James Caan – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: United Artists Goes to War on a Low Budget – “Submarine X-1” (1968) and Five Others

With the contraction of Hollywood production in the 1960s, cinemas worldwide were always crying for pictures – any pictures – that could take up a weekly slot or pad out a double bill. (The single-bill programming that is standard these days was not welcome in most cinemas, except a prestigious few, and audiences expected to see two movies for the price of their ticket). Indie unit Mirisch had scored such a big hit with aerial war number 633 Squadron (1964) – it recouped its entire cost from British distribution so was in profit for the rest of its global run – that Walter Mirisch persuaded distribution partner United Artists to attempt to capitalize on the idea and thus set in progress a series of war pictures to be made in Britain.

There would be cost savings through the Eady Plan. Each film would have a “recognizable American personality in the lead” and have American directors. Budgets would be held under $1 million. Half a dozen movies were planned, the first appearing in 1967, the last in 1970.

Quite whether James Caan (Red Line 7000, 1965) passed muster as a well-known enough star to qualify as a “personality” at the time he headlined Submarine X-1 (1968) is debatable, as was the presence of James Franciscus (The Valley of Gwangi, 1969) in Hell Boats (1970) and Christopher George (Massacre Harbor, 1968) in The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) though Stuart Whitman (Rio Conchos, 1964) exerted a higher marquee appeal for The Last Escape (1970). Veteran Lloyd Bridges (Around the World under the Sea, 1966) who headlined Attack on the Iron Coast (1968) was probably the best known, but these days that was mostly through television. And David McCallum owed whatever fame he had to television as part of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. double act and the idea that would still be enough to attract an audience for Mosquito Squadron (1969) seemed dubious.

Beyond setting up the project, Walter Mirisch had little to do with the actual production, putting that in the hands of Oakmont Production, which beefed up the action with judicious use of footage from other pictures. Invariably, reasons had to be given to explain why actors with American accents were members of the British fighting forces – most commonly they were represented as Canadian volunteers or might have British nationality by dint of having a British mother.

Storylines followed a similar template. At its heart was a dangerous mission. Leaders were invariably hated for some previous misdemeanor or because they were ruthless and drove the men too hard. If there was romance – not a given – it would border on the illicit. And someone required redemption.

And while none of the stars chose – or were chosen to – repeat the experience, Oakmont established something of a repertory company behind the scenes, writers, directors and producers involved in more than one movie.

*Italian poster (photobusta) for “Hell Boats”. I found Japanese and Australian posters*
*for most of the films in the series*.

Boris Sagal (Made in Paris, 1966) directed both The Thousand Plane Raid and Mosquito Squadron and then made his name with The Omega Man (1971). Paul Wendkos (Angel Baby, 1961) helmed Attack on the Iron Coast and Hell Boats. Walter Grauman who had kicked off the whole shebang with 633 Squadron returned for The Last Escape. William Graham (Waterhole #3, 1967) as the only outlier with just Submarine X-1 to his name.

Veteran producer Lewis Rachmil (A Rage to Live, 1965) oversaw three in the series – Hell Boats, Mosquito Squadron and The Thousand Plane Raid. Another veteran John C. Champion, younger brother of celebrated Broadway choreographer Gower Champion, was involved in a variety of categories. Champion is almost an asterisk these days, best known these days for producing the film Zero Hour! (1957) that inspired disaster parody Airplane! (1980). He was only 25 when he produced his first picture, low-budget western Panhandle (1948). He was behind another four low-budget westerns pictures before Zero Hour!, which had a decent cast in Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. But that was his last movie for nine years as he switched to television and Laramie (1959-1963), barely reviving his movie career with The Texican (1966) starring Audie Murphy.

He produced Attack on the Iron Coast and Submarine X-1 and was credited with the story for both plus The Last Escape. Irving Temaner produced The Last Escape and received an executive producer credit on Attack on the Iron Coast and Submarine X-1. Donald Sanford (Battle of Midway, 1976) was the most prolific of the writers, gaining screenplay credits for Submarine X-1, The Thousand Plane Raid and Mosquito Squadron. Herman Hoffman (Guns of the Magnificent Seven) wrote Attack on the Iron Coast and The Last Escape.

Cinema managers were not, it transpired, queuing up for the product. Most commonly, when reviewed in the British trade press, their release date was stated as “not fixed” which generally meant that United Artists was hoping the review would do the trick and alert cinema owners.

In the United States, they rarely featured in the weekly box office reports, though Portland in Oregon appeared partial to the product, Attack on the Iron Coast appearing there as support to Hang ‘Em High (1968), Mosquito Squadron supported The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970), Hell Boats supported Lee Van Cleef western Barquero (1970) while The Last Escape supported Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly (1970). To everyone’s astonishment a double bill of Hell Boats / The Last Escape reported a “big” $10,000 in San Francisco, but that proved an anomaly.

In Britain, the movies fulfilled their purpose as programmers, not good enough to qualify as a proper double bill, but accepted as supporting feature for a circuit release on the Odeon chain. Since UA supplied Odeon with its main features, it proved relatively easy to persuade the circuit to take the war films to fill out a program. This kind of second feature would be sold for a fixed price not sharing in the box office gross. However, they were given the kind of all-action poster they hardly deserved.

So in 1968 Attack on the Iron Coast went out with The Beatles Yellow Submarine. In 1969, Submarine X-1 supported slick heist picture The Thomas Crown Affair, which with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in top form scarcely needed any help securing an audience. Hell Boats was supporting feature in 1970 to Master of the Islands (as The Hawaiians starring Charlton Heston was known). As well as accompanying it on the circuit Mosquito Squadron in 1970 made a very brief foray into London’s West End with thriller I Start Counting and then reappeared a few months later as an alternative choice of support for Billy Wilder flop The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. If you went to see Burt Lancaster western Lawman in 1971 you might have caught The Last Escape – equally it could have been If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium (cinema managers could choose either).

United Artists, under the financial cost in the early 1970s, pulled the plug on “programmers” such as these. Walter Mirisch in his biography, disingenuously suggested that the six movies had done relatively well. But that wasn’t supported by the studio’s own figures.

Collectively, they made a loss of $1.7 million. Only Attack on the Iron Coast made it into the black and then by only $59,000. Hell Boats lost $700,000. None of the movies earned more than $200,000 in rentals in the United States.

Although Mirisch managed to keep budgets down to around the million-dollar mark, they would have had to be much smaller to see a profit. Ironically, it was the cheapest, Attack on the Iron Coast costing $901,000, that made the most. Submarine X-1 lost $150,000 on a $1 million budget, Mosquito Squadron lost $253,000 on a $1.1 million budget while The Thousand Plane Raid lost $50,000 more on the same budget. The longer the series went on, the worse the losses – The Last Escape lost $449,000 on a $995,000 budget while for Hell Boats the budget was $1.36 million.

SOURCES: United Artists Archives, University of Wisconsin; Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p204; Reviews, Kine Weekly – Feb 9 1968, Aug 31 1969, January 1970, April 18 1970; “Flops Loss-Cutting,” Variety, August 26, 1970, p6; “Picture Grosses,” Variety – March 13 1968, May 8 1968, April 24 1968, October 2 1968, June 10 1970, July 1 1970, July 8, 1970, August 12 1970, August 26 1970.

Submarine X-1 (1968) ***

One of the tropes of the World War Two mission picture was that it afforded plenty scope to boost the careers of supporting players – The Dirty Dozen (1967) being the best example given it boasted Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland (the denoted breakout star), Jim Brown (another breakout) and Telly Savalas. Never mind that here you could hardly find an interesting face, never mind well-written character in this one, you were struggling to find the James Caan as defined by The Godfather (1972).

Even with production shrinking and the industry throwing more and more money at the actors who supposedly guaranteed box office, Hollywood was still trying to blood new talent. But most failed to connect – Burt Reynolds was another who took a helluva long time, by movie standards, to find a fanbase.

Though Caan had been chosen by Howard Hawks to headline Red Line 7000 (1965) that had sunk without trace and a supporting role in the director’s El Dorado (1967), while exposing him to a larger audience, had not, as yet, pushed him that far up the Hollywood tree, top billing in neither Robert Altman’s Countdown (1967) nor Games (1967) doing much to bolster his marquee credentials.

His career could go either way – fizz and pop in a part that provided the opportunity to create a defined screen persona or fizzle and die after using up too many Hollywood lives. We all know which way it went so this could be considered a testing ground. And he reins in his screen persona so much he could almost qualify for a Stiff Upper Lip Award.

As ever, Yanks in many World War Two pictures set in Britain had to come in disguise. Commander Bolton (James Caan) is acceptable in the Royal Navy if he’s Canadian and a volunteer rather than American, though you’d be hard put to distinguish the nationalities by Caan’s accent.

It was also a given of this type of war picture that the recruits hated their leader with a vengeance – Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen leading the field, though you could equally point to Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan’s Express (1965) – “why did 600 Allied prisoners hate the man they called Von Ryan more than they hated Hitler” ran the tagline – and William Holden in The Devil’s Brigade (1968). .

Here, Bolton is in hot water for obvious reasons. He was a poor leader, causing the deaths of the majority of his crew on the 50-man submarine Gauntlet after an ill-chosen attack on the German battleship Lindendorf. The movie starts with him and the remainder of the crew staggering out of the water onto dry land. Even when he’s cleared at a tribunal, the stench of incompetence sticks. So it’s any wonder that he’s put in charge of a secret operation with many of the survivors, unless of course it’s the kind of suicide mission that offers redemption.

As it takes forever to reveal, the British have built mini-subs, manned by three men, for a second go at the Lindendorf safely stowed out of the way in the Norwegian fjords. So apart from simmering resentment and mutterings everywhere, the first section is the standard training where, as is par for the course, Bolton is a hard-ass, forcing men dying of exhaustion back into the freezing water to complete the designated exercise.

Except for incipient rebellion, there’s not much else in the way of plot before we head for the fjords, not even a romance which might make an audience more sympathetic to Bolton. The Germans, somehow, have got wind of this secret mission taking place in a remote part of Scotland (Loch Ness, actually) and send in a parachute team.

On land it’s as dull as ditchwater, but once we head to sea, it’s a more than competent action picture.

If James Caan has learned anything from his first four pictures, it’s not obvious, as mostly what he does is grimace. The supporting stars look as if they knew from the outset that this wasn’t going to do anything for their careers – and with the exception of David Sumner (Out of the Fog, 1962), they made barely a scratch on the movie business.

It didn’t help that the naval operation had been filmed before as Above Us the Waves (1955) starring John Mills (S.O.S. Pacific, 1960) and directed by Ralph Thomas (Deadlier than the Male, 1967).

Directed by William Graham (The Doomsday Flight, 1966) who had just scored a surprising hit with Waterhole #3 (1967). Written by Donald Sanford (The 1,000 Plane Raid, 1969) and Guy Elmes (Kali-Yug, Goddess of Vengeance, 1963).

Torpedoed by the acting, only partially rescued by the action.

The Glory Guys (1965) ****

The dismissive verdict of Sam Peckinpah (he wrote the script) is the main reason this remains unfairly underrated. This came out the same year as that director’s over-rated Major Dundee and covers some of the same themes – the training of raw recruits and the woman requiring a protector.

But this is the first cavalry picture I’ve seen where training covers more than recruits falling off their horses, picking fights with each other and getting drunk and into scrapes. The main task of Capt Harrod (Tom Tryon), apart from teaching them to shoot, is to ensure they ride in formation and are ready to take part in action. There’s a brilliant scene where Harrod fakes an Indian attack where they are all in a flash knocked off their horses. And another superb scene where, having achieved an almost impossible goal in double-quick time, Harrod leads them in a ride-past in front of General McCabe (Andrew Duggan) and they ride in about ten rows six abreast, keeping time and distance. When the soldiers dismount during combat, how they arrange for the horses to get out of the way but not run off is also revealed. The scene of the whole detachment leaving the fort is also breathtaking. They are lined up in columns, five or six abreast, and you begin to see, for really the first time, how the U.S. Army operates as a trained unit.

But that’s just the cream of a very finely worked crop. Harrod and McCabe are at odds because the captain’s previous company of raw recruits was virtually wiped out in a previous engagement when the general used them as bait. McCabe is the “glory guy” of the title, everyone else is just trying to keep alive. The only certainty of going into battle, Harrod reminds his men, is that they have a fair chance of not returning home.

Widow Lou Woddard (Senta Berger) pops up to wreak romantic havoc. She owns a gunsmith business, and responsible for driving up sales, so not quite the vulnerable woman. What’s most at stake is her standing in town, her honor if you like, and she can’t be seen to be playing the field. While hardly promiscuous, she has two men on the go, Harrod, who seems disinclined to take the romance beyond a fling, and Army scout Sol Rogers (Harve Pressnell) who is off earning the chunk of money it will take for them to settle down elsewhere.

She doesn’t let on they are rivals and when they discover this it triggers an all-out slugging match – you almost wince with the power of the blows. This ain’t a brawl but a last man standing punch-up where literally they trade blows, one at a time. And she keeps dithering between the two. She reckons Sol isn’t the settling down kind while Harrod’s not keen on commitment. So any time she’s spurned by Harrod she flaunts Rogers.

If she gets her come-uppance, it’s not from either of the men. Attempting to trade barbs with McCabe’s snippy wife Rachael (Jeanne Cooper) she is publicly humiliated. And there’s a terrific scene as the calvary is set to leave the fort and the physical distance between Lou standing on the sidelines with the wives waving husbands goodbye and Harrod on horseback stretches into an emotional chasm simply from the way director Arnold Laven lines up his camera.

The action is clearly based on the Battle of the Little Big Horn. McCabe, instructed to form one half of a pincer movement, races his men ahead to beat his rival general into battle. True to form, he uses Harrod’s men as decoys, theoretically sent out to protect his flank, in reality to draw out the enemy, permitting the general to attack their unguarded rear.

The battle scene is just superb, hordes of cavalry charging towards the enemy, then turning tail when facing superior forces, dismounting to take up positions, then retreating again to the rocks, pursued but managing, mostly, to survive. The scene where Harrod comes across McCabe’s wiped-out army is like the beginning of Zulu (1964). (In fact, it’s worth bearing in mind that Little Big Horn and Isandlwana took place just three years apart and had there been instant global communication in those days the combined events would have sent shockwaves throughout the world.)

It is an excellent script regardless of how Peckinpah felt about the outcome. But it is also a very good western with sufficient changes rendered to the genre’s standard tropes. The compulsory saloon brawl is elevated by an ongoing comic element of Trooper Dugan (James Caan) being constantly defeated in his determination to smash a bottle over someone’s head.

Senta Berger completists should enjoy this far more than her performance in Major Dundee. She essays a more complete realistic character, not quite grasping, but not far short, and in chasing a dream coming close to heartbreak. Tom Tryon (The Cardinal, 1963) is better than I expected and hoofer Harve Pressnell (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) is a revelation. James Caan (El Dorado, 1967), playing a “miserable whining sugar”, is awful, a terrible Irish accent sinking all his attempts at scene stealing

Arnold Laven might have felt hard-done-by in regard to Peckinpah, given the director, in his capacity as producer, had dreamed up The Rifleman television series on which Peckinpah made his name. While this isn’t quite in the same league as Rough Night in Jericho (1967) but better than Sam Whiskey (1969) it deserves reappraisal. Had it featured bigger stars in the two male principal roles it would have attracted more attention at the outset instead of demanding it now.

Well worth a look.

El Dorado (1966) ****

John Wayne incapacitated? Robert Mitchum a liability? The hell you say! You bring together two of the greatest male action figures only to turn the genre upside down and inside out. And I know it’s tradition for heroes to be unable to listen to their hearts, never mind deal with emotion, but it’s a heck of a stretch for them to just completely fall apart when spurned. And I know also that Duke is not invulnerable, this isn’t the MCU for heaven’s sake, and he’s been known in his long career to take a bullet, but to be shot by a woman! That’s very close to taking the proverbial.

Also, westerns usually operate on fairly tight timeframes. If the situation takes place over a longer period that’s usually because it involves a journey. Here, there’s a split of six months between the opening section and the main action, and it does kinda defy belief that the bad guys don’t make the necessary hay while the sheriff is drunk and his main assistant has scarpered.

There’s hardly a word spoken here – between the good guys again for heaven’s sake – that isn’t an insult. Never mind The Magnificent Seven (1960) this is teed up as The Bickering Quartet. And I do have to point out a couple of elements that won’t go down so well with a contemporary audience, one character imitating a Chinese, and a scene where one of our heroes is constantly interrupted in the bath by females, a twist to be sure on the usual scenario of the female lead skinny dipping in a handy pool or river, but it’s like a lame comedy sketch.

This won’t have been influenced by the spaghetti western, the first Sergio Leone game-changer wasn’t screened in the U.S. until the following year, so it’s also worth pointing out that some of the action is pretty savage, both John Wayne and Robert Mitchum indulging in the kind of mean behavior that was usually the prerogative of the villains. Wayne even cheats when it comes to the traditional shoot-out. And while there’s none of the blood-letting that later became synonymous with the genre, director Howard Hawks does something else that is far more realistic than anything that has gone before and would count as a genuine shock to our senses. The gunfire is incredibly loud. Imagine that on Imax and you’d be jumping out of your seat every few minutes.

And just in case you think this is nothing more than a remake of Rio Bravo (1959) where a gunslinger and a drunken sheriff are holed up in jail, here the jail is mostly used as a base, the good guys racing out every now and then to pick someone off. That running, too, by older guys certainly prefigures later action pictures like Taken (2008).

We need the time gap to allow Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), one of the three best gunslingers alive, to disintegrate. He goes from tough lawman keeping an unruly town in order and holding back the worst instincts of land-owner Bart Jason (Ed Asner) planning to go in mobhanded against rival rancher Kevin MacDonald (R.G. Armstrong) in an argument over water rights.

Hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), one of the three best gunslingers alive, turns up for a job with said Jason but is turned off the idea when J.P. gives him the lowdown on the situation. He dallies long enough to set up the notion that he’ll try to win back saloon-owning old flame Maudie (Charlene Holt) from J.P.

Thornton moseys off to the Mason spread to give the owner the bad news. On the way back, Luke Macdonald (Johnny Crawford), Kevin’s youngest son, on guard duty, mistakes Thornton for the enemy and shoots at him. Which results in his death. So Thornton does not get a good welcome when he arrives at the Macdonald farm toting a corpse.

Turns out the young whelp, although taking bullet in the gut, committed suicide because the pain was too much and Luke had been told by his dad that he wouldn’t recover anyway and just suffer a hideous death. While the father accepts this, his daughter Joey (Michele Carey) does not and ambushes Thornton, putting a bullet in his back. Said bullet is mighty inconveniently lodged close to his spine and needs more than the town quack to remove it. Despite sparking up old feelings for said old flame and the prospect of stealing her back from old buddy J.P., Thornton doesn’t dally longer than it takes to get temporarily fixed up, bullet still in place to cause later problems.

Now the tale takes a detour. Not only has six months passed and Thornton miles away from El Dorado, but we’ve got to hold up proceedings to introduce naïve youngster Mississippi (James Caan). Howard Hawks certainly hasn’t learned the knack of the compact introduction from John Sturges a la The Magnificent Seven (1960) so we learn that this young whelp is best with the knife and has spent two years tracking down the four killers of his foster father. The last man to die happens to be an employee of Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), one of the three best gunslingers alive, on his way to take up the job Thornton turned down, a task made a helluva lot easier because J.P is now the town drunk, having hit the bottle when spurned by a woman, not Maudie I hasten to add.

Thornton heads for El Dorado with Mississippi tagging along, armed with of a sawn-off shotgun. First task is to sober up the sheriff – by fistfight and awful concoction – and stop him becoming a worse figure of fun. On the evidence here Deputy Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt) was probably one of the three best riflemen – not to mention archers – alive. He also totes a bugle.

The sober J.P. strolls into the saloon and arrests Bart Jason and sticks him in jail, and to avoid being in a complete siege situation, the quartet, sometimes as a group, sometimes a pair, sometimes alone, venture out, as I mentioned, to pick off the enemy. This allows Mississippi a meet-cute with Joey who’s planning a short-cut to justice by shooting Jason. Maudie re-enters the frame.

The bullet in the back sporadically paralyzes Thornton and J.P. is wounded in the leg so eventually the pair are hobbling around on crutches. Maudie also turns out to be a liability, taken hostage, ensuring Thornton goes to the rescue. But the bullet in the back plays up at exactly the wrong time and Thornton’s also captured, trussed up like a hog (what, John Wayne?) then traded in for the prisoner.

Having by now reduced the odds and not wanting to be caught in a siege, the quartet take the battle to the enemy, ambushing them front and back in the saloon, Thornton ridding Nelse of the notion that he and Thornton will enjoy a winner-takes-all shootout by killing him with a rifle while lying on the ground.

While it could be trimmed – television screenings generally eliminate the racist Chinese impersonation – the action when it comes is blistering. There’s a terrific scene in a tower when Bull targets the bells to disorientate the enemy with their horrendous ear-jarring clanging. And the final shoot-out is exceptionally well done.

In ways not usually gone into, the quartet are experts in their fields. Thornton backs up his horse to get out of a difficult situation, J.P. detects a man hidden behind a piano in the saloon, Mississippi stalks a potential lone assassin, Bull uses bow-and-arrow when silence is required.

Theoretically, Robert Mitchum (Five Card Stud, 1968) steals the show as the drunken sheriff, but that’s only if you are taken in by the surface. The sight of John Wayne with his useless twisted right hand harks back to the arm in The Searchers (1956) and his one-armed rifle action predates True Grit (1969). James Caan (The Rain People, 1969) tries to steal scenes but what chance does he have with these two stars at the top of their game and past master at the scene-stealing malarkey Arthur Hunnicutt (The Cardinal, 1963). Charlene Holt (Red Line 7000, 1965) and Michele Carey (The Sweet Ride, 1968) come out honors even as do Edward Asner (The Venetian Affair, 1966) and Christopher George (The Thousand Plane Raid, 1969).

I don’t put this in the same bracket as Howard Hawks’ Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo, but it’s certainly one of the best westerns of the decade. Written by Leigh Brackett (Hatari!, 1962) from a novel by Harry Brown.

Not one to miss.

The Rain People (1969) ****

You could argue that grandiose ambition sucked the life out of Francis Ford Coppola. That if he had continued along the more intimate trajectory suggested here there might have been a more consistent output, perhaps on an even higher plane. Even if grounded in American life, this has a distinct European sensibility and while you won’t find a single memorable image you will definitely find characters of substantial depth drowning in agonizing circumstance.

That’s not to say you won’t find outstanding sequences. I defy you to find a more cruel and character-defining scene than the one where our heroine Natalie (Shirley Knight), running away from the chains of domesticity, takes dominance to a new extreme by demanding that muscular ex-college footballer Jimmy (James Caan) crawl round on the floor beneath her feet.

There’s no excuse for such behavior except that she wants some kind of revenge on her husband, whom she accuses of trapping her into said domesticity by the old-fashioned route of making her pregnant. This is before she discovers that Jimmy is simple-minded as the result of brain damage following an American football injury, and that it’s easier now for him to obey people rather than as before argue and stand his ground.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said there were no second acts in American acts. What he failed to mention was that some people barely got to the end of the first act. Jimmy is an outcast, nobody willing to take responsibilty for him, everyone dodging such commitment. Because American scoiety has no place for losers, they fall through the cracks and stay there.

As a result of his injury Jimmy was given a thousand bucks and “told to leave.” So, he went. He’s got a destination in mind, salvation of some kind, I guess, heading towards a drive-in where he has been promised a job by the father, previously a huge fan, of his ex-girlfriend Ellen (Laura Crews).

Natalie is on a road trip to find herself, firstly at the very least just to escape, secondly requiring the seclusion to decide if she wants to keep the baby, but also to have fun, pick up other men for sex. That’s how she happens upon Jimmy. But there’s no sex, not with the shame she feels after humiliating him and realizing just how dumb he now is.

But the alpha horse-riding girlfriend doesn’t want him, she’s humiliated that anyone would associate her with this shambling hulk, and the promised job flies out the window. Natalie dumps him at a reptile zoo where the duplicitous owner appropriates his thousand bucks, leaving Natalie so delighted to be rid of him she races off and is pulled over for speeding by lovelorn cop Gordon (Robert Duvall). Circumstance forces a return to the zoo where Jimmy has caused chaos by freeing all the livestock.

But she’s taken enough by Gordon and desperate for the sense of freedom that illicit sex brings that she ends up in his trailer. Only his rebellious young daughter doesn’t take kindly to him bringing home his conquests and while he’s trying to bed Natalie, initially very complicit despite the awkward presence of the awkward child, causes a ruckus outside. Natalie would still be up for it except she takes umbrage that Gordon’s unable in his lovemaking to forget his dead wife, killed along with his son in a house fire.

The scene turns ugly and she’s rescued by Jimmy who proceeds to put his football playbook moves on Gordon, picking him up and throwing him to the ground and ramming him in the stomach, none of your standard fisticuffs here. But given Gordon’s a cop, there’s a gun on the loose and the daughter picks it up and shoots Jimmy stone dead.

That last scene comes out of nowhere and stops the audience as dead as it does Jimmy and in a bitter ironic twist wraps up a scenario where the lost never find what they’re looking for. You might find similar in, despite their power, later characters such as Michael in The Godfather (1972) and Col Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979).

Compare the Caan and Duvall of The Godfather and you’ll think they’ve swapped their personalities from here, Caan adopting the firmness and overt masculinity of Gordon and Duvall the soft-spoken tones of Jimmy.

I mispoke when I said there were no memorable images. There are, but their meaning comes later. We see Jimmy sweeping up leaves in playful fashion and only later discover that’s all he’s fit for. We see Natalie as trapped in a phone booth as in her marriage trying to talk her way out of returning to her husband, whose tone changes from angry to whining and desperate, and all we get of him is his voice. There are a few of those lingering shots of rainwater and drab early morning scenery that you would get in an arthouse picture but this quickly grows out of them and into the meat of the situation.

James Caan is particularly superb, completely altering is screen persona. Shirley Knight (The Group, 1966) delivers on previous promise and Robert Duvall demonstrates his range. Original screneplay also by Coppola.

Lost in the acclaim for Coppola’s more grandioise efforts but well worth digging out.

Red Line 7000 (1965) **

Quentin Tarantino is probably alone in preferring this movie mishap to John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966) – or I have somehow missed a “cult” picture. There was no doubt director Howard Hawks could handle speed. Check out the action in Hatari! (1962) as jeeps battle across tougher terrain than NASCAR racing circuits. But for some reason, he thought he would get away with interspersing footage of races and spectacular crashes with shots of actors behind the wheel. Any time something exciting is about to happen we’re alerted by the commentator saying “oh oh” or “wait a minute” or “hold it.” There’s none of the feverish excitement or authenticity of Grand Prix.

Hawks hired a no-name cast in a bid a) to become a star-maker, b) to prove he did require the marquee wattage of the likes of John Wayne and c) to show he could make a movie cheaply. He failed on all three counts. He probably didn’t think he was taking any kind of gamble at all, as a man approaching 70, in trying to depict the lives of people around 50 years younger. James Caan, in his sophomore outing, comes out best, but that’s not saying much since he has very little to do except growl and look broody. Marianna Hill (El Condor, 1970) is also believable.

While the racing footage has dated in a way that Grand Prix has not, the main problem is just a jumble of characters getting lost in a jumble of stories. No sooner has one character been introduced than we are onto another. There’s none of the cohesive story-telling that marked out The Big Sleep (1946) or Rio Bravo (1959) and, frankly, none of the characters are particularly interesting. And what possessed him to stick in a song sung by a character (Holly, played by Gail Hire) who cannot sing – she talks the lyrics – with a backing group made up of waitresses, I can’t begin to guess.

The most fun to be had is spotting in bit parts people famous for other reasons. Carol Connors, for example, who co-wrote the lyrics to “Gone Fly Now” (Rocky, 1976) appears as a waitress. As does Cissy Wellman, daughter of veteran director William Wellman. Comedian Jerry Lewis has a cameo. It says much for Hawk’s star-spotting abilities that of two female leads, Laura Devon only made five pictures and Gail Hire just two.

*Henry Hathaway and Howard Hawks…Together!*

Of the main supporting males, this was the beginning and end of John Robert Crawford’s movie career while Skip Hire made a bigger splash as a producer of television series The Dukes of Hazzard. Co-written by the director, George Kirgo (Spinout, 1966) and Steve McNeil (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1964)..

However, the French had a word for it – “genius.” Despite being dismissed as a rare misstep by the bulk of critics worldwide, Cahiers du Cinema decided it was one of the year’s Top Ten pictures. So what do I know?

Fast Charlie (2023) ****

If you like your characters to sport monikers like Donut (“don’t call me Donut”) or Blade (not that Blade, obviously) or The Freak (“get me The Freak”) and like to see death dealt out in novel fashion – taxidermized bird beak through the eye, beer bottle through the mouth, and an update on the Magnum .357 “blow your head clean off” trope – then this one is for you. Not to mention the riffs on Quentin Tarantino and John Wick. And, here’s the kicker, a delicate meditation on old age and father-son relationships.

Your first port of marquee call, of course, should be star Pierce Brosnan. Not the Abba-magnet of Mamma Mia (2008), and far removed from James Bond, but with a hint of the clever machination of The Thomas Crown Affair remake (1999). You might regard his character as a common-or-garden retired hitman now doing business as a chauffeur to a younger generation of hitmen (step up Donut) but he tends to see himself as a “problem-solver” or even “concierge” (as though we might be talking The Continental Hotel). I suspect Brosnan was drawn to the script for the “cowboy draw” soliloquy that has echoes of the gold watch in Pulp Fiction (1994).

Add in director Philip Noyce, director of Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), the titles heavily promoted on the poster, and also, more importantly from this picture’s perspective, Dead Calm (1989). The poster says nothing about screenwriter Richard Wenk but since he gave us The Equalizer trilogy – three of my favorite pictures – then suddenly this little movie, shoved out into streamer with none of the publicity accorded lesser movies, has got my attention.

I started out not liking this at all but gradually warmed to it and at the end considered it a pretty good addition to the sub-genre of new-gangster-takes-over-old-gangster’s-territory-but-with-a-twist. So Charlie (Pierce Brosnan) is driving hitman Donut (Brennan Keel Cook) to knock off low-end crim Kramer. Donut’s M.O. is the knife, but this being the kind of picture where characters swerve from the norm, he decides instead he’ll stick some explosive device in a box of donuts. That works, for sure, but it has the unfortunate by-product of blowing the guy’s head clean off – clean off as in no longer attached to the shoulders and, even if you could scrape up the bits and pieces, unrecognizable.

Therein lies the problem. To pick up his dough, Charlie needs to show an identifiable corpse. Donut is soon out of the picture, the dumb sonofa, pistol in hand while driving over bumpy road, shoots himself in the head, brings down a telegraph pole and sets the car on fire. Still Charlie isn’t known as fast for nothing (in fact, the title had no relevance whatsoever, so if you’re expecting a car chase buckle up and get frustrated) and he decides the dead man’s wife should somehow be able to identify him.

Sure enough, Marcie (Morena Baccarin), now an ex-wife but still harboring sentimental thoughts about her deadbeat now dead husband, explains he has a tattoo on his ass that she is willing to verify as belonging to the ass of said deceased. That should be that, another problem solved by our problem-solver or concierge, if you prefer.

Except, suddenly, all hell breaks loose. It’s gang war time. Charlie’s ageing boss Stan (James Caan) is the object of the hit and, unfortunately, for the hitters, Charlie treats this old man very much like a father (hence the “cowboy draw” soliloquy) and takes agin anyone who could have been responsible for the hit, which is pretty much anyone who has crossed the screen in the early part of the picture.

These dudes will have names, for sure, but heck, they hardly appear before Charlie starts to knock ‘em off so don’t expect me to remember them all. In any case, the movie, I warned you to expect a narrative swerve, moves in a different direction. One route is that subtle kind of May-December romance Wenk gave us in The Equalizer 3 (2023), Charlie, while trying his hand with Marcie, aware that he’s got very little chance of success, given the age gap (acknowledged at least rather than expecting younger women to jump into bed with any old guy just because they’re an ageing movie star and that’s what the audience expects), even though he’s a cultured hitman, pretty ace in the kitchen and old-style in attitude to women. Whether it’s her particular set of skills – see what she can do with a bird beak – or her lost soul that’s the attraction.

But that element is left kind of floating in the background as the story shifts up a gear as we discover why the hit was out on Kramer in the first place and why everybody else was getting rubbed out. It wouldn’t be this kind of picture without a couple of twists at the end.

Charlie is a laid-back hardman with a nice line in quips, self-possessed and self-effacing, but a regular guy when it comes to the regular things in life. His relationship to Stan is very touching and the romantic element is underdone.

So if you’re going to buckle up for his one, ignore the opening sequence, set the Tarantino vibe aside and wait until it gets into the meat-and-potatoes of relationships and of course, for the thrill-seekers out there, Charlie taking revenge.

Shows there’s more to Brosnan than a raised eyebrow, a last hurrah for James Caan (no introduction needed), and Brazilian actress Morena Baccarin (Deadpool, 2016) reveals unusual reserve in what could easily have been, in other hands, a more showy part.

Worth a look and free on Amazon Prime.

The Making of “The Godfather” (1972)

With the 50^th anniversary imminent it’s no surprise to see a further addition to the already weighty library of works on The Godfather. What is surprising is just how good it is, wrapping up all previous research as well as adding copious new information about the making of the Mafia saga, in particular relationships between the filmmakers and the Cosa Nostra itself. A battle of egos as much as anything else with a budget that lay in tatters, quite how such a masterpiece emerged could have been a film in itself. Journalist Robert Seal has delivered a riveting book, replete with fascinating anecdotes, and with an insider’s knowledge of how a movie gets put together.

Some of the drama is certainly overplayed, the financial threats to Paramount at the end of the 1960s, the presence on the set of an auditor (hardly unusual with a director who had never handled such a big budget before), and the conflict with legendary producer Robert Evans who, after the event, claimed a greater share of the glory than he was entitled to. Evans at least had a track record – Rosemary’s Baby (1968), True Grit (1969) and Love Story (1970) among his successes during his tenure at the studio – compared to official producer Albert Ruddy with three flops to his name including Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970) and best known for television hit Hogan’s Heroes. But Ruddy was known as a producer who could bring a project in under budget. As an indication of the kind of penny pinching that Evans expected, he made Ruddy buy his own copy of the novel.

*Australian distributors took a different approach to advertising the movie.*

Paramount had little interest in Mafia movies after the under-rated The Brotherhood (1968) – reviewed in the Blog – had flopped at the box office and Burt Lancaster was waiting in the wings ready to take the project off the studio’s hands. Compulsive gambler and impoverished author Mario Puzo had no screenwriting credits when brought in to work on the picture. And no idea how to write a screenplay. So he mostly played tennis. His biggest contribution when he was sitting in meetings with little to show for his efforts was to suggest Marlon Brando as star. A suggestion that met with complete silence because Brando was box office poison.

Francis Coppola – himself the creator of three flops and as impoverished as Puzo had once been – was hired as director in part because Paramount got the notion that the reason The Brotherhood had failed was lack of cultural assimilation, director Martin Ritt having no Italian heritage. Coppola was pushed as having an insider’s knowledge of Italians even though as Paramount executive Peter Bart pointed out that he “may have had pasta now and then but I don’t think their family is any more Italian than my family.”

Paramount took out an eight-page ad in “Variety” (March 29, 1972) to publicize the colossal initial gross and listed the receipts from every cinema where it had been playing for mostly three or five days.

As the makers of Succession have realised, there is a classic story to be told about business inheritance. Coppola wanted to make a movie that was about “more than guns and goons and sex and spaghetti.” He envisaged a “classic succession concerning a great king who had three sons, each of whom had a single element of what made the king great.” Prior to Coppola making his presentation to the studio, Ruddy told him to play up the low budget. Instead, the director gave “one of the great sales jobs of all time” convincing executives to at least give him a shot at doing it his way. He was hired for $175,000 and six per cent of the profits. “I had two kids, a pregnant wife, and no money. I was terrified,” said Coppola.

As well he should have been. Not only did he have mobsters knocking on his door complaining on the one hand about how the film could adversely present Italian Americans and on the other hand determined to land a role in the picture to the extent of paying for their own screen tests. So many talent schools charged $100 to shoot screen tests for any gullible schmuck that Paramount had to take out restraining orders. But made man Gianni Russo did land the role of Carlo Rizzi. Al Lettieri’s brother was involved in the business. Ex-wrestler Lenny Montana with no acting experience was picked out of a crowd watching the shooting to play hitman Luca Brasi.

*Not the ideal balladeer to sing about the Mafia*.

Although Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Laurence Olivier and Rod Steiger were among the stars pitched for the Brando role, Puzo had sent a handwritten letter to Brando imploring him to consider the role. The Brando test, with the star improvising his own make-up, was electric. But the greatest actor of his generation had to accept a pitiful deal – $50,000 for six weeks’ work – though, thankfully, a percentage had been tagged on.

Robert Evans wanted Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty or Ryan O’Neal for Michael. “One of the reasons I got the job,” said Coppola, “was because they thought they could push me around.” He stuck to his guns, holding out for his dream team of James Caan, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, “eccentric and kind of weird in a way…to enliven the straight boring character” of Kay Adams.

But the casting was just the beginning of a momentous battle to keep Coppola’s vision intact. He came close to getting fired several times (“I was getting fired every other week,” recalled Coppola), especially as the budget, initially figured at $2 million, headed towards $6 million. The story of the shoot is told here in forensic detail. Come post-production, Evans wanted Henry Mancini to do the score so Coppola threatened to take his name off the picture unless the Nino Rota music was kept.

Finally, when the film was ready it was met with – deafening silence. Paris premiere – silence. New York premiere – silence. When Albert Ruddy and Al Pacino watched it in an ordinary cinema with an ordinary audience the result was the same – silence. But the lines around the block indicated something else – a phenomenon.

The only area where author Seal gets it wrong is in his understanding of release strategy. “Its distribution was a revolution,” claimed Mark Seal. Only it wasn’t. I know because I wrote a book on the subject (In Theaters Everywhere if you’re interested) and there was nothing at all novel in releasing a movie in New York in 26 cinemas all at once.

But apart from that glitch, Seal has produced a brilliant, incredibly readable book, that covers the saga of the making of the film in as much detail as an aficionado would want. Drawing on the dozen other books written previously about the film and adding his own fulsome research, Seal has created a book that will be as much a monument to this film as the film is to Hollywood cinema in the 1970s.

*For some reason the guy who created the best movie of the year wasn’t good enough to be named Best Director at the Oscars- that went to Bob Fosse for “Cabaret.”*

In 1972, there was no such thing as a global wide release. Although it was shown in the U.S. in March that year, in Glasgow, Scotland, where I lived, The Godfather did not get its first showing until the end of August. It opened at the ABC 1 in Sauchiehall St in the city centre as well as over the River Clyde at the ABC Coliseum. It was competing with two roadshows, Young Winston and Mary, Queen of Scots at the Odeon 1 and Odeon 3, respectively, Robert Redford in heist picture How to Steal a Diamond at the Odeon 2 and What’s Up Doc? at the ABC 2. Western The Hired Hand was playing the arthouse Cosmo and the arty Made for Each Other at the gigantic Green’s Playhouse. The La Scala had the double bill of Dr No/Thunderball and the Regent was in the second week of Dirty Harry, somewhat unusual in that this was a second run house where pictures were rarely retained.

There were three performances a day for The Godfather but no advance booking – as would have been the case if it had gone into roadshow – so the queues outside both cinemas were huge. It had such an impact on me I saw it twice in the same day. When I moved to London I used to take regular advantage of the double bill The Godfather / The Godfather Part II when it used to play a cinema in Regent St on occasional Sundays, so I have no idea how many times I have seen both. Never enough, I would guess.

Where were you when you first saw The Godfather?

And where will I be on February 26 when The Godfather will be reissued in cinemas all over Britain (and possibly worldwide for all I know)? I leave it to you to guess.

To cash in on the 50^th anniversary, cinemas all around the world are planning to screen all three parts of the trilogy. So watch out for them.

Book into Film – “The Godfather” (1972)

Watching King of the Roaring 20s (1961) and Murder Inc (1960) and struck by the number of similarities to The Brotherhood (1968) that could be found in The Godfather (1972) induced me to examine how well the original novel by Mario Puzo survived the often dangerous transition onto the screen.

There could not be a more textbook example of how to turn a big bestseller into a compelling motion picture. Although director Francis Coppola added texture and style to the bestseller, the film owes far more to the memorable characters created by author Mario Puzo. Apart from some slight structural changes and the elimination of a couple of subplots, the movie follows Puzo’s brilliant structure almost to the letter. And except for a few lines, virtually all the dialogue and many of the most unforgettable lines come directly from the book.

The opening wedding feast is an excellent example of the screenplay approach. The order of the action occasionally alters but the novel’s structure is strictly adhered to. The film’s striking opening line “I love America” by the undertaker is a slight but significant adaptation of that character’s line “I believe in America” in the book. But the screenwriters junk the book’s actual opening section which gives the background to the issues the three characters appealing to Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) for intervention against perceived injustice from Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and goes straight to the book’s wedding. Here, too, the various elements are taken directly from the book with slight changes. For example, to the FBI men taking down car number plates in the novel the screenplay adds in photographers so that, to demonstrate his temper at an early stage, Sonny Corleone (James Caan) can smash a camera.

Straight from the book: fat Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano) dancing, wiping his brow and calling for wine from Paulie (John Martino); Sonny whispering in the ear of bridesmaid Lucy (Jeannie Linero); the frightened undertaker being told off by Vito; the Luca Brasi story Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) tells Kay Adams (Diane Keaton); Sonny and Lucy having sex and being interrupted by Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall); and the screams that greet singer Johnny Fontane (Al Fontane) and the subsequent scene where Vito shouts at the singer to act “like a man.” Additions are slight: in the book Sonny’s wife is in the kitchen not at a wedding table in dumbshow making jokes about her husband’s manhood, and Luca Brasi rehearsing his speech.

Indicative of the ruthlessness with which the screenplay treats the book is the elimination of a moving scene at the tail end of the wedding where Vito goes to see his dying partner Genco. As indicative of the author’s brilliance is that he invented degenerate film producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) and the decapitated horse in his bed. But the storyline, the film’s core, from the attempted murder of Vito, Michael’s assassination of the Turk Solozzo (Al Lettieri) and corrupt cop McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), the exiled Michael struck by the “thunderbolt” falling in love, the ambush of Sonny and the stricken Vito suing for peace, is pretty much exactly that of the book. In some case, it’s clear that actors have drawn from Puzo’s characterizations, the chilling way Michael takes control of the Family, how Fredo goes from useless gangster to hotel dandy.

There are occasional additions. In the book Enzo’s hand outside the hospital is shaking but Michael lighting his cigarette is the movie shorthand to demonstrate his icy calm, Sonny’s “bada-bing” isn’t in the book nor is Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes, though there is something similar “Luca Brasi is sleeping on the bottom of the ocean.”

Occasionally, in the novel, for technical reasons, Puzo drifts away from the central characters to provide some more background or detail about a subsidiary person and in this manner we enter into the minds of Paulie, Carlo (Gianni Russo), Kay, Clemenza, McCluskey and Albert Neri just as they are about to play a significant role in forthcoming action. Other subsidiary characters featured more prominently in the novel, in particular Johnny Fontane whom the book reveals develops from Oscar-winning actor to successful movie producer and from manic seducer to more considerate male.

Fontane also helps revitalize the career of another singer Nino who does not appear in the movie at all and plays a role in developing the Family’s interests in Las Vegas. Lucy, who disappears entirely from the film after the wedding, is more significant in the book, finding romance after Sonny’s death with a surgeon and there’s a part of their relationship that would only now be permissible to film. Sicilian shepherd Fabrizio, instrumental in the attempted assassination of Michael, also reappears in the book. The book also devotes more attention to Michael’s new breed, Alberto (Richard Bright) and Rocco (Tom Rosqui).

The death of Vito in the garden is almost identical to the book with the grandson present except for Marlon Brando’s improvisation of stuffing his cheeks with orange to frighten the boy. And Michael’s betrayal by Tessio and the subsequent mass murder of all his enemies is also drawn from the book except for Moe Green having been killed earlier (Fabrizio the shepherd slotting into his place in the book’s action). Some slight detail is changed – Barzini (Richard Conte) killed beside his waiting car not on the steps, Tattaglia (Tony Giorgio) murdered in a chalet not an apartment block. Somewhat surprisingly the image of acolytes paying homage to Michael as briefly viewed by Kay has its origins in the book. The two final scenes in the book, both concerning Kay, are excluded from the film, in the first, having run away, she is challenged by Hagen and in the second she prays for Michael’s soul in church just as (in the book) Michael’s mother had prayed for his father

A lengthy chapter on Vito’s beginnings, explaining his early relationships with Clemenza, Tessio (Abe Vigoda) and Luca Brasi, was wisely held over for The Godfather Part II.

Having by now read a number of books that were subsequently filmed, my over-riding impression was that in many cases (The Secret Ways, Arabesque) little survived of the original tale or that characters, locations and timescales (The Detective) were substantially altered. In some instances the book’s length precluded a straightforward adaptation. Occasionally, subjects easily dealt with on the printed page were not so welcome on the screen. But, for whatever reason, change appeared inevitable for a bestseller being translated into a movie.

The Godfather almost stands alone as a novel that made the transition with virtually no alterations. All the main characters are present as described by Puzo and the storyline entirely reflects the book. The bulk of the dialogue was originally written by Puzo. While there is no doubting the Coppola’s achievement in putting the book on film, there is equally no doubt that the book leant itself to easier adaptation than most bestsellers.

Red Line 7000 (1965) *

Hawks hired a no-name cast in a bid a) to become a star-maker, b) to prove he did not require the marquee wattage of the likes of John Wayne and c) to show he could make a movie cheaply. He failed on all three counts. He probably didn’t think he was taking any kind of gamble at all, as a male approaching 70, in trying to depict the lives of people around 50 years younger. James Caan, in his sophomore outing, comes out best, but that’s not saying much since he has very little to do except growl and look broody. Marianna Hill (El Condor, 1971) is also believable.

The most fun to be had is spotting in bit parts people famous for other reasons. Carol Connors, for example, who co-wrote the lyrics to “Gonna Fly Now” (Rocky, 1976) appears as a waitress. As does Cissy Wellman, daughter of veteran director William Wellman. Comedian Jerry Lewis has a cameo. It says much for Hawk’s star-spotting abilities that of two female leads, Laura Devon only made five pictures and Gail Hire just two. Of the main supporting males, this was the beginning and end of John Robert Crawford’s movie career while Skip Hire made a bigger splash as a producer of television series The Dukes of Hazzard.