Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

Pecking Order

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.
aka Captain Horatio Hornblower
Directed by Raoul Walsh 
UK/USA/France 1951 
Warner Brothers
Spanish Blu Ray Zone B 

This will be, not much more than a short series of notes on Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. rather than a full blown review because, well, I felt the film was hugely entertaining but don’t have much to say about the cinematography, shot composition or music, to tell the truth. The acting is all excellent but, it’s what you’d expect from a top notch cast like this, working with some very well written dialogue.

Ever since I was a barely conscious child, I remember being impressed by my dad’s bookshelves but three specific sets of books remain in my memory to this day. One was his collection of hardbacks of the main works of Alexandre Dumas, another was a small Mervyn Peak boxed edition and, last but by no means least, his impressive box of C. S Forester’s Hornblower novels. Now, the film and TV shows have been on numerous times over the years on British TV but, I’ve somehow never got around to seeing any of them. For Father’s Day this year I wanted to get him a good Blu Ray transfer of the film starring Gregory Peck as the titular character but, nobody in the UK or the US seem to have put it out in a restored format. But I got one put out in Spain and, I have to say, it’s a fine transfer and has the full English language track on it. 

Forester himself helped somewhat to adapt his stories to the big screen for this one, which is based on three Hornblower tales (two novels and one short story I am told). I don’t know how this one is handled as an adaptation but, in one section where an officer has his leg injured but recovers sufficiently in order to have more adventures later in the movie, well... all my dad said was about this matter was that, in the book, he loses that leg. 

The film starts us with a scene of Hornblower having one of his crew flogged and it shows everything about his character as he takes an officer aside and impresses on him that it’s because that officer threatened the crew member with flogging that he has ordered it so. He personally disagrees with it and thinks it a harsh punishment but needs to uphold the officer’s judgement in the eyes of the men... but that said officer should think twice before lightly referring to this kind of judicial penalty in future. Which says everything, I think, about the kind of man Hornblower is.

And from hereon in it becomes a series of naval adventures where political decisions are enforced with broadside cannon runs and swordfighting. There’s even a love interest in the form of Lady Barbara Wellesley, played by Virginia Mayo, who was something of an afterthought in the casting, it would appear but who handles the role magnificently. Alas, both Hornblower and Wellesley are married to other people but, the film makes that right in the end so they can continue their shipboard romance on the mainland by the end of the movie. 

There are a few other actors of interest such as an early role for Stanley Baker and a character played by Mr. Pastry himself, Richard Hearne. Not to mention uncredited roles for Sam Kydd and Richard Johnson. Perhaps the most striking of the uncredited roles was the captain of a Spanish vessel who swordfights with Hornblower in one scene, played by Christopher Lee, still a few years away from his big break out role in the Hammer films. 

But my biggest surprise in the movie was the presence of James Roberston Justice as seaman Quist. Now I’m used to seeing the hulking, portly presence of Justice in comedy roles as pompous authority figures in films in the Doctor or Carry On series (for instance). In this one he’s a little slimmer than I remember him, doing a different accent but still as lovable a character as he is in his more comedic roles, for sure. I really loved him in this and I think I need to try and track down some more films where he’s playing against type. 

And that’s me done with Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., I think, other than to note that another great Forrester novel which caused a big splash in Hollywood was Humphrey Bogart’s Oscar winning vehicle The African Queen. Another entertaining movie but, I think this is pretty good too. I remember reading back in the day that Gene Roddenberry’s concept for Star Trek was Hornblower in Space and this movie certainly bears that out, I think. Even the three note motif that the sailors use to pipe the Captain on and off board, sounded vaguely familiar to my ears... and then I realised it’s the same three notes that Roddenberry used on his communicators in the original Star Trek series so, yeah, Hornblower in space indeed. Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. is a splendid adventure yarn, though and, I’d certainly recommend it to lovers of old Hollywood movies. Very entertaining. 

The Face Of Fu Manchu

Fu’s On First

The Face Of Fu Manchu
UK/West Germany 1965
Directed by Don Sharp
Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

The Face Of Fu Manchu is the first of a box set of five new Blu Rays put out by the Powerhouse/Indicator label called The Fu Manchu Cycle 1965 - 1969. It’s the first really great package for these films on home video in the UK (after countless releases on far away shores) and, like many of the Indicator releases, crammed full of extras, a booklet, postcards, posters and beautiful HD restorations of the films.

I first saw these on BBC2 in the early to mid 1970s, when they used to show around about 5.40pm. It was one of those things we watched as a family, at the time, on a black and white TV set and, I’m sure, in a ‘pan and scan experience’ (which became the bane of my life in terms of trying to watch films on television in this country in the 70s, 80s and 90s). Now, this wasn’t the first time the infamous Chinese doctor had appeared in film but the cinematic scene for his particular brand of devastating villainy was less in demand by the 1960s. There were silent film serials, three talkies for Paramount starring Warner Oland as the devil doctor (before he went off to play Charlie Chan in a whole series of movies), one with Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy, and a TV series with Henry Brandon in the 1950s which didn’t really go anywhere and which, I seem to remember, was just about beginning to seem a little ‘politically incorrect’ for its time... not that they had that catch all buzz phrase to excuse censorship back then.

So when quickie exploitation producer Harry Alan Towers, who had produced some successful German Krimi, came up with the idea of bringing back the role of a running super villain into cinemas, he bought the character rights from Sax Rohmer’s widow and then came up with his own scripts (written under a nom de plume), because it was cheaper than buying the rights to the actual books.

Sax Rohmer was the popular pen name of Arthur Henry Ward who, after some initial success with the character with the first three books, after a very long pause, wrote another ten. I read these around about 15 years ago and they weren’t what I was expecting. Fu Manchu is not all about torturing and killing people (although the subject does tend to turn up)... they were more pulp adventures in the style of many of the time and I have to say I loved them. The main protagonist for a number of them was Nayland Smith, sometimes aided by Dr. Petrie... although the regular protagonists did tend to come and go and then return again as the stories were written. Asides from Fu Manchu himself, his evil daughter Fah Lo Suee was also a regular character, although she is often given a totally different name, depending on which film series you watch. In these five she is played by Tsai Chin, who starred in this full cycle alongside Christopher Lee in his ‘Chinese make-up’ as the title character. She regrets doing them now, I believe.

Howard Marion-Crawford is also in all five films as Dr. Petrie but the actor playing Sir Nayland Smith chops and changes a few times. Marion-Crawford would die fairly early in life, the same year that the last of these was released, in 1969. In this one he is assisting Nigel Green in the role of Smith, an actor who I always like although he also died early, in 1972, from an overdose (possibly accidental) of sleeping pills. He plays the role absolutely beautifully, I have to say and it’s really a shame that he didn’t go on to do more of these ones.

Completing the main cast are Joachim Fuchsberger... who acts as a kind of additional, younger Dr. Petrie supplemental figure to take on more of the physical action... and Karin Dor as the daughter of a scientist who Fu Manchu kidnaps, to perfect a killer virus to wipe out cities in England if his demands are not met. I found it interesting that, after showing his hand and announcing he will be making his demands in two days, the plot is foiled and we never get to see just exactly what his demands are. Also, be on the look out for a couple of nice cameo scenes by famous British actor James Robertson Justice... as the head of a museum which has the ‘final secrets of the black poppy potion’ that Fu Manchu needs to enable the scientist to concoct his deadly poison. I found it interesting, since I’m writing this article days after a possible vaccine to Coronavirus ‘may’ have been found*, that one of the primary concerns is keeping the poison at the correct cold temperature so it isn’t rendered useless.

Anyway, despite being very cheap but, absolutely cheerful and, perhaps, because all of the cast are playing it absolutely straight... the film was a huge success (especially in America where the publicity department had Fu Manchu For President posters made up during the elections... apparently he got a lot of write in votes and, if you pre-ordered the box set direct from Indicator as I did, you’ll get an additional reproduction poster added to the set... alas, mine arrived with a torn corner). So a new, mini franchise of diminishing returns (and possibly diminishing quality from what I’m hearing... I really can’t remember these films very well) was born and thrived at a rate of one picture per year for five years.

And it’s a real humdinger of a pacey story... beginning with the execution by beheading of Fu Manchu himself at the start, witnessed by Sir Nayland Smith. It’s a great scene and the aftermath, a static long shot of everyone leaving the square in which the execution took place, leaving Smith and the headless body in the centre of the screen while the rain and thunder starts hammering down, is when the opening credits play out, without music. Actually, the film is very sparsely scored indeed, with very few musical cues and the only thing I can think of regarding this is... orchestra time isn’t cheap and these were made on a very small budget.

The film looks great though and Sharp does some really nice stuff with some of his shot compositions. For example, there’s a great scene where Fu Manchu and his daughter are waiting to hear some news on the radio. Her head is in close up filling the left third of the screen, looking at the big radio also in close up filling the right third of the screen. Framed between them in long shot is Fu Manchu sitting on his throne. Yeah, visually interesting shots like these are why I watch movies, to be honest.

There are some curious things happening too. For instance, there are quite a lot of ‘day for night’ filters used in some sequences but, in one scene only, the screen is also washed a dark blue. It looks great but I could find no visual correlation between this and the way the rest of the night sequences in the film were handled. Also, when Fuchsberger and Green have a fist fight in a darkened room before it’s revealed that the intruder is Smith himself, there was no way I would have recognised it was Nigel Green’s character because the guy doubling for him during the fight is way fatter and looks nothing like him. Such is the easy charm of these films that I love these little glitches rather than having them spoiling the movie for me.

There are some very nice moments too. For example, I haven’t heard the term ‘pea souper’ in relation to the London fog for a very long time (even in movies), so that was nice. Also, Fuchsberger has a narrow escape when he clambers up a load of cardboard tubes in a warehouse which are tied up with string  and, as two of Fu Manchu’s dacoits run up after him, he cuts the string as he jumps off and the rolls all... well... roll away from under the feet of his pursuers. Admittedly, the stunt would probably have been more dynamically staged nowadays but, it’s a nice idea and I appreciated it.

The film finishes with the supposed death of the title character, which you totally don’t believe because you always hear him just before the end of the credits of each film heralding his return... but I was a bit surprised that Smith and his allies thought it was okay to blow up a whole Tibetan monastery of people just to kill the villain and make good their escape. I see that as more than a little problematic.

All in all, The Face Of Fu Manchu is a total romp and I had an absolute blast with it. The presentation is fantastic too and, among the extras on this particular disc, is a nice piece by Sir Christopher Frayling who talks about the author, the character and the continual proliferation of the racially prejudiced undercurrent ready to latch on to the threat of The Yellow Peril... a point he makes with a bang up to date story about a student who was beaten up during the coronavirus lockdown. I’ve said before that there are quite a few absolutely brilliant Blu Ray boxed editions which have found their way onto the marketplace recently and, honestly, this is one of the best of them. If you have an interest in the character or this particular period of British movie making then it’s definitely one to pick up. Absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to watch the next one. The review will follow shortly.

*Sorry, my scheduling of these reviews depends on various other factors and this review was supposed to go up last year.

 

The Harry Alan Towers Fu Manchu Cycle at NUTS4R2

 The Face Of Fu  Manchu

The Brides Of Fu Manchu

The Vengeance Of Fu Manchu

The Blood Of Fu Manchu

The Castle Of Fu Manchu 

Zeta One

Zeta Max

Zeta One (aka The Love Factor)
UK 1969 Directed by Michael Cort
Tigon/Jezebel Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: I guess this technically
has spoilers in it all the way through.

Wow, this is terrible. Almost entertainingly bad to an extent, sure, but... terrible nonetheless.

I bought this on US Blu Ray a few years ago and have only now just gotten around to watching it. All I can say is that I’m really glad I got this one as it’s a great example of something that you just couldn’t imagine getting green lit today. Very much a product of its time... although I don’t think it was very well received back in its day either. Not surprisingly.

It was conceived as being a companion piece to the sadomasochistic imagery of a science fiction based, regularly running photo spread in Zeta fashion magazine but the film is trying really hard to be a Bond parody, mixing it up with a sci-fi plot line... if it can be seen as having a plot line (or at least one that makes any sense whatsoever). It starts off with a Bondian ‘almost song’, Zeta, playing over some distinctly non-Bond like credits employing some nice, static stills from the production. This is probably the best part of the movie.

We then go into the opening sequence where we see James Word (I guess his word is his Bond?) arriving home at his apartment, played by actor Robin Hawdon. In an entirely unsuccessful parody of a sequence in Doctor No (reviewed here), when Bond realises there is an intruder in his rooms. Here we watch as the moustached Word creeps around his apartment before opening the kitchen door and stumbling over some cleaning equipment, falling at the feet of this film’s equivalent of a sexy Miss Moneypenny substitute, who is there to cook for him and seduce him. It won’t take you very long to figure out why, either... but they unbelievably leave it until the end of the movie as some kind of ‘surprise moment’, I guess.

Anyway, when he falls at the feet of this starlet, his moustache is left hanging half off and it’s half revealed that he was wearing it as, I dunno, some kind of a disguise. Or, I suspect, he was wearing it so that all this footage which forms a bookend to the main ‘story’ in flashback, and which I’m guessing was shot sometime after the main production in order to pad out the running time, would match up to earlier footage of the actor when he had a real moustache... perhaps.

This James Word character seems totally inept when it comes to walking around in the film, often stumbling over things. However, other than constantly picking himself up, he doesn’t play the role with any comedic air at all and so his constant, gravity challenged shenanigans seem a bit strange and disconcerting on a character who is supposed to be the hero. Not that he actually leaves his apartment for the entire first half of the film, believe it or not.

So, anyway, the girl is in his flat and they talk and then play an interminably long game of strip poker, with inappropriate comedy scoring and a complete lack of sexual intrigue, despite the nudity content of this and many other scenes in the movie. She wins the game (but not before stripping off) and therefore gets to ask James about his recent mission, while they are cuddling in bed. Cue the actual film... after this opening scene has gone on for, believe it or not, over 20 minutes. Over 20 minutes of the first bit of padding. I believe the original director may have been ‘removed’ from the production half way through the shoot and, if that’s the case, this could explain a lot.

Word starts telling his story and then we finally get to something which very vaguely resembles a plot. Word’s boss W (which I guess is an inverted M... more Bond games) tells him about a place called Angvia (guess that’s another less than subtle anagram, then) populated by a race of only women, who kidnap worthy ladies from Earth society and brainwash them to fit in with the Angvian way. However, nobody seems to know whether they are from another planet or another dimension or what? All I can tell you is they live in some kind of impractical, psychedelic studio set and they can pop up in our streets out of thin air at the touch of a button. As can their big lorry which kinda phases in and out of reality in a country lane, presumably to load up their kidnapped lady folk. Strangely enough, their ability to materialise and dematerialise seems to desert them at any time they find themselves in trouble... I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Okay... so now we have the main villains of the film. When I tell you the villainous Major Boudon and his favourite henchman Swyne are played by ‘Carry On...’ veterans James Robertson Justice and Charles Hawtrey, I could totally understand that you’d think this movie was a comedy of some sorts but, if that is what it’s also trying to be, it’s a very poor one, it has to be said. Nobody actually does or says anything funny, that’s for sure and seeing the glee in which Boudon and Swyne want to torture any captured Angvians is really not what people are going to want to remember these two beloved National Treasures for. Especially with James Robertson Justice coming out with appalling lines, on discovering an Angvian spying on his house, like “Swyne. There's a bitch in the bushes. Go and see what she wants.” Major B wants to conquer the Angvians and take over their kingdom... but there seems to be absolutely no motivation or reason given as to why that would be during the entire running time of the film... along with lots of other absent details.

Meanwhile, back in the other part of the plot which actually never meets up with these villains, James has lost the woman he’s supposed to be meeting as she’s been kidnapped by Angvians. So he goes to see his boss on the 13th floor of his offices, finally getting him out of his apartment after 45 minutes into the film. He goes up to see him in an automated, talking lift that is a real jobsworth of an elevator and is, presumably, an attempt to ‘comedy up’ the general proceedings. The lift won’t take him up to the 13th floor as it’s superstitious but, when the doors open, James seems to have reached his destination anyway... as he’s sent to Scotland to try and rescue an Angvian from the clutches of Boudon for... oh, the plot points really escape me on this one. Don’t judge me too harshly, I believe I’m not the only person who can’t find a coherent way through this movie.

In the meantime the kidnapped girl is taken to the Angvian headquarters, allowing the audience a splendid view of quarter naked,  half naked and fully naked women in baths, eating fruit and in combat training. It is a colony of bizarre decorative shapes and kaleidoscopic effects. The ‘fighting corp’ exercises look very silly, however. Although it’s nice to see one of my favourite Hammer icons, Valerie Leon, wandering around in almost nothing.

We find that the Angvians use those stupid 1960s movie magical tele-screens which allows them to see anything that’s happening in ‘our’ world and that they employ left over sound effects from episodes of my favourite TV show The Prisoner. The kidnapped lady in question is pushed into a mechanical machine and she comes out in a chamber, laying face down but somehow naked on an invisible board in a black room with psychedelic wax lamp style designs swirling around her, badly superimposed into the foreground. We watch her spinning around and upside down for a while but it seems that when she comes out of this chamber she is not, in any way, reconditioned.

Elsewhere, a rescue mission has gone wrong and one of the Angvians is in trouble, so another prominent Angvian, who has been pumping James Word for information (not the person in the framing story), goes to Scotland at the pop of a button to rescue her. For some reason the girls can materialise and dematerialise anywhere, when and where they please... unless they’re in trouble. Then the cavalry arrive with their special powers which the same girls also seem to posses so... you know, they had many easy ways to escape if they wanted to. James also runs around the Scottish forests... or should I say ‘stumbles’ through them... but doesn’t actually arrive until the end of the story and once the two main villains have somehow just completely dropped out from the narrative of the movie, after a gang of henchmen have been taken out by Angvians... I’ll get there in a minute, people.

Meanwhile, our original kidnapped gal tries to escape by opening a pointless tube, much like a ventilation shaft but with no apparent purpose to it, and crawling down miles of twisty, turney tubes, rubbing her clothes against the edges at all angles and constantly revealing anatomical features of her body as the clothes get caught in the pipes. However, one of the trained elite also spots she is gone and gives chase by entering the same series of tubes and... doing exactly the same thing.

When the escapee gets loose, she takes on some of the trained military finest by karate chopping one of them and grabbing one of their belts which she flings at another two, the belt wrapping around their torsos, trapping them together. Except... hold on a minute. For a planet or, you know, possibly a strange dimension, that has no male population, the reverse shot of the throwing seems to show a man’s hand guiding the belt to the correct destination, flashing in from the left of the screen. Hmmm.... good production values on this one then... and all lovingly restored in the high definition Blu Ray format that films like this so obviously deserve.

Meanwhile, again, the head of the Angvians, Zeta, played fleetingly in scenes by Dawn Addams, sends her military unit to the rescue in Scotland using the Anglian intelligence codes for their rigorous strategies... in this case she orders... “Action 69, fast”. Um... which apparently means a lot of scantily clad dominatrix types come to the rescue by using what I can only describe as ‘air karate’ on a load of endless henchmen. And when I say ‘air karate’ I mean just that. They point their hands in anyone’s direction and a manipulated thunderclap peels on the soundtrack as their victims go flying. Which make you wonder why the Angvian they’re coming to save didn’t do that to her captors in the first place... or... you know.... just teleport herself somewhere else, as we know they can do.

And that’s nearly the end. There’s a pile of henchmen laying in the forest but no James Robertson Justice or Charles Hawtrey among them and, bizarrely, nobody asking questions about where they are either. So much for the bizarrely convoluted nothing of a plot. We then jump back to the book end scenes where, big surprise, it’s revealed the Moneypenny character is also, secretly, an Angvian and she kidnaps James Word, taking him to her realm to breed with the population in the ‘inseminating room’ so that they can perpetuate their species. Why they’re only now realising they’re short of men is anybody’s guess. In the insemination room we see various naked women lounging around James between his inseminating duties... apart from one strange lady who is doing the most bizarre and energetically out of place dance you’ve ever seen in the left of the shot. Here, James is constantly fed a diet of champagne and raw oysters to keep him up to his new job, between girls. And that’s that... the end.

Okay... so this is one of the most ludicrously plotless films you’ve ever seen. You may think the 1960s Casino Royale movie or the Dr. Goldfoot films are inanely insane but this movie makes those look like absolute masterpieces in comparison. It sounds fun, on paper but... it really isn’t. I’m not quite sure why this has had a US Blu Ray release but I am at least grateful that Jezebel have put this out... if only so people who watch it can warn others about it. If you’re a seasoned veteran of watching 1960s tosh that possibly should never have gotten out of the script stage, then you’d certainly want to add Zeta One to your library. For anyone else, however, this movie will probably seem like a colossal waste of time. This kind of movie is exactly my cup of tea and even I had some problems with it. This movie gets an A for enthusiasm but an E for effort, I think.