20,000 Leagues Under Sea (1916)

Little Slumber 
In Nemo Land

20,000 Leagues Under Sea
Directed by Stuart Paton
USA 1916
Imprint Blu Ray A/B/C

Warning: Some slight spoilers here. 

I’ve been wanting to see this silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea for some time now, since I loved the original novel by one of my favourite authors, Jules Verne. I didn’t get the UK release of this because it was bundled in with a bunch of movies I wasn’t that interested in but, I’m glad I waited now because this Australian edition is part of their Tales Of Adventure Collection 8, with some other Verne movies and some slightly adjacent tales in its make-up.

Now, I was both impressed and disappointed in this in equal parts so, I’m not quite sure how to organise this review... 

Okay, the first thing I was impressed with was that, unlike 99.5% of the Captain Nemo films I’ve seen in film versions, they actually get the character’s ethnicity correct to the book.. so an Indian, turban wearing guy (I think they actually got it right in the movie version of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen too but, that movie was also an incredibly poor adaptation of its source material). That being said, the caveat here is that he’s portrayed by a white dude, Allen Holubar, in brown face. Swings and roundabouts I guess, people. 

Another impressive thing is the Williamson brothers and their invention. Highlighted in footage before the film gets properly underway, along with a photo of Jules Verne, the Williamsons went with the director on location (the same locations used for the Disney version a few decades later) because they'd invented cameras for underwater photography. So there are lots of shots of divers and fish and coral etc in the movie. I can’t imagine what this might have looked like to the inhabitants of the world at the time, many of whom would never had been able to see what this stuff properly looks like before this motion picture was released. So it’s a landmark film for inventing and demonstrating the world’s first underwater photography, if for nothing else.

However, there are some problems I had with the film. 

Asides from lots of almost superfluous women in the movie… Verne didn’t really do much in the way of meaningful female characters, certainly in his most famous books… the story is an absolute mess and Jules would have been scientifically rotating in his grave at such shenanigans (and don’t get me started on the 50s serial of Mysterious Island, with its alien queen hell bent on world conquest, either). What we have here is very little to do with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea after about the first 10 mins… it’s also taking portions from The Mysterious Island (probably my favourite Jules Verne novel) and then grafted onto it another story featuring a.. ‘child of nature’ as she is credited in the cast list (a euphemism for someone who’s ‘gone native’)… who, most viewers will twig, long before the end of the picture and the big reveal, turns out to be Captain Nemo’s long lost daughter. 

About her... one of the crew of the balloon that lands on the island finds her and, she’s played by a lady called Jane Gail, again in brown face make up. And all I will say about her is… she’s an absolute comic genius. The scene where the poor white guy is trying to show her how to put on a shirt and trousers... and she’s waggling her toes at him… had me in stitches. I need to see more things with this lady in because she tickled my funny bone somewhat. She was the truly bright spot of this film for me, for sure (she died on her 74th birthday, I’m informed). 

Things all come around and she is reunited with her father who dies, is buried at sea and then we also see the Nautilus submarine (which appears to be quite different in long shot as opposed to when it surfaces, it seems to me) sink beneath the waves one final time. Leaving us with a romantic entailment involving one of the crew of the original balloon and Jane Gail’s character. Which also leaves me with the question… was this the first time an interracial romance had been depicted on screen or were there earlier films?

And that’s me done with this iteration of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, I think. It was a pleasure to watch this version, despite the enormous liberties taken with the original source materials… I’d certainly recommend this one to lovers of silent movies and will probably watch this one again at some point (if only for the comical shenanigans of Jane Gail). I’m pleased I finally got to see this one. 

In Like Flint

 

Acting On Inflint

In Like Flint
20th Century Fox 1967
Directed by Gordon Douglas
French Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Light spoilers.

You have eyes that keep attracting me,
Dazzling and distracting me,
It’s your Zowie face.
You have a smile, this is disarming,
And style that is alarming,
And such a wowie face.
From Nelson RIddle’s lyrics to the greatest song in movie history, Jerry Goldsmith’s In Like Flint theme.


After the incredible success of Bond spoof/parody Our Man Flint the previous year (reviewed here), in fact, even before that film’s release it would seem, a sequel called In Like Flint was enthusiastically commissioned. It would appear however, according to lead actor James Coburn who played Derek Flint, that the filmmakers, including the director, were not that interested in the film they were making. Coburn has gone on record that it was himself and the stunt choreographer who directed a lot of the finished film between them. Not sure I totally believe that (and I may be prejudiced because I think Douglas has made some good movies) but there may be some truth in that, from a certain point of view, I would guess.

Either way, the lack of backing from the production team doesn’t really come across in the final product, which is another breezy and fun spy movie parody in the vein of the first film. Coburn is back and so is Lee J. Cobb as former boss Lloyd Cramden. After the president is switched under his nose using a special paralysing gas, Cramden is left with the mystery of why the president’s golf swing, which he was timing with his stop watch, took three minutes but only passed in a half a second from his point of view. And then, after a run in with one of the film’s main, soft antagonists played by Jean Hale, Cramden is discredited and suspended from his organisation. Flint believes the problem is coming from within ZOWIE (Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage) itself and, he’s half right. The real problem is a network of women operating out of a chain of beauty parlours called Fabulous Face... they want to take control of the world and deliver it into the safer hands of women (and who can blame them), something Flint mocks openly when discovering the truth. Despite acknowledging that the real power in the world is really in the hands of secretaries and mistresses. 

And, yes, the women have been guilty of infiltrating various organisations and causing untold damage but, also, slowly brainwashing women to their ways of thinking and diminishing faith in men via thousands of subliminally loaded hairdryers in various salons around the world. However, when the men they’ve been working with in ZOWIE take the operation from their hands, the last quarter of the movie becomes about the ladies and Flint working together to stop the turncoats’ mad plan to dominate or destroy the world (or something). 

And it’s a great film, which always lands differently every time I revisit it. When I was a kid I always preferred this one slightly more than the excellent original but I’ve flip flopped on that as I’ve got older. In Like Flint is fantastic but, I think it’s just a little less ingenious than the first one. However there’s still a lot to recommend in this and much that’s worthy of note. 

Like actress Yvonne Craig, who plays a scene or two as Natasha the ballerina. Of course, this actress was ballet trained herself so is perfect in this role and that training must have helped her out considerably when she was playing her regular spot as Batgirl opposite Adam West and Burt Ward on the third series of the Batman TV show that same year. Genre fans will also know her for little roles in a couple of The Man From UNCLE episodes (and one of the film ‘assemblies’) and from a role in the third and final season of Star Trek, a couple of years later. 

Then there’s all the silly Flintisms and gadgets which pop up. It’s curious because recurring gags like the pulse arm watch to restart Flint’s heart are used without explaining them to the audience this time around and absolutely require knowledge of the first film. However, unlike the first one, where Flint’s arsenal of sleuthing props make their debut on use, mostly, this one goes for a more formulaic introduction of setting up things to bring them back in a deus ex machina capacity later in the film. 

For instance, the wonderfully comic scene where Flint is talking to a dolphin in his pool so he can compile a human/dolphin dictionary, has an absurd pay off later in he film when Flint calls out to any passing dolphins in their own language, to hitch a ride under the security barbed wire on the Fabulous Face beauty resort in the Virgin Islands. The people at the resort have Flint’s three women held hostage in cryogenic suspension. The point is made that they’re all new women, Flint having found his former four aides husbands to marry, earlier in the film. When Cramden asks why there are only three now, Flint replies that he’s ‘cutting down’. 

Another item is the sonic gizmo which Flint shows Cramden at the start of the film, when Cramden calls on Flint for help. This device which doubles as Flint’s belt buckle emits a variety of sonic notes which can either push objects around, like a billiard ball or, if turned up, cause an object to burst apart. Flint uses this device at least twice in the second half of the movie, both to break the glass in the suspended animation chamber in which he is being frozen and also to push himself through space towards the ship containing lady cosmonauts at the film’s conclusion. 

Other moments of fun are less advertised ahead of schedule... such as when Flint poses as the man on the ZOWIE recruitment poster to hide himself in plain sight via a ‘trompe l'oeil’ effect... or the moment when he starts a plane full of Russians he is hastily leaving, to singing a Russian song. Remember those films where the lyrics would pop up on screen and a bouncing ball would stress the word you were supposed to be singing to join in? Well, the Russian letters to the song pop up here with a bouncing red star. So, yeah, you get the idea, the film is still as silly and as entertaining as the previous Flint adventure. 

Once again, Jerry Goldsmith provides scoring duties and, if you think the score to Our Man Flint was one of the greatest film scores of all time (and if you didn’t then you’re not listening right), In Like Flint has a somehow vastly superior score to the original. Not only that but it also has the greatest song in cinematic movie history, some of the lyrics of which are reproduced at the opening of this review. If you want great music, In Like Flint is the movie to go for in soundtrack excellence.

And that just about wraps me up for In Like Flint and the Flint movies in general. In 1976 there was a TV pilot film for a series that never got made called Our Man Flint - Dead On Target, with a different actor and... it completely misses the point of what Flint is all about, even playing the character relatively poe faced and no longer the superman of the movies, relegated to kind of running a private detective agency. It’s truly dreadful and if you really want to see it, at least one DVD incarnation of the movies included it as an extra. I’d not bother though, if I were you. Meanwhile, the first two Flint cinema movies are still an absolute joy to watch and I shall certainly try to keep revisiting them regularly over the years. Trivia hounds might like to note that this is the last film that 20th Century Fox shot in actual Cinemascope. Highly recommended.

She Dies Tomorrow

Some Time To Die

She Dies Tomorrow
USA 2020
Directed by Amy Seimetz
Blue Finch Films

Warning: This film has been called spoiler proof by angry reviewers, it seems to me but, I think it’s fair to say this review has light spoilers.

Okay, I’ll say up front that I have mixed feelings about She Dies Tomorrow. I sought it out on a recommendation from someone and so it does have its fans but, it seems there’s a heck of a lot of negative criticism for this film too and I can kinda see why. That being said there’s very little in the film not to like, except for the lack of clarity on the central premise... but it’s a great hook.

We start off with a character called Amy (played by Kate Lyn Sheil from the great Brigsby Bear, reviewed here). Clearly something is wrong with her and then we flash to someone who we later find out was in a relationship with her... he is in a room and starts going mad thinking he’s going to die tomorrow. Then Amy wakes up from a nightmare and returns to her empty house. She rings a friend because she’s anxious... she keeps stopping and starting as a realisation hits her every now and again. At some point the title of the movie is suddenly flashed on the screen for two seconds, blaring music like a jump scare... and then we continue to watch Amy slowly becoming disjointed from reality. Is a sequence showing blood cells interacting, a hint that she has a virus? She starts exploring textures with her sense of touch and looking at things... caressing flat surfaces as something which sounded a bit like Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (it’s probably not but that’s what it reminded me of) plays over and over on her vinyl record turntable. 

Her friend Jane (played by Jane Adams) comes and Amy tells her the thing which has been bothering her. She knows for a fact that she is going to die tomorrow... or at least she believes she will. Jane thinks she is having an alcoholic relapse (which technically she also is because, she’s drinking like there’s no tomorrow... because she believes that’s the case) and goes off. However, when we follow Jane home, she also gets the same idea that she, herself, is going to die tomorrow.

While Amy checks out the best cremation urns on the internet and decides she wants to be turned into a leather jacket after she dies, we follow the ‘also coming unhinged’ as she crashes her brother’s wife’s small birthday party... and tells them she’s going to die. Not long after she leaves them, the four people there also believe they will die the next day. 

And so it goes as we follow, primarily, Amy and Jane (and a few others but to a lesser degree) as they go about the evening contemplating their existence and getting into encounters with people they also infect with.... I dunno... an idea. 

At some point, the flashbacks from Amy’s very recent past, which eventually dovetails back into the start of the movie, show us how she came to be ‘infected’ but doesn’t show how the chain starts and, I’m sad to say, doesn’t clue us in to what’s happening. Now, that might have been okay... like a good zombie movie, the cause of the effect is rarely discussed but, in this case, there’s no actual pay off either and I think that’s why people may be having a problem with it (at least, some of the appalling reviews I’ve read). I also normally don’t mind when a movie doesn’t have a traditional closure moment but, frankly, with a mystery concept and leaving us with no idea if any of the people in this do, actually, die tomorrow... it feels a little off.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that this film is basically taking an idea... if you think about it, it’s very much an M. R. James pass the curse story variation on Casting The Runes, found in such as movies like Ringu, Drag Me To Hell and It Follows (except there’s no getting rid of it so it’s a little more like a virus in some ways)... and then exploring the responses and reactions of the people who have been hit by this growing pandemic of certainty that they are going to meet their own demise the next day. And, yeah, I do appreciate the emotional areas into which this film strays and the way in which it explores humanity’s reaction to the prospect of its near demise... but the hook could have had just a little more back up to it, I felt. 

That being said, the director has an eye for interesting visuals. So some nice shot compositions where, for instance, Amy is framed by an upright rectangle formed by an alcove-like space into another room. And she certainly demonstrates that she’s into textures as much as her namesake protagonist, sometimes using big, vertical solid blocks to split the frame. And there’s also a lot of bright, flashing colour in certain sequences too... during episodes when the ‘victims’ lives are invaded by sudden spurts of enveloping lighting like they just strayed into a David Lynch nightmare and then are suddenly hit by distorted, indecipherable voices in the background (we know from one character that she’s hearing the voices of people long dead in her life)... so, yeah, visually the film is an absolute treat.

And so is the acting. Everyone is great in this and it feels like one of those films where certain things might have been left unscripted and worked on with the actors to build up their characters and scenes. Possibly not but, if this was strictly following the script then that would be a surprise to me, for sure. I suspect there was a lot of improvisation on the film.

So... I got a lot out of the film for sure but Tomorrow She Dies is not something I would recommend to many people (if any) because it sets up and executes such an intriguing prospect... I even thought we were heading into Philip K. Dick ‘reality is not what it seems’ territory at one point... but fails to deliver any hint or clue as to what is really going on. Like the ground zero moment for this ‘infection’ and I get the feeling that this concept must have been explored by the writer but then maybe just deliberately pared back for the audience and it just didn’t quite make it for me. It felt just a little bit thrown away and so, while I appreciated the way the concept was explored and the ideas it threw up as a consequence, I don’t think this is one I’d watch again.

The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver

Lemuel Pegging

The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver
USA 1960
Directed by Jack Sher
Morningside Productions/
Impact Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: Both small... then large spoilers.

I have to say that, every time I revisit The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver, I find myself wondering how much time Ray Harryhausen actually spent with this film. From what I can make out, it’s surely only the squirrel and crocodile sequences in the second half of the movie which he was needed for? I guess the process of using a travelling matte to make people appear on the same frame at different sizes would have kept him busy but, as far as the stop motion animation side of things go... I think those two scenes were basically it. 

The film is based, of course, on Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels aka Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships which was written in 1726... but the film is set in 1699, starting off in Wapping in England. One can only assume, since most of the worlds and peoples that Gulliver (played here by Kerwin Mathews) meets in his travels in the book are completely absent from this movie (and from many other adaptations, it has to be said), that Wapping, England itself is counted as one of the three worlds because, like many, this motion picture only deals with Gulliver’s time in Lilliput where he is a giant and is even pegged down on the beach (as in the classic imagery usually used to illustrate the tale in various manifestations) and his time in Brobdingnag, where the tables are turned and both he and his fiance Elisabeth (played by June Thorburn) are tiny compared to this land of the giants. Luckily, they have the help of a young girl in the second segment called Glumdalclitch (played by Sherry Alberoni... for some reason, the name Glumdalclitch always makes me think of the treasure buried in a woman’s ‘lady garden’ so it always makes me smile, at least).     

I won’t go too much into the plot because there isn’t much of one other than, in Lilliput, Gulliver attempts to stop a war and in Brobdingnag he tries to not die from being put under suspicion of being a witch by a magician who hates him. Some of the biting satire has managed to survive though, such as the war between the Lilliputians and their enemies being about which end of an egg you should smash to eat it from, the small end or the big end. Yeah, that sounds about as silly a reason for war as pretty much all wars started in the world, it seems to me. So... no reason at all. Also, a remark by the king of Lilliput that he hates justice but loves the law, certainly rings true of a lot of people in positions of authority these days, for sure. 

The film is... a pleasant enough watch. Kerwin Mathews is much less a block of wood than in his previous movie for Schneer and Harryhausen, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed here) and, while not ground shaking, the effects hold up far better on this nice new (at time of writing) Blu Ray edition from Impact than I’d expected and it passes the time nicely. 

That being said, there are a few issues with some of the execution and logic of things which seem a bit less thought out than they could be. For instance, to help the Lilliputions when a rainstorm comes, Gulliver blows the clouds out of the way. Um... yeah, the clouds would still be normal size and a person really can’t be doing that, even if he is a giant, I suspect. Another example would be when Gulliver goes fishing with his hat. We see a shot of the hat full of fish but, alas, when he empties it onto the beach for his tiny acquaintances, the scale of the fishes has changed to what would almost be normal size to them. Don’t get me wrong... modern CGI effects are no better (Spider-Man often seems to change size swinging from shot to shot in various films, for instance) but it seems to me a little more thought might have gone into issues like this.

That being said, it’s a nice and colourful film and the one thing which always brings me back to it is the absolutely astonishing score by Bernard Herrmann. It’s one of his more unusual ones where he’s trying to sound more English (it seems to me) and although there are some key Herrmann moments where he uses his characteristic repeat cells, it’s a much fuller and melodic sounding score and not one the unwary listener might, at first, peg as being from the same compositional mind that gave us, in the very same year, the ‘strings only’ score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

And that’s me about done on The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver I think... I really don’t have too much to say about the movie and the ending, where Gulliver and Elizabeth are washed up on a beach and waxing poetic, isn’t exactly stunning either. It’s mostly about the music and the various character actors involved for me (keep and eagle eye out for the woman who gives Dr. Gulliver a chicken as payment at the start of the film, it’s a youngish Joan Hickson, who would go on to play Miss Marple on TV, some 24 years later). If you like films of this period with a nice cast, an okay script and some wonderful scoring, then certainly give it a go. As far as Harryhausen goes though... it’s not exactly his strongest.

Mighty Joe Young

Beautiful Dreamer

Mighty Joe Young
USA 1949 Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Argosy Pictures/HMV UK Exclusive 
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Complete story spoilers from early on in this review.

Just revisited this classic movie, the original Mighty Joe Young (I still can’t bring myself to watch the modern remake) which I suspect is out on US Blu Ray courtesy of Warner Archives, being that it’s an HMV exclusive Blu Ray here in the UK and they tend to cherry pick from the Warner Archive releases. This one is very much in the ‘Kong’ family, as it were. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, who helped produce and direct (uncredited) the original 1933 spectacle that was King Kong (reviewed here), not to mention directing The Most Dangerous Game on the same sets and with some of the same actors in the evenings, as the original Kong. 

It also stars Robert Armstrong as Hollywood showman Max O’ Hara, pretty much the same way he played Carl Denham in both King Kong and Son Of Kong... he could pretty much be just a continuation of the same character if it weren’t for the name. Also along for the ride is the original special effects genius who brought Kong to life, Willis O’Brien but, he was more of an adviser and had a crew of stop motion technicians working on this one for him and, if you’re wondering why the animation still looks amazing on this, this is the first screen credited feature length effects work... about 80% of the film effects, apparently... of his enthusiastic apprentice (so to speak), one Ray Harryhausen. So, yeah, another future Hollywood legend was indeed learning his craft and also mastering it on this one. 

It’s a simple tale but Mighty Joe Young is an absolutely charming and emotionally heart warming movie which is kinda like King Kong but turned on its head. Young girl Jill Young, lives on a farm in the jungle and buys/trades things to buy baby Joe from two natives. 12 years later she’s grown up to be played by Terry Moore and she and Joe, who has grown to giant size (although, to be fair, the scale of him kinda changes up and down throughout the movie) are living a happy life until Max O Hara and his new cowboy wrangler Gregg (played by Ben Johnson), see how she and Joe have a rapport and how much Joe can be calmed by the song Beautiful Dreamer. Max signs her and Joe for a big Broadway style revue but, after a while the glamour wears off and, when a bunch of idiots ply the giant gorilla with wine and are cruel to him, he smashes the place up and the police are ordered to put Joe down. But he escapes with the aid of Jill, Gregg, Max and a few others and Jill, Gregg and Joe live happily ever after in Africa... stopping on the way during their escape to have Joe rescue children from a burning orphanage. 

This is such a great film and I don’t know why it wasn’t better received at the time. Indeed, there was to be a sequel teaming up Mighty Joe Young with Lex Barker as Tarzan but, due to the expense of animating the titular giant ape versus the disappointing box office receipts, this didn’t materialise. But it’s a truly great film with superb animated sequences and real emotional depth to the simple story. It’s also great for spotting way too many famous character actors to name. Indeed, I only spotted a handful myself but it was nice seeing Frank McHugh (who I remember best from The Roaring Twenties, reviewed here) as Max’s agent and also the great Nestor Paiva playing the drunken nightclub customer who gets Joe so riled up in one of the nightclub sequences. More eagle eyed watchers than me may also be able to spot, if they’re lucky, the presence of both Carol Hughes, the second incarnation of Dale Arden from Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here) and Donald Kerr, who played Happy Hapgood in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here) in the nightclub scenes... among many others. 

And I can’t say enough good things about Mighty Joe Young. Harryhausen’s talent at imbuing a stop motion mannequin with a real spirit of warmth and humanity shines throughout and it’s all backed up with a beautiful score by Roy Webb, which you can buy in a very authentic re-recording from those wondrous people at Monstrous Movie Music, at https://www.mmmrecordings.com/index.html packed onto a CD with the score for another Harryhausen classic, 20 Million Miles To Earth (reviewed here). 

The Blu Ray edition of this has the usual interesting extras about the film and also, I’m glad to say, keeps in the red and brown tint sections for the ‘fire at the orphanage’ sequence near the end of the picture. It also looks superb and, where you can sometimes see the joins and changeovers from the live action footage to the model work, it still looks better than it ever has before and this purchase was a no brainer for me (now if only they’d sort out a UK Blu Ray release for Son Of Kong, please). One of the all time great movies and something that should be on every cinephile’s radar, as far as I’m concerned. Such a great movie.

Conan The Destroyer

Crom, But Not Forgotten

Conan The Destroyer
USA/Mexico 1984 
Directed by Richard Fleischer
20th Century Fox Australian Blu Ray All Zones 

Oh, well... I remember looking forward to seeing Conan The Destroyer when it came out in 1984 but, even then, I realised it was a bit of a mess. Fun but... not that great as a movie about Robert E. Howard’s memorable hero. Let’s make no mistake, Conan The Barbarian (reviewed here) was pretty much the last truly great film from the ‘heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery’ genre and still is to this day, in my opinion (Peter Jackson kind of screwed up Tolkien and the nearest thing we have to a modern fantasy adventure of this kind is probably the contemporary set Mandy from a couple of years ago, which I reviewed here). The fact that John Milius wasn’t able to return to the director’s chair here really sealed the fate of this film, I think. 

What we have is an adventure fantasy movie with the emphasis on the more magical and mystical elements of Robert E. Howard’s Conan adventures... at the expense of the absence of a lot of the things that really worked so well from that first movie. The character is way too sophisticated in this sequel and the tone much too light hearted. The idea was to make the film even more box office friendly by making it appeal more to kids so the violence and single mindedness of the plot was kind of toned down in the hopes that it would get a lower classification in cinemas... something which kinda backfired in the UK, where the film still managed to garner an AA rating with nothing much to show for it. So, there’s also a lot less blood letting and goriness in this iteration and... that does kind of betray the spirit of the original stories, to some extent. 

Asides from Sven-Ole Thorsen, who is playing a completely different character and who is in the majority of Arnold Schwarzeneger’s films, we have only two characters back from the first film. At least they are played by the same actors... Schwarzenegger as Conan The Cimmerian and Mako as the minor wizard Akiro. We also have a bunch of new characters payed by Grace Jones, Olivia d’Abo, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracey Walter, Pat Roach (as Thoth Amon, no less, who never even met Conan in the original stories, instead always staying at the periphery of the adventures) and, as the other lead villain (as if Thoth Amon wasn’t enough for them) we have, in the words of the Superman The Movie Topps Bubble Gum card captions, ‘the alluring Sarah Douglas’. 

And, they’re all good actors and they jell quite well (well, I heard Grace Jones didn’t get on with some on the set but, yeah, I kinda expected that) and are all pretty good but, as I said, Conan has moved on and although he is still obsessed with the dead Valeria, the film seems like barely anything to do with the original. It’s a kind of half-hearted fantasy adventure which looks and feels more like Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only era films than the gritty, half exploitative, sword and sandal epic it really needs to be. I believe the tone of the film was not favourable to the director and that Schwarzenneger also objected to the ‘dumbing down’ of the character in this way which, I believe, went a good way to him losing interest in doing a third movie in the series (at the time... I’m still hearing the third part, King Conan, is still in development with him attached). 

The one good thing is the late, great composer Basil Poledouris’ sequel score. He does recook several themes from the first one such as the main Anvil Of Crom music, the Wheel Of Pain music (when Conan and another character are trying to lift open a heavy door), a sped up version of the Wifeing theme (during a brief, static effects insert of Sandahl Bergam as the dead Valeria) and several versions of The Orgy (aka the greatest score cue in soundtrack history), which I always thought was supposed to represent the Cult of Thulsa Doom from the first movie and so, therefore, seems somewhat out of place but no less welcome here. Other than these, there’s a new heroic theme which also seems somewhat out of place, while still being fairly listenable but, you know, nothing new which matches the strength of the themes in the first one (nothing as cool as, say, the Theology theme at any rate). Still, Poledouris was a great composer and the score is probably the best thing about this movie, it has to be said. I wish Intrada would finally release that restored version of the score they’ve been working on for years... I really have no desire to purchase the rerecording after the travesty of the Conan The Barbarian re-recording.*

The only other thing I could say is that you do get the odd shade of the visual legacy of Conan thrown in, perhaps sometimes accidentally, from time to time. The main moment, to my mind, is when Conan is fighting the creature that Thoth Amon metamorphoses into in the chamber of mirrors, which strongly resembles, to me anyway, one of the Frank Frazetta covers from the 1960s/70s Conan paperback reprints. Which is nice and a rare flash of gold in an otherwise drab production, it has to be said.

And that’s me done with Conan The Destroyer, methinks. I probably don’t really have to watch this one again in my lifetime because it does kind of leave you with a bad taste in the mouth after the sheer brilliance of the first movie. For years I waited for a third movie to come along which would crown Conan King of Aquilonia but, alas, when a third film did come along it was a rebooted version of Conan The Barbarian (a review of this was forged by me here many years ago, when this blog was still young in the eyes of men) but, alas, it didn’t star Schwarzenegger and it got as much wrong as it got right, it seemed to me. The 1982 movie is still the one great Conan movie, as far as I’m concerned and, as the years pass, I begin to think it will always remain so. 

*Actually, since I wrote this review, they have finally released it in 2022... still havent gotten around to listening to it yet, though.

Our Man Flint

After Dinner Flint

Our Man Flint
20th Century Fox 1966
Directed by Daniel Mann
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers a-go-go.

Our Man Flint was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid in the 1970s and remains so to this day. Essentially it’s a ‘band wagon’ film, in that it’s trying to capture some of the box office magic which the EON James Bond movies had been doing since four years before. Once a popular version of Bond had finally been unleashed on a largely unsuspecting public (the films were pretty ground breaking in their day), everyone was trying to rush their own knock off versions out into the cinematic wild, with perhaps the Italians and French churning out many of these things. 

The Americans, also, did a fair few and perhaps their most successful were their spoofs such as the four Matt Helm movies, which were absolutely nothing like the books they were based on and starred Dean Martin in the title role, where perhaps someone like John Wayne might have been closer to the character as written in Donald Hamilton’s popular novels (I’ll be reviewing those movies for the blog at some point too, of course). Their other big contribution was the Flint series of two films (and, much later, a truly terrible, missed the point TV pilot which I’m not sure I can be subjecting myself to again for a review). 

The Flint movies were where the Americans really got the formula right and the writers must have had their tongues lodged firmly in their cheeks as the title character, Derek Flint played by James Coburn, out does and sends up, not just Ian Fleming’s beloved character but also the whole idea of the secret agent movie. It’s absolutely ridiculous but, because the leads, including Lee J Cobb as Flint’s former war commander and Gila Golan as the turncoat femme fatale, all play it absolutely straight... the silliness works beautifully until you’re left with an absolutely perfect storm of spy tropes, action and ‘I can’t believe they just got away with that’ gags. 

How silly is it? Well, it’s beautifully over the top. How about the idea of Flint, observed by his four female ‘assistants’, with just his head and feet resting between two chairs, his body suspended off the ground in this manner while he rests (which apparently is something Coburn was able to do and was filmed as was), stopping his own heart for three hours and woken only when a little metronomic attachment comes out of his watch and starts his pulse ticking over again. Or the scene where he kills a fly in a room with a blow dart. Or the scene where he attacks two of the guards at the headquarters of ZOWIE (Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage) because he realises they are imposters... as he recognises they are wearing Battle Of The Bulge medals. But wait, “there’s no such as Battle Of The Bulge ribbons”... “exactly!” Yeah, brilliantly silly. 

Or how about the scene where Golan, dressed as a harpist, uses the strings of a harp to launch a poisoned dart at Flint, only to hit his boss Cramden (Cobb)... Flint grabs one of his keys, presses a button and a blade pops out the end so he can cut the poison out of the fallen man. A little later, he saves another man’s life by removing a light bulb from an overhead fitting, jamming Cramden’s fingers into it and then using his and Cramden’s body to pass the electrical current into a fallen victim to restart his heart. 

But while all this silliness is going on... and it’s great fun... there’s also a level of ‘over the top’ procedural, as Flint follows a trail of bizarre clues that nobody else on the planet would ever find, to lead him to the enemy threatening the world (known as GALAXY). There’s also a level of ingenuity in terms of how far the gadgetry and inventiveness of the film goes which, for my money, elevates this movie far above the Bond films. I love the Bond series but, for me, the Flint films are the absolute epitome of the spy genre... along with The IPCRESS File (reviewed here) and The Quiller Memorandum (reviewed here). 

For instance, in addition to the key blade, his watch has a rim which can be pulled up at an angle and combined with his pen to form a miniature microscope on his wrist with which he can analyse physical clues. And, of course, his cigarette lighter which contains 82 different weapons... this last item is first revealed in response to Cramden who is trying to equip Flint for the field, with a variety of things which are all refused by Flint. And this is one scene of many where the film doesn’t just spoof the Bond films, it blatantly calls them out...

So, after offering Flint a Walter PPK (Bond’s gun, acquired at the start of both the film and novel of Dr. No (reviewed here), after his Beretta failed him on a previous assignment, he tries to give Flint a briefcase which, with its retractable knives, is clearly modelled on the one in From Russia With Love (reviewed here). But the Bond riffs don’t stop there...

There’s a whole fight scene as Flint and another agent, 0008 (triple oh eight clearly being a riff but one better on 007), exchange intelligence information under cover of exchanging blows in a fist fight. The actor Robert Gunner is made up to look just like Sean Connery (the resemblance is uncanny) and he puts on a Scottish accent to complete the caricature. And during that fight, 0008 clearly states that it’s not SPECTRE behind the threat to the world. Later on in the movie, when Gila Golan’s character is reading a book of The Adventures Of 0008, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack quotes the four base line notes of part of John Barry’s contribution to Monty Norman’s original Bond theme, which I guess is just about as much as they could have gotten away with here without facing a lawsuit. 

And talking about that score. I don’t remember quite when my fascination with soundtrack music began, probably when I first saw the Flash Gordon serials but, Jerry Goldsmith’s absolutely stonking scores for Our Man Flint and its sequel In Like Flint really captivated me as a young ‘un and I still put the insubstantial (can we have an expanded version please Varese?) but absolutely amazing scores on for a spin at least a few times every year. It’s fantastic stuff and the original studio album recording (which is also way different but equally brilliant) featured a track, Galaxy A-Go-Go, which was co-written by a young Randy Newman.

Okay, I think that’s me done with Our Man Flint for the time being. There’s a scene were Flint quickly browns his face up, grabs a revolving towel out of its housing in a bathroom and uses it as a turban to appear Indian at one point which, I suspect, wouldn’t go down great with today’s overly politically correct crowd. But, who cares, it’s just a fun moment and it’s certainly not meant as a mockery in the context of the scene. And I have to say that, rather than pay out way too much money for a very pricey limited US edition, I found more or less the same Blu Ray edition in a French disc (and the second movie) and, although there are no extras (that’s okay, I have two different DVDs of the movie with different extras anyway), I have to say that I’ve never seen the films looking this good. And it’s the full cinemascope frame as always but in a stunning transfer so you can pick up little details you might have missed before. For instance, it’s not even made much of but, when Flint sends a GALAXY guard falling to his death, a quick look down at the body shows his hard hat spinning round and around on the floor at the left of the shot, which I’d never noticed before. 

All in all then, the Flint films are absolutely exceptional and, especially Our Man Flint. I’m not sure why these films aren’t being made more of these days. There’s no Blu Ray release in the UK, the US one was a blink and you’ll miss it affair and even the French editions I have were hard to get for the right price. These films deserve to find a new audience with a younger generation of film goers and, as far as I’m concerned, are absolutely essential viewing for any cinephile worth their salt.  

The Body Stealers

Eats Chutes and Leaves

The Body Stealers
Directed by Gerry Levy
Tigon 1969
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so this makes two badly made Tigon production films I’ve seen in one weekend but, in the case of this particular dud, unlike The Blood Beast Terror (reviewed here), The Body Stealers is at least a very interesting one… because all the parts seem so mismatched.

The story sees a few batches of military skydivers on test jumps, hurling themselves from their planes but... with only their chutes landing on the ground (some of which are mysteriously stolen later in the story). General Armstrong, played by George Sanders gets his right hand man, played by Neil Connery (brother of Sean), to get some kind of army specialist out of retirement (for no apparent reason) to investigate just what is going on.

Enter said specialist, ‘beyond womanising’ Bob Megan, played by rugged Patrick Allen. He is aided and abetted by two doctors played by Hilary Heath and Maurice Evans (that’s Dr. Zaius to you, apes fans!) but… what has the strange girl on the nearby beach, Lorna, played by the ravishing Pamela Conway, got to do with everything. As she and Bob get over friendly and naked on the beach, the audience has to ask themselves, is she a space maiden who has something to do with the missing jumpers? Well yeah, probably.

And the tone of this one is all over the place. The opening credits where jumpers are being abducted is scored by Reg Tilsley with some romping title music which is totally inappropriate to the visuals and, I have to say, the music continues in this fashion throughout the film. Some of the minor dramatic moments are underscored… or really overscored… with piercing stingers so strident that I think even John Barry himself would have been given pause to rethink before jotting them down. There’s even a moment in the score which sounds exactly like the opening of Holst’s Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity, at one point.

And then there’s the two nude scenes with the truly stunning Pamela Conway. They feel completely out of place, especially the extended sex scene on the beach where the awkward actors have crashing waves superimposed over them. This and the music looks like it’s trying desperately to capture a teenage market by tacking stuff onto a film which has none of the trappings of the youth culture in its make up, aside from these elements.

And not only does it have no real appeal for that segment of the market, it clearly has no budget either. The aliens are just humanoids and, well, their spaceship is cloaked so you can’t see it. Except in one sequence where it features in two shots and… well I don’t know how Tigon got their hands on the model but it’s clearly the Dalek starship from the earlier Amicus/Aaru production Daleks Invasion Of Earth 2150AD (reviewed here). I mean, really, how did this happen?

So what more can I say about The Body Stealers? Is it a good movie? No, it’s terrible. As was the case of The Blood Beast Terror, I feel Hammer or Amicus would have made a much better movie out of this one. Could I recommend it to anyone… well no, not in all conscience. But, I did enjoy 88 Films Blu Ray transfer of the film from a lovely print and I’ll certainly be watching this one again if time and mortality permit.

The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy

Don’t Panic

The Hitch Hikers Guide
To The Galaxy
UK 1981
Airdate: Jan 5th to Feb 9th - Six Episodes
Blu Ray Zone 2

“Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
The Book

This is the story of a book. 

The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy to be precise. 

And I first heard the original radio show in the late seventies when it was broadcast... followed by an equally brilliant second series a year or so later. And, up to a time, there wasn’t any format of this which I didn’t love. Because, frankly, all but one of the adaptations of it skew close to the spirit of the writing and are obviously rendered with love. The only fly in the ointment being the 2005, big screen movie version which, somehow (and I thought the writing had made it future proof) was well cast but turned out to be an absolute abomination, capturing exactly none of the essence of the original tales and basically wasting the one shot it had at a cinema audience. It was just terrible. 

No, the radio show’s true legacy of really great Hitch Hikers products you can explore, including this TV series, was many. For example, I saw a wonderful and very loud version of it done on stage at what was then the Rainbow Theatre at Finsbury Park in the late 1970s. It was awesome. As was the slightly recast vinyl records put out by the BBC, hot on the heels of the radio show. And, of course, there were Douglas Adams original novels, starting out as an expansion on his radio scripts before taking us all on totally new adventures. Heck, I even had a can of everything, which was a rare promotional item given to book stores to tie in with the third novel, Life, The Universe And Everything.

Now, I was definitely sceptical about the validity of a TV show when it aired on the BBC in 1981, because I soon realised that, while most of the cast were ported over from the radio show and were able to say their lines with the exact same tone and delivery as that show and the record set, one very important main cast member was completely different. 

So we had the great Peter Jones as the voice of the book itself. The unrelated Simon Jones as Earth man Arthur Dent, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson as Trillian, Stephen Moore as Marvin The Paranoid Android and even the great Richard Vernon as planet designer Slartibartfast. Heck, even the late, great Douglas Adams himself turned up in cameos in a few of the episodes. But, in the important role of Ford Prefect, Arthur’s friend who he soon discovers to be, not from Guilford after all but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse... the radio show and record set’s Geoffrey McGivern was recast and played by David Dixon. And, yes, it took me a little longer to get used to the slightly softer approach to Ford by this new actor but, he more than made up for it in body language and sheer enthusiasm, I believe. 

For those who are somehow still unfamiliar with the story, it follows the adventures of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin after Arthur and Trillian’s home planet of Earth is unexpectedly demolished by a Vogon Constructor Fleet, to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Cue many far fetched and totally hilarious adventures around the galaxy involving such elements as the starship Heart Of Gold (with its Infinite Improbability Drive), dolphins, mice, giant super computers, a restaurant at the end of the universe, prehistoric man with a bunch of telephone sanitisers, a bowl of petunias and a very surprised sperm whale. 

And it was great as a radio show (the first two series made when the writer was still alive, at any rate) and it was pretty good as a TV show too. The electronic book is brought alive simultaneously as Peter Jones voice with, complex ‘computer animations’ giving us auxiliary facts and figures to what was being said. Well... I say computer animations... back in 1981 these certainly looked like high tech computer rendering but, just like Disney’s Tron, they were of course just hand rendered animations made to look like what the general public thought computer aided graphics probably should look like, I would imagine. It doesn’t detract from the visuals in any way, though and, the drawings and typography add to the fun, for sure. 

And I wanted to flag that the TV version of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, which is now to be found in a wonderful Blu Ray, three disc set (two whole discs of extras which I don’t have time to watch right now) because it was a great experience then and it’s a great experience now. And I would certainly recommend to my readers, if you are unfamiliar with Adam’s greatest literary creation, that you hunt it down in, preferably, its radio form first  (I’m assuming the CDs are still available nowadays) as it’s one of the all time greats. Just don’t... you know... watch the movie version. That was obviously put together by suits who just didn’t know where their towels* were. 

*Seek out the books, radio show or TV show for an explanation of that reference. Delve deeper! Enjoy the fjords!

The Dead Pool

Harry’s Game

The Dead Pool
Directed by Buddy Van Horn
USA 1988
Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers. 

I first saw the movie The Dead Pool on its original cinema release in the UK in 1989, slightly behind the US theatrical release. I really liked the Dirty Harry films by this point but... I really hated this one... at the time. I thought the robot car bomb chase was stupid (while now, when we’re living in an age of killer drones... well, it just seems quaint) and I thought the background of the horror movie production setting was too theatrical and colourful... which admittedly it is but, I’m way more forgiving now, it would seem.

Revisiting the movie, well I actually really enjoyed it this time around and, although it’s still my least favourite of Clint Eastwood’s Inspector Dirty Harry Callahan movies, I think it’s not actually letting the spirit of the other movies down... it’s just how it seemed to me at the time of its release.

Following on from the most boring opening title credits of any of the movies in the franchise, we get a story where Callahan is actually being lionised by the press for what is seen as a heroic deed. Running with it, the San Fransisco Police Department, who are unused to having Callahan being received in a positive light, want Harry to cooperate with the press, this time in the form of lovely lady journalist Samantha Walker, played here by the great Patricia Clarkson. She has good chemistry with Eastwood in this and, I think this may be the first time I saw her in anything. 

However, she picked a bad time to be associating with Harry Callahan because various killers of a jailed mob boss are after his blood and, on top of that, the latest case revolving around a horror film production, with a truly unlikeable incarnation of Liam Neeson as the young, luvvie director, involves a dead pool with Harry’s name on it.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a dead pool, lots of places have them (or at least had them back in the day). You would basically bet on which celebrity would be the first to die and, after a number of years, if your one came up next, you would win the pool of cash for the bet. In this one, a killer close to the production of the film is mowing his way through the list in order to frame the director and it’s Callahan’s job to find him. 

Once again we have a fast paced story with a number of action scenes and also some great police procedural stuff thrown into the mix... and Harry ‘gets the gal’ too, by the end of the movie (I was betting that both her and Harry’s new partner, played by Evan C. Kim, wouldn’t make it to the closing credits alive). It’s also got a less bold but still nicely put together score by the franchise’s regular composer Lalo Schifrin, with a few nice call backs to a couple of his themes from the first movie (reviewed here). 

Oh, and one James Carrey... that’s Jim Carrey to you and I... plays one of the early victims, a rock star whose death is made to look like a drug overdose by the killer, who completely fails at that cover up too. Another thing worth noticing is that the movie critic who is stabbed to death by the killer is made up to look like legendary film critic Pauline Kael (who was quite critical of the first movie in the franchise). 

And that’s all I’ve got on The Dead Pool, I think. It looks nice enough but the cinematography and set dressing makes it feel more dated and mired in the 1980s, unlike the other four which seem to be somewhat timeless. I thought it was fine though and I’m certainly more into it than I was as a 21 year old, that’s for sure. It’s as shame this was the final one but at least Callahan walks off at the end with Patricia Clarkson, so it’s nice to think that was a long and happy partnership for the characters in their fictional life beyond the screen. Not as much of a dud as I’d originally thought and Mr. Eastwood does a fine job with it.