The maiden voyage of the time-travelling Tardis is triggered by some unexpected pratfall comedy. On board are the venerable doctor (Peter Cushing), his intrepid great-granddaughter Susan (Roberta Tovey) and a fearful pair, granddaughter Barbara (Jennie Linden) and accident-prone Ian (Roy Castle). They land on a petrified planet ruled by the robotic Daleks with menacing electronic voices.
The malfunctioning Tardis forces them to investigate an abandoned city but they are quickly imprisoned, the steel robots determined to discover why the earthlings should be immune to the radiation that has consumed this planet after nuclear war. Meanwhile, the planet’s remaining inhabitants, the Thals, are planning an uprising.
Budget restrictions ensure that menace is limited, even as the characters endure a heap of traditional obstacles such as swamp and rocky outcrop. Adults who did not grow up in the 1960s when the BBC television series took Britain by storm and apt to come at this without the benefit of nostalgia will certainly look askance at the sets and costumes. And it doesn’t possess the so-bad-it’s-good quality of some 1950s sci-fi pictures. But since it was primarily made for children, then perhaps it’s better to watch it with a younger person and gauge their response – of course, that may be equally harsh from someone brought up on the modern version of the series or already immersed in superheroes.
On the plus side, it does move along at a clip. Roberta Tovey (A High Wind in Jamaica, 1965) charms rather than annoys as the plucky grand-daughter even if her grandfather has mutated from the sterner figure of the television series into an eccentric inventor. Peter Cushing (The Skull, 1965) is only required to ground the production which he does adequately. The innate comic timing of comedian Roy Castle, in his leading man debut, brings a light touch to proceedings as the bumbling boyfriend and generates some decent laughs. Jennie Linden (Women in Love, 1969) has little to do except look scared.
Oddly enough, it was American Milton Subotsky who, in opportunistic fashion, brought the project to the big screen, although the BBC had a track record of providing product that might make such a leap, The Quatermass Experiment in the 1950s the leading example. He wrote the screenplay and acted as producer and had previously worked with Cushing on Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) and was about to embark on horror masterpiece The Skull the same year. He has approached the material with some reverence and the fact that the budget allowed for hordes of Daleks rather than being seen one or two at a time as on the television probably made some child’s day.
Scottish director Gordon Flemyng (The Split, 1968) would make the leap to Hollywood on the back of this picture and its sequel the following year and you can see what made studios have faith in his ability – he deals with multiple characters, works quickly on a low budget and delivers an attractive picture that was a box office hit.
I suspect that audiences will divide into those who watch the film with nostalgia-colored spectacles, those who think it only as good as a bad episode of Star Trek and those who adore any low-budget sci-fi movie.
Charm was in short supply in the 1960s. Sure, for a period you still had Cary Grant but David Niven was as often to be found in an action picture (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) or a drama, and others of the ilk, like Tony Curtis, veered more towards outright comedy. Britain had something of what would today be called a “national treasure,” admittedly a term more likely to be accorded females of the standing of Maggie Smith or Judi Dench; maybe a space might be found for the idiosyncratic Ralph Richardson. Dare I put Leslie Phillips into contention for such an honor?
Once into his mellifluous stride and with his trademark appreciation of female beauty, “Ding dong!” a more welcome remark than the more common “Cor!” or “Strewth” or sheer inuendo, Leslie Phillips, not so well known perhaps in the USA and foreign parts, would fit that definition. He had charm in spades.
Unfortunately, you could split his career into those roles where “ding dong” entered the equation and those it did not. This is one of those, and I have to confess I’m both disappointed and delighted. Dissatisfied because the charm appeared part of his screen persona, but pleased whenever I found out he wasn’t tied down to it and could essay other characters just as well.
Here, here’s shifty criminal Dandy, whose only redeeming feature is that somehow he has acquired a beautiful girlfriend, stripper Babette (Julie Christie), who, despite her profession
appears to have steered cleared of seediness and insists he goes straight before she consents to marriage. And that would be fine, except what can Dandy do when faced with such obvious temptation and jewels left idly on a counter in a jewellery?
When she catches him out, he is sent to the criminal version of Alcoholics Anonymous where he is at the mercy of a particularly sadistic “guardian angel” Widdowes (Stanley Baxter – in a variety of disguises). He is locked in a cell full of safes. Food, cigarettes etc are hidden inside the safes, so to eat and satisfy his smoking habit, he must open them. The logic, presumably, is that he will grow sick and tired of opening so many safes for so little reward.
Maybe it’s the hidden punishments – a touch of electrocution and various other booby traps – that do the trick. Or, it could be the glee of Widdowes. When Dandy finds cigarettes, they come without any means of lighting them. He pleads with Widdowes to point him in the direction of a safe containing means of ignition.Replies the “angel”, “I’m glad you asked that because I’m not going to tell you.”
There’s a whole raft of comedy skits revolving around temptation, mostly involving Widdowes in one guise or another. And when the movie stays with Widdowes and a bunch of other reformed criminals, it fairly zips along. But once Dandy is released and plot rears its ugly head it falls back on more cliché elements.
Dandy manages to go straight, employed as a Santa Clause in a department store, while Babette decides to give up her job so both can start afresh. Unfortunately, temptation raises its ugly head to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds and all those goody-two-shoes reformed criminals line up to take a crack at it. The twist, which you’ll already have guessed, is that they have to break into the vault again to return the money they have stolen.
Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter was going through a phase of attempting to become a movie star and was given a fair old crack at it – The Fast Lady (1962) and Father Came Too (1964) followed, the former with both Philips and Christie, the latter with just him.
But what was obvious from Crooks Anonymous was that Baxter was better in disguise – and the more the merrier – than served up straight. He steals the show here where in the other movies his character is more of an irritant.
A well-meaning Leslie Phillips somehow snuffs out the charm and there’s not enough going on between him and Babette when he’s full-on straightlaced. Heretical though it might be, there’s not enough going on with Julie Christie either to suggest she might be Oscar bait. Here’s she’s just another ingenue.
Wilfrid Hyde-White (P.J. / New Face in Hell, 1967), another who generally traded on his charm (in a supporting category of course), is also in the disguise business, so he steals a few scenes, too. James Robertson Justice (Father Came Too) would have stolen the picture from under the noses of Baxter and Phillips had he been given more scenes.
Directed by Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) from a screenplay by Jack Davies and Henry Blyth (Father Came Too).
I might have preferred Phillips in “ding dong” persona, but this works out okay, especially in the scenes set in the criminal reform school.
Strong contender for Hammer’s film of the decade, a tight adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s black magic classic with some brilliant set pieces as Nicholas de Richleau (Christopher Lee) battles to prevent his friend Simon (Patrick Mower) falling into the hands of satanist Mocata (Charles Gray).
Initially constructed like a thriller with Simon rescued, then kidnapped, then rescued again, plus a car chase, it then turns into a siege as Richleau and friends, huddled inside a pentagram, attempt to withstand the forces of evil. Sensibly, the script eschews too much mumbo-jumbo – although modern audiences accustomed to arcane exposition through MCU should find no problem accommodating ideas like the Clavicle of Solomon, Talisman of Set and Ipsissimus – in favour of confrontation.
Unlike most demonic pictures, de Richleau has an array of mystical weaponry and a fund of knowledge to defend his charges so the storyline develops along more interesting lines than the usual notion of innocents drawn into a dark world. In some senses Mocata is a template for the Marvel super-villains with powers beyond human understanding and the same contempt for his victims. And surely this is where Marvel’s creative backroom alighted when it wanted to turn back time. Though with different aims, De Richleau and Mocata are cut from the same cloth, belonging to a world where rites and incantations hold sway.
While special effects play their part from giant menacing tarantulas and the Angel of Death, the most effective scenes rely on a lot less – Simon strangled by a crucifix, Mocata hypnotizing a woman, a bound girl struggling against possession. Had the film been made a few years later, when Hammer with The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Lust for a Vampire (1971) increased the nudity quotient, and after The Exorcist (1973) had led the way in big bucks special effects, the black mass sequence would have been considerably improved.
The main flaw is the need to stick with the author’s quartet of “modern musketeers” which means the story stretches too far in the wrong directions often at the cost of minimizing the input of de Richleau. In the Wheatley original, the four men are all intrepid, but in the film only two – de Richleau and American aviator Rex van Ryn (Leon Greene) – share those characteristics. At critical points in the narrative, de Richleau just disappears, off to complete his studies into black magic. Where The Exorcist, for example, found in scholarship a cinematic correlative, this does not try.
Christopher Lee (She, 1965), pomp reined in, is outstanding as de Richleau, exuding wisdom while fearful of the consequences of dabbling in black magic, both commanding and chilling. Charles Gray (Masquerade, 1965) is in his element, the calm eloquent charming menace he brings to the role providing him with a template for future villains. The three other “musketeers” are less effective, Patrick Mower in his movie debut does not quite deliver while Leon Greene (A Challenge for Robin Hood, 1967) and Paul Eddington (BBC television’s Yes, Minister 1980-1984) are miscast. Nike Arrighi, also making her debut as love interest Tanith, is an unusual Hammer damsel-in-distress.
Hammer stalwart Terence Fisher (The Gorgon, 1964) creates a finely-nuanced production, incorporating the grand guignol and the psychological. Screenwriter Richard Matheson (The Raven, 1963) retains the Wheatley essence while keeping the plot moving. A few years later nudity was no longer be an issue and Hollywood injected big bucks in horror special effects, so with those constraints in mind the studio did a devilish good job.
BOOK INTO FILM
Dennis Wheatley was a prolific bestseller producing three or four titles a year, famous for a historical series set around Napoleonic times, another at the start of the Second World War and a third featuring the “four modern musketeers” that spanned a couple of decades. In addition, he had gained notoriety for books about black magic, which often involved series characters, as well as sundry tales like The Lost Continent. Although largely out of fashion these days, Wheatley set the tone for brisk thrillers, stories that took place over a short period of time and in which the heroes tumbled from one peril to another. In other words, he created the template for thriller writers like Alistair MacLean and Lee Child.
The Devil Rides Out, his fourth novel, published in 1934, featured the “musketeers” involved in his phenomenally successful debut The Forbidden Territory (1933), and introduced readers to his interest in the occult. Although of differing temperaments and backgrounds his quartet – the Russian-born Duke De Richleau (Christopher Lee in the film), American aviator Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) and wealthy Englishmen Richard Eaton (Paul Eddington) and Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) – are intrepid. And while screenwriter Richard Matheson stuck pretty much to the core of the Wheatley story, the film was hampered by the actors. The laid-back Paul Eddington hardly connects with the Wheatley characterization and Patrick Mower is too young for Aron.
As with the book, the story moves swiftly. Worried that Aron is dabbling in the black arts, De Richleau and Van Ryn go haring down to his country house where they meet black magic high priest Mocata (Charles Gray) and discover tools for satanic worship. And soon they are embroiled in a duel of wits against Mocata, climaxing in creating a pentagram as a means of warding off evil.
In order not to lose the audience by blinding them with mumbo-jumbo the script takes only the bare bones of the tale, bringing in the occult only when pivotal to the story, and that’s something of a shame. A modern audience, which has grown up on enormously complicated worlds such as those created for Game of Thrones and the MCU, would probably have welcomed a deeper insight into the occult. While out-and-out thrillers, Wheatley’s novels also contained copious historical information that he was able to dole out even when his heroes were in harm’s way. The Devil Rides Out is not a massive tome so it’s a measure of the author’s skill that he manages to include not just a condensed history of the occult but its inner workings. Every time in the film De Richleau goes off to the British Library for some vital information, his departure generally leaves a hole, since what he returns with does not always seem important enough to justify his absence.
But then the screenwriter was under far more pressure than a novelist. In some respects, this book like few others demonstrated the difference between writing for the screen and writing for a reader. With just 95 minutes at his disposal, Matheson had no time to spare while Wheatley had all the time in the world. Wheatley could happily leave the reader dangling with a hero in peril while dispatching De Richleau on a fact-finding mission, the action held up until his return. It’s interesting that Matheson chose to follow Wheatley’s characterization of De Richleau, who didn’t know everything but knew where to look. Matheson could easily have chosen to make De Richleau all-knowing and thus able to spout a ton of information without ever going off-screen.
But here’s where the book scores over the film. The reader would happily grant Wheatley his apparent self-indulgence because in the book what he imparted on his return, given the leeway to do so, was so fascinating. There are lengthy sections in the book which are history lessons where De Richleau gives readers the inside track on the satanic. In the opening section, once De Richleau and Van Ryn have rescued Aron, the author devotes a full seven pages to a brief introduction to the occult that leaves the reader more likely to want more of that than to find out how the story will evolve. He has hit on a magic formula that few authors ever approach. To have your background every bit as interesting as the main story is incredibly rare and it allowed Wheatley the opportunity to break off from the narrative to tell the reader more about the occult, which in turn, raised the stakes for the characters involved.
Dennis Wheatley
Effectively, there was too much material for a screenwriter to inflict upon an audience ignorant of the occult. Some decisions were clearly made to limit the need for lengthy exposition. But these often work against the film. For example, Mocata wants the Talisman of Set because it bestows unlimited power with which he can start a world war, but in order to accomplish that he needs to find people with the correct astrological births, namely Simon and Tanith. But this element is eliminated from the story, making Mocata’s motivation merely revenge. Matheson also removed much of the historical and political background, replaced the swastika as a religious symbol with the more acceptable Christian cross, and deleted references to Marie’s Russian background. Her daughter Fleur becomes Peggy. Matheson also treats some of the esoteric light-heartedly on the assumption that seriousness might be too off-putting.
Overall, the adaptation works, you can hardly argue with the movie’s stature as a Hammer classic, but the more you delve into the book the more you wish there had been a way for much of the material to find its way onscreen and to inform the picture in much the same way as the depth of history and character backstory added to Game of Thrones.
A hoot. Definitely a contender for that most sought-after of categories – the cult movie.
When I tell you it’s Vincent Price in a western you’ll see how much fun this could be. Price spent virtually a whole decade locked into horror typecasting, those distinctive tones dealing out doom. But like all typecast actors, no doubt he was desperate to show what he could do when the horror shackles were removed.
Trouble is – he does too much. This a lollapalooza performance, so wild and barmy it will have you in stitches, at the same time as wondering what the hell was going on in his head, and why he thought such barnstorming was required, as if he felt he had to steal a picture of which he was the denoted star.
Though effectively a western with all the tropes of that genre, and a remake to boot of Yellow Sky (1948), this, adding further hilarity and extending the cult status, is set in South Africa, with variable attention paid to accent.
Stretch Hawkins (Robert Gunner) is leader of a gang of outlaws robbing banks in the Transvaal during a gold strike. They escape the pursuing posse by heading into desert territory and eventually, parched, exhausted and suffering from heat stroke, seek refuge in a ghost town, former mining town Yellow Rock abandoned except for two inhabitants, Oupa Decker (Vincent Price) and his grand-daughter Willi (Diana Ivarson).
Naturally, on spotting the lone woman, the outlaws get the wrong ideas. But she soon puts them right. When she’s not holding them at bay with a rifle she’s decking Stretch with a neat right hook. Refusing to offer them any hospitality whatsoever seems particularly mean given the poor chaps are starving and this area is bereft of the animal population- lions, elephants, hogs – that had popped up previously in the way of the random stock inserts you found in any picture set in Africa.
So the fellows spread themselves out along the riverbank which provides the only water in the vicinity and where Willi must come calling, leading to further episodes of predatory sexual behaviour. By now Stretch has taken a liking to Willi, which is eventually reciprocated, and he tends to leap to her defence.
For no apparent reason, the outlaws surmise that the only reason the old man and his daughter are still hanging around this deserted spot is because they have found gold. Instead of doing the obvious and holding the younger woman hostage, Stretch attempts to strike a deal, agreeing to take only half the old man’s £20,000 stake in return for letting them go free.
This doesn’t go down so well with the rest of the gang and the shoot-out, when it occurs, sees Stretch siding with the good guys and turning over such a good leaf that he returns the money he stole to the bank.
Despite Vincent Price threatening to ruin the picture with his mugging there are some nice touches. After Stretch’s romantic overtures are derisively dismissed for him being too smelly, he smartens himself up, coming a-courting (or a rough version of it) in fresh shirt, armpits washed and hair combed. Stretch had a touch of religion in the past when a law-observing farmer. And you can tell what a change is wrought in him when at the end he buys rather than steals a pretty hat for Willi.
It’s true there is a transformation in Vincent Price (The Oblong Box, 1969). But not for the better. The lugubrious delivery is toned down, the iconic full beard reduced to a wisp, he wears a floppy hat, cackles like a madman and every time he looks at the camera it’s with a one-eyed leer. There’s something of the country bumpkin in his interpretation of the part, and that might just be a show put on to fool the outlaws. Whatever it is, it comes across as the barmiest performance this side of the Razzies.
On the other hand Diana Ivarson (Macho Callahan, 1970), in her debut, makes a pretty good stab at the feisty independent western women, channelling her inner Barbara Stanwyck, or in those tight jeans Jane Fonda in Cat Ballou (1965). She’s a sharpshooter, capable of missing “that close on purpose.” Robert Gunner (Planet of the Apes, 1968) is scarcely a decent substitute for Gregory Peck in the original.
Director Robert Webb (The Cape Town Affair, 1967) can do little to rein Price in. Written by Harold Medford (The Cape Town Affair), adapting the original by Lamar Trotti and W.R. Burnett.
But, really, there’s little to save it from being awful except that cult pictures are judged by different criteria and this has all the making of a cult.
Misguided attempt to play the innocent-caught-up-in-espionage card. And minus the angst on which he had built his screen persona, Tom Courtenay (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968) fails to elicit the spark that would turn himself into a leading man – excepting one other film, this was his last top-billed picture. And anyone hooked by the billing expecting to see a lot of female lead Romy Scheider (The Cardinal, 1963) would equally be in for a surprise.
And that’s a shame because Courtenay can act, not in the Oscar-bait sense, but just in his physical gestures and reactions to whatever else is going on in a scene. Scheider, too, especially in the scene where she more or less laughs in Courtenay’s face when he points a gun at her and in her knowing looks.
But Otley (Tom Courtenay) is such an unappealing character, the movie is on a sticky wicket from the off. Petty thief, largely homeless because of it, his propensity for slipping into his pocket anything that looks valuable in the homes of anyone stupid enough to give him a bed for the night, giving the movie its only sensible piece of narrative drive. Because the rest of the story is a farrago, a series of unconnected episodes dreamed up for their supposed humor, which wants to be pointed and sly but ends up heavy-handed and dreary.
And there’s one of those narrative sleights-of-hand where Otley wakes up on an airport runaway (security impervious to his presence, of course) having misplaced two days of his life. That’s just one of competing narratives – the other being that he’s wanted for the murder of the chap, Lambert (Edward Hardwicke), who was stupid enough to give him a bed for the night. Count in the espionage and there’s a trio of useless narrative hinges that get in each other’s way and largely introduce us to a succession of odd characters.
Pick of these is Johnston (Leonard Rossiter), an assassin who has more lucrative side hustles as a tour coach operator, double-crosser and blackmailer. The only other believable character is the landlady who’s had enough of Otley’s thieving, but only (unbelievable element lurching into view) after she’s bedded him.
The movie just lurches from one scene to another, a car chase that ends up on a golf course, (“Are they members?” cries one outraged lady), a houseboat, various low-life dives and chunks of tourist tat thrown in, a bustling street market, Carnaby St etc. I can’t begin to tell you what the espionage element is because that’s so far-fetched and ridiculous you won’t believe me.
This is the kind of low-budget picture that sets scenes, for no particular reason except they’re part of tourist London, in the Underground, but a completely empty Underground, not another person in sight, and not late at night either which would be a saving grace, though clearly it was filmed either late at night or early in the morning when the Underground was closed to ordinary passengers (thus saving on the budget).
Two examples of how heavy-handed the humor is: on a farm having been doused in water by Johnston, Otley remarks that he’s now deep in the proverbial only for the camera to cut to his foot sinking into a cowpat. At the airport, a couple of staff get lovey-dovey behind a counter, the male sneaking a grope, and we cut to a sign “ground handling”. Ouch and urgh!
If you manage to keep going the only reward is to see a handful of familiar names popping up: Alan Badel (Arabesque, 1966), James Villiers (Some Girls Do, 1969), Fiona Lewis (Where’s Jack?, 1969) and British sitcom legends James Bolam (The Likely Lads and sequel) and Leonard Rossiter (The Fall and Rise of Reginal Perrin, 1976-1979).
And where’s Romy Scheider in all this? Looking decidedly classy, but clearly wondering how the hell she got mixed up in it.
Screenwriter Dick Clement (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) made his movie debut on this clunker. He co-wrote the picture with regular writing chum Ian La Fresnais from the novel by Martin Waddell.
What happens when a genre cycle – in this case the espionage boom – gets out of control.
Variation on the director’s earlier The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as a pair of British ex-military cheekie chappies whose reach exceeds their grasp come unstuck when confronted by powerful religious elements. Enticingly presents a marvellously ironic puzzle – you can have everything your heart desires except anything that would make you human. And elevated less by John Huston’s cinematic achievement than by terrific performances by the two stalwarts of the British film industry at the time, Sean Connery and Michael Caine, the former taking the acting kudos by a nose as the less intelligent of the duo. Given Connery’s standing at the time, this was somewhat playing against type. Yes, he exudes screen charisma and is a macho as ever, but nonetheless not quite as quick on the uptake as the more calculating Caine.
Story is told in flashback after a maimed Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) turns up as the offices of journalist Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer). They originally met when Peachy had stolen the writer’s watch, returning it on realizing they were fellow freemasons. With buddy Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery), they attempt to enlist Kipling in a blackmail scheme and in due course the soldiers set off to make their fortunes in the forbidding land of Kafiristan, at the top of the Indian sub-continent, where no white man has set foot since Alexander the Great.
Their scheme is simple – to hire themselves out as mercenaries to various tribes, bringing modern warfare skills and weaponry to primitive society and ascending the ranks of power. When Daniel appears unhurt after plucking an arrow out of his chest, the natives confer on him the status of god, and so he is elevated to kingshippery and all the gold he could want. But in this Garden of Eden there is a humdinger of a Catch 22, the apple he must not touch.
He can’t take a wife.
You can see the logic. As a god you should be above base earthly desires. A god could not possibly wish such intimacy with a human. Otherwise he would lose his otherworldly sensibilities, not to mention that the chosen woman would expect to physically explode. While the more sensible Peachy has been all the time calculating just how he’s going make a getaway with as much gold as he can carry, Daniel becomes trapped in the notion that he can have his cake and eat it.
The religious hierarchy says otherwise and it doesn’t end well.
Audiences may well have been disappointed at the lack of action. There’s only one battle and it’s over in a minute, albeit that there’s a timeout to make the point about the power of religion. And although our boys endure a momentous trek it’s fairly standard stuff and Huston lacks the vision of a David Lean to turn the journey into anything more dramatically or visually memorable. A whole bunch of indigenous background material – including the ancient version of polo where the ball is a human head – doesn’t make up.
What does transform this relatively slight tale is the playing. Connery and Caine are a delight, the kind of top-of-the-range double act on a par with the cinemagical pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). They spark each other off just a treat. Caine, surprisingly, is the one in charge, Connery adrift in matters of arithmetic, strategy and, when it comes down to it, common sense even though when called up to judge on civil matters proves himself relatively astute and fair.
The writing, too, seems to understand implicitly how to get the best out of the characters. When they fall out, it is so subtle you would hardly notice. Caine scarcely bristles when Connery explains that Caine really should be falling in line with the rest of his subjects and bowing his head, but if you are astute reader of an acting face you can see the chasm that has opened up in their relationship.
To employ a Scottish phrase, Connery gives it “laldy” – acts with gusto – when playing the part of a madman, whirling around like a demented dervish, but mostly reins it in.
The intricacies of freemasonry would wait a few decades before called to the cinematic altar in The Da Vinci Code (2006) but here the mumbo-jumbo proves less important than, as with the Dan Brown epic, a symbol, and, again with the lightest of narrative strokes, we are left considering its mystic origins.
John Huston (Sinful Davey, 1969) back on top form but he’s more than helped by exceptional acting by Sean Connery (The Hill, 1965) and Michael Caine (Play Dirty, 1968) with Christopher Plummer (Nobody Runs Forever / The High Commissioner, 1968) in unusually subtle form as well. Gladys Hill (Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1967) and Huston were Oscar-nominated for the the screenplay based on the Kipling short story.
Impressed by this performance I should warn you I feel a Sean Connery binge coming on.
Exceptional down-and-dirty thriller and throwback film noir woefully underrated on release but with a brilliant mystery (or two), a touch of satire, red herrings, some great lines, and believable characters. Private eye P.J. Detweiler (George Peppard) is so down on his luck he is willing to play the lover so an errant wife can be photographed in a motel room. What little he earns goes on paying is debts. So he can hardly down the chance of serious money as bodyguard to Maureen (Gayle Hunnicutt), mistress of rich businessman William Orbison (Raymond Burr), never mind that she initially treats him as a servant.
Orbison has a legendary mean streak – secretaries have to type closer to the edge of sheets of paper, he forces wife Betty (Colette Gray) to account for every dime of her allowance to the point of almost making her beg. Sadism is another character trait. He is happy not to kill off animals he has shot. The childless millionaire adds Maureen to his will for the sole purpose of upsetting every other potential heir. In front of guests at a prestigious party he forces Betty to acknowledge Maureen’s existence.
This apparently wealthy world is riddled with seedy inhabitants, whose only motivation is greed, all desperate to retain status or inheritance and enjoying Orbison’s largesse, which, despite his miserly nature, he nonetheless flaunts. As well as Betty enduring ritual humiliation to remain his wife and enjoy a gilded lifestyle, his executive assistant Jason (Jason Evers) accepts being treated as a gofer in order to keep his position and the perks that go with it, and Maureen makes no bones about prostituting herself for temporary and future gain. Everyone has to kowtow, even the occupants of a West Indian island dependent on Orbison for investment, not only a kids choir welcoming Orbison on arrival, but a calypso performer singing a song in his praise.
As various threats, including narrowly missing a bullet, are made against Maureen, making a classical entrance in a red dress and alternating between helpless victim and femme fatale, with her creepy manservant Quell (Severn Darden) reporting on her every move, inevitably Detweiler grows closer to his client, unaware that Orbison is planning to have someone killed.
That someone turns out to be Jason, whom Orbison suspects of clandestine activity with his wife, and whom Detweiler innocently kills. As this takes place on the island, where the death is easily hushed up, Detweiler begins to wonder if he’s a patsy and, paid off by Orbison, undertakes his own investigation, quickly entering more dangerous waters, viciously beaten up at Quell’s behest in a gay bar, narrowly avoiding death in the subway and literally finding himself in the firing line.
Detweiler’s character undergoes transition, too. From begging for scraps and turning the other way so as not to jeopardize easy income, he rediscovers his suit of shining armor, walking down some pretty mean streets, a diligent private eye who can no longer be bought off, determined to get to the bottom of what turns out to be a complicated mystery.
Detweiler is no Marlowe or even Tony Rome, but rather despicable at the outset, employing all sorts of dodges, his interest in Maureen not slackening even after he knows she indulges in a quickie with Orbison. He takes too much at face value.
The unfolding mystery is superbly handled, involving proper clues and investigation, shoot-outs and fisticuffs, the outcome not what you might initially imagine. Although primarily an old school private eye picture, it’s great fun, with some wonderful comedy involving a dog, gentle satire on the West Indian island where whitewash is the order of the day, and some touching romantic foreplay.
Peppard (Pendulum, 1969) is outstanding as the dupe who rediscovers his moral code and his Detweiler is an excellent addition to the ranks of the private eye. Raymond Burr, a far cry from his Perry Mason (1957-1966) television persona, is easily one of the worst screen millionaires – on a par with Ralph Richardson in Woman of Straw (1964) in his contempt for humanity – and with his silver hair and bulk and scheming proves a slick adversary. Gayle Hunnicutt (Eye of the Cat, 1969) is allure on legs, brilliantly playing every man in sight, eye never diverted from the main chance.
Brock Peters (The Pawnbroker, 1964) has a standout cameo as the island’s cynical police chief. Susan Saint James (The Name of the Game, 1968-1971) makes her movie debut as Orbison’s slinky sex-mad niece. Also putting in an appearance are Wilfrid Whyte-Hyde (The Liquidator, 1965) as the island’s accommodating governor, Colleen Gray (Red River, 1948) as the humiliated wife, Severn Darden as the odious Quell, and John Ford regular John Qualen (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962).
This was the second of director John Guillermin’s George Peppard trilogy following The Blue Max (1966) and prior to House of Cards (1968). Generally dismissed as a journeyman, Guillermin brings a sly eye to this picture, the send-up of British colonialism, the master-servant aspects, an over-the-shoulder shot of an unknown assassin, the scenes in the bar which is effectively Detweiler’s office, and a brilliant subway death adding layers to the movie. He is bold in his use of close-ups with Hunnicutt, some scenes almost a homage to the Bogart-Bacall chemistry, and brings out a world-weary performance from the usually cocky Peppard.
Philip Reisman Jr. (All the Way Home, 1963) fashioned the screenplay, delivering one of cinema’s most memorable final lines.
Bracketed with Pendulum and House of Cards demonstrates that Peppard is under-rated.
Watched this with growing revulsion. The final, triumphal, image says it all. The coverage of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games in 1972 attracted a world record global audience of 900 million. Hooray! At least some good came out of it. How could anyone find celebration in such an atrocity? And ask a cinema audience to share in the tribulations of a television crew seeking the gold medal of the media games – the scoop.
No notion that in broadcasting the event – if it can be so termed – live that it opened the door to any other terrorist organization seeking a bigger global audience for its nefarious activities. You could blame the audience for watching. The networks after all are only pandering to public demand. They are not censors.
You’d hardly believe it but some of the characters here were all for broadcasting a live execution should the terrorists be so kind as to shoot someone within reach of the cameras. And, yeah, the terrorists knew there were cameras, because they could see the whole thing unfolding on the televisions in the rooms where they held their hostages. Which was very helpful, because it alerted them to the armed German police crawling over the rooftops.
In theory this falls into the subgenre of media backroom shenanigans, think Broadcast News (1987), or acclaimed tales of journalistic expose, king of that particular castle still being All the President’s Men (1976) though Spotlight (2015) might run it close, the ones where the reporters take a heroic stab at the establishment.
Here, though, the media is the establishment. This focuses on ABC, one of the three big U.S. networks, and it’s the tale more than anything of glory hunters, the sports division of the network stumbling upon the unfolding events and resisting every demand to hand it over to the more politically-aware and humanity-sensitive news department, boss Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) determined to win his place in the sun.
He’s the kind of manager who’s so arrogant that it’s not occurred to him to have around him anyone who speaks German – surely the Germans will oblige and all speak English – only to find that he relies to the extent of putting her life in danger on freelance German translator Marianne (Leonie Benesch). Given the crassness of the production, you won’t be surprised to learn that members of the team blame her for what her parents did or didn’t do during the Second World War.
What Roone is especially good at is departmental politics, so he finagles CBS out of their satellite slot so he can win coveted airing time and even when he has to accede to demands that he share the footage with other networks comes up with the proprietorial scam to stick an ABC decal on the corner of the screen, a device that is still used today as you will be aware.
In any other circumstance I’m sure I would delight in having revealed to me all the tricks of the trade, how the reporters hack into police radio, how they cut and edit footage to maximum effect, and, under extreme pressure, still think lightning fast on their feet, one cameraman cleverly disguised as an athlete to evade the security surrounding the hostage situation and sneak secret footage back..
The Germans come off as incompetent, initial security effort called into question, their handling of the shootout deplored, scant regard given to the fact that, as one of the conditions of peace, German soldiers are forbidden to appear on German territory. Steven Spielberg managed to cover the situation more even-handedly in Munich (2005) in which, thankfully, the media were non-combatants.
“We were waiting for something to happen so we could take a picture of it,” laments Marianne at the end, perhaps not realizing that this is the same instinct that currently bedevils social media, the stacking up of views for being there. All the way through the journalists are in self-congratulatory mode, convinced they are making history, not stopping to think it might be of the worst possible kind.
The only reason for making this movie from the standpoint of the reporters is to glorify them. The athletes held hostage and eventually killed are mere pawns in the larger media game.
For a movie intended to set up a series character in the vein of James Bond, it was ironic that it was the women who stole the show, not just from their tendency to turn up in bikinis but for their outrageous villainy. Irma (Elke Sommer) and Penelope (Sylva Koscina) are the seductive assassins in the hire of Carl Petersen (Nigel Green) who has designs on an Arab oil empire. On her own Irma dispatches mogul Henry Keller (Dervis Ward) then the pair – emerging from the sea like a pair of latter-day Ursula Andresses – harpoon his colleague Wyngarde (John Stone).
Soon Hugh Drummond (Richard Johnson), investigating the death of Stone, becomes a target and that sets him off, with nephew Robert (Steve Carlson) in tow, to the Mediterranean and the yacht of oil-rich King Fedra (Zia Mohyeddin) where, of course, the girls lie in wait.
Dispensing with the gadgets – except for one item employed by the villainesses – and gimmicks of Bond, but retaining the quips, this is a fun ride with a more down-to-earth leading man – like the early Bonds – smarter girls, a more old-fashioned mystery, hefty thug Chang (Milton Reid) in the Oddjob mold, a castle doubling as the villain’s lair, a suave master criminal, some detective work, and a super scene involving giant robotic chess men.
The bickering between Irma and Penelope, not just a tad sadistic but a kleptomaniac especially as far as her partner is concerned, coupled with their overweening confidence, makes them much more human than any Bond Girl and the character traits explored have a pay-off at the climax. Equally interesting are the mind games, Drummond vs. Peterson but also Drummond vs. Irma. And that the female baddies see it as points on their scoreboard to seduce Drummond rather than the other way round.
Drummond is every bit as capable a seducer as Bond and equally ruthless, stripping one suspect naked. Petersen is also a clever character, faking his own death and running a very smooth operation, and certainly his recruitment techniques are second to none.
Some ideas were certainly ahead of their time, the chess men are the equivalent of a modern computer game while the human bomb has, unfortunately, entered the modern lexicon and there are enough female serial killers around to prevent anyone believing they are always (to use a sexist phrase) the gentle sex. However, in the middle 1960s, the concept that women would be partial to murder and torture not to mention repeatedly seducing males went so much against the grain of the male authority figures that the British censor slapped an X-certificate on the movie.
Shakespearian actor Richard Johnson was at one time an MGM contract player, but his only previous top-billed outing was the Italian-made The Witch (1966) but he certainly made a splash with this character, investing it with a great deal more gravitas than Derek Flint or Matt Helm. The Teutonic Elke Sommer (The Venetian Affair, 1966) is brilliant as one half of the assassin tag-team with a batch of one-liners for every occasion. Sylva Koscina (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968), nose always put out of joint, almost steals the show. Nigel Green (Tobruk, 1967), while his usual sardonic self, has the playfulness of the rich and powerful.
Steve Carlsen, in his movie debut, doesn’t make much of an impact in a largely lame role. Zia Mohyeddin has a more interesting role as the oil kingpin wanting to help his people. As you can expect in a spy picture there are a host of beautiful women – Suzanna Leigh (The Lost Continent, 1968) a defector, Virginia North, also making her debut, Justine Lord (Night after Night after Night, 1969), and Didi Sydow in her only screen appearance.
The light comedy experience of director Ralph Thomas (Doctor in Distress, 1963) comes in very handy, as his sense of comic timing is excellent, but, perhaps learning from his previous brush with espionage in Hot Enough for June / Agent 8¾ (1964) brings a bigger punch to the action scenes. And it’s a bold ploy to start with an action sequence revolving around Irma and Penelope rather than our star man.
The screenplay was a team effort – Jimmy Sangster (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964), taking a break from Hammer duties, David D. Osborn (Maroc 7, 1967) and Liz Charles-Williams, making her screen debut – all involved. This was familiar territory for composer Malcolm Lockyer (Five Golden Men, 1967). British pop act The Walker Brothers had a hit with the theme tune.
This is more fun than camp, not a send-up of the genre like Derek Flint and Matt Helm, but a spy picture with a believable leading men and excellent villains. But the plot is more centered on filthy lucre rather than global control and there is a genuine understanding of how businesses work – takeovers, mergers, dirty dealings – though small wonder Petersen would like to be shot of pedantic boardroom nuisances like Bridgenorth (Leonard Rossiter) – wouldn’t we all?
Bulldog Drummond was an international crime-buster invented by “Sapper,” the pen-name of H.C. McNeile. Bulldog Drummond had been a Hollywood mainstay for over four decades, the twenty-plus pictures attracting stars like Ronald Colman (Bulldog Drummond, 1929, and Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back, 1934), Ray Milland (Bulldog Drummond Escapes, 1937), Walter Pidgeon (Calling Bulldog Drummond, 1951) and a young Ralph Richardson (The Return of Bulldog Drummond, 1934). But the notion, in the Swinging Sixties, of tagging any leading man by the moniker of ‘Bulldog’ did not seem like a good idea, so the character underwent wholesale reinvention, and his nickname is never mentioned.
The title comes from a line in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, The Female of the Species. That was the original title of the film and also of a Sapper book.
Erotically-charged, symbolically-heavy French drama of siblings trying to re-establish the intense relationship they enjoyed as teenagers. After a nervous breakdown and on the point of divorce, blonde translator Diana (Nathalie Delon) seeks respite at the home of younger sister Martha (Susan Strasberg), a brunette happily married to the wealthy and indulgent Alex (Massimo Girotti).
Initially, the more worldly Diana, the more flamboyant dresser, appears the superior but it soon transpires she is the more fragile. The apparently timid Martha allows her husband to control her life to the point of buying all her clothes and confesses to feeling as if she is on “a perpetual cruise.” While on the surface, it seems as if she has given up too much, in reality she disapproves of disorder and seeks perfection. She comes across as needing protection, and believes the woman’s role is to sacrifice, but in fact has managed to arrange her life to her own satisfaction.
Their competitive streaks emerge in different ways, Diana in obvious fashion, seeking to beat her sister while out horse-riding, Martha in more subtle and sensual manner, flaunting her sexual relations with her husband, almost offering her sister to her husband, and having a lover (Lars Bloch) on the side. There is a sense of each attempting to impose their world view on the other. Diana gives her sister a make-over, a new look which Alex adores, Martha hates it. There’s a sense of a chess game, with two or more players, with the males subservient. pawns.
Sensuality is never far away. Diana nuzzles her sister’s neck to smell her perfume. Alex is photographed, encouraged by Martha, in almost intimate mode with Alex. Dario (Giancarlo Giannini) is brought in to tempt Diana. And a scene where the girls experiment with colorful scarves suggests libertarianism.
But it is clear that both sisters live empty lives devoid of true love and equally obvious as the picture progresses that both have arrived at the conclusion that they were at their happiest when together. There are subtle hints of incest, comforting each other in bed, the sensuality electric and the film begins to examine whether this taboo can be crossed and, if so, will it provide the necessary escape?
Despite Martha’s apparent subjugation, there is more than an inkling of feminism, the girls are involved in a complicated game in which the males are pawns, either rejected or made to look fools. While not fulfilled, Martha has turned as much as possible to her own advantage and Diana seems perfectly capable of taking what she wants.
Alex provides the symbolism. He cultivates rare plants that need to hide from the sun, in a greenhouse, lengthy exposure to whose atmosphere would be fatal to humans. He endlessly photographs them because they won’t last long. And in similar fashion provides a haven for the apparently vulnerable Martha.
Nathalie Delon (When Eight Bells Toll, 1970), married at this point to Alain Delon, shows a subtlety of expression that is rare for someone appearing in just her third film, and effects a gradual character transition throughout. Susan Strasberg, daughter of famed acting coach, Lee Strasberg, inventor of the Method Style of Acting, was one of the boldest actors of her generation, appearing in drug pictures The Trip (1967) and Psych Out (1968). She delivers an excellent portrait of a woman who manages to keep her true personality hidden, and for whom sexuality has few barriers.
This is the puppy-fat version of Giancarlo Giannini (Swept Away, 1974), barely recognizable as the future arthouse superstar whose physical appearance relied on gaunt, angst-riddles features. Massimo Girotti (Theorem, 1968) is good as the man who thinks he has everything, not realizing how little he has.
Although this was an accomplished directorial debut from Roberto Malenotti, he only made one more movie. Perhaps he made enough from directing the famous Coke commercial I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing (1971).
Always intriguing, revelations continually undercutting what we think we know of the characters, but delivered in subtle European tones rather than employing Hollywood shock, each of the four main people involved changing considerably due to their interaction with the others. While certainly skirting close to the borders of what was permissible at the end of the 1960s, it does so without exploiting the actresses.
The Magnificent 60s 