pace is quicker and there’s more emphasis on incident, but there’s nothing spectacular about it and it’s just a standard monster-on-the-loose flick - but the efficient cast and production, with some gruesome (for the time) effects make it worth a look.
Presumably the budget was so low that unlike the first movie this one was filmed in black and white.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
That sums up my thoughts about this one, as well. Now you have to see "Curse Of The Fly" to finish off that trilogy. It's... well, let's not give anything away yet. All I'll say is that our own George Baker is starring, and does a good job.
A tepid action adventure set in the Sahara with John Wayne as a desert guide assisting Rossano Brazzi to find a lost city, which turns out to be Leptis Magna near Tripoli in Libya. Most movie goers probably wouldn’t have known that in 1957, but it was obvious to my practised eye; I knew there was a reason for watching all those history documentaries. The puzzle remains how such extensive ruins could possibly have been ‘lost’ – even in a desert I’d suggest this city is too big to not be known to somebody. Well, Wayne’s Joe January [!] finds it, but then has to contend with Brazzi going gold-crazy and Sophia Loren’s prostitute getting her impractical dress torn. Henry Hathaway directs without any sense of timing or character. He isn’t helped by a script from old masters Ben Hecht and Robert Pressnell that feels like an attempt to recapture faded glories. Sadly, all the lustre has long vanished. The only sparkling thing left is Jack Cardiff’s photography. The film starts out as an amiable comedy, but soon becomes a dreary homage to King Solomon’s Mines and the ilk. Not a good entry into the Duke’s canon.
I’ve only seen “Curse” once, way back in the 70’s on TV, it’s on my saved list of movies, so it will get a viewing and a review sooner or later.
TURKEY SHOOT (1982)
Steve Railsback plays the nominal hero in this futuristic prison camp actioner which is a Most Dangerous Game rip-off. At the fearsome Camp 47, Commandant Michael Craig rules over prisoners who are enemies of the fascist State. He gives them the chance to escape in a “turkey shoot” where the odds of escaping are very slim. As we see chief prison guard Roger Ward mete out his own particular brand of justice in the camp, it’s unsurprising that many take up the offer. A batch including Railsback and Olivia Hussey take the challenge and we see a load of gruesome death scenes before the tables are turned. What Olivia Hussey is doing here no one knows, she was obviously short of offers or the pay was very good, either way she looks suitably scared in the outback. The acting is atrocious, the editing is bad but the special effects are decent for the time.
It’s one of those pulp exploitation films that make the genre so watchable - so bad, it’s good.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Bummed out on the revamp of London's Prince Charles cinema website. You used to be able to click on the showing and see how many tickets had been sold and which seats were left - how packed out it was, in other words. Now it doesn't seem easy to do that - maybe you have to become a member? It's off-putting.
A pleasant old-fashioned wartime comedy of manners about a USS submarine captained by Cary Grant forced to take on board a gaggle of military nurses causing friction among his crew. The film’s narrative cleverly adapts several true stories from the Pacific War and paints them in hilarity. Tony Curtis, fresh from impersonating Grant in Some Like It Hot, gets to star with the real thing, playing idling scavenger Lt Holden, who seems to have all the solutions to the sub’s problems while adding to them at every turn. The movie brightens up considerably once the women join the action. They are an attractive little gaggle, which helps, and the innuendo starts to flow with some wit. Everyone seems to be having a good time. Director Blake Edwards ensures the farcical elements don’t overpower the general steadiness of the story, something he was less prone to in the later stages of his career [all those Pink Panther sequels…]. Operation Petticoat was a huge hit on release, the biggest box-office success of Cary Grant’s tenure, but seems now largely a mere footnote in most critical appraisals of his career. I can sort of see why, as he isn’t doing anything very unique, but then the film isn’t designed for that. It perhaps isn’t as sharp as it might be comedy-wise, yet the effect is warm and cheerful and you can’t be disappointed with that.
We just watched this last month and I agree with you 100% on all points. The film gets by on a lot of charm and by not overdoing it on the farcical elements.
The wife and I also did all of the original 6 Peter Sellers Pink Panther films. They become nearly unwatchable towards the end (the last one cobbled together from outtakes) but boy does that series start out strong. A SHOT IN THE DARK is the best of the franchise and, in our opinion, one of the best comedies we've seen. Everything just works in that film.
Thanks for that @HarryCanyon Somewhere on here I wrote reviews of The Pink Panther & A Shot in the Dark. As you say, both very good. The other Clouseau movies do not interest me much. In fact, I prefer the Steve Martin remake [#1 only, #2 falls into the same indulgent traps as the 70s films].
We rather liked the 4th one, STRIKES AGAIN, where Herbert Lom is the bad guy. Lom is the MVP of those latter films and giving him more screentime really helped elevate that entry.
But A SHOT IN THE DARK is the one entry that's consistently hilarious from beginning to end. Everything just works. I daresay it may be be the best film that Blake Edwards made, and that's saying a lot.
Coming slap bang in the middle of the ‘epic movie’ craze that beset Hollywood from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, El Cid is about as good as the historical blockbuster gets. Preceded by wobbly films like The Ten Commandments, or grand socio-political commentaries such as Ben Hur, The Alamo or Spartacus, El Cid chooses adventure as its foremost theme and is packed full of intense characters, vivid colour, reinterpreted history, robust action and a rousing Miklos Rosza score, which is surely the epic soundtrack to outdo all epic soundtracks. It’s difficult to know who we should be congratulating the most: the cameramen, the costumers, set designers, makeup artists, editors, second unit crew, writers (numerous and many uncredited), casting manager, musicians, composers, all the thousands of extras, the director, producer, stars or even General bloody Franco who lent a fair slice of the Spanish military to play warring 11th century armies. The film really is truly impressive, blending a strong love story [mostly fabricated] with a potted history of a noble knight who became his country’s national hero. Throw in sword fights, jousts, assassinations, courtly intrigue and a vast array of battlefield combat and the only thing which seems to be missing is actual blood.
Oh and the fourteen minutes restored during a 1993 revamp. Quite why the BBC is showing the roadshow edited version and not the original 183min premiered release I can’t tell you, but there you have it. It doesn’t spoil our enjoyment too much. This version at least doesn’t feature the annoying Paul Francis Webster song lyrics.
Producer Samuel Bronston created his own studio near Madrid to make a series of mostly historical epics, all of which were international coproductions and most of which starred Charlton Heston, or at least they always felt like the should have done. El Cid came hot on the hooves of King of Kings. It retains the earlier film’s attempt to portray courtly politics with some intrigue, venom and a healthy dose of internecine familial jealousy, hate, murder and revenge.
Rodrigo de Bivar [Heston] fights a battle against the Moors and, upon extracting allegiance from the conquered Berbers, saves their lives. This brings his family into conflict with the King of Castille and the King’s Champion, Count Gormaz, who happens to be the father of Chimene, Rodrigo’s bride to be. Forced to fight to retain his family’s honour, Rodrigo, the Cid, wins gladiatorial jousts and great battles, eventually uniting both Berbers and Castilians in a victorious campaign against the Muslim leader Ben Yousef [a crazy eyed Herbert Lom]. The film never bores, is economical in the telling of a long and bitter story and looks stupendous. They can make armies appear far more formidable, far larger, with CGI these days, but that would take away something of the physical drama of the battle scenes, which towards the end are more to do with creating an emotional pallet to climax the movie. Heston offers a commanding performance in the lead and is well supported by Sophia Loren as his dutiful and beautiful wife. A host of British and Italian faces fill out the support roles. Andrew Cruikshank is particularly good as Gormaz. Douglas Wilmer is stately as a sympathetic Berber ruler.
The movie isn’t overly accurate in regards history – no mention of Rodrigo’s son for instance – but this doesn’t affect anyone’s enjoyment. Unlike some epics, which tend to be ponderous, El Cid goes for incisive and vital scenes. The slowest section is the opening forty minutes that introduces all the main characters, their ambitions, personalities, strengths and weaknesses laid bare and sets them in the historical context. Once the first sword fight begins, we are into tense, wrought sequence after tense wrought sequence, often accompanied by bouts of reckless fighting. Anthony Mann made notoriously tough movies – mostly westerns – and delivers a suitably macho landscape for this Spanish history lesson. Some of his framing is fantastic, really making full use of cinemascope’s width; even in the intimate scenes, he places his actors at the extremes of the set reinforcing emotional or intellectual distance; a sudden close up will completely absorb the screen, the actors needing to work overtime on facial expression to convince us. Robert Krasker is the busy cinematographer. The film does have quiet moments, perhaps not enough of them. There is a great scene of Rodrigo and Chimene’s wedding night that involves Heston delivering his seduction in a dumb show around the banqueting table – she rejects Rodrigo’s overtures – he did after all kill Chimene’s father in a duel. Meanwhile, the incestuous relationship between a royal brother and sister is strongly hinted at, but floats away to indifference. The prominence and dominance given to the two female characters actually reflects real history: the Spanish princess Urraca [Genevieve Page, rather good] did command her own minor kingdom and Chimene ruled Valencia for several years after El Cid died. The politics doesn’t really need to concern us though, because the story progresses swiftly and with plenty of brawny incident to keep our eyes and ears occupied. In fact, one’s brain doesn’t fully engage unless it is reacting to Rosza’s superb music score. Good thing too as there is over two hours of it. Rosza often sensibly leaves the sounds of battle to deliver their own kind of metallic crunching music, before climaxing with a broad stroke of trumpets, brass and strings. Once he even uses an organ voluntary.
This is a strange review, as I’m not really making a judgement call on the movie, just telling you stuff I like about it. That’s the trouble. I am a big sucker for an epic. Done well, they are invariably very good. El Cid is certainly done better than well. While it perhaps lacks the political gravitas of Spartacus or the overt religiosity of Ben Hur and King of Kings, it surely sets the strongest template for the historical epic.
No spoilers here. Absolutely loved this movie. A spin off to the Mad Max movies and prequel to Fury Road.
Ana Taylor Joy plays the eponymous character and we see her backstory that led her to the Citadel and the events of Fury Road. She plays the role so well that the join to Charlize Theron is fairly seemless. Kudos also to the young actress who plays a juvenile Furiosa for the first part of the movie.
Chris Hemsworth against type plays the villain Dementus and follows in the great line of Mad Max villains, The Toecutter, Humongus, Immortan Joe etc.
Speaking of the latter, Immortan Joe is also back here, albeit played by a different actor as Hugh Keays Byrne sadly passed since Fury Road, again you don’t notice this though given his mask etc.
Nice also to see Brit actor Tom Burke get a meaty role.
Great action, stunts and a continuation of the world building from Fury Road. More CGI in this but that didn’t bother me, as there are still a good deal of stunts as well.
I’ve seen some reviews that make comparisons to this and Fury Road, with this coming off worse, but I suggest this is best viewed as a companion piece to the last film. It revisits and expands on the world and some characters first seen in Fury Road.
Also read reviews bemoaning the lack of Mad Max, but let’s face it he was always a monosyllabic cypher with the world he inhabits (and villains he faces) as the real stars of the show.
Against the tide of recent reinventions and reboots of older IP, the film is also “woke free” (the character Furiosa is no Rey or other Mary Sue type, she takes a lot of beatings in this film).
All in all I really enjoyed this movie and hope it does well as I’d love to see a further entry in this series from Miller.
Oh and see it in a cinema as the sound and visuals need to be appreciated.
Japanese proverb say, "Bird never make nest in bare tree".
I last saw this as a kid on tv way back then and loved it, so a second viewing was a no-brainer when it popped up on my streaming service. Future Tarzan star Jock Mahoney is a Navy geophysicist on an expedition to the Arctic. Along with a female reporter and a machinist they are sent out in a helicopter to investigate a body of warm water in the midst of the Arctic. Caught in a rising storm and bumped by a mysterious flying lizard type bird, the damaged helicopter descends through thick cloud and sets down on the floor of a lush tropical valley. Dinosaurs still roam in this ‘lost world’ as does the sole survivor of a 1945 plane crash.
Virgil Vogel was appointed director when Jack Arnold left because the budget was cut and the original intention of filming in colour was scaled back to black and white and stop-motion effects were jettisoned for rubber suits. The dinosaurs include a T-Rex and giant monitor lizards (real ones, photographically enlarged). If Land Unknown's monsters look fake (and they do) they wowed me as a kid and I think it’s that memory that makes me ignore those frailties and concentrate on the action which is pretty good.
The sex-starved survivor offers the men the spare parts they need to repair the helicopter and escape, if they leave the reporter behind. Intriguingly, against usual expectations of the time, the machinist pushes for the swap, and even handsome heroic leading-man Mahoney briefly entertains the notion of sacrificing her to the survivor’s lust. The sex angle and the depiction of desperate men, aren't the sort of usual plot lines you usually expect to find in a late 50’s exploitation movie and it’s powerful stuff.
The “lost world” set is decent and gives an air of credibility to the action. Jock Mahoney can’t do much with his dialogue other than mouth it, and comes across a pretty dull hero. Shawn Smith as the reporter, gives the role her best shot, but bouncing most of her lines off Mahoney’s stiff character, she was on a bit of a loser. Vogel gives pace and mood to his direction, and combined with the "adult" themes it gives the movie an added edge over many similar pictures with better special effects.
The long wait between viewings was well worth it, watch it if you can.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Loved it as well. I suspect there's a good chance that Chris Hemsworth might get some 'best supporting actor' consideration for his work here, he's that good.
I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't FURY ROAD REDUX. It's not as relentless in its throughline as FURY ROAD (which is essentially one long, drawn out chase scene), it's much more of a slow burn narrative broken up with some incredible action sequences. The action is amazing, though. Indeed, there's a third chapter sequence where Furiosa is a stowaway on a rig that might be the best action sequence in the entire franchise.
Another Samuel Bronston historical epic which makes a lot noise while choosing to mostly forget about character and historical accuracy. Not a single European name on the cast of characters existed in real life. Curiously almost all the Chinese and Japanese characters do. Most of the scenarios, relationships and conflicts are invented for interest’s sake.
55 Days at Peking relates the true story of an incident during the Boxer Rebellion in China, 1900, when the Foreign Legation’s Compound in Beijing [then Peking] was besieged by the rebels, who in turn are being covertly assisted by sympathetic persons at the Empress’s court. The starry cast does a good job with a fairly inauspicious script. Charlton Heston breathes deeply, reclines in that louche manner he perfected and sneers his way through proceedings. Apparently he didn’t get along with Ava Gardner and that’s revealed in their tense scenes of love and argument. Gardner’s shooting schedule was reshuffled deliberately to write her character out of the film so they could pack the unreliable actress off home. Heston doesn’t have such luck, but at least he shares some decent emotional moments with a pretty Chinese orphan, played effectively by 14 year old Londoner Lynne Sue Moon. The best acting honours go to David Niven and Elizabeth Sellars as the British ambassador and his dedicated wife, who have tired of diplomatic service, yearn for home, yet hunker down with stoic endurance when the fighting starts. The usual suspects of British stalwarts and European unknowns fill out the cast. Flora Robson makes a stately Dowager Empress and Harry Andrews crops up as a missionary with military know-how. The subplot surrounding the morals of Ava Gardner’s Russian baroness feels like an afterthought.
The film has the familiar Bronston look: tremendous attention to visual details, bright colours, enormous sets, thousands of extras in thousands of costumes, rousing music. Nicholas Ray was the credited director, but he took ill and half the film was shot uncredited by Andrew Marton and Guy Green. You barely notice, the film was so well story boarded it hardly needed a director. Jack Hildyard does a decent job with the cameras. A special mention must go to the Dimitri Tiomkin who scored the picture and provides a lush main theme. The orchestration is perhaps too romantic for the sullen and serious escapade which is unfolding on screen, but it is very good. Another Paul Francis Webster song lyric was added to the love theme So Little Time, but you don’t hear Andy Williams singing it, which may be just as well; the film doesn’t seem to require a song.
While one can moan about the historical mishits, it is probably fair to suggest that’s not worth the effort. Far better just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle, dumb bits n all, and do the research on Wiki once the film credits have rolled. Not the very best of epics, but eminently watchable and far better than many.
I recently read the adult fairy tale Stardust, ‘a novel with illustrations’ by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. I didn’t like it. I don’t like Matthew Vaughn’s movie adaptation either. If there was anything good about the novel it was the moments of melancholy, the undercurrent of adult themes that peppered the narrative and the sudden bouts of gory violence. All of that is excised for the film version in favour of dreamy teen love and stilted humour. The extended beginning, which lay the foundations of the hero’s dynamic quest is condensed to the point of obtuseness while the climax, which in the book was lowkey and less theatrically fantastical, is jettisoned in favour of a Harry Potter style witchcraft and wizardry standoff, all dark mirrors, hulking interiors and evil sorcery. For the remainder, once you ignore Robert de Niro and the silly escapade with the sky pirates, all your left with is a very long chase movie through Iceland and Buckinghamshire. You can’t forgive the stereotypical Narnia / Star Wars throne room coda either, but at least the novel’s downhearted ending is replaced with something more idealised and romantic, which the subject matter probably deserves. Generally though, the content has been dumbed down and sanitised for the family market. Star spotting in the cast is all fine and dandy until you realise everyone is miscast. Michele Pfieffer seems to enjoy herself as a haggardly old witch, but the rest of the performances are monumentally lame. Enormously indulgent and disappointing.
Judd Nelson plays a horror screenwriter who kidnaps women and chains them up in his cabin to study their terrified reactions so that he can write them into his latest screenplay. He then starts killing the women by tying a cement block to their legs and drowning them in the lake next to the cabin. He even goes underwater to arrange the women in his garden of corpses. The special effects are good and Nelson's performance is eccentric enough to keep things interesting.
Certainly worth watching.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
A witless sci-fi / western that attempts to include as many familiar tropes from both genres as it can possibly see fit. That approach doesn’t work by a long, long chalk. Daniel Craig plays an amnesiac outlaw in the Old West whose wife has been kidnapped by aliens. He wears a chunky piece of extra-terrestrial hardware on his wrist which comes in handy when the titular ‘aliens’ actually turn up, which takes a while. Harrison Ford is a mean cattle baron. The two pair up and join forces with a pretty woman, a gang of thieves and a tribe of renegade Indians to thwart these powerful interplanetary gold seekers. The movie’s hopelessly confused plotting plods along at a slow gait while the action sequences move at a steady gallop. The gaps between the two are filled with mumbo-jumbo and hocus-pocus and about as many cliches as you can count.
I watched this while preparing and eating my dinner. There was nothing else on. Maybe I wasn’t giving the thing my full attention, but it didn’t feel as if I needed to. Jon Favreau directed Iron Man 1 & 2 so I should have guessed where Cowboys and Aliens was heading. I have subsequently learnt the film is based on a popular comic book, which surely explains a lot. Half a dozen writers contributed to fabricating this excuse for entertainment. I kid you not.
Superior Hammer sequel from director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster, the team responsible for rejuvenating the horror genre when they remade Universal’s original Frankenstein. This effort comes fast on the heels of The Curse of… and is a less obviously sensational piece. Peter Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein cheats death at the guillotine and takes up practicing medicine in the pretty Austrian town of Carlsbad. On the quiet he’s creating a new monster, only this time he’s refined the technique, deciding to use a ‘live’ brain rather than reanimate a dead one. Scientific claptrap of course, but it hardly matters, we are in the 1860s after all. The local townsfolk seem quite taken with the dashing Dr Stein, including Eunice Gayson’s naïve charitable rich girl who accidentally meets the Doctor’s new case: Karl, his deformed servant, now invested with a beautiful new body, but desperate to escape the Doctor’s clutches.
The film is low on shocks and is more interested in the psychological aspect of the transfer process and the implications for the individual concerned. Frankenstein wishes to use the ‘new’ Karl as a demonstration of the wonders of medical science, but the ‘old’ Karl’s brain doesn’t like the sound of that. He wants to be appreciated as most normal people would be. Fisher and Sangster develop Karl’s troubles with plenty of empathy and sympathetic playing from Micheal Gwynn ; as an audience, we feel his plight. Meanwhile, Frankenstein continues to be a distinctly unheroic personality. If he is a hero at all, he’s definitely an anti-hero. Cushing’s Baron acts less of the cad than he did in the first film, but he’s still got a brittle temper and blames everyone except himself as disaster again unfolds around him. This time a youthful protégé [Francis Matthews] succeeds in preventing complete annihilation of the Baron’s work. The ending is exceptional.
Five more sequels followed, but with less and less impact.
Yes, this is one of the (if not the) best in the Hammer Frankenstein series. Cushing is superb and the supporting cast not too far behind him. Sangster and Fisher are on top form. It might even be in the running for a place in the top ten Hammer productions, though the competition there is fierce.
ARABESQUE (1966), starring Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck. Directed by Stanley Donen.
We went into this hoping it would be another CHARADE. It was not. Peck is playing the Cary Grant role here and duffing it badly. We were not surprised to read that the role was written with Grant in mind but, when Grant passed, Peck grabbed it. It's some of the worst miscasting that I've ever seen as Peck really, really is not up to the task at all. Light comedy is not his strength. Sophia Loren is fine (more than fine, actually...scenes where she's working with anyone not named 'Peck' are really solid) and the direction is often quite innovative from Donen, but the script is terrible and Peck ruins every single scene he's in. We almost didn't finish the film.
CHINATOWN (1974), starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, and others. Directed by Roman Polanski.
Pretty much a perfect movie. I'd seen it before but not in maybe 10 years. It holds up amazingly well with an exceptionally well thought out script. Beautifully acted and directed, it's one of the best films of the 1970s.
Comments
HELLBOUND (1994)
Chicago cop Chuck Norris and his sidekick Calvin Levels go to Israel to track down the immortal supernatural satanist Christopher Neame. Not knowing whether to be a cop thriller or a horror movie, this is slackly handled by Chuck’s younger brother, Aaron. Neame is the only one who tries to raise the level of acting above bad. Sheree J. Wilson, who also starred with Chuck in the WALKER: TEXAS RANGER television series looks nice, straight from her stint on DALLAS.
This was the final outing from the Cannon group, they provided scores of pulp exploitation movie fare, and for that we should be grateful, unfortunately this was a sad end to bow out on.
THE QUIET MAN (1952)
A silly Irish comedy-romance that succeeds purely through its heart-on-your-sleeve performances and an old-fashioned air of grace among non-sophisticates. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, an ex-heavyweight boxing contender who, following a bout during which he killed his opponent, returns to claim the family cottage in County Mayo, Ireland, and runs into a whole bundle of fiery red-headed trouble in Maureen O’Hara’s Mary Kate Danaher. Love blossoms quicker than a leprechaun can dance, but thrifty brother-in-law Victor McLaglen, who happens to be the local squire, attempts to dismantle the relationship before it even gets started.
Good natured, although the humour is dated, and ably played by a cast of Irish locals and relatives of the stars and director John Ford, the whole episode gets labelled rather unfairly as a load of blarney. It’s a but more special than that, touching on the ridiculousness of in-bedded cultural Catholic norms and the equally base notion that love always eventually conquers wealth. Bad attitudes though seem to be the norm in Ireland. Wrapped up in so much beautiful countryside the screen virtually drips with viridescent emerald grasses and forests, sparkling blue skies and deep sucking reds, noticeably Maureen O’Hara’s auburn hair and her crimson petticoats. Winton C. Hoch always made the Utah deserts look hotly bronzed and he makes Ireland look like sparkling fields of roses. John Ford doesn’t do anything special behind the lens, he doesn’t need to when the actors nail their roles, big or small, so effectively. Both lensman and director won Academy Awards. The film was the only production from Republic Studios ever to garner a nod for Best Picture [it lost to Cecil B. De Mille’s gargantuan circus epic The Greatest Show On Earth].
John Wayne is excellent, cast very much against type, displaying a deft hand at comedy as well as some nuanced straight drama. Maureen O’Hara spars wonderfully with him, as she did in several films. McLaglen and Barry Fitzgerald, wed constantly to his jaunty carriage, his whiskey bottle or his tote book, offer sterling comic support. The scenes of out-dated courtship are charming. The battle of wills and wits watchably daft. Even the extended comic fist fight that seems to solve everyone’s problems all at once is heroically amusing.
It won’t be to everyone’s taste, and I won’t be rushing to watch it again – it is over forty years since I first saw it – but The Quiet Man certainly strikes that rare balance between comedy and drama while not forgetting the central spiky romance. It’s elegantly, beautifully staged, looks wonderful and bright and has top notch performances. You can’t say fairer than that now…
THE QUIET MAN is a yearly viewing experience around St. Patrick's Day. My personal favorite John Wayne film.
HILLBILLY’S IN A HAUNTED HOUSE (1967)
A hillbilly musical duo and their nervous business manager en route to a jamboree, are forced to take a night's shelter in a supposedly haunted mansion. In the basement, a quartet of spies including John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Basil Rathbone are preparing to steal secrets from the missile plant in a neighboring town. The spies attempt to scare off the hillbillies, but with the help of a secret agent and a real ghost, the hillbillies thwart the plan.
Hillbilly music, horror and espionage merge together in this amateurish, but not un-entertaining 60’s mash-up. The respective lineups of singing and horror stars are first class, even if the movie itself doesn't come within a country (& western) mile of reputability. Most movies of this type have the heavies play it straight but the director allows Carradine, Chaney and Rathbone to indulge in a bit of welcome spoofing. All three appear to be having a good time. Rathbone probably didn't know he would be the bottom-billed of the trio, though!
John Carradine was quoted as saying "I suppose it was crap but we had to do it."
‘Nuff said.
That sounds like a good romp! Was it Rathbone's last film?
Mad Max 2
Little known sequel to A View to A Kill in which a waterlogged and simply furious Max Zorin goes on the rampage... okay, okay, I'd seen this film some decades ago and it doesn't date, being a beat-up futuristic film; they tend not to. Monsosyllabic Mel Gibson is visually quite Simon Le Bon, and it's good to see an autogyro again - aside from Bond, I can only think of The 39 Steps as featuring one. I suppose with all such films where the hero doesn't say much we get much of our entertainment from the supporting troupe, such as Copter Pilot, and I enjoyed that character's evolution, esp given that the leading man doesn't and isn't meant to evolve much. Some good smash-ups, not sure what happened to the hostages sprayed out on the front of the cars however, do we ever see their fate?
It's funny how enjoyable a simplistic film like this can be, whereas a Bond film usually has to turn cartwheels to keep us interested, via different locations, elaborate plots, supporting cast and so on...
I've never really seen the first or third Mad Max.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
MAD MAX and MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME are both worth seeing. MAD MAX is much more raw and low budget but is quite effective in its 'crazy Aussies doing insane stunts' kinda way. THUNDERDOME is a Hollywood production and has much more of a budget and overall sense of polish about it. It's the weakest of the three original Gibson films but there's quite a lot there to enjoy.
I'd go:
MAD MAX: 3.5/4
MAD MAX2/THE ROAD WARRIOR: 4/4
MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME: 3/4
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD: 4/4
I'm pretty sure the hostages were strapped to the vehicle that crashes head on into the tanker truck during the final chase. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they probably don't make it.
RETURN OF THE FLY (1959)
After what happened to our own David Hedison in THE FLY (1958) it’s maybe a little strange that twenty years later (but only one in real time) that Hedison’s now grown-up son has resumed work on the molecular device which turned his father into a half-man-half-fly. Aided by his uncle Vincent Price, they work hard to perfect the process. But a lab assistant, a wanted killer, is waiting to steal the machine’s secrets. The two get into a fight and the son is put into the device, and like father, like son…
RETURN OF THE FLY is like most sequels, a re-hash of the original, and there isn’t anything in it that equals the spider-web climax of the first one. The pace is quicker and there’s more emphasis on incident, but there’s nothing spectacular about it and it’s just a standard monster-on-the-loose flick - but the efficient cast and production, with some gruesome (for the time) effects make it worth a look.
Presumably the budget was so low that unlike the first movie this one was filmed in black and white.
That sums up my thoughts about this one, as well. Now you have to see "Curse Of The Fly" to finish off that trilogy. It's... well, let's not give anything away yet. All I'll say is that our own George Baker is starring, and does a good job.
LEGEND OF THE LOST (1957)
A tepid action adventure set in the Sahara with John Wayne as a desert guide assisting Rossano Brazzi to find a lost city, which turns out to be Leptis Magna near Tripoli in Libya. Most movie goers probably wouldn’t have known that in 1957, but it was obvious to my practised eye; I knew there was a reason for watching all those history documentaries. The puzzle remains how such extensive ruins could possibly have been ‘lost’ – even in a desert I’d suggest this city is too big to not be known to somebody. Well, Wayne’s Joe January [!] finds it, but then has to contend with Brazzi going gold-crazy and Sophia Loren’s prostitute getting her impractical dress torn. Henry Hathaway directs without any sense of timing or character. He isn’t helped by a script from old masters Ben Hecht and Robert Pressnell that feels like an attempt to recapture faded glories. Sadly, all the lustre has long vanished. The only sparkling thing left is Jack Cardiff’s photography. The film starts out as an amiable comedy, but soon becomes a dreary homage to King Solomon’s Mines and the ilk. Not a good entry into the Duke’s canon.
I’ve only seen “Curse” once, way back in the 70’s on TV, it’s on my saved list of movies, so it will get a viewing and a review sooner or later.
TURKEY SHOOT (1982)
Steve Railsback plays the nominal hero in this futuristic prison camp actioner which is a Most Dangerous Game rip-off. At the fearsome Camp 47, Commandant Michael Craig rules over prisoners who are enemies of the fascist State. He gives them the chance to escape in a “turkey shoot” where the odds of escaping are very slim. As we see chief prison guard Roger Ward mete out his own particular brand of justice in the camp, it’s unsurprising that many take up the offer. A batch including Railsback and Olivia Hussey take the challenge and we see a load of gruesome death scenes before the tables are turned. What Olivia Hussey is doing here no one knows, she was obviously short of offers or the pay was very good, either way she looks suitably scared in the outback. The acting is atrocious, the editing is bad but the special effects are decent for the time.
It’s one of those pulp exploitation films that make the genre so watchable - so bad, it’s good.
Bummed out on the revamp of London's Prince Charles cinema website. You used to be able to click on the showing and see how many tickets had been sold and which seats were left - how packed out it was, in other words. Now it doesn't seem easy to do that - maybe you have to become a member? It's off-putting.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
OPERATION PETTICOAT (1959)
A pleasant old-fashioned wartime comedy of manners about a USS submarine captained by Cary Grant forced to take on board a gaggle of military nurses causing friction among his crew. The film’s narrative cleverly adapts several true stories from the Pacific War and paints them in hilarity. Tony Curtis, fresh from impersonating Grant in Some Like It Hot, gets to star with the real thing, playing idling scavenger Lt Holden, who seems to have all the solutions to the sub’s problems while adding to them at every turn. The movie brightens up considerably once the women join the action. They are an attractive little gaggle, which helps, and the innuendo starts to flow with some wit. Everyone seems to be having a good time. Director Blake Edwards ensures the farcical elements don’t overpower the general steadiness of the story, something he was less prone to in the later stages of his career [all those Pink Panther sequels…]. Operation Petticoat was a huge hit on release, the biggest box-office success of Cary Grant’s tenure, but seems now largely a mere footnote in most critical appraisals of his career. I can sort of see why, as he isn’t doing anything very unique, but then the film isn’t designed for that. It perhaps isn’t as sharp as it might be comedy-wise, yet the effect is warm and cheerful and you can’t be disappointed with that.
We just watched this last month and I agree with you 100% on all points. The film gets by on a lot of charm and by not overdoing it on the farcical elements.
The wife and I also did all of the original 6 Peter Sellers Pink Panther films. They become nearly unwatchable towards the end (the last one cobbled together from outtakes) but boy does that series start out strong. A SHOT IN THE DARK is the best of the franchise and, in our opinion, one of the best comedies we've seen. Everything just works in that film.
Thanks for that @HarryCanyon Somewhere on here I wrote reviews of The Pink Panther & A Shot in the Dark. As you say, both very good. The other Clouseau movies do not interest me much. In fact, I prefer the Steve Martin remake [#1 only, #2 falls into the same indulgent traps as the 70s films].
We rather liked the 4th one, STRIKES AGAIN, where Herbert Lom is the bad guy. Lom is the MVP of those latter films and giving him more screentime really helped elevate that entry.
But A SHOT IN THE DARK is the one entry that's consistently hilarious from beginning to end. Everything just works. I daresay it may be be the best film that Blake Edwards made, and that's saying a lot.
EL CID (1961)
Coming slap bang in the middle of the ‘epic movie’ craze that beset Hollywood from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties, El Cid is about as good as the historical blockbuster gets. Preceded by wobbly films like The Ten Commandments, or grand socio-political commentaries such as Ben Hur, The Alamo or Spartacus, El Cid chooses adventure as its foremost theme and is packed full of intense characters, vivid colour, reinterpreted history, robust action and a rousing Miklos Rosza score, which is surely the epic soundtrack to outdo all epic soundtracks. It’s difficult to know who we should be congratulating the most: the cameramen, the costumers, set designers, makeup artists, editors, second unit crew, writers (numerous and many uncredited), casting manager, musicians, composers, all the thousands of extras, the director, producer, stars or even General bloody Franco who lent a fair slice of the Spanish military to play warring 11th century armies. The film really is truly impressive, blending a strong love story [mostly fabricated] with a potted history of a noble knight who became his country’s national hero. Throw in sword fights, jousts, assassinations, courtly intrigue and a vast array of battlefield combat and the only thing which seems to be missing is actual blood.
Oh and the fourteen minutes restored during a 1993 revamp. Quite why the BBC is showing the roadshow edited version and not the original 183min premiered release I can’t tell you, but there you have it. It doesn’t spoil our enjoyment too much. This version at least doesn’t feature the annoying Paul Francis Webster song lyrics.
Producer Samuel Bronston created his own studio near Madrid to make a series of mostly historical epics, all of which were international coproductions and most of which starred Charlton Heston, or at least they always felt like the should have done. El Cid came hot on the hooves of King of Kings. It retains the earlier film’s attempt to portray courtly politics with some intrigue, venom and a healthy dose of internecine familial jealousy, hate, murder and revenge.
Rodrigo de Bivar [Heston] fights a battle against the Moors and, upon extracting allegiance from the conquered Berbers, saves their lives. This brings his family into conflict with the King of Castille and the King’s Champion, Count Gormaz, who happens to be the father of Chimene, Rodrigo’s bride to be. Forced to fight to retain his family’s honour, Rodrigo, the Cid, wins gladiatorial jousts and great battles, eventually uniting both Berbers and Castilians in a victorious campaign against the Muslim leader Ben Yousef [a crazy eyed Herbert Lom]. The film never bores, is economical in the telling of a long and bitter story and looks stupendous. They can make armies appear far more formidable, far larger, with CGI these days, but that would take away something of the physical drama of the battle scenes, which towards the end are more to do with creating an emotional pallet to climax the movie. Heston offers a commanding performance in the lead and is well supported by Sophia Loren as his dutiful and beautiful wife. A host of British and Italian faces fill out the support roles. Andrew Cruikshank is particularly good as Gormaz. Douglas Wilmer is stately as a sympathetic Berber ruler.
The movie isn’t overly accurate in regards history – no mention of Rodrigo’s son for instance – but this doesn’t affect anyone’s enjoyment. Unlike some epics, which tend to be ponderous, El Cid goes for incisive and vital scenes. The slowest section is the opening forty minutes that introduces all the main characters, their ambitions, personalities, strengths and weaknesses laid bare and sets them in the historical context. Once the first sword fight begins, we are into tense, wrought sequence after tense wrought sequence, often accompanied by bouts of reckless fighting. Anthony Mann made notoriously tough movies – mostly westerns – and delivers a suitably macho landscape for this Spanish history lesson. Some of his framing is fantastic, really making full use of cinemascope’s width; even in the intimate scenes, he places his actors at the extremes of the set reinforcing emotional or intellectual distance; a sudden close up will completely absorb the screen, the actors needing to work overtime on facial expression to convince us. Robert Krasker is the busy cinematographer. The film does have quiet moments, perhaps not enough of them. There is a great scene of Rodrigo and Chimene’s wedding night that involves Heston delivering his seduction in a dumb show around the banqueting table – she rejects Rodrigo’s overtures – he did after all kill Chimene’s father in a duel. Meanwhile, the incestuous relationship between a royal brother and sister is strongly hinted at, but floats away to indifference. The prominence and dominance given to the two female characters actually reflects real history: the Spanish princess Urraca [Genevieve Page, rather good] did command her own minor kingdom and Chimene ruled Valencia for several years after El Cid died. The politics doesn’t really need to concern us though, because the story progresses swiftly and with plenty of brawny incident to keep our eyes and ears occupied. In fact, one’s brain doesn’t fully engage unless it is reacting to Rosza’s superb music score. Good thing too as there is over two hours of it. Rosza often sensibly leaves the sounds of battle to deliver their own kind of metallic crunching music, before climaxing with a broad stroke of trumpets, brass and strings. Once he even uses an organ voluntary.
This is a strange review, as I’m not really making a judgement call on the movie, just telling you stuff I like about it. That’s the trouble. I am a big sucker for an epic. Done well, they are invariably very good. El Cid is certainly done better than well. While it perhaps lacks the political gravitas of Spartacus or the overt religiosity of Ben Hur and King of Kings, it surely sets the strongest template for the historical epic.
Excellent entertainment.
Furiosa (2024)
No spoilers here. Absolutely loved this movie. A spin off to the Mad Max movies and prequel to Fury Road.
Ana Taylor Joy plays the eponymous character and we see her backstory that led her to the Citadel and the events of Fury Road. She plays the role so well that the join to Charlize Theron is fairly seemless. Kudos also to the young actress who plays a juvenile Furiosa for the first part of the movie.
Chris Hemsworth against type plays the villain Dementus and follows in the great line of Mad Max villains, The Toecutter, Humongus, Immortan Joe etc.
Speaking of the latter, Immortan Joe is also back here, albeit played by a different actor as Hugh Keays Byrne sadly passed since Fury Road, again you don’t notice this though given his mask etc.
Nice also to see Brit actor Tom Burke get a meaty role.
Great action, stunts and a continuation of the world building from Fury Road. More CGI in this but that didn’t bother me, as there are still a good deal of stunts as well.
I’ve seen some reviews that make comparisons to this and Fury Road, with this coming off worse, but I suggest this is best viewed as a companion piece to the last film. It revisits and expands on the world and some characters first seen in Fury Road.
Also read reviews bemoaning the lack of Mad Max, but let’s face it he was always a monosyllabic cypher with the world he inhabits (and villains he faces) as the real stars of the show.
Against the tide of recent reinventions and reboots of older IP, the film is also “woke free” (the character Furiosa is no Rey or other Mary Sue type, she takes a lot of beatings in this film).
All in all I really enjoyed this movie and hope it does well as I’d love to see a further entry in this series from Miller.
Oh and see it in a cinema as the sound and visuals need to be appreciated.
THE LAND UNKNOWN (1957)
I last saw this as a kid on tv way back then and loved it, so a second viewing was a no-brainer when it popped up on my streaming service. Future Tarzan star Jock Mahoney is a Navy geophysicist on an expedition to the Arctic. Along with a female reporter and a machinist they are sent out in a helicopter to investigate a body of warm water in the midst of the Arctic. Caught in a rising storm and bumped by a mysterious flying lizard type bird, the damaged helicopter descends through thick cloud and sets down on the floor of a lush tropical valley. Dinosaurs still roam in this ‘lost world’ as does the sole survivor of a 1945 plane crash.
Virgil Vogel was appointed director when Jack Arnold left because the budget was cut and the original intention of filming in colour was scaled back to black and white and stop-motion effects were jettisoned for rubber suits. The dinosaurs include a T-Rex and giant monitor lizards (real ones, photographically enlarged). If Land Unknown's monsters look fake (and they do) they wowed me as a kid and I think it’s that memory that makes me ignore those frailties and concentrate on the action which is pretty good.
The sex-starved survivor offers the men the spare parts they need to repair the helicopter and escape, if they leave the reporter behind. Intriguingly, against usual expectations of the time, the machinist pushes for the swap, and even handsome heroic leading-man Mahoney briefly entertains the notion of sacrificing her to the survivor’s lust. The sex angle and the depiction of desperate men, aren't the sort of usual plot lines you usually expect to find in a late 50’s exploitation movie and it’s powerful stuff.
The “lost world” set is decent and gives an air of credibility to the action. Jock Mahoney can’t do much with his dialogue other than mouth it, and comes across a pretty dull hero. Shawn Smith as the reporter, gives the role her best shot, but bouncing most of her lines off Mahoney’s stiff character, she was on a bit of a loser. Vogel gives pace and mood to his direction, and combined with the "adult" themes it gives the movie an added edge over many similar pictures with better special effects.
The long wait between viewings was well worth it, watch it if you can.
Loved it as well. I suspect there's a good chance that Chris Hemsworth might get some 'best supporting actor' consideration for his work here, he's that good.
I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't FURY ROAD REDUX. It's not as relentless in its throughline as FURY ROAD (which is essentially one long, drawn out chase scene), it's much more of a slow burn narrative broken up with some incredible action sequences. The action is amazing, though. Indeed, there's a third chapter sequence where Furiosa is a stowaway on a rig that might be the best action sequence in the entire franchise.
Great stuff. Recommended for the big screen.
55 DAYS AT PEKING (1963)
Another Samuel Bronston historical epic which makes a lot noise while choosing to mostly forget about character and historical accuracy. Not a single European name on the cast of characters existed in real life. Curiously almost all the Chinese and Japanese characters do. Most of the scenarios, relationships and conflicts are invented for interest’s sake.
55 Days at Peking relates the true story of an incident during the Boxer Rebellion in China, 1900, when the Foreign Legation’s Compound in Beijing [then Peking] was besieged by the rebels, who in turn are being covertly assisted by sympathetic persons at the Empress’s court. The starry cast does a good job with a fairly inauspicious script. Charlton Heston breathes deeply, reclines in that louche manner he perfected and sneers his way through proceedings. Apparently he didn’t get along with Ava Gardner and that’s revealed in their tense scenes of love and argument. Gardner’s shooting schedule was reshuffled deliberately to write her character out of the film so they could pack the unreliable actress off home. Heston doesn’t have such luck, but at least he shares some decent emotional moments with a pretty Chinese orphan, played effectively by 14 year old Londoner Lynne Sue Moon. The best acting honours go to David Niven and Elizabeth Sellars as the British ambassador and his dedicated wife, who have tired of diplomatic service, yearn for home, yet hunker down with stoic endurance when the fighting starts. The usual suspects of British stalwarts and European unknowns fill out the cast. Flora Robson makes a stately Dowager Empress and Harry Andrews crops up as a missionary with military know-how. The subplot surrounding the morals of Ava Gardner’s Russian baroness feels like an afterthought.
The film has the familiar Bronston look: tremendous attention to visual details, bright colours, enormous sets, thousands of extras in thousands of costumes, rousing music. Nicholas Ray was the credited director, but he took ill and half the film was shot uncredited by Andrew Marton and Guy Green. You barely notice, the film was so well story boarded it hardly needed a director. Jack Hildyard does a decent job with the cameras. A special mention must go to the Dimitri Tiomkin who scored the picture and provides a lush main theme. The orchestration is perhaps too romantic for the sullen and serious escapade which is unfolding on screen, but it is very good. Another Paul Francis Webster song lyric was added to the love theme So Little Time, but you don’t hear Andy Williams singing it, which may be just as well; the film doesn’t seem to require a song.
While one can moan about the historical mishits, it is probably fair to suggest that’s not worth the effort. Far better just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle, dumb bits n all, and do the research on Wiki once the film credits have rolled. Not the very best of epics, but eminently watchable and far better than many.
STARDUST (2007)
I recently read the adult fairy tale Stardust, ‘a novel with illustrations’ by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. I didn’t like it. I don’t like Matthew Vaughn’s movie adaptation either. If there was anything good about the novel it was the moments of melancholy, the undercurrent of adult themes that peppered the narrative and the sudden bouts of gory violence. All of that is excised for the film version in favour of dreamy teen love and stilted humour. The extended beginning, which lay the foundations of the hero’s dynamic quest is condensed to the point of obtuseness while the climax, which in the book was lowkey and less theatrically fantastical, is jettisoned in favour of a Harry Potter style witchcraft and wizardry standoff, all dark mirrors, hulking interiors and evil sorcery. For the remainder, once you ignore Robert de Niro and the silly escapade with the sky pirates, all your left with is a very long chase movie through Iceland and Buckinghamshire. You can’t forgive the stereotypical Narnia / Star Wars throne room coda either, but at least the novel’s downhearted ending is replaced with something more idealised and romantic, which the subject matter probably deserves. Generally though, the content has been dumbed down and sanitised for the family market. Star spotting in the cast is all fine and dandy until you realise everyone is miscast. Michele Pfieffer seems to enjoy herself as a haggardly old witch, but the rest of the performances are monumentally lame. Enormously indulgent and disappointing.
(Looks around nervously then puts his head round a corner) I liked it (runs away as fast as his aged legs will carry him).
I'll back you up. I thought STARDUST was delightful.
CABIN BY THE LAKE (2000)
Judd Nelson plays a horror screenwriter who kidnaps women and chains them up in his cabin to study their terrified reactions so that he can write them into his latest screenplay. He then starts killing the women by tying a cement block to their legs and drowning them in the lake next to the cabin. He even goes underwater to arrange the women in his garden of corpses. The special effects are good and Nelson's performance is eccentric enough to keep things interesting.
Certainly worth watching.
COWBOYS AND ALIENS (2011)
What a mess.
A witless sci-fi / western that attempts to include as many familiar tropes from both genres as it can possibly see fit. That approach doesn’t work by a long, long chalk. Daniel Craig plays an amnesiac outlaw in the Old West whose wife has been kidnapped by aliens. He wears a chunky piece of extra-terrestrial hardware on his wrist which comes in handy when the titular ‘aliens’ actually turn up, which takes a while. Harrison Ford is a mean cattle baron. The two pair up and join forces with a pretty woman, a gang of thieves and a tribe of renegade Indians to thwart these powerful interplanetary gold seekers. The movie’s hopelessly confused plotting plods along at a slow gait while the action sequences move at a steady gallop. The gaps between the two are filled with mumbo-jumbo and hocus-pocus and about as many cliches as you can count.
I watched this while preparing and eating my dinner. There was nothing else on. Maybe I wasn’t giving the thing my full attention, but it didn’t feel as if I needed to. Jon Favreau directed Iron Man 1 & 2 so I should have guessed where Cowboys and Aliens was heading. I have subsequently learnt the film is based on a popular comic book, which surely explains a lot. Half a dozen writers contributed to fabricating this excuse for entertainment. I kid you not.
Oh it's terrible and it takes itself way too seriously. There's no 'fun' to the film at all.
THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958)
Superior Hammer sequel from director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster, the team responsible for rejuvenating the horror genre when they remade Universal’s original Frankenstein. This effort comes fast on the heels of The Curse of… and is a less obviously sensational piece. Peter Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein cheats death at the guillotine and takes up practicing medicine in the pretty Austrian town of Carlsbad. On the quiet he’s creating a new monster, only this time he’s refined the technique, deciding to use a ‘live’ brain rather than reanimate a dead one. Scientific claptrap of course, but it hardly matters, we are in the 1860s after all. The local townsfolk seem quite taken with the dashing Dr Stein, including Eunice Gayson’s naïve charitable rich girl who accidentally meets the Doctor’s new case: Karl, his deformed servant, now invested with a beautiful new body, but desperate to escape the Doctor’s clutches.
The film is low on shocks and is more interested in the psychological aspect of the transfer process and the implications for the individual concerned. Frankenstein wishes to use the ‘new’ Karl as a demonstration of the wonders of medical science, but the ‘old’ Karl’s brain doesn’t like the sound of that. He wants to be appreciated as most normal people would be. Fisher and Sangster develop Karl’s troubles with plenty of empathy and sympathetic playing from Micheal Gwynn ; as an audience, we feel his plight. Meanwhile, Frankenstein continues to be a distinctly unheroic personality. If he is a hero at all, he’s definitely an anti-hero. Cushing’s Baron acts less of the cad than he did in the first film, but he’s still got a brittle temper and blames everyone except himself as disaster again unfolds around him. This time a youthful protégé [Francis Matthews] succeeds in preventing complete annihilation of the Baron’s work. The ending is exceptional.
Five more sequels followed, but with less and less impact.
Yes, this is one of the (if not the) best in the Hammer Frankenstein series. Cushing is superb and the supporting cast not too far behind him. Sangster and Fisher are on top form. It might even be in the running for a place in the top ten Hammer productions, though the competition there is fierce.
ARABESQUE (1966), starring Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck. Directed by Stanley Donen.
We went into this hoping it would be another CHARADE. It was not. Peck is playing the Cary Grant role here and duffing it badly. We were not surprised to read that the role was written with Grant in mind but, when Grant passed, Peck grabbed it. It's some of the worst miscasting that I've ever seen as Peck really, really is not up to the task at all. Light comedy is not his strength. Sophia Loren is fine (more than fine, actually...scenes where she's working with anyone not named 'Peck' are really solid) and the direction is often quite innovative from Donen, but the script is terrible and Peck ruins every single scene he's in. We almost didn't finish the film.
CHINATOWN (1974), starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, and others. Directed by Roman Polanski.
Pretty much a perfect movie. I'd seen it before but not in maybe 10 years. It holds up amazingly well with an exceptionally well thought out script. Beautifully acted and directed, it's one of the best films of the 1970s.