thanks @Number24 I was just being a smartass, didnt really mean to distract from your post
actually I tried the link on my desktop, it works even without a phone though is very slow. Must be a huge amount of data to download ten minutes in three dimensions
it opened in youtube, and I could use my cursor to pan round in a circle, following the elephant herd or looking elsewhere across the savannah. very immersive. I'll watch the whole thing later today when I get ten minutes
I like nature too and illegal poaching is an important issue that doesnt get enough attention. its impressive how National Geographic are using the technology to make the problem more real to the viewer, an evolutionary step from the magazine photography we're all familiar with
FYI, VR stands for "Virtual Reality". If you watch that video in a virtual reality headset such as the Meta Quest 2 you'll see that the video surrounds you and allows you to literally look around the environment by simply turning your head instead of having to swipe a screen, thus giving you a very immersive experience which is the whole point of VR.
The Rangers risk their lives for what I suspect are low wages, but for a very good cause.
I've wanted somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa as a Bond location for years. Having the villain taking part in illegal big game hunting is a good way to establish him/her as a villain, and in a new way in an exotic location.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,690MI6 Agent
edited March 2023
VR sounds like being able to climb inside the cinema or TV screen and explore more of the surroundings than you can see on the screen normally. That's something I've wanted to do with some films and TV episodes I've seen over the years to be honest. Back in March 2016 when I was buying my first smartphone in the Carphone Warehouse I did get a chance to try on a VR headset. I'm sure that the technology has come on leaps and bounds since then though with the advent of Meta etc.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
I remember taping this film off the TV and watching it years ago, I think some time in the late 1990s. A scene where a villainous character is double crossed and thrown down a casm only to make his way out again and cast his attacker into the the very same casm has stuck in my mind ever since. I'd love to see it again some time. It remains the only Tarzan film I've ever seen and it wasn't bad.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
This is a very good Tarzan movie. One of the top three of all time. It works almost like a western in the jungle, with Tarzan in the role of a white-hatted avenging gunslinger, only he wears a loin cloth and carries a bow and arrow. Two great villains in Connery and Quayle.
I too remember watching Tarzan on television [Friday, BBC2 at 5.40pm, if the memory serves] and over the years I've seen every sound movie, including oddities like the 1959 remake of Tarzan the Ape Man and the Edgar Rice Burroughs produced 1930s serials. While Johnny Weissmuller is forever associated with the role, I agree that Gordon Scott enjoys himself tremendously in his six outings. He brought a more international flavour to the movies, had stronger casts and better directors, coupled with some fine storylines. He also wasn't encumbered with Jane - except for the b/w Tarzan and the Trappers - three unsold TV episodes stitched together as a cash in. Scott was a muscular and intelligent Tarzan. His films paved the way for Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry's underrated sixties films where Tarzan was brought bang up to date and flew around the globe fighting wrongs across the world's jungle realms.
Thanks for the tip! I just finished watching it and I enjoyed it. It was especially interesting to see Connery as a secondary villain just before he became famous. According to IMDB Connery said while making this movie: ""Two fellows took an option on me for some spy picture and are exercising it."
it was also interesting to watch a scene where Connery's character is hunting Tarzan who's hiding while a big poisonous spider crawls on his shoulder. Not too different from that "spy picture".
I should really post this in the Harry Palmer thread, although I may need to do a more detailed appreciation for that...
THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)
Where to start?
Michael Caine, perhaps, in a career defining role as Harry Palmer, bringing elements of schoolboy charm to a working class, slightly obnoxious, slightly sarcastic, clever, yet ever-so put-upon spy – “insubordinate, insolent, a trickster with criminal tendencies.”
John Barry’s music, perhaps, with its memorable theme played out over scenes of Palmer’s domestic life, its jazz notes swaying, a pre-Thunderball score of incidental excellence.
Sidney J. Furie’s incisive direction, perhaps, almost entirely shot from obscure angles to give us the impression we are clandestinely observing the action – from the floor, below a desk, a bed, a car, through a key hole, chicken wire, a lamp shade, a windscreen, a telephone booth, a spectacle lens, etc, etc – not only is the audience constantly off-balance, they are also prone to the same tensions and intrigues as are played out for the cast – quite possibly one of the most astonishing and consistently puzzling yet satisfying array of viewpoints ever put into a main stream movie.
Bill Canaway and James Doran’s screenplay which sensibly thins down Len Deighton’s novel and contracts the action into an identifiable, plausible London centric landscape, yet never forgets to present character, place and narrative in every single scene; not a second nor a line is wasted.
The other-worldly brain-drain plot, perhaps, which isn’t allowed to drown the realism; instead it overarches the street level shenanigans and the villain’s pillars collapse only at the very end – off screen, in fact – after torture and murder and mayhem have elapsed.
Nigel Green and Guy Doleman, perhaps, as the twin pillars of disgusted authority, whose allegiances seem to sway with Barry’s music and Caine’s affected glances; will Harry Palmer recognise the traitor in time?
The droll humour, perhaps, not so much witty as overtly observational, drawing on tetchy interpersonal relationships, irritating personality ticks and a crawling dread of anything out of the norm, the waggishness steadfastly refuses to plant jokes just to poke fun at the film itself.
Frank Gatliff, perhaps, as Grantby, a.k.a ‘Blue Jay’, the low-key, even mannered, credible and capable villain surrounded by a cohort of much unnamed ugliness.
Ken Adam’s down-at-heel designs, perhaps, a spare contrast to his usual extravagances, messy, dirty, uninvolving and unobtrusive, here rather than being impressive, they add character, contrast and shape to individual sequences.
The smallest details, perhaps: Palmer and ‘House Martin’ mirror-imaged walking the balconies of the Science Museum, Palmer removing his specs before a fist-fight, the US agent following ‘Blue Jay’, the backhanded assistance between the Secret Services and the Met Police, Palmer’s disrespect for routine red tape, his spartan domestic arrangements, recipes stuck on cupboard doors, Mozart on the turntable, the plaque for Dalby’s section ironically reading ‘Domestic Employees Bureau’, his secretary endlessly smoking, the colour ‘red’ recurring as a more and more obvious Freudian clue, the days scratched in sevens on a prison cell wall, our introduction to the duplicitous love interest comes over her shoulder – like Cary Grant in Notorious – what is she hiding other than her shapely legs? – and Palmer searches for his automatic and finds it not under his pillow but even further down his bed than last night’s lady’s cheap bracelet.
Peter Hunt’s editing, perhaps, which cuts effectively and without puzzlement from scene to scene, evoking tension, drama and excitement in equal measure.
Gordon Jackson, Sue Lloyd, Stanley Meadows, Freda Bamford, Thomas Baptiste and the rest of the solid support cast, perhaps, who provide Harry Palmer with just enough to trouble him or to relax him, depending on how much cooking, boxing, loving, shooting or investigating he’s done.
The sheer sixties coolness of the thing, perhaps, a window onto an indefinable cultural moment, a slice of cinema that reminds us times may have been rough, but societal change was afoot in the mid-sixties, class war was rife, prudishness was diminishing, the Cold War was functioning, technology was rising, everyday life was altering for good or bad for everyone, yet in the midst of it all, people smoked, drank, loved, laughed and died for causes unseen or unspoken and sometimes, just sometimes, a movie magically conjures those moments and wraps them in a pretty brown paper parcel so that we can only wonder, just wonder, was it really all as marvellously swinging, yet scrupulously decrepit as this?
A fantastic spy film on every level.
Bloody loved it, as Harry Palmer – or Michael Caine – might say.
'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'
'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'
'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'
It's contentious to say that The Ipcress File is better than any Bond given the name of this website but you can see how it might be so. I'll add a few things to @chrisno1 's excellent review; given that it is meant to be down-at-heel it dates better than many Bonds - OHMSS a possible exception - because of course what is down-at-heel stays down-at-heel decades later; much of that shabby decor would have looked the same in the 70s and even 80s given that's what it is, whereas luxury and opulence evolves and so will look dated further down the line, a bit passe.
Secondly, producer Saltzman is right off the bat with this, Palmer's debut film. He's already got the Bonds under his belt so with this he brings an experience, know-how and John Barry all lacking to some extent with Dr No which, enjoyable as it is, feels like a movie sometimes finding its way, establishing itself. The production values are better, there's no sense of falling down because of course the whole thing is set in London - well, a lot of it - so there's no sense as with the early Bonds that things might be running a bit short at times; later Bonds had the budget but were always lagging slightly behind even then, a sense of reach exceeding grasp. In Ipcress it's like every shot is considered and of course there's the sense of the audience being a spy, observing through wine glasses of the windows of telephone boxes and so on. The closest Bond gets to that stuff is OHMSS. It also helps enliven the mundane plot which is simply Palmer tailing various people about town - the mirrored stalking in the library (was that a real venue or a Ken Adam set?) mentioned in the previous review reminded me of Grant stalking Bond along the train before their introduction.
As with Dr No, rank is pulled on the hero by the boss insisting he change his gun.
Latterly, perhaps these weird camera angles bog things down for just a couple of scenes because at that point the pace has picked up and we just want it served cold.
A lot is made to establish Palmer's hetero credentials 'I like birds best!' because - and it's a sign of the era - his being a single man with specs, a liking for making his own cuisine, classical music and his own cafetière might mark him out as travelling on the other Routemaster, a Serious Charge back then when homosexuality was illegal. Indeed, Caine claims he chose to wear glasses (his character doesn't have them in the book) lest his starring role turn out to be a flop, so he wouldn't have been linked with the role thereafter (Plummer was in line to play Palmer, an odd choice we see now because his manner was so similar to Guy Doleman, who probably wouldn't have been cast in any case).
We also see Palmer engage in an unnecessary fist fight with Grantby's bodyguard near the Albert Hall, given he could just chase after his quarry instead, it appears to be it's so we can see he's a real man really and handy with his fists, not just some faddish effete type.
I love all the byplay and banter between Palmer and his work colleagues, we get to see Guy Edwards I think his name is as the duty sergeant, he popped up as the pub landlord in Minder and of course in Caine's Get Carter.
Barr'y's score really is very good, I'd be minded to get the soundtrack. The Grantby track is utilised on that Beats By Dub Demand CD from the late 90s or thereabouts, under that very name, see also Timber off that album.
There are snags later on. It makes dramatic sense to have Palmer undergo the same torture as the kidnapped scientists but with the bodies piling up by that point I'm not sure why they have to do it - can't they just bump him off? Shoot him? Or is the aim to get him to 'confess' to various stuff and bump off one of the section heads? (I won't spell it out to avoid spoilers) As with some Bonds, there's a continuity error with day to night - it seems like Palmer is meeting Dalby in a park in the early hours so how come Dalby's on his way to dinner? Ditto when Palmer happens upon a London bus - or is the night time meant to denote time has passed before he makes that phone call? Would the two men really head out alone to a deserted warehouse? Would an American spy really have a conspicuous bit of Elastoplast on the bridge of his specs?
The book is quite different to the film, the key plot point adopted by a later episode of The Avengers starring Christopher Lee, if I recall. I think the recent series did it more accurately but I think that was a bit too stylised. This version is very much the era of A Hard Day's Night, the sense that posh boys are running the country, okay no change there then. The actor who plays Grantby was chosen for his resemblance to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, I understand, much as Hitchcock's villain for The 39 Steps was meant to resemble FDR, just to make it more unsettling for audiences.
Perhaps I was a bit unfair on Funeral in Berlin, I caught the first 15 minutes and it has a good few jokes in that time though Sue Lloyd is no longer Caine's love interest and his flat seems to have changed, though the furniture is the same. It took Bond six films for him to visit M's house, but Palmer visits his boss's house in just the second movie. Caine is lean and seems older and more commanding in this movie, a nattier dresser, his boss looks older too. Not sure it fits the character, quite. One of the old Ipcress team shows up briefly but I miss the byplay between his old work colleagues, kudos I suppose for not just making Ipcress 2 but honestly I just don't find the characters he has to interact with here terribly interesting or quite plausible; the Jewish woman who picks him up in Berlin - well, there must be a better way to describe her - but I don't find her too characterful, she is a cypher, an Israeli spy so that's her then. No John Barry of course, and Toronto-born Sidney F Furie, well he isn't back. Amazingly he turned out to have a real career of sorts, he did Sinatra's The Running Man, another one called The Lawyer which seems to be never seen on telly, then latterly he did rubbish like Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle IV (our own John Glen did Iron Eagle 3, (it seems to be the dustbin for famed movie directors) as well as Superman IV: The Quest for Peace which killed off Reeve's time in the role, talk about sublime to ridiculous. That said, he did continue directing, he is still alive, amazing to me given he was born the same year as my mum, who died five years ago, he's the same age as Caine in fact, and had something out in 2018 with Superman star Margot Kidder the year of her death - and has an upcoming film acc to imdb, though whether that's just sat in the can I don't know. Anyway, Guy Hamilton directs Funeral in Berlin, it's all a bit smooth and nowhere near as sinister as its predecessor, not quite authentic. It didn't help that BBC4 wasn't showing a lovely remastered print, either.
The problem with the Palmer films is, once you establish you've got a downbeat, reluctant spy, the series doesn't have legs. You can only make things more downbeat, which gets a bit depressing. It has little logic for our man to be still in the game because unlike Bond he isn't motivated by patriotism, he is doing it under duress which is a bit of a drag. As with the Craig Bonds, once you establish as a downer, things get more depressing as they go on. Funeral isn't that depressing, nor is Billion Dollar Brain but instead the films exceed their brief a bit in trying to be exotic. I think those two both end with Palmer walking off in a strop at some betrayal by someone he thought he trusted or something.
@Napoleon Plural It was on cable television here in the Philippines, but I have seen it many times before, but not for a long time, so I was happy to see it in the listings.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Written and directed by horror supremo George A. Romero this adapts Stephen King’s psychological novel quite nicely. Timothy Hutton plays an author of respected literary novels whilst publishing thrillers under a pseudonym. He wants to stop writing the thrillers but his alter-ego has become a physical being and terrorises his family and friends. When murders start to be committed he becomes a suspect.
Huttton gives a good performance and although it never really explains everything it’s worth a look.
6/10
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'
'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'
'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'
"Not quite, sir. About that loan..."
"What are you going to do with it, Palmer, buy a car?"
"Hire another director, I thought, sir."
@Napoleon Plural I recorded it. I can only take so much downbeat Michael Caine in one go.
FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1966)
While The Ipcress File was wowing them at Cannes, providing Michael Caine with a career launch pad playing a downbeat British special agent of dubious skills, Martin Ritt was going even more downbeat with John Le Carre’s even more anti-OO7 The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Filmed in noirish monochrome and dominated by a brutal performance from Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an agent who never quite seems to understand whose side he’s supposed to be on, Le Carre’s vision of spy work was far more morose than Len Deighton’s. I mention this because in part Funeral in Berlin covers similar territory to Ritt’s film, beginning and concluding with escapes across the Berlin Frontier.
The Wall was still fairly new in 1965/66 so it probably had a certain fascination for filmgoers [JFK and “Ich bin ein Berliner” and all that]. Director Guy Hamilton, fresh from Goldfinger, utilises his Berlin locations to demonstrate a genuine sense of a city indulging in Weimar tastes, extravagance and decadence while teetering on the verge of chaos. The hotels are swish, the nightclubs bawdy and the women slinky and sexually available. Despite this, the look of the movie is not as innovative as its forebear. Hamilton only uses those slanted angles when Palmer meets his superior, Colonel Ross, which is a bit like Batman meeting his villains. It is a remarkably ordinary looking film. Guy Doleman is good once again as Ross, tending his garden of weeds, which he likens to marauding refugees – much like the desperate people jumping the wall.
As with Ipcress, Deighton’s original novel is slimmed down for narrative coherence and here the finished story revolves around the defection of a senior Soviet colonel and a band of interfering Zionist agents seeking war criminals. Palmer has his eyes on every prize and second guesses his way to a suitable conclusion. He’s aided by virtually nobody. This is spy V spy V spy V spy. The film opens like West Side Story, a snatched series of scenes showing the day-to-day street life of Berlin, before the camera settles on the barren tract of land near the wall, where all is quiet and life has ceased to exist. A daring Modesty Blaise style escape, or a James Bond enterprise for OHMSS, involving a construction bucket, welcomes the martial music of the titles. Konrad Elfers orchestral score is below par. It is at its best when we don’t hear it. Ken Adam is still on hand, but the editing has been shovelled to John Bloom, and the cast isn’t as interesting.
Palmer is dispatched to Berlin on a Saturday morning. He doesn’t like being disturbed at the weekend and tells his messenger boy such. “You really work on that insubordinate stuff, don’t you,” says his pyjama top clad squeeze, who is making him very bad coffee – nothing like his efforts in Ipcress. Palmer’s not impressed by his orders or by her, well, he likes the view of her legs: “You’re useless in the kitchen; why don’t you get back in bed.” About as anti-Bond as you can get: a frank way of checking his watch after telling his boss he’s going to be late. The woman later turns out to be one of Ross’ secretaries; now James Bond never went there either.
In Berlin, we learn a little more about Palmer’s past, a stores swindle which landed him in a military prison, but kept his partner in crime Johnny Vulkan at leisure. Like Palmer, Vulkan is indebted to Colonel Ross, although his underwear business also nets him a tidy profit. Vulkan is a slippery customer from the get-go. As is slinky sexy lingerie model Samantha Steel – Eva Renzi, very nice, but dubbed by Nikki Van Der Zyl, so I kept thinking she sounded like Honey Rider / Ursula Andress. Oskar Homolka delivers a riotous turn as the double-crossing old Bolshevik Colonel Stok. Hugh Burden has the key role of the inside man, already under suspicion because he’s a homosexual, and losing his loyalties faster than the bodies can pile up.
The film is solid rather than spectacular. It doesn’t do anything wrong, but it lacks the sparkle which made Ipcress such a starkly, sleek and impressive outing. Berlin tries to be seedy, tries to be dangerous, but you never have the impression Palmer is in any peril. Michael Caine carries the film well, already displaying his star quality, but only Doleman and Homolka are giving him any support. The screenplay is flat and its humour entirely misplaced – an early reference to Batman clouds it in a pop culture reference that both dates the film and makes a faintly obvious point: that spies don’t have a ton of secret special gadgets. The writer is trying to tell us we are not watching James Bond, but simply by doing so he acknowledges a debt to the genre and makes his own task more difficult.
There is plenty to enjoy, despite the low key action, but it is mostly in the early sections as Palmer negotiates his way around Vulkan, Stok, Samantha, the Berlin police, Ross, Kreutsmann and the transexuals at a cabaret. The secondary plot about Nazi hunters and the war criminal Paul Louis Bloum serves to add intrigue but fails to generate any extra tension. The film ends in an underwhelming confrontation close to the Wall. Nobody seems to have won this particularly grubby game, which feels remarkably similar to Martin Ritt and John Le Carre’s viewpoint in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
There’s a lot of love for this on IMDB. Reviewers hark on about how realistic and earthy it is, how they identify with the Cold War setting. Personally, I find the lack of panache dates the film irrevocably. Unlike Ipcress, which has a stylised and identifiable look, one that allows it to boldly escape the confines of its decade, Funeral in Berlin could only have been made in the sixties and it remains there, a dour and rather unimaginative time capsule.
VR is still very niche but it has evolved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. The newest headsets have visual fidelity that starts to approach what you get on good hi-def TVs and Sony's newest one even has HDR. 360 and 180 degree videos are fun and some filmmakers are starting to dip their toes into the genre; VR games can be even more amazing if they're well done since you are inside the game instead of watching it on a TV.
Not sure this warrants the Chris No 1-type review then again it is very funny, one of the funniest films ever in a way. The gross out reputation is perhaps exaggerated thought it is there - the famous hair gel Mary (Cameron Diaz) uses is only one scene though her quiff was used for the posters. The lead - who was in Meet the Fokkers, mind is groggy tonight, Ben Stiller that's it- could have been Adam Sandler in a way, the leads sort of could have been him and Drew Barrymore, it's the same dynamic almost as Wedding Singer but Diaz is very very good as the 'perfect' woman that all the men fall for, she'd have been played by Marilyn Monroe back in the day but Diaz is less the butt of the joke here, the actress is more in on the gag. There's great support of course, in particular Lee Evans who it turns out has retired from stand-up - he's brilliant in this but so is Matt Dillon as the sleazy private investigator hired to track down the ex prom night date but takes an interest himself.
Just to prove my reviews don't always have to be so grand...
ON THE FIDDLE (1961)
A pleasant enough, but entirely forgettable comedy about con artist Alfie Lynch and his slow witted mate Sean Connery who make money running scams in the RAF during World War II. There are no surprises. The long cast is packed with British thespian notables who flooded television screens and program fillers throughout the fifties and sixties – Barbara Windsor crops up as a bar maid, that sort of thing. Not many laughs. The film turns serious in its final quarter as the two skivers become unlikely heroes. Connery deals with the action highlights well and a seduction scene proves diverting [“Private, put me down and take off your boots”] so we’re offered glimmers of his James Bond future. In retrospect, halfway interesting, but I can’t imagine anyone being interested at the time.
Flashy sci-fi that re-treads the familiar ground of robots gaining autonomous thought.
Will Smith is a scrupulous and suspicious policeman who believes something is amiss at Chicago’s USR facility. He’s not wrong, but the longer proceedings extend the more you wonder why nobody believes him, especially given the amount of surveillance technology on show. Some stunning visuals help keep us interested, but it’s ultimately a revolution story about slaves [robots] rebelling against masters [humans] and we’ve watched this dozens of times in dozens of genres. Impressive, soulless exercise enlivened by daft in the extreme but extremely good looking action sequences and a willing performance from a CGI generated robot named Sonny.
1974. Two Lancashire teenagers discover love, sex, drugs and Northern Soul music in the dance halls of Wigan, Stoke and the north west. Nothing unusual in that. I suppose it’s comforting to see an independent movie make it big, but this isn’t a great example of film making. Cliches abound. The characters start nowhere, go nowhere and end nowhere. People die. People f**k. People inject heroin. People dance. The lack of a decent script means obscenities must pass as character building. A very good music soundtrack is spoilt by a very uninteresting narrative, a sort of Trainspotting for clubbers, only without a sense of humour.
I caught a bit of this too, I'd seen it before. Alfred Lynch needed to be funnier and more charming, he's a bit boorish as the spiv private; he would turn up later in Connery's The Hill. My dad was an optician nr Brighton in the 70s/80s and Lynch has his eyes examined by him, Dad sung the praises of The Hill to him 'very good' and Lynch replied 'Only decent film I ever made!' In some ways On the Fiddle put me in mind of The Man Who Would be King and the dynamic might be the same - but the Lynch role was taken by Caine of course. I don't feel Connery and Caine quite convinced as mates in that, I felt Danny might have been better if he'd been a bit more - not exactly slow-witted, but amiably detached, taking a back seat to Caine's clever clogs, so when he becomes flavour of the month the contrast in power becomes more galling, more obvious.
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS. The critics are ripping into this one, and for the life of me, I don't understand why. It's a fun movie with a good-hearted hero and a decent message. Maybe that's the problem. . .Marvel has conditioned us to think that anything with characters running around in bright costumes should Grand Opera. Go into it with a desire to enjoy what's on screen and you'll do fine.
This is one of the myriad of blaxploitation movies of its era, the celluloid version of all those action-adventure pulp paperback series which sold by the millions back in the day. It’s the standard revenge plot but it’s well made and Jim Brown is a good lead. It has two Bond alumni in the gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi and Bruce Glover, (three if you count NSNA’s Bernie Casey). Martin Landau is his usual impressive self as the mob leader and the movie, whilst cliche-ridden, moves along at a cracking pace. The blood is bright red which seems to be a trope of movies at that time. The n-word is used with abandon by all races so it would be difficult to see this ever being shown on terrestrial television any more.
5/10
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Some clarification: the production was refused about 40 helicopter landings in some sensitive natural areas. They found alternative ways to get the scenes they needed and filming continued. Tom Cruise is very approachable to the locals and tourists ( even to the point of starting conversations with other guests at restaurant), possibility because there aren't many journalists and other people on the islands. it irritates me how MI is "using up" prime Norwegian locations while the Bond producers seem to be twiddling their thumbs.
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas were huge stars of their day and this was a kind of swan song for their careers. Playing convicts released from prison after 30 years inside after a train robbery, they come into a changed world. This part of the film is quite amusing, their old drinking haunt is now a gay bar and they are dismayed at the general disrespect everyone has for each other. They stop a bank robbery and give a gang a good beating in some amusing scenes. A hitman played by the always reliable Eli Wallach tries to kill them on a long outstanding contract. After experiencing a lot of red tape and general dismissiveness they decide to reenact the train heist which they originally went down for.
In the hands of a more experienced and talented director this could have been really good, but Jeff Kanew hasn’t the ability to handle his cast and the film ultimately plods along to an unexciting finale which by the time we get there all interest has been lost. It’s good to see two old stars in the twilight of their careers and both of them put in good performances, as do co-stars Wallach and Charles Durning, but the whole thing doesn’t have any zest. They must have been longing for a director like John Sturges who directed them both in GunfightAtTheO.K. Corral.
Worth watching for the stars, if nothing else.
5/10
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Thanks. Not sure when I'll get to see Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg, but they get airings quite often on the lesser movie channels. Anyway, for now:
BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967)
Billion Dollar Brain kicks off with Colonel Ross infiltrating the H.P. Detective Agency. This pokey office is, one assumes, in Soho; the flickering red and blue lights suggest it. The exterior is actually on Pentonville Road. The office doubles as Harry Palmer’s digs. He’s come down in the world quite a bit since The Ipcress File: sleeping in his office, unmade beds, convenience food, dishes unwashed, a tip and a life of disastrous proportions. Chasing infidelities doesn’t suit Palmer and Ross knows it. He wants Palmer back in the Secret Service, but the two don’t see eye to eye. Instead, having sent his ex-boss away with a flea in his ear, Palmer receives a package containing a wedge of money and a ticket to Helsinki, simultaneously answering a metallic, pre-recorded telephone message offering him carriage instructions to Finland.
It isn’t entirely clear why Palmer has to be a free agent. He wasn’t in the novel, which has a plausible explanation for sending our Harry to Finland, and he really isn’t a free agent here either – Ross follows his errant ex-employee and re-enlists him to retrieve the vacuum flask Palmer abandoned with his Finnish contacts. The flask contains half a dozen eggs, each one infected with a deadly virus, a product of the UK’s Porton Down research facility. This chemical and biological evil is irrelevant to the evolving plot, a cute McGuffin which Palmer, and we, think is important, but leads us nowhere.
More pertinent is Palmer’s old acquaintance Leo Newbigen, a character written out of the film version of Funeral in Berlin, whose young mistress, Anya, takes an obvious like to the cocky Englishman. These two cunning operators appear to be perfecting an uprising in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Newbigen demonstrates the global-spanning ‘Brain’, a computer which gives him remote orders, sent from Texas and the headquarters of the Crusade for Freedom, an anti-Communist pro-capitalist nationalist army and scientific society orchestrated operatically by the oil magnate General Midwinter. The ‘Brain’ orders the elimination of a suspected enemy agent: Anya. Meanwhile, another old friend, Colonel Stok, seems to know more about Harry, Midwinter and the uprising than anybody. It seems Palmer’s troubles are only just beginning.
Billion Dollar Brain gets a casual dismissal from most armchair critics, but that’s a trifle unfair. True, it isn’t as engaging as Ipcress, nor does it have the grounded, earthy feel of Funeral. What it does have is a wider Cold War scope, which encompasses both the fantastically imaginative and the same old double-dealing which prevaricates most espionage scenarios. Here it is Leo Newbigen, played with some enthusiasm by Karl Malden, and Anya – the delicately beautiful Francoise Dorleac, who was tragically killed in a car accident immediately after filming her role – who impersonate the villainous tricksters. A more straightforward bad guy is the believably insane Ed Begley, who inhabits General Midwinter with all the gusto and righteous anger of an evangelist preacher: “My arm is long and my vengeance is total!” He spouts vitriol, pride, avarice, common sense, conspiracy theory, the Word of the Lord and complete lunacy, sometimes all in one sentence. Midwinter is as unhinged as any Bond villain. In fact, he’s a damn sight better than many of them. Midwinter frightens because he’s so palpably real, disconnected from the outside world, consumed by his own modern crusade, fascinated with his personal achievements, bound by the gun and the sword, the General is one small roaring step away from starting a nuclear war. What is so good about Begley’s portrayal, unlike a similarly manic Stephen Berkoff in Octopussy, is the unsentimental pontificating. Berkoff’s General Orlov was devious, deluded and, occasionally, stroppy; a schoolboy denied his toys. Midwinter is the fully grown man, certain of his belief system, enthralled by the adoration of his retinue, subsumed by his own cult of forceful personality. This is exactly the kind of madness which starts wars and slaughters thousands and millions. Strange too, from a modern perspective, that it is incorrect misinformed data which advises Midwinter his plans are succeeding, and that he continues his campaign even when confronted with [for him] the unpalatable truth. Here is a true lunatic of the grandest scale, parading beneath a winged MW symbol that has all the associations of fascism, double-headed eagles and military iron. Begley’s robust, violent, virulent, non-stop performance is astounding. He drives the film forward at the very moment it was starting to flounder. Michael Caine too seems to come alive at this point and Harry Palmer ceases to be a bemused cheeky chappie and morphs back into the wily, verbally slick secret agent we know and love him to be.
The film is strong visually. Cinematographer Billy Williams does some good work with the snowy Finnish landscapes. The slow moving ice floes of Helsinki’s Capital Region form a portent of disaster to come. Director Ken Russell occasionally pulls out some startling scenes, although he’s not as innovative as Sidney J. Furie, erring to bombast rather than subtlety. The eerie, crystal hued visit to Dr Kaarna’s mansion is one; our first sight of Dorleac, in close up, whispering a password is another; the intercut preparations and inspections of Midwinter’s army a third; the fiery Texas hoedown an incongruous fourth highlight; he even handles the billion dollar computer set with some aplomb. Russell, being an emotionally over the top director, lets his camera linger on Ed Begley and Oskar Homolka’s out of the box performances, and rightly so. There is frequent criticism that he didn’t understand the plot, but that surely is a question for the screenwriter and John McGrath’s adaptation does have holes in it, but no more than the Berlin Wall or an Albanian torture chamber. In fact, the holes are mostly where we came in, with that nest of eggs, a chancel which causes the most confusion. The film benefits from, I feel, repeated viewing.
The central theme from Richard Rodney Bennett is excellent, although he comes unstuck dramatically. Producer Harry Saltzman utilises old friend Maurice Binder to cut a half decent main titles sequence. A fourth film [Horse Under Water] was planned as part of an eleven picture deal Caine made with the producer and his Lowndes Productions company, but apparently the poor returns on this one scuppered that – it disappointed in the U.S. market, hardly a surprise given the less than flattering portrait offered of American espionage expertise. Like the takings, Billion Dollar Brain feels like an underachievement. When it’s good, it’s very good, but much of the middle portion is unbalanced by the confused plot and an inappropriate sense of slapstick. It needed straightening out. Ken Russell and editor Alan Osbiston were not up to the task. I wonder what Peter Hunt might have made of it.
Filmed in 1972, but belatedly released in spring ’74, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter was perceived by Hammer Productions as a new view on old expectations. It still sits firmly in the vampiric tradition while attempting to intermingle a swashbuckling hero with notions of magical religiosity. I’d consider it to also fit snugly into the ‘folk horror’ sub-genre which reared its head in British cinema during the early seventies, especially given its perceived 17th Century English timeframe, the besieged village setting and the nods to pagan mysticism.
I should clarify that no place or time is explicitly mentioned. My assumption is based solely on the clothing, the fey Renaissance glam of the local manor house and the mention of ‘wars’. During a key scene, there is a suggestion Captain Kronos fought in the English Civil War, but the supposition is tremendously vague and my interpretation may not be the same as another’s. For instance, no one drinks beer, they all drink wine, which hints at a European setting. The screenplay does its utmost to cast the action in a non-specific time and place,. This has advantages when you’re dealing with distractions such as vampires, mesmerism, swordplay and heaving bosoms. Caroline Munro pops up as the hero’s love interest, Clara, a young wench he saves from the stocks; Clara had the temerity to dance on a Sunday. Kronos promptly takes her to his straw laden bed, a much greater sin surely. Nonetheless, the nudity is low for the time, the body count is high and the blood splashes are frequent. A large rubber bat attacks one poor victim; a well edited sequence, but still obviously a dud of a fluffy fake.
Captain Kronos is a war veteran turned vampire hunter, like Jean Rollin’s camp protagonists in his weird LSD infused Shiver of the Vampires, only Kronos is better at the job. He’s been called to an isolated village in the east [east where? – see what I mean about vagueness?]. Here, young innocents have been drained of their life-force, prematurely aging them until they die. Kronos thinks it is the work of vampires and so does the local physician Doctor Marcus. A series of elaborate traps are laid to hound the bloodsucker to its lair.
Kronos carries a sword made from the steel of a crucifix and is covered in the scars of battle. He’s played by Horst Janson. I don’t know the actor [should I?] but he’s of a passable, athletic school and handles the character well. Moments of personal curiosity attest to Kronos’ other-worldly attributes. He meditates; he’s full of bitter vengeful instincts; he is clearly irreligious and defies the law of the land; he is a master swordsman; he is familiar with the tropes of paganism; his accomplice is a hunchback Professor of medicine, philosophy, the forge and the dark arts. So, we have a sort of hybrid pairing of Robin Hood / Van Helsing / Igor / Victor Frankenstein or if you like a Civil War version of OO7 and Q. You can feel the potential creeping out of the action. It has some flashy moments and some spicy, but not over horrific, terror. The conclusion is unexpected, but climaxes with an extended rapier duel, like an episode of Richard the Lionheart – which writer Brian Clemens used to script in his early days – or given the obvious genre cross-over his later efforts for Adam Adamant Lives! The film is short on humour and takes itself way too seriously.
Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell spent most of the 1960s producing The Avengers. They tried to break into films with two Hammer productions, but results, while untypical fare, are not great. This movie has the feel of a pilot episode for a prospective television series and one wishes the executives at Bray Studios had also seen that potential as I fancy something like The Adventures of Captain Kronos might have made a decent stab at the post News at Ten time slot back in the day. As a movie, Captain Kronos isn’t really going anywhere. It may hark back to the Karnstein legend, making it an unofficial sequel to Twins of Evil, but you don’t feel the movie needed vampires at all. It would have played out perfectly well as a Civil War ‘detective’ adventure, with grisly murder replacing neck bites. Fennell and Clemens, who over stretches himself by directing as well as scripting, would soon return to safer ground with John Steed and The New Avengers.
Unbelievably, US censors awarded the film an R certificate based on its sexual content, which as I said, is low at best. The film is low on shocks too, which might have been the intent, but the different prospects don’t add up to anything particularly unique and the film tends towards the uneven, being uncertain of a sure footing, which is a pity.
The flask contains half a dozen eggs, each one infected with a deadly virus, a product of the UK’s Porton Down research facility. This chemical and biological evil is irrelevant to the evolving plot, a cute McGuffin which Palmer, and we, think is important, but leads us nowhere.
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there's an early Avengers episode called The Golden Eggs, which is also about chicken eggs injected with a deadly experimantal virus. i guess this was a thing in real life?
A fourth film [Horse Under Water] was planned as part of an eleven picture deal Caine made with the producer and his Lowndes Productions company, but apparently the poor returns on this one scuppered that
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eleven films! Ii didnt know that! @Barbel has discussed clues that Deighton's books An Expensive Place To Die and Spy Story might be My-Name's-Not-'Arry adventures, but what would the other five be? I thought Deighton's other books were about distinctly different characters. i wonder if Deighton abandoned the character when the film deal fell apart?
Comments
thanks @Number24 I was just being a smartass, didnt really mean to distract from your post
actually I tried the link on my desktop, it works even without a phone though is very slow. Must be a huge amount of data to download ten minutes in three dimensions
it opened in youtube, and I could use my cursor to pan round in a circle, following the elephant herd or looking elsewhere across the savannah. very immersive. I'll watch the whole thing later today when I get ten minutes
I like nature too and illegal poaching is an important issue that doesnt get enough attention. its impressive how National Geographic are using the technology to make the problem more real to the viewer, an evolutionary step from the magazine photography we're all familiar with
FYI, VR stands for "Virtual Reality". If you watch that video in a virtual reality headset such as the Meta Quest 2 you'll see that the video surrounds you and allows you to literally look around the environment by simply turning your head instead of having to swipe a screen, thus giving you a very immersive experience which is the whole point of VR.
The Rangers risk their lives for what I suspect are low wages, but for a very good cause.
I've wanted somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa as a Bond location for years. Having the villain taking part in illegal big game hunting is a good way to establish him/her as a villain, and in a new way in an exotic location.
VR sounds like being able to climb inside the cinema or TV screen and explore more of the surroundings than you can see on the screen normally. That's something I've wanted to do with some films and TV episodes I've seen over the years to be honest. Back in March 2016 when I was buying my first smartphone in the Carphone Warehouse I did get a chance to try on a VR headset. I'm sure that the technology has come on leaps and bounds since then though with the advent of Meta etc.
I've never seen this one! Connery as a villain, three years before Bond. How did you come by this, @CoolHandBond
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I remember taping this film off the TV and watching it years ago, I think some time in the late 1990s. A scene where a villainous character is double crossed and thrown down a casm only to make his way out again and cast his attacker into the the very same casm has stuck in my mind ever since. I'd love to see it again some time. It remains the only Tarzan film I've ever seen and it wasn't bad.
Ke Hit Quan (Short Round) just got the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor in "Everything everywhere all at once"
This is a very good Tarzan movie. One of the top three of all time. It works almost like a western in the jungle, with Tarzan in the role of a white-hatted avenging gunslinger, only he wears a loin cloth and carries a bow and arrow. Two great villains in Connery and Quayle.
I too remember watching Tarzan on television [Friday, BBC2 at 5.40pm, if the memory serves] and over the years I've seen every sound movie, including oddities like the 1959 remake of Tarzan the Ape Man and the Edgar Rice Burroughs produced 1930s serials. While Johnny Weissmuller is forever associated with the role, I agree that Gordon Scott enjoys himself tremendously in his six outings. He brought a more international flavour to the movies, had stronger casts and better directors, coupled with some fine storylines. He also wasn't encumbered with Jane - except for the b/w Tarzan and the Trappers - three unsold TV episodes stitched together as a cash in. Scott was a muscular and intelligent Tarzan. His films paved the way for Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry's underrated sixties films where Tarzan was brought bang up to date and flew around the globe fighting wrongs across the world's jungle realms.
Thanks for this review.
I feel a Tarzan marathon coming on...
As for that kid winning an Oscar, crikey...
Thanks for the tip! I just finished watching it and I enjoyed it. It was especially interesting to see Connery as a secondary villain just before he became famous. According to IMDB Connery said while making this movie: ""Two fellows took an option on me for some spy picture and are exercising it."
it was also interesting to watch a scene where Connery's character is hunting Tarzan who's hiding while a big poisonous spider crawls on his shoulder. Not too different from that "spy picture".
Now, back to some serious stuff.
I should really post this in the Harry Palmer thread, although I may need to do a more detailed appreciation for that...
THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)
Where to start?
Michael Caine, perhaps, in a career defining role as Harry Palmer, bringing elements of schoolboy charm to a working class, slightly obnoxious, slightly sarcastic, clever, yet ever-so put-upon spy – “insubordinate, insolent, a trickster with criminal tendencies.”
John Barry’s music, perhaps, with its memorable theme played out over scenes of Palmer’s domestic life, its jazz notes swaying, a pre-Thunderball score of incidental excellence.
Sidney J. Furie’s incisive direction, perhaps, almost entirely shot from obscure angles to give us the impression we are clandestinely observing the action – from the floor, below a desk, a bed, a car, through a key hole, chicken wire, a lamp shade, a windscreen, a telephone booth, a spectacle lens, etc, etc – not only is the audience constantly off-balance, they are also prone to the same tensions and intrigues as are played out for the cast – quite possibly one of the most astonishing and consistently puzzling yet satisfying array of viewpoints ever put into a main stream movie.
Bill Canaway and James Doran’s screenplay which sensibly thins down Len Deighton’s novel and contracts the action into an identifiable, plausible London centric landscape, yet never forgets to present character, place and narrative in every single scene; not a second nor a line is wasted.
The other-worldly brain-drain plot, perhaps, which isn’t allowed to drown the realism; instead it overarches the street level shenanigans and the villain’s pillars collapse only at the very end – off screen, in fact – after torture and murder and mayhem have elapsed.
Nigel Green and Guy Doleman, perhaps, as the twin pillars of disgusted authority, whose allegiances seem to sway with Barry’s music and Caine’s affected glances; will Harry Palmer recognise the traitor in time?
The droll humour, perhaps, not so much witty as overtly observational, drawing on tetchy interpersonal relationships, irritating personality ticks and a crawling dread of anything out of the norm, the waggishness steadfastly refuses to plant jokes just to poke fun at the film itself.
Frank Gatliff, perhaps, as Grantby, a.k.a ‘Blue Jay’, the low-key, even mannered, credible and capable villain surrounded by a cohort of much unnamed ugliness.
Ken Adam’s down-at-heel designs, perhaps, a spare contrast to his usual extravagances, messy, dirty, uninvolving and unobtrusive, here rather than being impressive, they add character, contrast and shape to individual sequences.
The smallest details, perhaps: Palmer and ‘House Martin’ mirror-imaged walking the balconies of the Science Museum, Palmer removing his specs before a fist-fight, the US agent following ‘Blue Jay’, the backhanded assistance between the Secret Services and the Met Police, Palmer’s disrespect for routine red tape, his spartan domestic arrangements, recipes stuck on cupboard doors, Mozart on the turntable, the plaque for Dalby’s section ironically reading ‘Domestic Employees Bureau’, his secretary endlessly smoking, the colour ‘red’ recurring as a more and more obvious Freudian clue, the days scratched in sevens on a prison cell wall, our introduction to the duplicitous love interest comes over her shoulder – like Cary Grant in Notorious – what is she hiding other than her shapely legs? – and Palmer searches for his automatic and finds it not under his pillow but even further down his bed than last night’s lady’s cheap bracelet.
Peter Hunt’s editing, perhaps, which cuts effectively and without puzzlement from scene to scene, evoking tension, drama and excitement in equal measure.
Gordon Jackson, Sue Lloyd, Stanley Meadows, Freda Bamford, Thomas Baptiste and the rest of the solid support cast, perhaps, who provide Harry Palmer with just enough to trouble him or to relax him, depending on how much cooking, boxing, loving, shooting or investigating he’s done.
The sheer sixties coolness of the thing, perhaps, a window onto an indefinable cultural moment, a slice of cinema that reminds us times may have been rough, but societal change was afoot in the mid-sixties, class war was rife, prudishness was diminishing, the Cold War was functioning, technology was rising, everyday life was altering for good or bad for everyone, yet in the midst of it all, people smoked, drank, loved, laughed and died for causes unseen or unspoken and sometimes, just sometimes, a movie magically conjures those moments and wraps them in a pretty brown paper parcel so that we can only wonder, just wonder, was it really all as marvellously swinging, yet scrupulously decrepit as this?
A fantastic spy film on every level.
Bloody loved it, as Harry Palmer – or Michael Caine – might say.
'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'
'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'
'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'
It's contentious to say that The Ipcress File is better than any Bond given the name of this website but you can see how it might be so. I'll add a few things to @chrisno1 's excellent review; given that it is meant to be down-at-heel it dates better than many Bonds - OHMSS a possible exception - because of course what is down-at-heel stays down-at-heel decades later; much of that shabby decor would have looked the same in the 70s and even 80s given that's what it is, whereas luxury and opulence evolves and so will look dated further down the line, a bit passe.
Secondly, producer Saltzman is right off the bat with this, Palmer's debut film. He's already got the Bonds under his belt so with this he brings an experience, know-how and John Barry all lacking to some extent with Dr No which, enjoyable as it is, feels like a movie sometimes finding its way, establishing itself. The production values are better, there's no sense of falling down because of course the whole thing is set in London - well, a lot of it - so there's no sense as with the early Bonds that things might be running a bit short at times; later Bonds had the budget but were always lagging slightly behind even then, a sense of reach exceeding grasp. In Ipcress it's like every shot is considered and of course there's the sense of the audience being a spy, observing through wine glasses of the windows of telephone boxes and so on. The closest Bond gets to that stuff is OHMSS. It also helps enliven the mundane plot which is simply Palmer tailing various people about town - the mirrored stalking in the library (was that a real venue or a Ken Adam set?) mentioned in the previous review reminded me of Grant stalking Bond along the train before their introduction.
As with Dr No, rank is pulled on the hero by the boss insisting he change his gun.
Latterly, perhaps these weird camera angles bog things down for just a couple of scenes because at that point the pace has picked up and we just want it served cold.
A lot is made to establish Palmer's hetero credentials 'I like birds best!' because - and it's a sign of the era - his being a single man with specs, a liking for making his own cuisine, classical music and his own cafetière might mark him out as travelling on the other Routemaster, a Serious Charge back then when homosexuality was illegal. Indeed, Caine claims he chose to wear glasses (his character doesn't have them in the book) lest his starring role turn out to be a flop, so he wouldn't have been linked with the role thereafter (Plummer was in line to play Palmer, an odd choice we see now because his manner was so similar to Guy Doleman, who probably wouldn't have been cast in any case).
We also see Palmer engage in an unnecessary fist fight with Grantby's bodyguard near the Albert Hall, given he could just chase after his quarry instead, it appears to be it's so we can see he's a real man really and handy with his fists, not just some faddish effete type.
I love all the byplay and banter between Palmer and his work colleagues, we get to see Guy Edwards I think his name is as the duty sergeant, he popped up as the pub landlord in Minder and of course in Caine's Get Carter.
Barr'y's score really is very good, I'd be minded to get the soundtrack. The Grantby track is utilised on that Beats By Dub Demand CD from the late 90s or thereabouts, under that very name, see also Timber off that album.
There are snags later on. It makes dramatic sense to have Palmer undergo the same torture as the kidnapped scientists but with the bodies piling up by that point I'm not sure why they have to do it - can't they just bump him off? Shoot him? Or is the aim to get him to 'confess' to various stuff and bump off one of the section heads? (I won't spell it out to avoid spoilers) As with some Bonds, there's a continuity error with day to night - it seems like Palmer is meeting Dalby in a park in the early hours so how come Dalby's on his way to dinner? Ditto when Palmer happens upon a London bus - or is the night time meant to denote time has passed before he makes that phone call? Would the two men really head out alone to a deserted warehouse? Would an American spy really have a conspicuous bit of Elastoplast on the bridge of his specs?
The book is quite different to the film, the key plot point adopted by a later episode of The Avengers starring Christopher Lee, if I recall. I think the recent series did it more accurately but I think that was a bit too stylised. This version is very much the era of A Hard Day's Night, the sense that posh boys are running the country, okay no change there then. The actor who plays Grantby was chosen for his resemblance to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, I understand, much as Hitchcock's villain for The 39 Steps was meant to resemble FDR, just to make it more unsettling for audiences.
Perhaps I was a bit unfair on Funeral in Berlin, I caught the first 15 minutes and it has a good few jokes in that time though Sue Lloyd is no longer Caine's love interest and his flat seems to have changed, though the furniture is the same. It took Bond six films for him to visit M's house, but Palmer visits his boss's house in just the second movie. Caine is lean and seems older and more commanding in this movie, a nattier dresser, his boss looks older too. Not sure it fits the character, quite. One of the old Ipcress team shows up briefly but I miss the byplay between his old work colleagues, kudos I suppose for not just making Ipcress 2 but honestly I just don't find the characters he has to interact with here terribly interesting or quite plausible; the Jewish woman who picks him up in Berlin - well, there must be a better way to describe her - but I don't find her too characterful, she is a cypher, an Israeli spy so that's her then. No John Barry of course, and Toronto-born Sidney F Furie, well he isn't back. Amazingly he turned out to have a real career of sorts, he did Sinatra's The Running Man, another one called The Lawyer which seems to be never seen on telly, then latterly he did rubbish like Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle IV (our own John Glen did Iron Eagle 3, (it seems to be the dustbin for famed movie directors) as well as Superman IV: The Quest for Peace which killed off Reeve's time in the role, talk about sublime to ridiculous. That said, he did continue directing, he is still alive, amazing to me given he was born the same year as my mum, who died five years ago, he's the same age as Caine in fact, and had something out in 2018 with Superman star Margot Kidder the year of her death - and has an upcoming film acc to imdb, though whether that's just sat in the can I don't know. Anyway, Guy Hamilton directs Funeral in Berlin, it's all a bit smooth and nowhere near as sinister as its predecessor, not quite authentic. It didn't help that BBC4 wasn't showing a lovely remastered print, either.
The problem with the Palmer films is, once you establish you've got a downbeat, reluctant spy, the series doesn't have legs. You can only make things more downbeat, which gets a bit depressing. It has little logic for our man to be still in the game because unlike Bond he isn't motivated by patriotism, he is doing it under duress which is a bit of a drag. As with the Craig Bonds, once you establish as a downer, things get more depressing as they go on. Funeral isn't that depressing, nor is Billion Dollar Brain but instead the films exceed their brief a bit in trying to be exotic. I think those two both end with Palmer walking off in a strop at some betrayal by someone he thought he trusted or something.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@Napoleon Plural It was on cable television here in the Philippines, but I have seen it many times before, but not for a long time, so I was happy to see it in the listings.
I’d love to read your reviews of the Tarzan movies 😁
You’re welcome @Number24 you spend far too long watching “worthy” movies - it’s not good for you 🤣
THE DARK HALF (1993)
Written and directed by horror supremo George A. Romero this adapts Stephen King’s psychological novel quite nicely. Timothy Hutton plays an author of respected literary novels whilst publishing thrillers under a pseudonym. He wants to stop writing the thrillers but his alter-ego has become a physical being and terrorises his family and friends. When murders start to be committed he becomes a suspect.
Huttton gives a good performance and although it never really explains everything it’s worth a look.
6/10
'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'
'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'
'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'
"Not quite, sir. About that loan..."
"What are you going to do with it, Palmer, buy a car?"
"Hire another director, I thought, sir."
@Napoleon Plural I recorded it. I can only take so much downbeat Michael Caine in one go.
FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1966)
While The Ipcress File was wowing them at Cannes, providing Michael Caine with a career launch pad playing a downbeat British special agent of dubious skills, Martin Ritt was going even more downbeat with John Le Carre’s even more anti-OO7 The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Filmed in noirish monochrome and dominated by a brutal performance from Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an agent who never quite seems to understand whose side he’s supposed to be on, Le Carre’s vision of spy work was far more morose than Len Deighton’s. I mention this because in part Funeral in Berlin covers similar territory to Ritt’s film, beginning and concluding with escapes across the Berlin Frontier.
The Wall was still fairly new in 1965/66 so it probably had a certain fascination for filmgoers [JFK and “Ich bin ein Berliner” and all that]. Director Guy Hamilton, fresh from Goldfinger, utilises his Berlin locations to demonstrate a genuine sense of a city indulging in Weimar tastes, extravagance and decadence while teetering on the verge of chaos. The hotels are swish, the nightclubs bawdy and the women slinky and sexually available. Despite this, the look of the movie is not as innovative as its forebear. Hamilton only uses those slanted angles when Palmer meets his superior, Colonel Ross, which is a bit like Batman meeting his villains. It is a remarkably ordinary looking film. Guy Doleman is good once again as Ross, tending his garden of weeds, which he likens to marauding refugees – much like the desperate people jumping the wall.
As with Ipcress, Deighton’s original novel is slimmed down for narrative coherence and here the finished story revolves around the defection of a senior Soviet colonel and a band of interfering Zionist agents seeking war criminals. Palmer has his eyes on every prize and second guesses his way to a suitable conclusion. He’s aided by virtually nobody. This is spy V spy V spy V spy. The film opens like West Side Story, a snatched series of scenes showing the day-to-day street life of Berlin, before the camera settles on the barren tract of land near the wall, where all is quiet and life has ceased to exist. A daring Modesty Blaise style escape, or a James Bond enterprise for OHMSS, involving a construction bucket, welcomes the martial music of the titles. Konrad Elfers orchestral score is below par. It is at its best when we don’t hear it. Ken Adam is still on hand, but the editing has been shovelled to John Bloom, and the cast isn’t as interesting.
Palmer is dispatched to Berlin on a Saturday morning. He doesn’t like being disturbed at the weekend and tells his messenger boy such. “You really work on that insubordinate stuff, don’t you,” says his pyjama top clad squeeze, who is making him very bad coffee – nothing like his efforts in Ipcress. Palmer’s not impressed by his orders or by her, well, he likes the view of her legs: “You’re useless in the kitchen; why don’t you get back in bed.” About as anti-Bond as you can get: a frank way of checking his watch after telling his boss he’s going to be late. The woman later turns out to be one of Ross’ secretaries; now James Bond never went there either.
In Berlin, we learn a little more about Palmer’s past, a stores swindle which landed him in a military prison, but kept his partner in crime Johnny Vulkan at leisure. Like Palmer, Vulkan is indebted to Colonel Ross, although his underwear business also nets him a tidy profit. Vulkan is a slippery customer from the get-go. As is slinky sexy lingerie model Samantha Steel – Eva Renzi, very nice, but dubbed by Nikki Van Der Zyl, so I kept thinking she sounded like Honey Rider / Ursula Andress. Oskar Homolka delivers a riotous turn as the double-crossing old Bolshevik Colonel Stok. Hugh Burden has the key role of the inside man, already under suspicion because he’s a homosexual, and losing his loyalties faster than the bodies can pile up.
The film is solid rather than spectacular. It doesn’t do anything wrong, but it lacks the sparkle which made Ipcress such a starkly, sleek and impressive outing. Berlin tries to be seedy, tries to be dangerous, but you never have the impression Palmer is in any peril. Michael Caine carries the film well, already displaying his star quality, but only Doleman and Homolka are giving him any support. The screenplay is flat and its humour entirely misplaced – an early reference to Batman clouds it in a pop culture reference that both dates the film and makes a faintly obvious point: that spies don’t have a ton of secret special gadgets. The writer is trying to tell us we are not watching James Bond, but simply by doing so he acknowledges a debt to the genre and makes his own task more difficult.
There is plenty to enjoy, despite the low key action, but it is mostly in the early sections as Palmer negotiates his way around Vulkan, Stok, Samantha, the Berlin police, Ross, Kreutsmann and the transexuals at a cabaret. The secondary plot about Nazi hunters and the war criminal Paul Louis Bloum serves to add intrigue but fails to generate any extra tension. The film ends in an underwhelming confrontation close to the Wall. Nobody seems to have won this particularly grubby game, which feels remarkably similar to Martin Ritt and John Le Carre’s viewpoint in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
There’s a lot of love for this on IMDB. Reviewers hark on about how realistic and earthy it is, how they identify with the Cold War setting. Personally, I find the lack of panache dates the film irrevocably. Unlike Ipcress, which has a stylised and identifiable look, one that allows it to boldly escape the confines of its decade, Funeral in Berlin could only have been made in the sixties and it remains there, a dour and rather unimaginative time capsule.
VR is still very niche but it has evolved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. The newest headsets have visual fidelity that starts to approach what you get on good hi-def TVs and Sony's newest one even has HDR. 360 and 180 degree videos are fun and some filmmakers are starting to dip their toes into the genre; VR games can be even more amazing if they're well done since you are inside the game instead of watching it on a TV.
There's Something About Mary
Not sure this warrants the Chris No 1-type review then again it is very funny, one of the funniest films ever in a way. The gross out reputation is perhaps exaggerated thought it is there - the famous hair gel Mary (Cameron Diaz) uses is only one scene though her quiff was used for the posters. The lead - who was in Meet the Fokkers, mind is groggy tonight, Ben Stiller that's it- could have been Adam Sandler in a way, the leads sort of could have been him and Drew Barrymore, it's the same dynamic almost as Wedding Singer but Diaz is very very good as the 'perfect' woman that all the men fall for, she'd have been played by Marilyn Monroe back in the day but Diaz is less the butt of the joke here, the actress is more in on the gag. There's great support of course, in particular Lee Evans who it turns out has retired from stand-up - he's brilliant in this but so is Matt Dillon as the sleazy private investigator hired to track down the ex prom night date but takes an interest himself.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Not sure this warrants the Chris No 1-type review
Just to prove my reviews don't always have to be so grand...
ON THE FIDDLE (1961)
A pleasant enough, but entirely forgettable comedy about con artist Alfie Lynch and his slow witted mate Sean Connery who make money running scams in the RAF during World War II. There are no surprises. The long cast is packed with British thespian notables who flooded television screens and program fillers throughout the fifties and sixties – Barbara Windsor crops up as a bar maid, that sort of thing. Not many laughs. The film turns serious in its final quarter as the two skivers become unlikely heroes. Connery deals with the action highlights well and a seduction scene proves diverting [“Private, put me down and take off your boots”] so we’re offered glimmers of his James Bond future. In retrospect, halfway interesting, but I can’t imagine anyone being interested at the time.
And...
I, ROBOT (2004)
Flashy sci-fi that re-treads the familiar ground of robots gaining autonomous thought.
Will Smith is a scrupulous and suspicious policeman who believes something is amiss at Chicago’s USR facility. He’s not wrong, but the longer proceedings extend the more you wonder why nobody believes him, especially given the amount of surveillance technology on show. Some stunning visuals help keep us interested, but it’s ultimately a revolution story about slaves [robots] rebelling against masters [humans] and we’ve watched this dozens of times in dozens of genres. Impressive, soulless exercise enlivened by daft in the extreme but extremely good looking action sequences and a willing performance from a CGI generated robot named Sonny.
"Wink."
Plus...
yeh, I had a bad Saturday...
NORTHERN SOUL (2018)
1974. Two Lancashire teenagers discover love, sex, drugs and Northern Soul music in the dance halls of Wigan, Stoke and the north west. Nothing unusual in that. I suppose it’s comforting to see an independent movie make it big, but this isn’t a great example of film making. Cliches abound. The characters start nowhere, go nowhere and end nowhere. People die. People f**k. People inject heroin. People dance. The lack of a decent script means obscenities must pass as character building. A very good music soundtrack is spoilt by a very uninteresting narrative, a sort of Trainspotting for clubbers, only without a sense of humour.
I caught a bit of this too, I'd seen it before. Alfred Lynch needed to be funnier and more charming, he's a bit boorish as the spiv private; he would turn up later in Connery's The Hill. My dad was an optician nr Brighton in the 70s/80s and Lynch has his eyes examined by him, Dad sung the praises of The Hill to him 'very good' and Lynch replied 'Only decent film I ever made!' In some ways On the Fiddle put me in mind of The Man Who Would be King and the dynamic might be the same - but the Lynch role was taken by Caine of course. I don't feel Connery and Caine quite convinced as mates in that, I felt Danny might have been better if he'd been a bit more - not exactly slow-witted, but amiably detached, taking a back seat to Caine's clever clogs, so when he becomes flavour of the month the contrast in power becomes more galling, more obvious.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Guys, I thoroughly enjoyed reading those reviews of the first two Harry Palmer films. Looking forward to your thoughts on the others.
Napoleon, Palmer's novel counterpart does wear glasses.
SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS. The critics are ripping into this one, and for the life of me, I don't understand why. It's a fun movie with a good-hearted hero and a decent message. Maybe that's the problem. . .Marvel has conditioned us to think that anything with characters running around in bright costumes should Grand Opera. Go into it with a desire to enjoy what's on screen and you'll do fine.
BLACK GUNN (1972)
This is one of the myriad of blaxploitation movies of its era, the celluloid version of all those action-adventure pulp paperback series which sold by the millions back in the day. It’s the standard revenge plot but it’s well made and Jim Brown is a good lead. It has two Bond alumni in the gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi and Bruce Glover, (three if you count NSNA’s Bernie Casey). Martin Landau is his usual impressive self as the mob leader and the movie, whilst cliche-ridden, moves along at a cracking pace. The blood is bright red which seems to be a trope of movies at that time. The n-word is used with abandon by all races so it would be difficult to see this ever being shown on terrestrial television any more.
5/10
Some clarification: the production was refused about 40 helicopter landings in some sensitive natural areas. They found alternative ways to get the scenes they needed and filming continued. Tom Cruise is very approachable to the locals and tourists ( even to the point of starting conversations with other guests at restaurant), possibility because there aren't many journalists and other people on the islands. it irritates me how MI is "using up" prime Norwegian locations while the Bond producers seem to be twiddling their thumbs.
TOUGH GUYS (1986)
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas were huge stars of their day and this was a kind of swan song for their careers. Playing convicts released from prison after 30 years inside after a train robbery, they come into a changed world. This part of the film is quite amusing, their old drinking haunt is now a gay bar and they are dismayed at the general disrespect everyone has for each other. They stop a bank robbery and give a gang a good beating in some amusing scenes. A hitman played by the always reliable Eli Wallach tries to kill them on a long outstanding contract. After experiencing a lot of red tape and general dismissiveness they decide to reenact the train heist which they originally went down for.
In the hands of a more experienced and talented director this could have been really good, but Jeff Kanew hasn’t the ability to handle his cast and the film ultimately plods along to an unexciting finale which by the time we get there all interest has been lost. It’s good to see two old stars in the twilight of their careers and both of them put in good performances, as do co-stars Wallach and Charles Durning, but the whole thing doesn’t have any zest. They must have been longing for a director like John Sturges who directed them both in Gunfight At The O.K. Corral.
Worth watching for the stars, if nothing else.
5/10
Thanks. Not sure when I'll get to see Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg, but they get airings quite often on the lesser movie channels. Anyway, for now:
BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967)
Billion Dollar Brain kicks off with Colonel Ross infiltrating the H.P. Detective Agency. This pokey office is, one assumes, in Soho; the flickering red and blue lights suggest it. The exterior is actually on Pentonville Road. The office doubles as Harry Palmer’s digs. He’s come down in the world quite a bit since The Ipcress File: sleeping in his office, unmade beds, convenience food, dishes unwashed, a tip and a life of disastrous proportions. Chasing infidelities doesn’t suit Palmer and Ross knows it. He wants Palmer back in the Secret Service, but the two don’t see eye to eye. Instead, having sent his ex-boss away with a flea in his ear, Palmer receives a package containing a wedge of money and a ticket to Helsinki, simultaneously answering a metallic, pre-recorded telephone message offering him carriage instructions to Finland.
It isn’t entirely clear why Palmer has to be a free agent. He wasn’t in the novel, which has a plausible explanation for sending our Harry to Finland, and he really isn’t a free agent here either – Ross follows his errant ex-employee and re-enlists him to retrieve the vacuum flask Palmer abandoned with his Finnish contacts. The flask contains half a dozen eggs, each one infected with a deadly virus, a product of the UK’s Porton Down research facility. This chemical and biological evil is irrelevant to the evolving plot, a cute McGuffin which Palmer, and we, think is important, but leads us nowhere.
More pertinent is Palmer’s old acquaintance Leo Newbigen, a character written out of the film version of Funeral in Berlin, whose young mistress, Anya, takes an obvious like to the cocky Englishman. These two cunning operators appear to be perfecting an uprising in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Newbigen demonstrates the global-spanning ‘Brain’, a computer which gives him remote orders, sent from Texas and the headquarters of the Crusade for Freedom, an anti-Communist pro-capitalist nationalist army and scientific society orchestrated operatically by the oil magnate General Midwinter. The ‘Brain’ orders the elimination of a suspected enemy agent: Anya. Meanwhile, another old friend, Colonel Stok, seems to know more about Harry, Midwinter and the uprising than anybody. It seems Palmer’s troubles are only just beginning.
Billion Dollar Brain gets a casual dismissal from most armchair critics, but that’s a trifle unfair. True, it isn’t as engaging as Ipcress, nor does it have the grounded, earthy feel of Funeral. What it does have is a wider Cold War scope, which encompasses both the fantastically imaginative and the same old double-dealing which prevaricates most espionage scenarios. Here it is Leo Newbigen, played with some enthusiasm by Karl Malden, and Anya – the delicately beautiful Francoise Dorleac, who was tragically killed in a car accident immediately after filming her role – who impersonate the villainous tricksters. A more straightforward bad guy is the believably insane Ed Begley, who inhabits General Midwinter with all the gusto and righteous anger of an evangelist preacher: “My arm is long and my vengeance is total!” He spouts vitriol, pride, avarice, common sense, conspiracy theory, the Word of the Lord and complete lunacy, sometimes all in one sentence. Midwinter is as unhinged as any Bond villain. In fact, he’s a damn sight better than many of them. Midwinter frightens because he’s so palpably real, disconnected from the outside world, consumed by his own modern crusade, fascinated with his personal achievements, bound by the gun and the sword, the General is one small roaring step away from starting a nuclear war. What is so good about Begley’s portrayal, unlike a similarly manic Stephen Berkoff in Octopussy, is the unsentimental pontificating. Berkoff’s General Orlov was devious, deluded and, occasionally, stroppy; a schoolboy denied his toys. Midwinter is the fully grown man, certain of his belief system, enthralled by the adoration of his retinue, subsumed by his own cult of forceful personality. This is exactly the kind of madness which starts wars and slaughters thousands and millions. Strange too, from a modern perspective, that it is incorrect misinformed data which advises Midwinter his plans are succeeding, and that he continues his campaign even when confronted with [for him] the unpalatable truth. Here is a true lunatic of the grandest scale, parading beneath a winged MW symbol that has all the associations of fascism, double-headed eagles and military iron. Begley’s robust, violent, virulent, non-stop performance is astounding. He drives the film forward at the very moment it was starting to flounder. Michael Caine too seems to come alive at this point and Harry Palmer ceases to be a bemused cheeky chappie and morphs back into the wily, verbally slick secret agent we know and love him to be.
The film is strong visually. Cinematographer Billy Williams does some good work with the snowy Finnish landscapes. The slow moving ice floes of Helsinki’s Capital Region form a portent of disaster to come. Director Ken Russell occasionally pulls out some startling scenes, although he’s not as innovative as Sidney J. Furie, erring to bombast rather than subtlety. The eerie, crystal hued visit to Dr Kaarna’s mansion is one; our first sight of Dorleac, in close up, whispering a password is another; the intercut preparations and inspections of Midwinter’s army a third; the fiery Texas hoedown an incongruous fourth highlight; he even handles the billion dollar computer set with some aplomb. Russell, being an emotionally over the top director, lets his camera linger on Ed Begley and Oskar Homolka’s out of the box performances, and rightly so. There is frequent criticism that he didn’t understand the plot, but that surely is a question for the screenwriter and John McGrath’s adaptation does have holes in it, but no more than the Berlin Wall or an Albanian torture chamber. In fact, the holes are mostly where we came in, with that nest of eggs, a chancel which causes the most confusion. The film benefits from, I feel, repeated viewing.
The central theme from Richard Rodney Bennett is excellent, although he comes unstuck dramatically. Producer Harry Saltzman utilises old friend Maurice Binder to cut a half decent main titles sequence. A fourth film [Horse Under Water] was planned as part of an eleven picture deal Caine made with the producer and his Lowndes Productions company, but apparently the poor returns on this one scuppered that – it disappointed in the U.S. market, hardly a surprise given the less than flattering portrait offered of American espionage expertise. Like the takings, Billion Dollar Brain feels like an underachievement. When it’s good, it’s very good, but much of the middle portion is unbalanced by the confused plot and an inappropriate sense of slapstick. It needed straightening out. Ken Russell and editor Alan Osbiston were not up to the task. I wonder what Peter Hunt might have made of it.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Good fun, I feel.
CAPTAIN KRONOS, VAMPIRE HUNTER (1972 / 74)
Filmed in 1972, but belatedly released in spring ’74, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter was perceived by Hammer Productions as a new view on old expectations. It still sits firmly in the vampiric tradition while attempting to intermingle a swashbuckling hero with notions of magical religiosity. I’d consider it to also fit snugly into the ‘folk horror’ sub-genre which reared its head in British cinema during the early seventies, especially given its perceived 17th Century English timeframe, the besieged village setting and the nods to pagan mysticism.
I should clarify that no place or time is explicitly mentioned. My assumption is based solely on the clothing, the fey Renaissance glam of the local manor house and the mention of ‘wars’. During a key scene, there is a suggestion Captain Kronos fought in the English Civil War, but the supposition is tremendously vague and my interpretation may not be the same as another’s. For instance, no one drinks beer, they all drink wine, which hints at a European setting. The screenplay does its utmost to cast the action in a non-specific time and place,. This has advantages when you’re dealing with distractions such as vampires, mesmerism, swordplay and heaving bosoms. Caroline Munro pops up as the hero’s love interest, Clara, a young wench he saves from the stocks; Clara had the temerity to dance on a Sunday. Kronos promptly takes her to his straw laden bed, a much greater sin surely. Nonetheless, the nudity is low for the time, the body count is high and the blood splashes are frequent. A large rubber bat attacks one poor victim; a well edited sequence, but still obviously a dud of a fluffy fake.
Captain Kronos is a war veteran turned vampire hunter, like Jean Rollin’s camp protagonists in his weird LSD infused Shiver of the Vampires, only Kronos is better at the job. He’s been called to an isolated village in the east [east where? – see what I mean about vagueness?]. Here, young innocents have been drained of their life-force, prematurely aging them until they die. Kronos thinks it is the work of vampires and so does the local physician Doctor Marcus. A series of elaborate traps are laid to hound the bloodsucker to its lair.
Kronos carries a sword made from the steel of a crucifix and is covered in the scars of battle. He’s played by Horst Janson. I don’t know the actor [should I?] but he’s of a passable, athletic school and handles the character well. Moments of personal curiosity attest to Kronos’ other-worldly attributes. He meditates; he’s full of bitter vengeful instincts; he is clearly irreligious and defies the law of the land; he is a master swordsman; he is familiar with the tropes of paganism; his accomplice is a hunchback Professor of medicine, philosophy, the forge and the dark arts. So, we have a sort of hybrid pairing of Robin Hood / Van Helsing / Igor / Victor Frankenstein or if you like a Civil War version of OO7 and Q. You can feel the potential creeping out of the action. It has some flashy moments and some spicy, but not over horrific, terror. The conclusion is unexpected, but climaxes with an extended rapier duel, like an episode of Richard the Lionheart – which writer Brian Clemens used to script in his early days – or given the obvious genre cross-over his later efforts for Adam Adamant Lives! The film is short on humour and takes itself way too seriously.
Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell spent most of the 1960s producing The Avengers. They tried to break into films with two Hammer productions, but results, while untypical fare, are not great. This movie has the feel of a pilot episode for a prospective television series and one wishes the executives at Bray Studios had also seen that potential as I fancy something like The Adventures of Captain Kronos might have made a decent stab at the post News at Ten time slot back in the day. As a movie, Captain Kronos isn’t really going anywhere. It may hark back to the Karnstein legend, making it an unofficial sequel to Twins of Evil, but you don’t feel the movie needed vampires at all. It would have played out perfectly well as a Civil War ‘detective’ adventure, with grisly murder replacing neck bites. Fennell and Clemens, who over stretches himself by directing as well as scripting, would soon return to safer ground with John Steed and The New Avengers.
Unbelievably, US censors awarded the film an R certificate based on its sexual content, which as I said, is low at best. The film is low on shocks too, which might have been the intent, but the different prospects don’t add up to anything particularly unique and the film tends towards the uneven, being uncertain of a sure footing, which is a pity.
chrisno1 said:
The flask contains half a dozen eggs, each one infected with a deadly virus, a product of the UK’s Porton Down research facility. This chemical and biological evil is irrelevant to the evolving plot, a cute McGuffin which Palmer, and we, think is important, but leads us nowhere.
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there's an early Avengers episode called The Golden Eggs, which is also about chicken eggs injected with a deadly experimantal virus. i guess this was a thing in real life?
you might be able to watch that episode here at Uncle Earls
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chrisno1 also said:
A fourth film [Horse Under Water] was planned as part of an eleven picture deal Caine made with the producer and his Lowndes Productions company, but apparently the poor returns on this one scuppered that
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eleven films! Ii didnt know that! @Barbel has discussed clues that Deighton's books An Expensive Place To Die and Spy Story might be My-Name's-Not-'Arry adventures, but what would the other five be? I thought Deighton's other books were about distinctly different characters. i wonder if Deighton abandoned the character when the film deal fell apart?