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  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    Taking my cue from CoolHandBond's Hammer triple header, I caught up with these two, which I'd recorded earlier:

    SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

    This film is regarded as the first to demonstrate the decline in Hammer Studios output. That’s a tad unfair. It certainly has its stale moments – the chattering hovering vampire bat being one of them – but it also takes time to try and deliver something more akin to what horror aficionados might regard as the traditional elements of the vampire / Dracula movie, despite being the nearside of trashy.  

    Roy Ward Baker directs and he was always serviceable for Hammer, rarely putting a foot wrong without ever suggesting he would do anything extraordinary. The script is by John Elder and while it’s cliched and sometimes unintentionally hilarious, it does make sure the horror and suspense aspects remain front and centre. This isn’t a movie which will distract you with a love story or a moral conundrum, it’s out for shock and for 1970, I think it’s fairly shocking. There are some distinctly nasty moments, albeit many of them are ‘silent’ shots as we witness the aftermath of the debacle. There’s oodles of bright stage blood. There’s a particularly vicious encounter between the aforementioned vampire bat and the local priest which is well edited and distinctly unsettling, especially given it takes place in a church.

    The writer and director do well to reintroduce Dracula’s castle, personality and estate: he has many prized possessions, a servant [played with some delight by Patrick Troughton], a horse and carriage which is able to self-navigate, he retains power over wild animals, can communicate telepathically with bats, is an urbane host, climbs up walls, and has a mesmeric sensual power over women. His seductions are particularly erotic. His killings are gory and startling. Christopher Lee plays the titular count for a fifth Hammer outing [he did also play Dracula in other movies] and he’s very effective, although his make-up appears slapped on, giving a sense of a pantomime villain. I enjoy the way he cringes angrily away from a crucifix. His overcurious, obvious glances of desire at the heroine are wickedly perceptive. I enjoyed too that, after having his castle almost destroyed by baying villagers in the opening reel, Dracula never leaves his home turf, relying instead on his servant Klove, who he treats with violent disdain.

    There’s a beauty-and-the-beast love story underpinning the fiery dénouement and plenty of fine interplay between the characters, who are gamely struggling to get a hold of dialogue which doesn’t amount to very much. Dennis Waterman is a bit too modern for the hero, but he’s better than Christopher Matthews who plays his brother, a cheeky lothario who ultimately gets his comeuppance. Two of Blofeld’s Angels of Death from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service appear: Anoushka Hempel is a succubus and Jenny Hanley is the beautiful wide-eyed heroine.

    I enjoyed it.    


    LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971)

    This Hammer Horror disaster-piece is nominally based on the characters created by Sheridan Le Fanu for his vampire novella Carmilla, a book which preceded and was an influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

    Hammer had already adapted the novel for the previous year’s The Vampire Lovers, which starred Ingrid Pitt. This one misses Ms Pitt and gains absolutely nothing. Ralph Bates plays a writer who wangles a position at a girls finishing school at which Mircalla Karnstein is running amok. Unintentionally hilarious, this plays out like Topless St Trinians meet the Lesbian Vampire. Our first look at these luscious ladies sees them indulging in erotic Greco-Roman dancing as an exercise class. I couldn’t stop laughing. All the sly looks, bedtime kisses and nude swimming seductions, heaving bosoms all over the place, and a strange man in a cape and top hat watching every sordid little sex game or throat biting murder. The whole thing’s a 95-minute joke, I feel.

    Good looking women aside, the movie has very little to offer. It isn’t tense, it isn’t shocking. The best moment comes five minutes in when Yutte Stensgaard’s vampire is resurrected and awakens totally nude covered in blood. Thing is, the promotional still is far more chilling and bloody and pseudo-erotic than the film shot [mostly seen from behind.] Otherwise Lust... is a dreary drag through all the usual Hammer staples.

    Stock footage of Riegersburg Castle is used to represent the Karnstien Schloss. This was apparently Le Fanu’s original inspiration for his vampire’s abode. For Hammer, the inspiration was The Scars of Dracula, as the castle sets created for that movie are reused here. Susanna Leigh is the heroine [I use the term loosely]; for those interested she was also the heroine in the Bulldog Drummond escapade Deadlier Than The Male. She’s the only one making any kind of effort. The director and the nominal stars certainly aren’t.

    Terrible.  

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    Mr Jones (2019)

    This movie tells the story of how the Welshman Gareth Jones was the first journalist to report on the Holdomor, the man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. Stalin's genocide of the Ukrainans is not very well known in spite of the aproximately 3.5 million dead.

    James Norton plays Jones while Venessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgård co-stars. Some scenes are shot in an experimental style, probably inspired by interwar movies made in Germany. Jones told George Orwell of his experiences, inspiring the novel "Animal farm". This link is used as a framing device in the movie. The subject of the movie is dark, but important. Very much worth watching. James Norton's performance strenghtens my belief that he's a strong candidate to be the next Bond.

    It's worth mentioning that the Metro-Vickers Affair were a show trial was held against six British engineers is part of a sub-plot in the movie. Ian Fleming traveled to Moscow in 1933 to cover it. "Mr Jones" may give some insight into what it was like for Fleming to be a foreign journalist in Moscow at the time.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    (If you want to learn more about the Holdomor I can reccomend Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's war on the Ukraine".

    Try not to lose faith in humanity if you read it)

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    Another round (2020)

    This Danish movie is about four male teacher in their fourties who decide to performman unusual experiment. A Norwegian philosopher has a theory that humans are born with a blood alcohol level that's 0.05 too low. The four friends decide to test the theory and see what the effect is professionally and at home. The results are positive, the alcohol provides them with the courage and playfulness that prove to be an asset. They decide to increase their BAC, something that affect their lives differntly. Some handle it better than others.

    The director says alcohol is important life, both as a negative and a positive. The negative effects has been the the topic of many movies, but few celebrate the positive aspects of alcohol use. The movie is funny, at times moving and thought provoking.

    One of the teachers is played by Mads Mikkelsen in a different and well-acted role. Don't miss the chance to see le Chiffre interpret modern dance! 😁

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU (1968)

    Oh, gosh. I have a feeling I ought to like this.

    I feel terribly guilty that I don’t.

    Basil Dearden directed a handful of fine British movies – like Victim, Khartoum, etc – but this isn’t one of them. The Assassination Bureau is based on an unfinished novel by Jack London. It has the feel of a prestige production. The sets and costumes are fabulous. Geoffrey Unsworth’s cinematography is very lush. There’s a starry cast enjoying themselves. So what on earth’s gone wrong?

    This period black comedy about an Edwardian era secret society of assassins simply lacks grace and style. It’s far too flat and obvious when it needs to be vivacious and misleading. I give full marks to Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed, the latter playing against type as a charming devil-may-care gentleman, who are spritely and mischievous and wouldn’t look out of place replicating this sort of powder-puffery in The Avengers [not hard for the late Dame Diana]. The rest of the cast is so-so. Telly Savalas is always a great villain, as is Curt Jurgens, but they are hamming it here, as are some of the over eager supporting players, many of whom are familiar from 60s or 70s British television.

    It starts wonderfully well with the initial meeting between Rigg’s bossy suffragette supporting journalist and Reed’s gentleman assassin crackling with sexual tension and a frisson of genuine danger. She’s out to have him murdered; he decides that’s a good idea. Cue a sort of Kind Hearts and Coronets meets Jules Verne Adventure which lacks all the wit of the former and the excitement of the latter. It’s not without charm, but that’s mostly due to Rigg and Reed. When you see the notorious rabble-rousing Reed playing with a tongue so gently in his cheek, you wonder how his career went so badly astray. It couldn’t all simply be down to the booze. Rigg also deserved a far greater cinematic legacy. She looks gorgeous in period costumes.

    At times The Assassination Bureau was very amusing, but there simply weren’t enough of those times. I was disappointed. I don’t know what I expected, but I expected something more substantial than this which could easily transfer itself into a Cold War spy spoof the sort of which was very prevalent at the time. The frantic finale is set aboard a Zeppelin and the dodgy special effects show up the lack of overall artistry. 

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    ABOVE US THE WAVES (1955)

    This was a British WWII film in classic mid-50s style. It has most of what you would expect of a WWII film of the era - black and white cinematography, some understated derring-do, a mission of exceptional difficulty, and cast including the likes of John Mills, John Gregson and Donald Sinden who are familiar faces from other classics of the era.

    This particular film is about attempts to sink the Tirpitz in using midget submarines. The film gave a decent sense of the cramped quarters in the midget submarines and the perils of the mission. I was not familiar with this particular operation so didn't go into the film knowing how the mission would pan out (apart from having some knowledge what the eventual fate of the Tirpitz was in the war). Certainly a very interesting sector of WWII and one which I will enjoy exploring further.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954)

    “Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies, when everything fits too well – the beginning, the middle, the end – from fade-in to fade-out.”

    So begins Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, a well-regarded and very bitter trash drama about a Cinderella girl in Hollywood. Ava Gardner plays Maria Vargas, a beautiful Spanish dancer persuaded to become a movie star by Humphrey Bogart’s weary director Harry Dawes. The story covers the three years and three ‘loves’ of her Hollywood life. The first of these is oil and movie mogul Kirk Edwards, a thinly veiled interpretation of Howard Hughes. This is a man she detests. Playboy Alberto Bravano rescues her in histrionic fashion, but she only tolerates his self-centred antics. The man she adores is an impotent Italian count, Vincenzo Toriato-Favrini.

    The film strikes a curious bridge between implausible melodrama and circumlittoral no-drama. When Mankiewicz wants his characters to be profound, angry or just darn clever, he has them spouting quite impossible dialogue. There are several long speeches, lots of knowing asides, and that one tremendously dull verbal confrontation between Edwards and Bravano, which is settled by a classic put down from Ava Gardner: “I did not want to go. Now you have spoken, I feel I should go.” For much of the narrative, however, nothing happens. For instance a whole ten minutes is taken up by Bogart and Gardner discussing her suitability to be a film actress, a series of convoluted sentences which mean something and nothing. Another five minutes is spent introducing the backgrounds of insignificant characters at a casino.

    When the really important details start arriving, Mankiewicz’s screenplay feels hamstrung by the conventions of the time. He can’t properly explain Vincenzo’s plight. Instead there’s a wedding night letter and an overwrought semi-confession. The oversight is shocking, both because it feels so unlikely – how could a war damaged veteran not explain his body is disfigured and missing a penis? – but also because it feels so cruel – didn’t someone tell poor Maria? What a callous bunch. Mind you, Maria is nothing if not a cheap date anyway [“To a girl with nothing, a man with hundreds is just as rich as a man with millions”] and cavorts openly with musicians, gypsies, dancers and chauffeurs with no thought for how others may react to her actions.

    I won’t give away any more of the plot; I’ve probably spoilt it already. The film is remarkably heavy going. Mankiewicz was at the top of his game in the early fifties and his writing demonstrates this, yet it feels hopelessly out of place. There are some monumentally great lines, but they don’t provide the film with an emotional core. The movie is very static and lacks drive. It needed more directorial, cinematic ‘tricks’ to enliven what we see; the central flashback idea isn’t original enough to keep us interested past the first third. In fact once Maria leaves Spain for Hollywood, the film stumbles, misses out all of the star building process [which might have been interesting] and never gets back on its feet. Maria Vargas as a character becomes a cipher for all wannabe actresses with thoughts of glamour and riches. I’m not even sure there was a moral to the thing. It ends in the rain, exactly as it started, only this time the clouds are clearing, which doesn’t sit right on such a depressing portfolio.

    It’s worth noting that Jack Cardiff photographed the movie and his work is quite original. He deepens the colours and the reds come up dark, bloody crimson, the greens almost black emerald, shadows seem to lurk over the characters. Much of the action takes place at night and those shadows creep everywhere. It’s almost as if he’s attempting to give a technicolour movie the look of a film noir. There is a particularly good shot of a bloody Italian sunset. Cardiff also makes Ava Gardner look ravishing.

    The same year this film came out, Judy Garland made A Star is Born, which sort of treads the same ground. That film retains its dark edges, casts a bitter eye over Hollywood and the star / studio system, but never forgets to entertain. The Barefoot Contessa is too dark, too introspective and has a level of interest with peaks at ‘middling.’ I’m a big Humphrey Bogart fan, but he’s miscast here, as is almost everyone. It’s Ava Gardner’s movie, but she’s not a big enough actress to pull off the trick in the same way Judy Garland does.      

      

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    edited June 2021

    LIVE AND LET DIE on the big screen.

    Well, you all know this one so just a few points-

    The boat chase is the part which benefits most from being seen in the cinema. Spectacular and thrilling.

    Geoffrey Holder is a standout in a film not short of impressive villains.

    Contrary to what many including me have stated, there ARE a couple of white guys among Mr Big's gang. Blink and you'll miss them, but they are there and obviously easier to spot on the big screen. I seem to have forgotten them over the last 50 years or so.

    Jane Seymour doesn't get a lot to say in the latter stages of the movie, with Kotto and Moore carrying most of the dialogue.

    Next week- He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot....

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    😁😁😁

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    The Curse Of The Werewolf (1961)

    Oliver Reed had his first starring role in this excellent entry in the Hammer catalogue. He is simply electrifying as the Werewolf and I find it strange that Hammer didn’t extend this into a franchise as they did with Frankenstein and Dracula.

    Its 18th century Spain and a beggar is thrown into the cells by the sadistic marquis, played by Anthony Dawson (Professor Dent in DN) in an effective, evil performance. The beggar rapes the jailkeepers daughter and she dies during childbirth on Christmas Day, which is a bad omen in that area of superstitious Spain. The child grows into a werewolf and a reign of terror begins.

    This is top notch horror and is easily one of Hammer’s greatest films, great performances all round with atmospheric sets.

    Highly recommended.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff

    STOWAWAY, on Netflix. This is a "hard" science fiction movie--there are no laser guns, ETs, or galactic emperors. . . Instead it's about a trio of astronauts on a vessel bound for Mars. The vessel is really built to sustain two people and they're pushing things by having three aboard. . . and then they discover a fourth person has stowed away. That's both the plot and the source of the tension--and it works very well. This is all about the kind of terror you can encounter in space when the equipment fails, not when there's a BEM that wants to suck out your brain.

    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958)

    A classic stop-motion animation from Ray Harryhausen featuring Kerwin Matthews as the titular hero eluding the devious magician Sokurah, fighting a cyclops, a dragon, a roc and a homicidal skeleton while rescuing a beautiful princess from enchantment and freeing a cheerful boy genie.

    That sums up the splendid story, but there’s a lot more going on here than just the Arabian Night’s fantasy, chiefly the superb special effects which are marvellous to behold and still create a sense of wonder watching them. It’s really heard to define why I like these old SFX movies so much. The fact you can see the effort which goes into the animation, the little ticks and squirms that allow the creatures to have character as well as detail. For all the whizz-bang fancy-dan modern day accruements of CGI, there’s always something ‘flat’ about them, something almost unmemorable. Perhaps because we see so much of it, our minds cease to be interested. When modern effects go wrong, they look no better than bad effects from the 1950s or 60s; so similarly when we see excellent effects like those in Seventh Voyage they are just as compelling as the best of Transformers or The Fifth Element.

    The sound effects are fantastic too. The cyclops roars mightily when angry and chuckles when its roasting a human on a spit. The skeleton cackles and its bones rattle. The gigantic roc bird screeches and its wings flap like angry wind. Couple these with Bernard Herrmann’s amazingly contemplative, stirring and tension racked score and we have an all-encompassing visual and aural treat.

    The cinematography is great too, all lush, vibrant colours. Much of it was filmed in Spain, including the Alhambra Palace in Granada, which looks gorgeous on film. It’s hard to see where the location shots stop and the studio sets kick in. Kenneth Klob’s script steals liberally from The 1001 Nights, but that doesn’t really matter. He makes Sinbad a less romanticised figure than did Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the sumptuous 1949 edition. Kerwin Matthews follows the lead. He’s a good, robust and straightforward swashbuckling hero. The fact he and none of the cast look or sound remotely Arab isn’t as much of a drawback as you may think. In a peculiar way, it adds to the fun.

    The tiny little princess is one of the cheekiest heroines in cinema. Kathryn Grant coquettishly kicking grapes across a table as she discusses the nature of love with a full size Sinbad is one of the sweetest love scenes you’ll ever see. Her trip inside the genie’s lamp is equally cute: “You’re as small as me!” she exclaims. “You have to be to live in a lamp,” replies Barani, played with competence and some cheek by twelve-year old Richard Eyer. Torin Thatcher is superb as the villainous Sokurah, scowling at everyone for the perceived injustices he’s being dealt.

    Of course the monsters and the overall SFX get all the headlines, but there’s much to admire here, with production designs, costumes and editing all well above par. Nathan Juran was never a great director, but he’s not got much to do here except follow Harryhausen’s lead. It’s a sorry indictment of the shallowness of critics and Academy’s that a film as good as this, which succeeds in spades purely on an entertainment level, doesn’t get recognised for the things it does well.

    After the rubbish day I had on Saturday not seeing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, this was a perfect tonic.

    Thank you, the Horror Channel, and no thanks to the Prince Charles Cinema.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Okay - what happened to Chris No1's viewing of OHMSS?

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE BOSTON STRANGLER (1968)

    Directed by Richard Fleischer, who would go on to helm the similar themed 10 Rillington Place three years later, this is a grim retelling of the true life events of the murder of 13 women in Boston between 1962 and 1964. Henry Fonda is the detective leading the investigation and Tony Curtis stars as the serial killer in what is probably his best acting role of his career. The film is shot in a documentary style with split-screen techniques. As Fonda become thwarted by lack of evidence he calls in a psychic for help while Curtis continues his killing spree under the guise of a plumber.

    An excellent film, well worth watching.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954)

    “Life, every now and then, behaves as though it had seen too many bad movies, when everything fits too well – the beginning, the middle, the end – from fade-in to fade-out.”

    So begins Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa, a well-regarded and very bitter trash drama about a Cinderella girl in Hollywood. Ava Gardner plays Maria Vargas, a beautiful Spanish dancer persuaded to become a movie star by Humphrey Bogart’s weary director Harry Dawes. The story covers the three years and three ‘loves’ of her Hollywood life. The first of these is oil and movie mogul Kirk Edwards, a thinly veiled interpretation of Howard Hughes. This is a man she detests. Playboy Alberto Bravano rescues her in histrionic fashion, but she only tolerates his self-centred antics. The man she adores is an impotent Italian count, Vincenzo Toriato-Favrini.

    The film strikes a curious bridge between implausible melodrama and circumlittoral no-drama. When Mankiewicz wants his characters to be profound, angry or just darn clever, he has them spouting quite impossible dialogue. There are several long speeches, lots of knowing asides, and that one tremendously dull verbal confrontation between Edwards and Bravano, which is settled by a classic put down from Ava Gardner: “I did not want to go. Now you have spoken, I feel I should go.” For much of the narrative, however, nothing happens. For instance a whole ten minutes is taken up by Bogart and Gardner discussing her suitability to be a film actress, a series of convoluted sentences which mean something and nothing. Another five minutes is spent introducing the backgrounds of insignificant characters at a casino.

    When the really important details start arriving, Mankiewicz’s screenplay feels hamstrung by the conventions of the time. He can’t properly explain Vincenzo’s plight. Instead there’s a wedding night letter and an overwrought semi-confession. The oversight is shocking, both because it feels so unlikely – how could a war damaged veteran not explain his body is disfigured and missing a penis? – but also because it feels so cruel – didn’t someone tell poor Maria? What a callous bunch. Mind you, Maria is nothing if not a cheap date anyway [“To a girl with nothing, a man with hundreds is just as rich as a man with millions”] and cavorts openly with musicians, gypsies, dancers and chauffeurs with no thought for how others may react to her actions.

    I won’t give away any more of the plot; I’ve probably spoilt it already. The film is remarkably heavy going. Mankiewicz was at the top of his game in the early fifties and his writing demonstrates this, yet it feels hopelessly out of place. There are some monumentally great lines, but they don’t provide the film with an emotional core. The movie is very static and lacks drive. It needed more directorial, cinematic ‘tricks’ to enliven what we see; the central flashback idea isn’t original enough to keep us interested past the first third. In fact once Maria leaves Spain for Hollywood, the film stumbles, misses out all of the star building process [which might have been interesting] and never gets back on its feet. Maria Vargas as a character becomes a cipher for all wannabe actresses with thoughts of glamour and riches. I’m not even sure there was a moral to the thing. It ends in the rain, exactly as it started, only this time the clouds are clearing, which doesn’t sit right on such a depressing portfolio.

    It’s worth noting that Jack Cardiff photographed the movie and his work is quite original. He deepens the colours and the reds come up dark, bloody crimson, the greens almost black emerald, shadows seem to lurk over the characters. Much of the action takes place at night and those shadows creep everywhere. It’s almost as if he’s attempting to give a technicolour movie the look of a film noir. There is a particularly good shot of a bloody Italian sunset. Cardiff also makes Ava Gardner look ravishing.

    The same year this film came out, Judy Garland made A Star is Born, which sort of treads the same ground. That film retains its dark edges, casts a bitter eye over Hollywood and the star / studio system, but never forgets to entertain. The Barefoot Contessa is too dark, too introspective and has a level of interest with peaks at ‘middling.’ I’m a big Humphrey Bogart fan, but he’s miscast here, as is almost everyone. It’s Ava Gardner’s movie, but she’s not a big enough actress to pull off the trick in the same way Judy Garland does.      

      

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    chriso1 said:

    circumlittoral 

    OK I had to look that one up. Sounds dirty, but actually means "around or adjacent to the shoreline", I think in the sense of intertidal zone rather than manmade structures. I oughta know that, at one point in my life I hung out on the beach every day and loved exploring tidepools.

    Still not sure how that modifies "no-drama" but its good to learn a new word!

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    I've not seen it, but in today's Times its film reviewer Kevin Maher says of the new Fast & Furious 9 'the tone here is late-era Roger Moore Bond (mostly Octopussy) where the awareness of farce is never far away and even brief moments of sobriety are infused with camp'. Enough for many of us to book our tickets - its 'In cinemas now' but at 143 mins it's a long car journey.

    Headlined 'Absurd nonsense, but furiously funny'.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • GrindelwaldGrindelwald Posts: 1,294MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    Wasnt Arthur H Nadel involved animation , MotU I believe ?

    The Rigg sitcom wasn't all that , strictly for Rigg fans imo

  • GrindelwaldGrindelwald Posts: 1,294MI6 Agent

    2012 , 2/6 , disaster movie about the end of the world , SFX good otherwise zzzzzzzz

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited June 2021

    SHOUT AT THE DEVIL (1975)

    Wilbur Smith is something like a publishing phenomenon. Since his first novel When the Lion Feeds was a success in 1964 he’s gone on to complete an astonishing 35 books, almost all of which have sold in excess of 1 million copies. His very earliest work tended towards the short side, with action orientated plots and contemporary settings, although the occasional historical drama was dropped into the mix. Shout at the Devil, his fourth book, is one of those history adventures, set in German and Portuguese Tanganyika during the First World War, and loosely based on an actual incident, the Royal navy’s 1915 sinking of the Konigsberg on the Rufiji Delta. His central character is the Irish American Flynn Patrick Flynn, an ivory poachers who roams frequently into German territory and antagonises the local commissioner Fleischer. He recruits by stealth the Englishman Sebastian Oldsmith who eventually marries his daughter Rosa. When war breaks out, Fleisher has the opportunity to exact legal revenge on Flynn.

    I used to read lots of Wilbur Smith when I was a teenager. I still have the copies somewhere. This was one of my favourites. My memory is that it had great historical detail, strong characters, an epic sweep and some thunderous action. It was also quite nasty. I remember horrific torture scenes and several quite gory murders or killings. After a while, all Smith’s books, especially his Courtney and Ballantyne adventures, seemed to read the same; endless elephant hunts and pages of long repetitive description. I hadn’t read one for thirty years until I recently picked up a cheap copy of Those in Peril and that opus did everything to confirm I was right.

    What can be said for Wilbur Smith is he is very cinematic. His stories cover landscapes, stories and eras which have immediate visual appeal. It’s difficult to understand quite why his novels have not translated well to the screen. Perhaps it’s because his prose is criticised for being unsympathetic to the native tribesmen. It is a reasonable point, but if an author writes in an era of widespread racism, I think he’s perfectly entitled to reflect that. My memory of Smith’s stories is that for every stupid, violent or subservient character [whether a native or a colonial] there was always an intelligent, conciliatory and liberal opposite. As far as I’m aware, Smith isn’t a racist and supports the current South African democracy. He abandoned his native Rhodesia because of Ian Smith’s autocratic regime, although a move to neighbouring South Africa can’t exactly be dressed in ribbons.

    The best of the movie adaptations is probably the earliest, 1968’s The Mercenaries, based on The Dark of the Sun, with a bristling Rod Taylor battling revolutionaries in the Congo. Producer Michael Klinger bought the rights to all Smith’s early stand-alone novels, but only managed to film two of them, Gold Mine [filmed as Gold, 1974] and Shout at the Devil. Both films were directed by ex-Eon editor and director Peter Hunt and this movie in particular employed a raft of ex or current Bond alumni: Michael Reed photographed, John Glen helmed the second unit, Alec Mills was cameraman, Maurice Binder did the credits, Syd Cain the sets, Bernard Horsfall has a small supporting role and, of course, Roger Moore, the newly appointed OO7 himself, starred in both films. Sometimes you feel all Shout at the Devil needed was Barry to write the score, Maibaum to touch up the script and Broccoli or Saltzman to add their names above the title and you’ve virtually got an Eon product.

    Another way the film resembles the Bond movies of the early seventies is through its emphasis on humour at the expense of character. The novel was very efficient on the psychology of its personalities. Their personas were paper thin, but hugely believable. Humour was non-existent. The underlying relationship between the antagonists Flynn and Fleischer is one of antipathy, they really detest each other. In the film, while this is made fairly obvious, it is undermined by portraying Fleischer as a bumptious boor with an uncontrollable sadistic streak. His method of policing is to shoot first and lynch afterwards. None of his underlings question this arbitrary violence even when it is apparent he’s making mistakes. When Fleischer attempts to utilise the assistance of the German navy cruiser The Blucher, the captain roundly ridicules him. An earlier image of the Commissioner parading his troops, shouting endlessly, his bulk surrounding a worn-out looking mule, reinforces the idea he is a lazy, oafish incompetent. These moments demean Fleischer and turn him into a figure of fun, when he ought to be a roundly unpleasant, amoral person. Perhaps screenwriters Alastair Reed and Stanley Price chose to tone down his psychotic behaviours to allay any fears of an ‘X’ certificate.

    Similarly, Flynn’s remorseless ivory poaching, an activity which has delivered riches into his pocket, is designed in part to purely antagonise his nemesis; there cannot be any other reason he consistently hunts over the border. The two men have a long history of confrontation. Unfortunately, Lee Marvin’s Flynn simply isn’t believable as a driven, revengeful hunter. His best friend was garrotted by the German, he himself is shot, his ivory confiscated and his daughter’s child murdered, yet he retains a peerless, cheerful and positive disposition, maintained by copious quantities of gin. Marvin, a very fine actor, is being badly directed here. Marvin seems to consciously be playing for laughs, when the screenplay doesn’t actually intend them. At one point Flynn conducts a comic fist-fight with Sebastian; in the novel this was a deadly serious event. The difference between the two readings of the incident is like introducing the fun of Wayne and McLaglan from John Ford’s The Quiet Man, when we ought to witness the orderly viciousness of Peck and Heston from Wyler’s The Big Country. Unfortunately, Peter Hunt doesn’t seem prepared to stop the two stars from continuing their night-time revelries [Moore and Marvin spent most of their free time drinking] onto the daytime set.

    The novel also featured Fleischer’s soldiers subjecting Rosa to a multiple rape, which was the focal reason her marital relationship floundered; this is eradicated from the film, replaced with a few scenes revolving around Barbara Parkins’ grief. Roger Moore, playing Sebastian twenty years too late, does rather well in the scenes where he attempts to comfort his beloved. Once more, it is noticeable how good Moore is with moments of control and care, where his natural empathetic appeal can assert itself. Like Marvin, he isn’t served well by Peter Hunt’s uneven direction. The action is fine and everyone copes splendidly with this. The tension mounts appropriately towards the end and there some spectacular moments of derring-do. This is mostly John Glen’s second unit work anyway. Everyone though struggles within the confines of the comedic material.

    The first half of the film doesn’t know whether to be a safari romp or a bloodbath, and because it’s both, the film is hopelessly unbalanced. The movie tries to be funny then tries to be deadly serious. The chapters jar and the audience notices. With about forty minutes to go, the film sorts itself out and chooses to be the solemn adventure thriller is ought to have been from the get-go. This is the most accomplished section, where Sebastian, disguised as a native, plants an incendiary device on The Blucher while it undergoes repairs on the delta. Things don’t go according to plan and with time running out, he and Flynn return to rescue Rosa from Fleischer’s evil clutches.

    The ending doesn’t present itself entirely convincingly. I feel Rosa should have the last rifle shot. Sebastian’s tossing way of the gun suggests revenge, not the war, was always their motive, which is fine as far as it goes. The novel was less ambiguous about the future because everybody dies. Flynn is caught conducting a needless elephant hunt; Fleischer hangs him. Sebastian and Rosa infiltrate The Blucher in full knowledge Fleischer is aboard and commit suicide detonating the bomb. Only Flynn’s friend Mohammed survives the carnage. There is no happy ending. Everyone shouts at the devil on Wilbur Smith’s pages.

    The film is well photographed and mostly looks exotic. Maurice Jarre’s music is good. At times, it’s exceptionally exciting. I’m undecided. Shout at the Devil is an uneven piece, neglected unfairly, but not quite as good as it could or should have been. Perhaps my final note can rest with a contemporary point: the film was tremendously successful at the time of release, earning over $15m, which for a British film in the seventies was a grand achievement.    

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
    edited June 2021

    On the big screen (part of a series of showings, starting with the Connery movies, now onto the Moores).

    It's often said that a Bond movie is only as good as its villain. There's truth in that- QoS, for example has a weak villain though his lack of impact is obscured by the awful editing, that excuse for a title song, etc. In THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN we have a fairly average Bond film that manages to punch above its weight mainly owing to its villain who should be high on any list of great Bond villains. It's just a shame that he isn't in a better Bond movie, but his impact isn't obscured as with QoS.

    The scenery is beautifully photographed and all the better for being seen in a cinema, as is the car chase sequence. However, a lot of the film takes place indoors and gains nothing. For example, the bedroom farce where Bond is visited by the two main girls works the same whether on a small screen or a large one as does the Lazar scene, M & Q parts, etc. I haven't checked with a stopwatch but it seems to me that more of TMWTGG takes place in smallish rooms (ie sets) than normal, and those don't need a cinema-sized screen.

    Still, next week it's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and that one on the big screen is most certainly one to look forward to.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    I'm reading Wilbur Smith's Assegai now and it strikes me that the story is both highly cinematic and very different from what we usually see in movies.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Spoiler function should be used towards the end of your review ChrisNo1 though as I haven't seen that film so far no real reason to now. Isn't it a remake of one with Bogart or am I just imagining it? It's odd how esteemed Hunt was for OHMSS and while Gold is okay and dandy, this isn't so much.

    Re Barbel's big screen Bond junket, it's odd how some Bonds really work well on the big screen and others less so. Golden Gun has a cheap look about it. Ken Adam not on for the big set finale and there's a fun story by the designer they went with in the book Some Kind of Hero - basically he didn't want to do it, but someone hinted it might dent his reputation in the industry if he turned it down. You do get just a whiff of ruthlessness in the EON story throughout. (The designer died weeks after talking to the authors but that's probably coincidental!)

    Barbel - should I post a massive review of Spy Who before you see it or after?

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    I caught this on Hardyboy's recommendation of 60s/70s pop and he's right - it's superbly done. I was watching this movie - my first trip to the cinema since Le Mans 66 about March last year! - and had a big grin on my face throughout much of it. Nothing is wrong with it and it looks brilliant. In fact, I know I'll enjoy it more than the Bond film when it eventually trundles into cinemas.

    Much of Cruella is one-upmanship between the young Cruella and her nemesis - this riffs on The Devil Wears Prada to great effect. It's this kind of - to use a word I picked up from Bond fans in the Gutter, I mean Twitter - sh**housery that worked so well between Bond and Goldfinger or Largo or Drax. I can happily watch that sort of thing all movie. Now you get the sense it's more the villain trolling Bond.

    You can go too far with the whole backstory makeover. We even had it a bit with Blofeld in the last one! Who next, Hitler? 'Well, he met some awful people in his 20s who just happened to be Jews, so that explains it, plus all those movies - The Sound of Music, The Great Escape, Casablanca - they wouldn't have happened without World War II and would Spielberg ever have got his Oscar?' - alright, so Hitler was real but movies even rowed back on Hannibal Lector's claim that some are just born evil: 'Nothing happened to me, I happened' in subsequent outings. Cruella's backstory involved murderous Dalmatian dogs - so that explains it- and the deathly dull post-war period which she jazzes up; it never quite paints her the an outright canine sociopath of the Disney film, but then you don't always want a whole movie devoted to someone like that, not when you're supposed to be amused by their antics and mostly rooting for them.

    That said, it seems that the floor manager of Liberty's in Cruella would make a truly excellent Captain Hook if Disney wants to do his backstory. I don't know how they'll make his backstory sympathetic though his alligator tale puts him in the frame I guess. And Peter Pan can be annoying.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Napoleon Plural- please, be my guest. ☺️

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Eh? I'm not travelling all the bloody way to Scotland to see a Bond film!

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    😁 Your loss!

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited July 2021

    WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL (1971)

    After the stunning financial success of Where Eagles Dare, producers Elliott Kastner and Jerry Gershwin sought out another Alistair MacLean screenplay for yet another blockbuster. When Eight Bells Toll doesn’t have the star power of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood and was subsequently treated as half-baked by most U.S. critics. That’s a little unfair as there is much to admire. Given that the replacement lead was Welshman Anthony Hopkins, you wonder if the producers had tapped up Burton to take on the hard drinking, anti-authoritarian, action man and archetypal MacLean hero Philip Calvert.

    MacLean had published the original novel in 1966, his first after a three year hiatus, and it is one of his most accessible efforts. It started his most financially productive period. Buoyed by the success of the movies The Satan Bug, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare, MacLean’s books were flying off the shelves and the six volumes he completed between 1966/71 were all huge bestsellers. The writer saw movie adaptations as an effective way to promote his novels and ten films based on his works were released in just over a decade (1968 – 1979). Several more were in the pipeline and MacLean often wrote a working screenplay before completing a novel proper to ensure it would translate visually from page to screen.

    The literary version of When Eight Bells Toll features one of MacLean’s very best opening paragraphs, quite possibly one of the best in the thriller genre, as his hero describes in detail the devastating power of a Peacemaker Colt, before informing the reader one is aimed directly at him. The movie retains the same opening scene, slightly elaborated, and from that moment, much like the brisk source prose, the action barely lets up. Thankfully MacLean provided a more satisfying conclusion to his screenplay than he did to his book. In fact, he’s developed a free-flowing, crisp script which allows the characters enough room to breathe without getting bogged down in extraneous background details.

    Hopkins displays verve and vigour as Calvert, a naval intelligence officer loaned to an obscure branch of the British Secret Service run by a pompous Robert Morley, known as Uncle Arthur. He’s hired by Corin Redgrave’s young pen pusher Hunslett and together the two set off for the Scottish Isles on the hunt for a cache of stolen gold bullion. Suspicion falls on Jack Hawkins’ shipping magnate Sir Anthony Skouras, who is holidaying with his young wife Charlotte, played with demure cold-calculation by Nathalie Delon. Through a series of violent incidents including the machine gunning of a helicopter, an underwater fight with a salvage diver and a boat chase around the Isle of Skye, Calvert somehow manages to piece together who is responsible. Befriending a cutthroat band of local fisherman, he organises a daring assault mission on a windswept castle which contains more secrets than just the comely daughter of the Laird.

    The film is a fun joyride. It never pauses long enough for the viewer to take in the preposterousness of what is happening. The cast give it their all and some scenes are tremendously effective. Belgian director Etienne Perier probably wasn’t experienced enough for this and it shows in the lack of visual imagination. It’s the sort of romp our ex-Bond alumni Terence Young or Peter Hunt could have handled with some success. Accomplished cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson can’t do much with the murky landscapes. John Shirley edits without panache, but he doesn’t mess about either, which compensates for the lack of artistic flair.

    Luckily the film is mostly action, so it doesn’t drag, but there’s a tendency to flirt dangerously close to parody. MacLean’s screenplay prevents that because – unlike most of his screen work and his novels – When Eight Bells Toll forefronts the humorous side of the author. Hopkins, Morley and Redgrave deliver a series of fine darkly comic lines, which mostly succeed, though not always. Even when seducing Nathalie Delon, which takes three scenes of protracted salacious staring, Hopkins allows a little twinkle to crease his eyes as the double entendres trip off his and her tongue. The whole ninety-five minutes is thoroughly enjoyable. My only complaint is the repetitive music score from Walter Stott, which is suitably seventies but offers no variety. There’s an odd story attached to the composer, who is in fact the female Angela Morley, a transgender woman who would break boundaries by winning Emmy awards and becoming famous for writing the theme to the soap opera Dynasty.

    Hopkins is rather good. He was still mostly recognised as a stage actor, but had done some film work including an adaptation of John Le Carre’s spy drama The Looking Glass War. On this performance, I rather fancy him as an action hero. Although he never took on another role quite like this, you wonder if the Bond producers sneaked a look when considering replacements for Sean Connery. I suspect Hopkins’ height may have done him a huge disservice. Producers Kastner and Gershwin had hoped to launch a series of thrillers starring Hopkins as Calvert but the movie’s relative failure in America curtailed that. The film did recoup its money with good receipts in the U.K. and Europe.

    When Eight Bells Toll is a fine thriller which delivers its punches and gets out quick. It’s even got a nicely sour ending for the hero. An underrated near classic.  


     

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    I enjoyed reading that fine review of a film (and book, of course) which I know well. Agree about the score- it starts ok, but never goes anywhere.

    IIRC this was Hopkins' first film lead and naturally he's splendid. He was a little young and young-looking so his hair is greyed to make him look more of the tough agent who's been around.

    I watched this with my father who was disappointed that Jack Hawkins, a star of his generation, didn't have more to do. We didn't know that Hawkins was dying of throat cancer. It took me some viewings to spot that he'd been dubbed by Charles Gray.

    Lastly, I've been to many of the locations and, as is always the case here, they look gorgeous and stunning..... on a day when it isn't raining.

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