Conan doyle – The Magnificent 60s

The Lost World (1960) ***

A pair of pink knee-length boots, courtesy of adventuress Jennifer (Jill St John), are among the wondrous sights awaiting our band of intrepid explorers. She’s not the only curiosity, Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) is certainly the most obstreperous of archaeologists, aristocrat Hoxton (Michael Rennie) must have a screw loose to keep on resisting the charms of Jennifer, while Gomez (Fernando Lamas) brings along his guitar to (literally) strike a chord at appropriate moments. But it’s a fun ride – cannibals, volcano, giant phosphorescent spiders, carnivorous plants, and dinosaurs.

There are secrets, too. Hoxton has been here – a lost plateau in the middle of the Amazon – before and abandoned an earlier exploration in favour of hunting for the mythical diamonds of El Dorado, Gomez wants to kill Hoxton, Jennifer plans to hook a duke, and Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn) wants more than anything else to prove Challenger wrong.

*A bit of poetic licence here by the illustrator, Jill St John’s pants staying intact throughout.*

And of course, in the way of dinosaur pictures, having battled to find the damned creatures, intrepidity goes out the window and the explorers spend all their time running away from the dinosaurs, seeking a hidden way down from the plateau, while being hunted by cannibals. Any time you see a ledge you know there’s something terrible above – battling monsters with long tails capable of swishing you downwards – or below, not just a sea of lava but a giant sea beast. The only element that’s missing is the booby-traps. Unfortunately, all the spunk goes out of the otherwise spunky Jennifer when faced with monsters and she turns into the quivering screaming cliché.

But the script is on point, feelings indicated by action rather than dialogue. Having learned of Hoxton’s past, Jennifer spurns him by refusing a cigarette and a moment later taking one of her own, Gomez sneaks glances at a mysterious locket. With so much action there’s little time for romance so mainly by looks and the occasional rescue sparks fly between Jennifer and newspaperman Ed (David Hedison) and between Jennifer’s brother David (Ray Stricklyn) and the native girl (Vitina Marcus). And to alleviate the drab scenery there’s always Jennifer in a new bright outfit and, for comic effect, her poodle.

Given that writer-producer-director Irwin Allen (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, 1961) was unable to hire the likes of Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) for the special effects or even find the budget to utilize the drawings of Willis O’Brien (King Kong, 1933) who had been responsible for the stop-motion techniques in the original silent version of The Lost World (1925), the monsters come across on the small screen as acceptable enough. The infusion of sub-plots keeps the project ticking along.

Allen made significant changes to the original – introducing the diamonds, making Challenger rather than following in the footsteps of a previous explorer having previously visited the plateau but lost his proof, swapping the heroine’s pet monkey for a pet poodle, turning the heroine into a gold-digger, substituting as plateau inhabitants natives for ape men, and adding the heroine’s wardrobe. The spicing up of the story helps divert the tale in certain places from the dinosaurs, so the tension is not just waiting for the next attack.

Oddly enough, the film strikes a very contemporary note with regards to the current contentious issue of invasion of privacy. Challenger hits out at pestering journalists for what he views as the invasion of his privacy. Later on he says, “invasion of privacy gives man the right to kill,” but that bold statement relates to the explorers breaching the lost sanctuary, “we are the invaders.”

It’s still pretty enjoyable stuff especially allowing for the budget limitations. None of the actors is called upon to do much, which is what you would expect, although Claude Rains is a surprise and Jill St John a delight. Michael Rennie (Hotel, 1967), primarily there for his stiff-upper-lip, is provided with a neat reversal, the supposed hero with feet of clay. Claude Rains (Casablanca, 1942) is the standout as the feisty bombastic professor not above battering annoying newspapermen with his umbrella.

In an early role, Jill St John (The Liquidator, 1965) provides not just sultry evidence of her physical charms, but carries a terrific almost playful screen presence, though she’s better as the tough gal in a man’s world of the earlier section of the movie than the damsel in distress of the last part. Former Latin movie heartthrob Fernando Lamas (100 Rifles, 1969) is the only other one with a decent part, participating in the expedition to find his lost brother. Vitina Marcus (Taras Bulba, 1963) has a small but pivotal role. David Hedison (Live and Let Die, 1973) and Ray Stricklyn (Track of Thunder, 1967) are outshone by their respective amours. Jay Costa (Escape from Zahrain, 1962) is a pantomime villain.

Charles Bennett (City in the Sea, 1965) helped Irwin Allen flesh out the screenplay.

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) **

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be turning in his grave. Workmanlike at best, awful at its worst, or a “so-bad-it’s-good” candidate? Christopher Lee goes through the motions, there’s an oddly inserted heist, the continuity goes haywire, and the deduction would not have troubled a child. Even the great sleuth having to match nemesis Moriarty in cunning fails to lift this turgid tale. Despite being made in Germany, all the actors, save Senta Berger, appear injected with a fatal dose of stiff upper lip.

A corpse in the water alerts Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Lee) to the presence of Moriarty (Hans Sohnker) who is hunting Peter Blackburn (Wolfgang Lukschy) who has appropriated Cleopatra’s necklace from an archaeological dig. This takes them to Hampshire where corpses abound but the necklace is gone. Holmes burgles Moriarty’s apartment and steals back the necklace which is sent, in heavily protected police van, to an auction house. Holmes outwits Moriarty by infiltrating the heist the villain has planned.

The best scene comes at the beginning when boys throw stones at something floating in the Thames only to discover it’s a corpse. After that, you can choose from any number of bad scenes. Where do you start? The disguises? Holmes is first seen wearing a false nose to pass himself off as dock worker. An eyepatch is enough to convince Moriarty’s henchmen that Holmes in one of their kind. Bare-handed, Holmes kills an obviously plastic snake. To find out what Moriarty is up to, they listen down a chimney!

The deduction is so awful Dr Watson (Thorley Walters) could have done it. A dying man who manages to whisper one word is unable to whisper two and instead still has the strength to flap his hands in a way that any child in the audience familiar with shadow play would have known signaled a bird. Holmes follows bloody footsteps over grass in the darkness. The hands of a corpse are too calloused to be a high-class gentleman. And that’s as much of the detective’s genius as is on show. Moriarty, who is meant to be ever so bright, offers Holmes £6,000 a year to enter into a criminal partnership with him.

Did I mention the continuity? Holmes, in docker’s disguise, turns up outside his apartment lying on the pavement calling for help. Wounded, perhaps? A bit of a joke? We never find out. Once inside, he just turns back into Sherlock Holmes. In the middle of the Hampshire countryside, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Cooper (Hans Neilsen) turns up in a trice.

The film has also been dubbed so the performances are all flat except that of Ellen Blackburn (Senta Berger), the only character who injects emotion into the picture. Everybody else is wooden. Christopher Lee bases his entire interpretation of Holmes on his costume, deerstalker prominent and always puffing on his pipe. Austrian Senta Berger at least shows promise and manages to project some personality into her small part.

Made in a Berlin studio, with some location work in Ireland, this German-made movie has a screenplay by Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man, 1941), purportedly based on the Conan Doyle tale The Valley of Fear. British director Terence Fisher (Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960) is generally assumed to have helmed this project but the actual credits on the picture have him sharing duties with Frank Winterstein, so perhaps Fisher can be absolved of the complete blame.

The so-bad-it’s-good category had obviously not been invented in the early 1960s so this picture was shelved in Britain for six years, although shown in Germany and France before then.

CATCH-UP: If you’ve been tracking the often subtle performances – for a glamour queen – of Senta Berger through the Blog, you can also check out my reviews of The Secret Ways (1961), Major Dundee (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), and Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966). If you’re a Berger fan or fast becoming one to can see one of her later performances in Istanbul Express (1968) which, by coincidence, is reviewed tomorrow.

Selling Sherlock Holmes – The Pressbook for “A Study in Terror” (1965)

This is one of my favorite pressbooks because the marketing concept is so wacky and clearly an ill-advised attempt to cash in on the crime-busting efforts of television’s latest sensation Batman which had aired on the small screen in January 1966 and on the big screen in July of that year, a month before A Study in Terror found its way into U.S. theaters.

Rather than merely adapting the British exhibitors manual – the film had been released in Britain in October 1965 – Columbia, clearly deciding the movie was too old hat for American audiences, aimed to hijack some of the ideas currently being used for the Twentieth Century Fox television series/movie.

So potential moviegoers were treated to bizarre taglines such as “here comes the original camp-counsellor-in-a-cape” and “Flyaway Batman!” complete with the “Bam!” “Biff” and “Crunch” opticals that had become synonymous with the Batman television series. Not content with that, the advertising team invoked Superman as well with a spoof tagline: “faster than a speeding computer…able to leap tall tales in a single stroke of genius.” A third famous character was drawn into proceedings – “He’s James Bond in a cape.”

Also referenced was a famous movie campaign from two decades before. “Sherlock Holmes is Back and Jack the Ripper’s Got ‘Im” echoed the legendary tagline that welcomed Clark Gable back to the movies after his war stint “Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him.”

Interestingly, although exhibitors were supplied with a choice of several taglines, the core advertising image – a pistol-packing Holmes above a busty screaming victim – remained the same, contrary to the normal practice of devising a number of advertisements that allowed the exhibitor to choose the one most relevant to their customer base.

Outside of the spoof Batman ads, the campaign focused on the clash between the master sleuth and the villain. Other taglines spelled it out: “Sherlock Holmes takes on Jack the Ripper” / “Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper in a mad, mad thriller” / “Sherlock Holmes strikes back at the foulest fiend of them all, Jack the Ripper” and “The sleuth versus the slayer.”

Supplementary taglines were occasionally included: “girl after girl, he gives a new twist to the world’s oldest profession” / “the most savage killer of the century and the screen screams with suspense” / “the battle of wits is as terror sharp as the murder weapon.”

With copyline writers doing overtime, the Pressbook clocked up over 15 separate adverts. Pictorially, the emphasis appeared to be on cleavage and brutal murders of women.

With a virtual cast of unknowns, the Pressbook writers had to work hard to summon up interest in the principals. John Neville for example had been originally approached for a musical Baker Street and he fitted in shooting the film with his work in the theatre. Adrian Conan Doyle, son of the famed author, proclaimed that Donald Houston was “completely, utterly. right for the part.” The role of a disfigured girl was considered a “professional risk” for Adrienne Corri and Barbara Windsor announced she was going to turn brunette and concentrate on drama rather than comedy.

Another famous writing team was called into the promotional whirl, bestselling authors Ellery Queen writing the novelization of the screenplay.

On the basis that the detective was well-known, the marketeers felt safe enough exhorting exhibitors to persuade local libraries to hold a Sherlock Holmes Week and approaching bookstores to feature the other books in the series as well as the novelization. Another suggestion was a competition to name all ten stars who played the character. Sherlock Holmes fans were known as Baker Street Boys and “there may be a member or two in your community…who may prove tremendously helpful in radio/newspaper/television promotion.”

Another promotion focused on deerstalker hats and the hero’s interest in the violin and pipe-smoking lent themselves to tie-ups with retailers of such products.

A Study in Terror (1965) ****

Excepting Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) the world’s most famous fictional detective had been absent from the big screen for over two decades so it seemed an inspired decision to set him on the trail of the world’s most infamous serial killer – Jack the Ripper. The result is high-class comfort food – the first of the series made in color – classic deduction coupled with barbaric murders in a fog-bound London replete with cobbled streets, Dickensian urchins and sex workers apop with cleavage and corset. Throw in sensitivity towards the abject poverty of the period, female exploitation and a nod towards an upper-class cover-up and you have a movie with a surprisingly contemporary outlook.

This is a tougher Holmes, handy with his fists, sporting a spring-loaded knife in his walking stick. The investigation draws in the Prime Minister (Cecil Parker) and the Home Secretary (Dudley Foster) as well as Sherlock’s pompous brother Myron (Robert Morley) and the ubiquitous Inspector LeStrade (Frank Finlay).

Pretty quickly it is Suspects Assemble. Due to a scalpel being the murderer’s instrument of choice, doctors are immediately implicated, the most likely candidate the philanthropic Dr. Murray (Anthony Quayle) who operates a soup kitchen. Publican Max Steiner (Peter Carsten), with a sideline in blackmail, is another possibility. And there is the mysterious disinherited son of a lord, Michael Osborne who has married sex worker Angela (Adrienne Corri).

*The Italian ad campaign combined a more conservative Sherlock Holmes*
*with exploitative illustrative detail.*

As ever, the plot is complicated by red herrings and sleights of cinematic hand. But the highlight of a Holmes picture is the sleuth’s mastery of deduction based on clues missed by the ordinary mortal and every now and then the story comes to a halt to allow time for the detective to demonstrate genius. Occasionally he dons a disguise. And thoroughly enjoyable these scenes are before he gets down to the main business of uncovering the killer.

A Study in Terror introduces social depth to the Holmes saga. When the crimes focus the media spotlight on Whitechapel, Dr. Murray draws attention to the constant “murder by poverty” ignored by the state. Female exploitation is of course the norm in the sex worker business and small wonder that such women are easy targets for the Ripper and although that is an overdone trope in this case a different angle comes into play.

Shakespearian actor John Neville (Oscar Wilde, 1960) handles the main character with considerable aplomb with Donald Houston (The Blue Lagoon, 1949) as his often baffled sidekick Watson. Robert Morley (Genghis Khan, 1965) is a splendid Mycroft although Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) fails to nail down his Scottish accent.

The considerable supporting cast includes Judi Dench making her second film appearance, Barbara Windsor of Carry On fame, John Fraser (Operation Crossbow, 1965), John Cairney (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963), Peter Carsten (Dark of the Sun, 1968), singer Georgia Brown (Nancy in the original stage production of Oliver!), Edina Ronay (The Black Torment, 1964), Corin Redgrave (The Girl with the Pistol,1968), former British leading lady Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist, 1948) and future television comedy writer Jeremy Lloyd (Are You Being Served?, 1972-1985).

The picture was unusual in that it was not drawn from the existing Holmes canon but as an original devised by Derek and Donald Ford (The Black Torment), the former going onto a more extensive career as a director of British sexploitation pictures such as Suburban Wives (1972). Production company Sir Nigel Films had been set up as an official vehicle to exploit the Holmes legacy.

Director James Hill (The Kitchen, 1961) had won an Oscar for the short Giuseppina (1960) and was a year away from his breakthrough Born Free. Given the low-budget this is a highly watchable picture.

Flick Vault has this for free on Youtube or if you want to own it forever there’s a DVD.