Jack Lord – The Magnificent 60s

The Doomsday Flight (1966) ***

Early entry to the hijack subgenre – this one pivoting on the bomb-on-a-plane. Could almost deem it a template for what to do and not do in this particular field. Airport (1970) was the most obvious beneficiary although Speed (1994) could be reckoned to be something of a homage. And though “what if” was largely the preserve of sci fi, this posed very scary questions for audiences only beginning to enjoy the benefits of cheaper international travel. A quartet of excellent twists and three examples of men under pressure heat up the concept.

Unusually, the writer was the main selling point, Rod Serling (Seven Days in May, 1964) being more famous than most screenwriters thanks to The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) scaring the pants off viewers in ways that nobody thought television would dare to do.

Propped up by an interesting cast – Jack Lord (The Name of the Game Is Kill!, 1968), former major league movie star Van Johnson (Wives and Lovers, 1963), Edmond O’Brien (Rio Conchos, 1964), John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966), Ed Asner (The Satan Bug, 1965) and Michael Sarrazin (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969).

Unusual in that the two main characters lose it and the movie is probably the first to touch upon PTSD in Vietnam. While Special Agent Frank Thompson (Jack Lord), leading the task force on the ground, appears to be in complete control, in fact he’s hidden the fact that his wife is on the hijacked plane. That’s only revealed in the final climactic twist, so you have to cast your mind back over the movie and reassess Jack Lord’s apparently unflappable performance.

The anonymous hijacker (Edmond O’Brien) is a pretty cunning individual. He’s set a bomb to explode on the plane’s descent and removed the easy option of making a speedy landing by forcing the jet to remain above a certain height otherwise an altitude-sensitive trigger will blow the passengers to kingdom come. He demands a $100,000 ransom which the airline is only too willing to pay.

Meanwhile, Capt Anderson (Van Johnson), who had appeared the insouciant handsome epitome of the airline pilot of the kind you saw in advertisements, is sweating profusely under the pressure as the cabin crew begin to search for the bomb. The passengers are not quite as terrified as you’d expect, most sitting in their seats, and i’ts left to celebrity George Ducette (John Saxon) to kick up a ruckus until put in his place by an anonymous army corporal (Michael Sarrazin) who has a distinct aversion to bombs and so far has sat rigid in his seat.

The hijacker keeps everyone on their toes by constantly moving from phone to phone. There’s a hiccup when the delivery van carrying the ransom has an accident and the cash is obliterated. By this point the hijacker, in a bar, is getting drunk and his iron control is tested by the news. The plane, meanwhile, is running out of fuel and Capt Anderson has long run out of patience.

Turns out the bomber isn’t the evil genius you expect. He’s been cast aside by the American dream, his considerable talents overlooked, and he wants everyone to know that he’s worth more. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get his moment in the sun, either literally having made off with the money, or by having his face splashed over the front pages of newspapers.

When he dies of a heart attack, the plane still circling and fuel levels dangerously low and now unable to locate the bomb, that’s a heck of a fabulous twist. But what Rod Serling takes away with one hand, he gives with the other, and the pilot soon works out that if he lands at a high altitude airfield he’ll prevent the bomb exploding.

Safely on the ground, we come to the third twist. The hijacker had deposited the bomb in Capt Anderson’s flight bag, carelessly left lying around at the airport. The final twist is the revelation that Thompson’s wife was on board.

What had every opportunity of becoming a run-of-the-mill thriller, especially since we are light on passenger drama (no pregnant women about to give birth, no kids or nuns to claw at our sentiments), segues into something more interesting as it delves into the cracking up of the hijacker and intimation that soldiers returning from Vietnam do not feel like heroes.

Edmond O’Brien is the pick, but Van Johnson possibly the most courageous in filleting his screen persona. You wouldn’t have predicted Michael Sarrazin’s later success from this performance, nor that Jack Lord would hit a home run in television’s Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980).

Ably directed by William Graham (Waterhole #3, 1967) and although, technically, all he has to do is point the picture in the direction of the twists, he brings more by allowing Edmond O’Brien to humanize his character.

I saw this as the supporting feature to Carry On Doctor and as a youngster never came out of a cinema more scared. Originally it was a made-for-television number though yanked after only one screening after airlines, not surprisingly, objected, so, as with many hard-to-find pictures it entered the cult zone in the USA.

As YouTube is often the curator of cult you can find it there.

The Name of the Game Is Kill (1968) ***

Surprisingly effective thriller headlined by Jack Lord (Dr No, 1962) and providing Susan Strasberg (The Sisters, 1969) with a more complex role than hitherto.

Hungarian drifter Symcha (Jack Lord) hitches a lift in the desert with Mickey (Susan Strasberg), one of three sisters living with their mother (T.C.Jones) and running a filling station in a backwater. And before you can say Bates Motel, it’s clear not all is right. Youngest sister Nan (Tisha Sterling) keeps a rattler and a tarantula as pets and has the awkward personality trait of tending to set cats on fire.

Oldest sister Diz (Collin Wilcox Patton) eyes up the visitor for herself, even though Mickey is clearly hell-bent on him and is short in the fiancé department, her last boyfriend mysteriously disappearing. There’s more than a hint of the later The Beguiled (1970) in that each of the girls, Nan the most blatant, Diz the most persistent, shows keen sexual interest in the visitor.

And there’s some mystery, too, about the dead father. Everyone has a different tale to offer: he was murdered and incinerated by the mother; he committed suicide; he was run over by Nan. It’s this take-your-pick element that throws Symcha, though, admittedly, his brain might be addled after surviving a hit-and-run. Three days in a coma and all he has to show for it is a plaster on his head. He would need to be dumb, or just lusting after Mickey, to return to the house after that.

He makes no bones about being incapable of love, after witnessing friends and family slaughtered after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He “wants” her, but doesn’t commit to love. Mickey, in the manner of such romantics, reckons he’ll soon fall into a swoon over her. “Don’t let your past ruin our future,” she opines, in one of several good lines in the picture. “You have a sick mind,” Mickey tells Diz. “No,” she retorts, “I have a sick sister.” The bulk of the good lines are the family taking verbal chunks out of each other so tension is kept high.

Mostly, Symcha’s job is to act like an involuntarily detective, getting close enough to each of the women to let them spill their secrets, though he’s less adept at working out what’s the truth. Is Mickey a “cheap lay” or virginal? Did Julio, the aforementioned fiancé, disappear once he realized what he was letting himself in for, or was he done away with?

And Symcha’s even less adept at looking after himself. There’s a kind of clever gender switch here. It’s usually the girl who’s foolish enough to return to the haunted house, or who doesn’t recognize danger, or who lets love (in this case, lust) get in the way of rational decision.

Family here is the disturbing element. Anyone attempting to break it up – by heading for San Francisco for example with one of them – is viewed as a threat.

You’ll probably guess the ending from two unnecessary giveaways at the beginning and a flaw in the make-up department, but, in fact, though the poster pleads with you not to give away the ending, it doesn’t say which ending it’s referring to. For this ends with a bang, three twists in quick succession. And don’t be tempted to switch off before the final freeze-frame (I always did wonder where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969, got that idea).

Swedish director Gunnar Hellstrom (Just Once More, 1962) cleverly plays with expectations. He has you thinking, from the way Symcha makes his intentions clear, and from his wandering eye, that he’s the predator descending on a bunch of vulnerable women. He’s got that strong masculine air. He’s soft-voiced, too, and that carries a greater aura of confidence (ask Clint Eastwood) than a loud-mouth more physically-dominant specimen. But it soon becomes clear he might have stumbled into a web.

Jack Lord is more impressive than I expected and if he hadn’t gone straight from this into a dozen years of Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980) he might have blossomed into a decent male lead in the movies. Susan Strasberg gets to run up an entire scale of acting notes, showing that she is far more accomplished and deserved more than just supporting roles.

But everyone gets their moment in the sun. Tisha Sterling (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) is good, a mixture of temptation personified and dangerous instinct. Collin Wilcox Paxton (The Baby Maker, 1970) as the dominant sister sometimes overacts to express that character trait, but that’s not to the movie’s detriment as sometimes it is a bit too low-key. Screenwriter Gary Crutcher (The House of Zodiac, 1969) ran with the rattler notion in Stanley (1972).

Would have been more suspenseful minus the early give-aways.

Damn good for a B-picture.

Catch it on Amazon Prime.

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Dr No (1962) *****

Minus the gadgets and the more outlandish plots, the James Bond formula in embryo. With two of the greatest entrances in movie history – and a third if you count the creepy presence of Dr No himself at the beds of his captives – all the main supporting characters in place except Q, plenty of sex and action, plus the Maurice Binder credit sequence and the theme tune, this is the spy genre reinvented.

Most previous espionage pictures usually involved a character quickly out of their depth or an innocent caught up in nefarious shenanigans, not a man close to a semi-thug, totally in command, automatically suspicious, and happy to knock off anyone who gets in his way, in fact given government clearance to commit murder should the occasion arise. That this killer comes complete with charm and charisma and oozes sexuality changes all the rules and ups the stakes in the spy thriller.

Three men disguised as beggars break into the house of British secret service agent Strangways (Tim Moxon) and kill him and his secretary and steal the file on Dr No (Joseph Wiseman). A glamorous woman in a red dress Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson) catches the eye of our handsome devil “Bond, James Bond” (Sean Connery) at a casino before he is interrupted by an urgent message, potential assignation thwarted.

We are briefly introduced to Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) before Bond is briefed by M (Bernard Lee) and posted out immediately – or “almost immediately” as it transpires – to Jamaica, but not before his beloved Beretta is changed to his signature Walther PPK and mention made that he is recovering from a previous mission. But in what would also become a series signature, liberated women indulging in sexual freedom, and often making the first move, Ms Trench is lying in wait at his flat.

In another change to the espionage trope, this man does not walk into the unknown. Suspicion is his watchword. In other words, he is the consummate professional. On arrival at Jamaica airport he checks out the waiting chauffeur and later the journalist who takes his picture. The first action sequence also sets a new tone. Bond is not easily duped. Three times he outwits the chauffeur. Finally, at the stand-off, Bond fells him with karate before the man takes cyanide, undercutting the danger with the mordant quip, on delivering the corpse to Government house, “see that he doesn’t get away.”

Initially, it’s more a detective story as Bond follows up on various clues that leads him to Quarrel (John Kitzmiller), initially appearing as an adversary, and C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) before the finger of suspicion points to the mysterious Dr No and the question of why rocks from his island should be radioactive. Certainly, Dr No pulls out all the stops, sending hoods, a tarantula, sexy secretary Miss Taro (Zena Marshall) and the traitororous Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson) to waylay or kill Bond.

But it’s only when our hero lands on the island and the bikini-clad Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) emerges from the sea as the epitome of the stunning “Bond Girl” that the series formula truly kicks in: formidable sadistic opponent, shady organization Spectre, amazing sets, space age plot, a race against time.

It’s hard not to overstate how novel this entire picture was. For a start, it toyed with the universal perception of the British as the ultimate arbiters of fair play. Here was an anointed killer. Equally, the previous incarnation of the British spy had been the bumbling Alec Guinness in Our Man in Havana (1959). That the British should endorse wanton killing and blatant immorality – remember this was some years before the Swinging Sixties got underway – went against the grain.

Although critics have maligned the sexism of the series, they have generally overlooked the reaction of the female audience to a male hunk, or the freedom with which women appeared to enjoy sexual trysts with no fear of moral complication. Bond is not just macho, he is playful with the opposite sex, flirting with Miss Moneypenny, and with a fine line in throwaway quips.

Director Terence Young is rarely more than a few minutes away from a spot of action or sex, exposition kept to a minimum, so the story zings along, although there is time to flesh out the characters, Bond’s vulnerability after his previous mission mentioned, his attention to detail, and Honey Rider’s backstory, her father disappearing on the island and her own ruthlessness. The insistently repetitive theme tunes- from Monty Norman and John Barry – were innovative. The special effects mostly worked, testament to the genius of production designer Ken Adam rather than the miserable budget.

Most impressive of all was the director’s command of mood and pace. For all the fast action, he certainly knew how to frame a scene, Bond initially shown from the back, Dr No introduced from the waist downwards, Honey Rider in contrast revealed in all her glory from the outset. The brutal brief interrogation of photographer Annabel Chung (Marguerite LeWars), the unexpected seduction of the enemy Miss Taro and the opulence of the interior of Dr No’s stronghold would have come as surprises.

Young was responsible for creating the prototype Bond picture, the lightness of touch in constant contrast to flurries of violence, amorality while blatant delivered with cinematic elan, not least the treatment of willing not to say predatory females, the shot through the bare legs of Ms Trench as Bond returns to his apartment soon to become par for the course.

Future episodes of course would lavish greater funds on the project, but with what was a B-film budget at best by Hollywood standards, the producers worked wonders. Sean Connery (The Frightened City, 1961) strides into a role that was almost made-to-measure, another unknown Ursula Andress speeded up every male pulse on the planet, Joseph Wiseman (The Happy Thieves, 1961) provided an ideal template for a future string of maniacs and Bernard Lee (The Secret Partner, 1961) grounded the entire operation with a distinctly British headmaster of a boss.