"...Bond's imitators, many of whom have plundered unfilmed Ian Fleming stories for gimmicks..."
were there any other Spymania films of the time that borrowed bits from Fleming? I dont think this review mentioned Casino Royale, which had the legal right to film a Fleming story. but even if the author means that one, what are the rest of these "many" Bond imitations plundering Fleming's unfilmed stories?
@caractacus potts There's a mid 60s film called "Kaleidoscope" starring Warren Beatty as a gambler who helps British cops catch a villain by playing him at cards in a casino, so it vaguely resembles CR.
thanks @Barbel , never heard of that one, I'll add it to my queue. anybody else think of Spymania entries prior to 1967 that "borrowed" bits of unfilmed Fleming for their plots? (I can think of a few that EON borrowed plots from in the 1970s but thats the opposite situation)
now youve reminded me of the basic Casino Royale plot, on teevee there were at least two episodes of The Saint that seemed to borrow very specific details, not just generally: in one, the baddie is using infrared glasses to read marked cards, and in the other a baddie tries to assassinate a cardplayer from behind his chair using a blade concealed in a cane (Fleming had a gun hidden in the cane)
and also on teevee, theres an early Avengers where Cathy Gale joins a gang planning a gold heist from a high security vault and has to get a message out to Steed without blowing her cover (she just sends a postcard). By definition that is before Honor Blackman left the show to film goldfinger! I think the two Saint episodes on the other hand were both after the release of Feldman's Casino Royale.
The Saint episodes: The Queen's Ransom, features an attempted assassination of an Arab ruler by a man with a bayonet stick. It premiered on 30th Sep 1966. The Ex-King of Diamonds was the one with the glasses and that was 1969, so well after Feldman. The third season episode Crime of the Century features a bullion robbery and a fatal nerve gas. The episode was aired in March 1965 but must have been in production around the time Goldfinger was at the cinemas in late 1964. The 1965 episode Sibao features a voodoo ritual not unlike the kind if stuff we see in LALD, although whether this is inspired from Fleming, Charteris or scriptwriter Terry Nation, I can't tell you.
Sorry, I am off topic. I knew all those Saint reviews would come in handy @caractacus potts
yes @chrisno1 your research shall prove valuable for all us SpyFans for many years to come!
if someone had said "oh yeh, Plopps? which episodes precisely are these you are talking about? prove it!" I knew I would be able to open your Saint thread and find the titles and dates within seconds
I'd forgotten about Sibao, because I'd thought the influence was the other way round (Moore was able to recycle ideas from his old teevee show in his very first BondFilm!) , but yes, now you mention it, the basic idea of the big baddy using voodoo to control the populace wouldve come from Fleming! and there was a young lady fortune teller to be wed to the baddy, was there not? all from Fleming (presuming Fleming himself was not recycling an old trope)
but it was the film that made the big baddy a politician, as well as casting a Holder brother for the ritual scenes
and just the other night I watched a Man from UNCLE with a voodoo politician plot: The Very Important Zombie Affair (S2.E15 Dec 31, 1965)
@caractacus potts Sibao is based on the short story Haiti: The Questing Tycoon. This features in the 1955 collection The Saint on the Spanish Main, so it was published a year after Live and Let Die. Fleming therefore may be a possible influence on Charteris' writing here, what with all the voodoo mystery and a young woman both in thrall and in peril.
Wiki Fandom states this about The Questing Tycoon:
Templar squares off against a man who is taking advantage of a young woman who may or may not be a voodoo priestess.
The telly adaptation has plenty of scenes that spark memories of LALD the movie. There is a voodoo dance show [performed by Geoffrey Holder's brother Boscoe], fortune telling, fear of the undead, cemeteries, voodoo rituals, dead secret service agents, buckets of snakes!
Interestingly, one of the other short stories in the collection is called Jamaica: The Black Commissar and is sometimes referred to as The Man from Moscow.
Wiki Fandom writes:
Simon reunites with characters from the previous stories The Arrow of God and The Masked Angel (from an earlier book, Call for the Saint) to bring down a communist sympathizer who has installed himself as a dictator of a semi-autonomous area of Jamaica.
Now, that sounds like some crafty screenwriter has pinched an idea from Leslie Charteris ! The Black Commissar was never adapted for TV.
While the overriding influence on the movie LALD is clearly Ian Fleming it is certainly interesting to note what has been stolen [my word] from other sources to brighten up what might be considered a rather dull package.
I'd be intereste dto know if Tom Mankiewicz has ever admitted or discussed where his ideas for LALD originated from.
Both The Ex-King of Diamonds and The Queen's Ransom were original episodes written directly for the series.
I will try to leave all at that - this isn't the correct thread for this discussion.
The point in posting professional reviews is to create discussion on points raised in those reviews, so this IS the correct thread to discuss the review of YOLT, even if sometimes it goes off tangent, and there are many interesting points raised, keep it going, folks!
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Well, that's great to know @CoolHandBond I do find the '"origins & influences" of the Bond films quite interesting and even if we may not be entirely correct in our assertions, there clearly are cultural influences across the books and movies which need to be considered. Sonetimes context is half way towards understanding.
well we did drift pretty far from the YOLT review, and I'm still not convinced that there were any rival spyfilms "plundering unfilmed Fleming plots". Barbel's Warren Beatty example sounds a pretty vague similarity.
Chris's deepedive into the source material of that Saint episode actually suggests to me that Fleming and Charteris independently thought of a voodoo plot by coincidence round the same time. I dont think Fleming was successful enough in 1954 that the long established Charteris would necessarily even notice is new book. Rather I would guess both authors were writing variations on long established tropes in adventure fiction. We know Fleming was, he was a fan of Jules Verne, Fu Manchu, pirate stories, "boys own adventures", and (I suspect) Rider Haggard. The general idea of an evil ruler manipulating the populace through local religion is in a lot of Haggard's stories, and typical of exotic Victorian adventure fiction. These voodoo plots Fleming and Charteris both wrote update this general trope by placing the exploited local religion at the exotic edge of modernday America and making it a national security matter.
And to bring it back to that one sentence in the review, these SpyMania films of the 60s were similarly regurgitating old tropes, from older spy stories (a genre long before Fleming), from Hitchcock, from comic books and scifi. A lot from the old serials and b-movies. Unless I see a specific example of a plundered Fleming plot, I'd say that claim is just a case of giving Fleming too much credit, as if he invented everything to do with the spy genre.
I'm still not convinced that there were any rival spyfilms "plundering unfilmed Fleming plots". Barbel's Warren Beatty example sounds a pretty vague similarity.
For instance, I just checked out Michael Richardson's excellent book Guns, Girls and Gadgets which looks at many of the sixties spy movies and all the films up to YOLT are either Man from UNCLE episodes or they are all based on novels written by people like Deighton, Hamilton, O'Donnell, Canning, Leasor, Le Carre, Sax Rohmer, Lionel Davison, John Gardner, Alex Gordon, David Esdaile Walker, Helen MacInnes, Henry Maxwell, Adam Hall.
The exceptions are the two British spoofs, The Spy With the Cold Nose and Carry On Spying and the two Derek Flint movies.
Even when I had a little think, I could only muster the two Charles Vine movies, Our Man in Havana [Graham Greene], Our Man in Marrakesh and Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, the latter of which was reverse-mined by Christopher Wood but not until 1979 and Moonraker. None of these films appear to have ransacked Ian Fleming's work at all, except in the most obvious: a tough, suave secret agent as a hero battling the odds. Maybe not the Graham Greene adaptation though!
I think the reviewer hasn't read any Ian Fleming or hasn't seen these films.
Yes, I think mainstream reviewers who didn't consume many spy thrillers didn't realize that the genre had a long tradition of shared tropes and recurring gimmicks, many of which were transferred to cinema via serials and early screen thrillers. Fritz Lang's Spies might be from 1928, but parts of it could be from a silent-era Bond film. And spy novelist/critic Jeremy Duns has pointed out that in the 1941 novel The Island of Fu Manchu the villain frightens the locals by the use of voodoo and makes his lair inside a hollowed-out volcano, where he keeps experimental underwater craft for use in tipping the balance of world power. Now imagine if that was adapted to film around the time of YOLT--the reviewer would be seriously confused!
Part of the reason why I started this thread was to expose what some so-called “professional” movie critics are able to get away with.
@chrisno1 says - I think the reviewer hasn't read any Ian Fleming or hasn't seen these films. I think Chris is 100% correct.
There were, of course, legions of James Bond rip-offs, the best of these were very good (Flint, Helm, UNCLE) which had Fleming-like outlandish villains, but nothing that I can see was directly taken from the Bond novels.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
That's a very good, fair and complimentary review, showing again that this theory Lazenby was disliked by critics [and audiences ?] simply isn't true. Pity the reviewer gave away the ending
This is the last review that I have to post, so unless anyone else has any to add to the thread, it will be cease to be, like the parrot. Special thanks to those who have taken the time to post reviews and comments.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Yes, it's the new James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forgotten". An accurate review, DAF really "doesn't carry the same quality or flair as its many predecessors" and can be difficult to follow.
Fairly accurate review, although it is a bit mean to suggest the diamonds are forgotten: they are revealed as important to the operation of the space laser and Tiffany mentions them at the very end. I like Diamonds, confusing, garbled or whatever. It is very amusing and holds my attention well with moments of tension and intrigue even if ultimately it falls a bit flat.
Comments
A better review than the previous one!
The written English is appalling. At least the game isn't given away this time. Surprised he enjoyed the yawning underwater battle.
"All seems authentic Fleming."
I was wondering about this line:
"...Bond's imitators, many of whom have plundered unfilmed Ian Fleming stories for gimmicks..."
were there any other Spymania films of the time that borrowed bits from Fleming? I dont think this review mentioned Casino Royale, which had the legal right to film a Fleming story. but even if the author means that one, what are the rest of these "many" Bond imitations plundering Fleming's unfilmed stories?
@caractacus potts There's a mid 60s film called "Kaleidoscope" starring Warren Beatty as a gambler who helps British cops catch a villain by playing him at cards in a casino, so it vaguely resembles CR.
thanks @Barbel , never heard of that one, I'll add it to my queue. anybody else think of Spymania entries prior to 1967 that "borrowed" bits of unfilmed Fleming for their plots? (I can think of a few that EON borrowed plots from in the 1970s but thats the opposite situation)
now youve reminded me of the basic Casino Royale plot, on teevee there were at least two episodes of The Saint that seemed to borrow very specific details, not just generally: in one, the baddie is using infrared glasses to read marked cards, and in the other a baddie tries to assassinate a cardplayer from behind his chair using a blade concealed in a cane (Fleming had a gun hidden in the cane)
and also on teevee, theres an early Avengers where Cathy Gale joins a gang planning a gold heist from a high security vault and has to get a message out to Steed without blowing her cover (she just sends a postcard). By definition that is before Honor Blackman left the show to film goldfinger! I think the two Saint episodes on the other hand were both after the release of Feldman's Casino Royale.
The Saint episodes: The Queen's Ransom, features an attempted assassination of an Arab ruler by a man with a bayonet stick. It premiered on 30th Sep 1966. The Ex-King of Diamonds was the one with the glasses and that was 1969, so well after Feldman. The third season episode Crime of the Century features a bullion robbery and a fatal nerve gas. The episode was aired in March 1965 but must have been in production around the time Goldfinger was at the cinemas in late 1964. The 1965 episode Sibao features a voodoo ritual not unlike the kind if stuff we see in LALD, although whether this is inspired from Fleming, Charteris or scriptwriter Terry Nation, I can't tell you.
Sorry, I am off topic. I knew all those Saint reviews would come in handy @caractacus potts
yes @chrisno1 your research shall prove valuable for all us SpyFans for many years to come!
if someone had said "oh yeh, Plopps? which episodes precisely are these you are talking about? prove it!" I knew I would be able to open your Saint thread and find the titles and dates within seconds
I'd forgotten about Sibao, because I'd thought the influence was the other way round (Moore was able to recycle ideas from his old teevee show in his very first BondFilm!) , but yes, now you mention it, the basic idea of the big baddy using voodoo to control the populace wouldve come from Fleming! and there was a young lady fortune teller to be wed to the baddy, was there not? all from Fleming (presuming Fleming himself was not recycling an old trope)
but it was the film that made the big baddy a politician, as well as casting a Holder brother for the ritual scenes
and just the other night I watched a Man from UNCLE with a voodoo politician plot: The Very Important Zombie Affair (S2.E15 Dec 31, 1965)
@caractacus potts Sibao is based on the short story Haiti: The Questing Tycoon. This features in the 1955 collection The Saint on the Spanish Main, so it was published a year after Live and Let Die. Fleming therefore may be a possible influence on Charteris' writing here, what with all the voodoo mystery and a young woman both in thrall and in peril.
Wiki Fandom states this about The Questing Tycoon:
Templar squares off against a man who is taking advantage of a young woman who may or may not be a voodoo priestess.
The telly adaptation has plenty of scenes that spark memories of LALD the movie. There is a voodoo dance show [performed by Geoffrey Holder's brother Boscoe], fortune telling, fear of the undead, cemeteries, voodoo rituals, dead secret service agents, buckets of snakes!
Interestingly, one of the other short stories in the collection is called Jamaica: The Black Commissar and is sometimes referred to as The Man from Moscow.
Wiki Fandom writes:
Simon reunites with characters from the previous stories The Arrow of God and The Masked Angel (from an earlier book, Call for the Saint) to bring down a communist sympathizer who has installed himself as a dictator of a semi-autonomous area of Jamaica.
Now, that sounds like some crafty screenwriter has pinched an idea from Leslie Charteris ! The Black Commissar was never adapted for TV.
While the overriding influence on the movie LALD is clearly Ian Fleming it is certainly interesting to note what has been stolen [my word] from other sources to brighten up what might be considered a rather dull package.
I'd be intereste dto know if Tom Mankiewicz has ever admitted or discussed where his ideas for LALD originated from.
Both The Ex-King of Diamonds and The Queen's Ransom were original episodes written directly for the series.
I will try to leave all at that - this isn't the correct thread for this discussion.
The point in posting professional reviews is to create discussion on points raised in those reviews, so this IS the correct thread to discuss the review of YOLT, even if sometimes it goes off tangent, and there are many interesting points raised, keep it going, folks!
Well, that's great to know @CoolHandBond I do find the '"origins & influences" of the Bond films quite interesting and even if we may not be entirely correct in our assertions, there clearly are cultural influences across the books and movies which need to be considered. Sonetimes context is half way towards understanding.
well we did drift pretty far from the YOLT review, and I'm still not convinced that there were any rival spyfilms "plundering unfilmed Fleming plots". Barbel's Warren Beatty example sounds a pretty vague similarity.
Chris's deepedive into the source material of that Saint episode actually suggests to me that Fleming and Charteris independently thought of a voodoo plot by coincidence round the same time. I dont think Fleming was successful enough in 1954 that the long established Charteris would necessarily even notice is new book. Rather I would guess both authors were writing variations on long established tropes in adventure fiction. We know Fleming was, he was a fan of Jules Verne, Fu Manchu, pirate stories, "boys own adventures", and (I suspect) Rider Haggard. The general idea of an evil ruler manipulating the populace through local religion is in a lot of Haggard's stories, and typical of exotic Victorian adventure fiction. These voodoo plots Fleming and Charteris both wrote update this general trope by placing the exploited local religion at the exotic edge of modernday America and making it a national security matter.
And to bring it back to that one sentence in the review, these SpyMania films of the 60s were similarly regurgitating old tropes, from older spy stories (a genre long before Fleming), from Hitchcock, from comic books and scifi. A lot from the old serials and b-movies. Unless I see a specific example of a plundered Fleming plot, I'd say that claim is just a case of giving Fleming too much credit, as if he invented everything to do with the spy genre.
I'm still not convinced that there were any rival spyfilms "plundering unfilmed Fleming plots". Barbel's Warren Beatty example sounds a pretty vague similarity.
I would agree with that @caractacus potts
For instance, I just checked out Michael Richardson's excellent book Guns, Girls and Gadgets which looks at many of the sixties spy movies and all the films up to YOLT are either Man from UNCLE episodes or they are all based on novels written by people like Deighton, Hamilton, O'Donnell, Canning, Leasor, Le Carre, Sax Rohmer, Lionel Davison, John Gardner, Alex Gordon, David Esdaile Walker, Helen MacInnes, Henry Maxwell, Adam Hall.
The exceptions are the two British spoofs, The Spy With the Cold Nose and Carry On Spying and the two Derek Flint movies.
Even when I had a little think, I could only muster the two Charles Vine movies, Our Man in Havana [Graham Greene], Our Man in Marrakesh and Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, the latter of which was reverse-mined by Christopher Wood but not until 1979 and Moonraker. None of these films appear to have ransacked Ian Fleming's work at all, except in the most obvious: a tough, suave secret agent as a hero battling the odds. Maybe not the Graham Greene adaptation though!
I think the reviewer hasn't read any Ian Fleming or hasn't seen these films.
Yes, I think mainstream reviewers who didn't consume many spy thrillers didn't realize that the genre had a long tradition of shared tropes and recurring gimmicks, many of which were transferred to cinema via serials and early screen thrillers. Fritz Lang's Spies might be from 1928, but parts of it could be from a silent-era Bond film. And spy novelist/critic Jeremy Duns has pointed out that in the 1941 novel The Island of Fu Manchu the villain frightens the locals by the use of voodoo and makes his lair inside a hollowed-out volcano, where he keeps experimental underwater craft for use in tipping the balance of world power. Now imagine if that was adapted to film around the time of YOLT--the reviewer would be seriously confused!
Part of the reason why I started this thread was to expose what some so-called “professional” movie critics are able to get away with.
@chrisno1 says - I think the reviewer hasn't read any Ian Fleming or hasn't seen these films. I think Chris is 100% correct.
There were, of course, legions of James Bond rip-offs, the best of these were very good (Flint, Helm, UNCLE) which had Fleming-like outlandish villains, but nothing that I can see was directly taken from the Bond novels.
The review from Variety.
Favourable review, if full of errors.
That's a very good, fair and complimentary review, showing again that this theory Lazenby was disliked by critics [and audiences ?] simply isn't true. Pity the reviewer gave away the ending
This is the last review that I have to post, so unless anyone else has any to add to the thread, it will be cease to be, like the parrot. Special thanks to those who have taken the time to post reviews and comments.
Yes, it's the new James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forgotten". An accurate review, DAF really "doesn't carry the same quality or flair as its many predecessors" and can be difficult to follow.
Fairly accurate review, although it is a bit mean to suggest the diamonds are forgotten: they are revealed as important to the operation of the space laser and Tiffany mentions them at the very end. I like Diamonds, confusing, garbled or whatever. It is very amusing and holds my attention well with moments of tension and intrigue even if ultimately it falls a bit flat.