Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D

Every Witchery Way

Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D
Germany/USA 2013
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Playing at cinemas now.

Alrighty.

So now we have the big gingerbread house of a movie that is Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. It’s an intriguing concept, in that it’s something I’ve not expected to see in terms of using a source material to inspire a gung-ho action flick and the writer/director’s certainly taken a good stab at doing something which is almost as irresistible as the succulent confection of a witches abode that features so heavily in the source fairy tale (and also at certain points in the movie). It’s certainly a lot of fun, that’s for sure.

There are also a few problems with it which I’ll also highlight a little as I go through my personal witch hunting experience.

If you don’t already know, this film is a kick-ass action movie in much the same camp as the badly received Stephen Sommers movie Van Helsing, from almost a decade ago. This may be, I suppose why a lot of people don't seem to be that turned on about going to see it... which is a shame because it’s got some nice things to offer. Now, I happen to have really loved the Van Helsing movie so, when I saw the trailers for this film featuring crossbows, gatling guns, flying witchery, Famke Jannsen, Jeremy Renner (who I like a lot as an action hero, ever since I first became aware of him in 28 Weeks Later) and, as the lovely icing on an already rich cake, the fantastic UK actress/glamour puss phenomenon who is Gemma Arterton... I was already kinda full on gagging to see this particular movie.

The film starts off with a pre-credits recap of the fairy tale version of the story (or “a” version of the story) for people who don’t know it, which neatly leads onto an ultimately expected but still nice little revelation about the main protagonists later on in the movie. It’s a pretty cool sequence and, the young girl in particular, looks very much like Gemma Arterton, who she grows up to be while the opening credits sequence plays out. This particular title sequence is a real masterpiece in itself (especially in 3D) with “newspaper” articles which trace the path of the two witch hunters as they grow up and make a name for themselves in the... ahem... “Witch Hunters For Hire” business. The nature of the illustrative drawings used and the way they are presented in 3D make them almost look like those old, Victorian, Pollock’s Toy Theatre cutouts (black and white for a penny, colour for tuppence) and this helps lend a certain sense of larger than life theatricality to the proceedings as we then plunge into a “witch trial” which is stopped by the title characters in their grown up form.

These characters are quick and easy to be established through some verbal and physical shorthand and then the basic plot (and it is pretty basic, it has to be said, though there’s nothing wrong with that) is out of the way and everyone can get on with the witch hunting and general “beating-upness” of the movie in some set pieces which are half way between dazzling and, unfortunately, bewildering. Yes, this movie suffers from some confusing editing during the action sequences, it’s true, but I’m hoping when (and that is a when, not an if) I watch this movie again, on DVD, some of the - fight/chase/run/fight a bit more - sequences will make more sense. To be fair, it might have been that my brain was trying to cope with all the 3D effects and, in tight juxtaposition with a fast action sequence, I was just not processing the information fast enough.

There are some nice supporting characters in the shape of Hansel’s red headed love interest played by the very beautiful Pihla Viitala and also “Hansel & Gretel’s biggest fan”, played by Thomas Mann (who turns in a really likeable performance and who is not to be confused with the German geezah who wrote Death In Venice). The film also features Peter Stormare in a minor villain role but, although he is more than worthy of the character, he never really gets the chance to let rip with his particular kind of craziness and I think this is a case of the specific casting choice raising this viewers expectations of the character via the baggage of his previous roles... which is a shame but, hey, he’s still excellent and credible in it, so I need to temper my expectations a little, maybe.

There’s some nice business with a troll character that I really liked and he really drives home one of the things that I’d kind of subconsciously noticed right from the outset but which was then pushed to the front of my mind when I watched the first big sequence with this character... this film is not for little kids. It’s violent, for sure, but I was kind of expecting it to be the Marvel comic book style of turning violence into a bloodless ballet, which the majority of large budget films over the last decade or so have been guilty of, primarily because of censorship issues and the fears said censorship would have on the box office. This, however, is quite gory all the way through, with loads of decapitation, head pulping, bodies torn apart, bodies exploding and, you know, all the gory stuff. It wasn’t until after I’d seen the movie, when I looked up the director to write this review, that I realised it was written and directed by the same guy who wrote and directed Dead Snow (aka Dod Sno), the excellent, tongue in cheek nazi-zombie movie which was on everyone’s radar a few years ago. This explains a lot. I certainly can’t say I prefer Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters over Dead Snow (which I loved) but now i understand why this movie was refreshingly, for the kind of movie it is, blessed with a penchant for gory bloodletting when it could so easily have bypassed that aspect of the production.

I also think there may have been script issues along the way too... which is a shame. There are some nice details and little character props put in the film and one of these is the fact that, due to Hansel’s childhood experience at the original witch’s gingerbread lair, he has to inject himself with a substance every couple of hours or die... which could have made for a suspenseful scene towards the end of the picture but, alas, all references to this facet of the character seem to fly out of the window by the end of the movie and he goes for long stretches of time without even once “pulling out his plunger” after a certain point. There’s one scene which may explain the reasons for this in terms of story logic, except if that is what was going on, it wasn’t made implicit enough, for me at least, to register. What I think, is more likely, is that the film was originally a much longer cut and the sequences explaining just what is going on in relation to this story element were lost in the edit somewhere along the line. Personally I’d like to see a longer version of this movie where stuff like this is addressed at some point in my near future. Oh well... maybe with the blu-ray.

Another script issue might be the language, which seemed a bit too modern in a lot of places... specifically when it came to the use of swear words in whatever the time period of this film is supposed to be covering. I remember reading an article when I was a kid about “controlled anachronism” in the context of fantasy fiction but, frankly, there’s a lot of reference to “those f*cking witches” throughout the film and this did seem to lessen the credibility of the central characters somewhat... I would have personally gone with a more antiquated set of swear words to run through the film but, all in all, it doesn’t really spoil the movie too much and the pacing is such that you never really have too much time to think about it before being yanked into the next set piece.

So, in essence, what we have here is a movie which is a rollicking action fest, if that’s your thing, and has some pretty cool actors playing some characters with a fair bit of heart and depth (although, it is a shorthand sketchy kind of depth, to be sure) tearing through an adult fairy tale at a fairly fast pace with a good amount of gore thrown into the mix. Some nice scoring, too, in the few places you can actually hear it properly (it does tend to get buried in the mix in places) which I’m looking forward to grabbing for a “stand alone” listen when it gets released towards the end of next month.

This is not the best action movie going, by a long shot, but it is trying something new and it is, by and large, a fairly enjoyable romp in the cinema if you’ve got nothing else to do one night. I’d recommend it to most people but don't go into it with really high expectations... this director is in better form with nazi zombies than he is with twisted fairy tales.

Doc Savage: The Infernal Buddha

Buddha Keen, A Contender

Doc Savage The Infernal Buddha
by Will Murray 
writing as Kenneth Robeson
Altus Press 
ISBN: 978-1618270597

Warning: There are some spoilers in this review. Sorry.

So here we have the third of Will Murray’s second batch of Doc Savage novels (also reviewed here and here), following on from the batch he wrote in the early 1990s. Once again it’s a tale of high adventure using some of the characters we’re all familiar with from the original Lester Dent stories of the 1930s and onwards and, as usual with this guys work on the series, it’s got a lot going for it and Murray proves himself a more than worthy successor to the legacy of Street and Smith Publications' house name Kenneth Robeson.

This novel is a bit of a curious one in what you are actually getting, in terms of maybe a little more deviation from the formula than you might be comfortable with... although I think in this case, when respectfully done, it refreshes and updates, in the most positive way, the franchise for a new generation of readers (much like what Russel T. Davies did with Doctor Who a few years back). Different from the usual formula in that, while it all locks together as a single story, the structure of this one is such that it’s almost like it’s split into two different mini adventures. If I were any kind of football fan I might say it’s definitely a novel of two halves... but I’m not so I’ll try to make myself a little clearer.

The story involves a bunch of pirates headed by the first main villain of the piece, who comes into possession of an artefact called the Buddha’s Toe... which is about as dangerous a weapon as you’re going to get. Something happens when you open the box that houses the Buddha’s Toe, in that everything from the area in front of the box is dried up and made devoid of moisture, including people who quickly mummify up and die in seconds if they’re not beating a very hasty retreat. Doc Savage becomes embroiled in the affair and he obviously makes it his business to get the toe out of the hands of the murdering pirates who would possess it for themselves and unleash a deadly force which could destroy the world without even knowing what they are doing... and this he achieves in the first half of the book... the lead pirate mummifying to death in the power struggle which takes place, for the most part, on an island. Then things get more complicated as the Buddha’s Toe is merely a fragment of another artefact with the same properties, only much larger and more threatening.

The second half of the story follows Doc as he poses as a pirate in an attempt to wrest control of the more powerful artefact form the obsessive Japanese destroying Chinese cutthroats who would unleash it’s power in a similarly ignorant attempt to control a force that would be best left outside of their grasp. Things get a bit dicey for Doc and the gang but it all works out in the end... as you can probably guess.

An interesting and, for me, disappointing thing about this novel was that not all of The Amazing Five, Doc’s gang of aides, are present in the story. This is nothing new for the Doc Savage stories, and as the original thrillers used to be absent a number of the five towards the end of the run in 1949, you can’t fault Murray for jettisoning a few characters that he thought might have either been clogging up the action or providing too much of a deux ex machina in their collaboration in this story. So this one just features Monk, Ham and Rennie as Doc’s invaluable aides. I was distraught that Patricia Savage didn’t make the cut in this one either... I always like the stories where Doc’s cousin Pat is present, bronzed amazon adventuress that she is.

What you do get in this one is a more vulnerable Doc who does often find himself in situations which he doesn’t quite know how to handle. Now don’t panic, I know how that’s going to sound to any Savage fan, but you needn’t worry because the character in the original stories did used to have occasional brushes with uncertainty every now and again too. Let’s face it, although people lionise their heroes because of their superhuman, less flawed characteristics... that can sometimes make for a dull story. Instead, Murray gives us a version of Doc who has to rely on his wits just a little more than usual but, like I said, it’s not a bad call and, as long as he doesn’t start doing this in every novel, I personally think it’s acceptable once in a while. Not that he’s writing these for me, of course.

An especially great touch is when Doc loses his metal skull cap. It wasn’t mentioned too much in the original tales, as far as I recall, but it was certainly a part of the character which has always been there right from the beginning. Doc Savage’s fine hair is actually a facsimile of the same hair which sits underneath a metal skullcap, used to deflect bullets if Doc has to go diving head first into a brawl... it’s a stupid but brilliant invention and it's typical of the 1930s culture that spawned it. Like I said, it’s always there but rarely referred to this pointedly in the original series... and here, Murray spotlights it in one scene and uses it to make the hero even more vulnerable in a tight position. Using this stuff as a dramatic device is a good call and it works really well here because long term fans of the series will get another hit of “Savage nostalgia” while it also serves to put the key characters under more pressure. Bravo, Mr. Murray.

My one big complaint, and its a similar one I had when I was reading the denouement of his earlier novel Doc Savage: The Desert Demons (reviewed here), is that although the less than understandable destructive power of the Infernal Buddha is explained away in typical, for the series, scientific manner... the origin of the artefact in question is less explainable and relies on the reader swallowing a possible extraterrestrial origin. I personally think this is less than acceptable in a series that only once (to my knowledge), in its original incarnation, presented the “object of mystery”, as something genuinely unexplainable for Doc... which is something which was saved for his very last adventure, Up From Earth’s Centre, when the pulp magazine was cancelled. So, yeah, I would have preferred a lot more down to earth explanation for the title’s artefact in this story, methinks, but ultimately it didn’t detract too much from a solid adventure yarn, on the whole.

Also, while the cover artwork is another triumph of fantastic painting, I thought the subject matter was a little less in keeping with the spirit of the covers that have come before it over the last 80 years and it also spoils one of the possible surprises in one of the chapters... instead of letting realisation slowly dawn as to the identity of a new character arrival, we just have to remember the front cover illustration. So that could possibly have tipped novice Doc Savage readers off... seasoned readers will have jumped on it anyway as soon as the character appears.

All in all, though, I have to say that I really enjoyed this one and am especially looking forward to the March 80th anniversary story where Doc Savage crosses paths with another famous 1930s icon, King Kong. Can’t wait for that one. The Infernal Buddha is definitely a delight to read, however, and gets a hefty recommendation from me for any fans of the character who are still willing to go along for the ride. Good stuff!

Nude Nuns With Big Guns

Nun’s The Wiser

Nude Nuns With Big Guns
2010 USA
Directed by Joseph Guzman
Havana Films Blu Ray Region B

Nuns? Yes.
Nude nuns? Oh yes.
With guns? Affirmative.
Big guns? As the film carries on the guns get a bit bigger so... yes, very much so.

As you can see from my blindingly scientific and rigorous critical technique above, I have perhaps come to the conclusion that Jospeh Guzman’s grindhouse homage, Nude Nuns With Big Guns, does exactly what it says on the tin.

That’s not always a recommendation , of course, and if you’re a somewhat seasoned film watcher like me and you come across a title of this kind of... um... calibre, you’ll know that even if the writers/directors of these kinds of things managed to live up to the title... it can still be a dull and deadly affair with the name of the tale being just about the only thing that’s interesting about it.

I’m happy to report, however, that Nude Nuns With Big Guns exceeded my expectations for it.

This film seems to be based, from what little information I can glean, on Guzman’s original short of the same title, which is actually just one scene which would then make it’s way into the final feature, with the actresses and roles slightly changed around. But it’s made, I would think, with the wave of modern grindhouse movies very much in mind and it does nothing to hide its influences, perhaps wearing them on it’s celluloidal sleeve just a little too obviously but in a way that will, I suspect, be much appreciated by fans of this kind of work. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about here...

Grindhouse: Planet Terror, Grindhouse: Death Proof, Machete (reviewed here), Hobo With A Shotgun (reviewed here)... this film is very much trying to hold its own with these kinds of movies and, I have to say, it succeeds at this very well. Right from the outset we have a modern day take on the early 70s exploitation thriller which really makes sure that no grimy, sleazy stone is left unturned to make up the proper ingredients for a jaw dropping and mostly quite dumb hour and a half of escapist mayhem.

The villains are unpleasant and vicious, of course. They do nasty things like rape and kill... but that’s always a good way to get the audience’s back up and ensure that when the time for final retribution comes, as it does in this tale of an abused nun coming back for revenge and doing “the lords work” in her best “old testament” style of anger, wrath and fury... the audience is on her side when it comes to the films tough and “if you’re a geezah cross your legs” grizzly denouement.

But of course, since it’s trying its darndest to be a tight, little exploitation movie, you can be sure the path to revenge will take the sleaziest of routes possible as the titular Sister Sarah (played unflinchingly by Asun Ortega) and her “lesbian lover nun sidekick” spend as much time out of their habits as they do getting back in them and going into battle fully locked and loaded. The film gets all the clichéd genre thrills squeezed into its short running time and, even when the characters in the movie are being their most unpleasant, you can be sure that the filmmakers will put something humorous or “knowing” into the editing style to give you a little smile, even at the most inappropriate of times.

The film asks you to suspend your disbelief because one of the things you have to accept about the landscape and network of villages this plays out in, is that all the nunes and priests are drug dealers and are the religious equivalent of a kind of low life mafia. Against this backdrop, Sister Sarah walks as God’s right hand gun, and if the movie does tend to make you think of the lone western gunman roaming the desert and doing the Lord’s work, then I really think it’s supposed to. In terms of the twisted morality and the prevalence, no matter how grim, of an angry, vengeful justice of sorts, the tone of this movie comes across no less as a modern, but not that modern, take on the classic Italian spaghetti western idiom.

And it has a lot of help with that on the musical front too, with Dan Gross’ score being a definite cross between emphasising a kind of rerun of the heavy Planet Terror music (and it’s really close on that front) and a typical Morricone meets Nicolai mode of spaghetti western scoring in the quieter passages. So if you find yourself thinking the locations and some of the stylistic tweaks are similar to something you’ve seen in those Italian oaters... I really don’t think you were supposed to think any other way.

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, fair warning. The villains are very well played, which also means they’re thoroughly unpleasant and commit atrocities you might have a hard time having fun with... but like I said earlier, that’s all part of the tension and release part of the game on these kinds of revenge movies and if you can handle this kind of stuff then you shouldn’t have a hard ride with this one.

The performances on this are all very good including a little bit of business with modern character actor Bill Oberst Jr that will come back to haunt you if you stay to the films, enigmatic, last minute or so of footage. If you’ve seen and loved films like Machete and are also into watching such lowly 70s fodder as They Call Me One Eye and The Blood Spattered Bride in the spirit in which they are intended, then you shouldn’t find yourself having too much of a problem and probably quite like, Nude Nuns With Big Guns. If you’re anyone else, however, I’d definitely say “stay away”.

American Mary

Rocks ‘n’ Modders

American Mary
2012 Canada
Directed by Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska
Universal Blu Ray Region B

Okay, so American Mary is a second feature both written and directed by The Soska Sisters after their fairly well received opening feature Dead Hooker In A Trunk (which I confess to not having seen myself, I’m afraid). I was kind of looking forward to this because I figured something set against a backdrop of the body modification community would probably start to get vaguely surreal and, possibly, if they decided to shy away from the sense of fun which I’m sure must exist in this kind of human landscape-changing pastime, maybe even a little disturbing. Alas, I can’t quite give this one a full thumbs up (or even a full thumbs off) because it kind of left me disengaged from the action on screen to the extent that I was wondering when the movie was going to go into more grotesque or edgy territory... which turned out to be never.

On the other hand, the plus side is that it’s incredibly well directed, well performed by all the key actors and looks fantastic on a visual level. So there’s that.

The titular character (although I’ve no idea why they decided to throw the word American in there) is Mary Mason, played by Katharine Isabelle, who ensured her status as a horror film genre favourite in the role of Ginger in the Ginger Snaps movies... however, if you’re looking for a horror movie in American Mary, then I’m afraid you are going to be out of luck. It maybe bears a resemblance to the American slasher movies which were themselves inspired by the Italian giallo films of the sixties and seventies, but even so, it’s a mild slasher at best if you’re coming at it from that angle.

Isabelle’s performance is strong but, from what I’ve read from a couple of lines in a couple of reviews on the IMDB, somewhat misunderstood and under appreciated. It might be something to do with the fact that we don’t share the full horror that Mary undergoes near the start and which flips a little light out in her head.

Mary, you see, is a genius of a surgery student who is having trouble keeping her apartment running and paid for while she completes her course. After being in the wrong place at the right time, she uses her surgical skills on an unconventional job for the owner of a strip club and then all manner of body modification jobs come her way for big money. Meanwhile, she is drugged and raped at a “surgeon’s party” and that’s when the light in Mary’s head goes out and she leaves college and embraces the dark surgery she is good at... starting with a less than pleasant and ongoing revenge on her ex-tutor who raped her.

Isabelle plays the part from hereon in as a person who is just numbed to everything that happens in her life... which is fine and it’s an acceptable and immensely watchable, enjoyable performance... but I think the directors could maybe have lent it a little more credibility to this acting choice by showing some brutal stuff happening to her rather than just the prelude to rape... yeah, I know, rape is an awful, evil thing... but if you shy away from it in the visuals (or even just panning off and letting the sound play out, maybe) then in movie terms, the character in this film maybe changes over into “desensitised Mary” just a little too quickly. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about on that one... you can make up your own mind on that one by giving this movie a quick spin.

On the super-plus side, the movie looks fantastic with muted browns, contrasting blues (yeah, I know, it gets a little clichéd at times but the sisters pull it off so well) and vibrant reds, not least of which is the brilliant crimson slashes of blood which is strange because in a movie about modification surgery and a couple of stabbings... there’s really not much in the way of disturbing imagery in this film... nor nudity. The shot designs and nicely lazy way in which the camera caresses the sets as it strives to soak up the atmosphere is brilliant and reminded me a lot of a David Lynch film... and one of the reasons it did so is because the violence and gore is kept to an absolute minimum, enveloped by the exquisite and rich textures captured in the mise-en-scene.

An argument could be made that the writers/directors were going for a slow, constant landscape with just an occasional “moment” of friction in heavy contrast and, while that seems to work very well with directors like Bergman or Tarkovsky, to name but two, it doesn’t really work in this film because there is no great shocking imagery showcased here. Frankly, if you want to see the extremities of body modification (and worse) these days, you just go on the internet and see it for free... so maybe there was a sense of not needing to show it in this movie. I don’t know. What I do know is that in the context of the movie, you needed to see more of what was going on, I think, if... indeed... the intention was to take a dark look at the scene. I’m not a body modder myself but I’m guessing it’s a full on, fun and friendly community but if you wanted to make a dark movie set in this world, there would still have been plenty of scope to do that with a more, “in your face before you realise it”, kind of modus operandi. So I did feel let down on being privy to a fuller understanding of the culture behind the story here... but again, maybe that’s just me.

On the other hand, American Mary is a gorgeous looking piece of work and the film in recent memory I’d most liken it to, although that one itself did a much better job of highlighting its particular fetish of choice and threading it into a narrative structure, would be Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (reviewed here), which I thought was similarly pulled off with a certain amount of taste and style not unlike the slightly less slow-burn movie that is American Mary. 

At the end of the day, if you’re a fan of the well crafted, beautifully lit shot, then you’ll get something out of American Mary. If, on the other hand, you are expecting a movie packed with nudity, gore and strange grotesquery, then you might find yourself a little disappointed in this film. Or you might not. The DVD and Blu Ray editions are on sale now and you won’t have to lop off an arm to get them... at least unless you want to feel a little more connected to the visually elusive subject matter of the movie.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Services Rendered

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

1969 UK

Directed by Peter Hunt

EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Warning: Some pretty heavy spoilers if you’ve never seen this masterpiece before.

“I love you. I know I'll never find another girl like you. 

Will you marry me?”

James Bond, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

C’mon, admit that you never expected to hear those words spoken or those sentiments conveyed in a Bond movie? But this is no ordinary Bond movie, you see. This is probably the most unique and, frankly, greatest Bond movie ever made... and it’s very different from any Bond movie made before or since. Although it comes from a very traditional Bond vintage of craftsmen.

Let's start with the film’s director Peter Hunt, who also happens to be the first person you see in this movie, reflected in a metal plaque for Universal Exports as he walks past it from screen right to left. This is the man who changed the course of editing, to some extent, when he broke all the rules on Dr. No which, along with all the EON Bond films prior to this one, he edited. The style of editing on this one is another step forward (a bit too much of a step forward, I think, for the motion picture industry at the time) and, although it wasn’t edited by him this time around, I am sure he was probably passing enough notes or sitting in with editor (and long term future Bond director) John Glen to be somewhat credited for the innovative cutting on this picture.

This one is certainly something of an oddity of a Bond film in terms of continuity too. As you will see if you read some of my future reviews (and some of my early ones) in this series on Bond films, the Bond team did themselves no favours in some of their decisions which quite often resulted in difficult continuity anomalies. This movie throws up just such an anomaly because Peter Hunt chose to make a movie very close to the original Ian Fleming novel, rather than carry on from You Only Live Twice. However, the story hangs on the idea that Bond and arch villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld have never actually met face to face before. There’s no way Blofeld could recognise 007 for this infiltration game to work... but clearly, in the previous film You Only Live Twice (reviewed here and not based on the original novel in anything other than name, really) they were chatting away together in the same room. So the film-makers obviously want you to forget that little detail and maybe take this as something of a restart to the series rather than a continuation. But it’s a strange choice if that was indeed the thinking behind this one because one could argue that it’s a reboot... except for the fact that all the way through the film the director is reminding you of the past Bond films in an effort to make the general public forget that Sean Connery had left the series and accept George Lazenby as, in the words of the trailers, “The new James Bond. The different double-oh-seven!” in relation to all the movies that had gone before. 

There are scenes, such as Bond’s first meeting with Moneypenny which serve to underline the fact that this new Bond is supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, the same but different and a sequence where bits of old musical scores are played as Lazenby picks up props from those earlier films serves to ensure the audience doesn’t forget its links to the past. There’s even a scene with a midget whistling the tune to Goldfinger and a credits sequence that utilises clips from the previous 5 movies added into the mix and, if that weren’t enough, a brilliant moment at the end of the pre-credits action sequence where Lazenby breaks “the fourth wall”, glances at the audience and complains that “This never happened to the other feller!”

So definitely a strange choice to do the book as it is, with the two characters, Bond and Blofeld, never having met before. Not the last of the Bond anomalies but certainly one of the more showier ones.

So anyway... master editor Peter Hunt gets to direct a Bond movie and decides to do On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (a book Fleming wrote while Dr. No was being shot) just like the source material and, after a hard time casting, with George Lazenby playing Bond. Let me tell you now that Lazenby’s Bond is every bit an impressive performance as Sean Connery’s incarnation of the character. A lot of people at the time turned off to this performance in this film, I think, because it was the first time the producers had experimented with casting a different actor in the lead role of the series... and people were probably expecting the same kind of approach that Connery would have given it. Well, in my humble opinion (and I really love Sean Connery’s take on the role) they may not have got Connery, but they certainly got James Bond. Lazenby’s performance, obviously due to the writing to some extent, is a much more feeling and emotional Bond and a lot closer to the Bond we meet in the very first novel, Casino Royale, than any other actor to have played him to date, as far as I’m concerned. He walks and talks right, can do the action and also handle the romantic interest.

A fair portion of this must obviously also be landed at the feet of Peter Hunt. He set out to strip the gadgets away from Bond and give us back the man and it really works. This Bond movie has a sense of being a movie for “grown ups” going for it all the way through, bearing in mind that the comic book action and larger than life situations are also, obviously, very much present. It just feels more serious and less throwaway than any of the other Bond movies and I suspect that of all of the series, this one is probably the least appealing to the youngsters. 

It’s also, although I hate to use the term but feel I must when brevity creeps in, a bit of an art movie.

Peter Hunt’s shot designs and transitions are just so impressive. You will find shots such as Bond drinking to the health of Her Majesty, reflected back in the glass covering a painting of her reminding the audience of Bond’s “For Queen And Country” line of work while showing them sharing the same plane of space in one economical shot. Another brilliant transition sees a replay of Tracy (played brilliantly by The Avengers girl Diana Rigg... and future The New Avengers girl Joanna Lumley is also in this one) being dragged from under an avalanche by Blofelds men projecting from the windows Bond is looking out of, signifying Bond’s thoughts and what turmoil is in his mind while he waits for the United Nations to make a decision as to Blofeld’s demands. Plus a cool transition where a daytime, almost birds eye view of a busy swimming pool, changes into the same shot but at night and devoid of people, with the neon sign of a casino reflected in the water to set up the next scene. 

Then there is the brilliant shot in Draco’s office where Bond throws a knife into a calendar behind Draco (played by Gabriele Ferzetti)... what follows is sheer visual genius and it’s all accomplished with one shot making use of differential focus (or rack focussing as it is sometimes referred to) in a more creative way than it usually is on film...

Draco turns away from the camera to look at the knife on the wall behind him. As he does so, he raises his glasses to his eyes and in exact time with that movement, the camera shifts focus to clarify the knife on the wall. After a second or two, Draco turns back to camera, lowering his glasses and, again, in exact timing to this action of lowering his glasses, the camera shifts focus back to exactly where we were at the start of the shot. I was pretty knocked out by that the first time I saw a print of this in widescreen, I can tell you. Forgot to listen to the dialogue because my brain was still reeling.

There are many visual wonders in store for potential viewers of this film including a brilliant colour palette on some of the interior/studio bound scenes which evoke those 1950s and 1960s classic Hammer film colours and which, for the second, snow bound part of the movie, are an interesting contrast in terms of white, grey and blue neutrals verses a lively selection of greens and positively Bavaesque purples.

The editing, especially during the fight sequences, is extremely creative and very impressionistic. This is very much in evidence in the pre-credits sequence fight on the beach, where characters choppily shift position and perspective a tad at each cut, ramping up the speed and intensity of the fist hits and splashes of water so the viewer, especially on ones first watch, is left similarly as dazed and confused as the actual on-screen participants in the fight. It’s all very much about creating an impression of the intensity of a fight, rather than showing everything blow by blow, in a much more fragmentary fashion which, I suspect, would have been very popular in Japan at the time, seeing the route the Japanese went in the late 20th Century with some of their editing.

The sound design, like all the Bond films before this, is also quite brilliant and, as can be expected, Hunt pushes past the constraints of what you would expect to hear going on again. If the fights scenes are visually impressionistic, for example, then the fight outside Draco’s office near the start is similarly creative. With high volume echoes and phase loops etc all dropped into the action to give an almost surrealistic interpretation of the on-screen visuals. A fight much later in the movie takes place in a shed filled with loads of hanging bells and the cacophony of sound which is used to punctuate punches, so to speak, is amazing and serves well to aid the claustrophobia of the actual reality of the fight. This is very much the culmination, both aurally and visually, of the fight Connery’s Bond had with Robert Shaw on the train in From Russia With Love. The fist fights in the Bond films rarely match this intensity again in the series.

Pitched against all this heavy ‘action intensity’ is an equally intense love story between James Bond and his future wife Teresa, who he marries near the end of the movie. The love story starts the film, tails off with Bonds infiltration of Blofelds mountain top lair and then comes straight back in again for the third act of the film... 

One of the greatest moments of any Bond film comes when “Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?” (my all time favourite Bond song) is playing and Bond is running from Blofeld’s team of villains. He looks lost, scared and out of luck... and then Teresa (aka Tracy) skates in to the rescue... not only to the rescue, in fact. Her character does all the driving in the getaway/stock car chase and helps, among many other wonderful sequences such as her brilliant dialogue with Telly Savalas’ version of Blofeld, make this one of the strongest portrayals of a female character in screen history, not to mention the most potent female character in a Bond movie. There’s absolutely no doubt in your mind by the end of the movie why Bond wants to marry her. There’s even a ‘romantic montage’ sequence which is probably about the only time that’s ever been done in a Bond movie, I reckon (I’ll probably prove myself wrong on that point now as I continue to watch the Blu-Ray set I got for Christmas but... we shall see).

And then, of course, there's another more famous sequence that sets this Bond film squarely apart form any other Bond film (although the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale tried hard to recapture this lightning a second time, it seems to me... and failed somewhat). At the end of the movie, on their way from the wedding to their honeymoon, Bond stops to remove the flowers from their car and said car is perforated by bullets, courtesy of Blofeld and his ‘shooter’, Irma Bunt. Bond rushes around to the driver’s seat to give pursuit, only then realising that Teresa has taken a bullet to the brain and lays dead before he can even hold her to die in his arms. 

This is the saddest and most powerful ending of any Bond movie and, if you’re invested in the characters enough, there will be tears.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the greatest Bond film, directed by a man who really knew how to put a Bond film together. It’s criminal that Lazenby never got to do another movie in the series... and just as bad that director Peter Hunt never got to direct another Bond either. If you’ve never seen a Bond film before or always shied away from them because of some of the sexist attitudes in them (which, in all fairness, are still very much in evidence in this particular masterpiece) and are thinking of maybe seeing one of them some time... then this is definitely the one to look out for. And it’s got a John Barry score which will completely knock your socks off.

Peter Hunt, George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas and John Barry... nobody does it better.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

Muchos Gracias Senor Lobo

Paper Naschy

Muchos Gracias Senor Lobo
by Thorsten Benzel
Creepy Images 
ISBN: 978-3000393419

This marvellous tome was given to me by “a very good friend” recently for my birthday... because she knew just how much I wanted to read it. Now, while the book isn’t quite what I was expecting it to be, I was so struck by the design and beauty of this limited edition that I really wasn’t overly worried and, as it happens, this proved an absolutely amazing read, in addition to the heady experience of looking over the thousands of beautiful posters, lobby cards, locandinas and foto busta reproductions which make up 99% of the book. It really is one of the three or four most beautiful books I’ve ever owned... right up there with Tim Lucas’ All The Colours Of The Dark (his epic work on director Mario Bava... and I mean epic) and my Taschen book, The Pedro Almodovar Archives (reviewed here).

Now, when I first caught sight of this wonder on the internet, I was labouring under the false impresssion that this book, which has all the text in two languages (one of which is English), was concerned with talking about the films of Paul Naschy... who was perhaps most famous for his Waldemar Daninsky wolfman character which he played on and off for a number of decades. Well this is not strictly true, although, it certainly is one of the most valuable resources on the films of Paul Naschy there is (possibly the most indispensable actually). I don’t think you would find as fine a collection of posters and lobby cards etc as comprehensive as this printed anywhere else. However, the sharper eyed among you may have noticed the subtitle of the book is actually “Paul Naschy Memorabilia” and while the book features all these quite rare and opulent examples of various promotional materials on a film by film basis, it turns out that it is these artefacts from the films themselves, and not the actual films, that are the source of discussion here.

The book is put together by a private collector of Paul Naschy items and, while there is obviously some technical background on the origins of each movie, the main thrust of the information is all to do with the history of each movie as seen by it’s release patterns and paper trail, so to speak.

Curiously, the book only goes up to the 1987 Naschy movie El Aullido Del Diablo (aka Howl Of The Devil, reviewed here), which co-starred the extraordinary Caroline Munro... and then covers some of the other films in a short appendix which also has some amazing poster artwork in it (I ordered a cheap copy of Mystery On Monster Island on DVD after finishing this book because of that appendix). So what would be a typical chapter here would be some bumph about the movie, followed by the curiosities manifest in the different styles of advertising campaign materials in different countries - things like a company logo being printed on the bottom right of a poster identical to another except for the absence of that logo or the fact that one country’s run of lobby cards was printed on a slightly thicker stock but printed offset litho instead of some other process. Some of the most amusing differences from territory to territory are the way in which some countries censor nudity... some will allow it, others will put little stars over ladies’ nipples and yet another went to quite elaborate lengths to “pen and ink” ladies underwear onto some of the actresses. All very strange but interesting.

Now, I’m a graphic designer for print, so I naturally found most of this stuff really fascinating anyway, but the real icing on the cake, and the strength of this book, is that the writer is able to then show you all these things illustrated in full colour with a wonderful (old, decaying book) background which is printed under the text and pictures on every page, presumably chosen to give the photographs of this rare, archival material a bit of 'lift' off the page in contrast. It’s really wonderful stuff and, even if there had been no accompanying text with each section, it would still be one of the most essential purchases going... not just for longstanding fans of Paul Naschy, but for anyone interested in knowing the ins and outs of the way films are marketed in different areas.

This is, untypically, one of my shortest reviews, but that’s because I really have nothing bad to say about this particular volume. The myriad illustrations of brightly coloured movie advertising confections coupled with the sheer enthusiasm and passion of the writer, who has obviously spent many decades putting together this collection of rare and sometimes rescued items, are more than enough to ensure this is a book I shall return to for reference and, well, to just lose myself in the pictures, time and time again. If you are a fan of either Paul Naschy, horror films or movie advertising in particular, I urge you to snap up one of the last copies of this book before it passes you by. An absolutely thrilling work of reference which is an absolutely essential purchase for lovers of film.

And another big thank you to my “extra special friend” who got me the book in the first place.

For some of my Paul Naschy movie reviews, check these links below...

Assignment Terror
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/assignment-terror.html

Fury Of The Wolfman
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/like-werewolf-scorned.html

The Beast And The Magic Sword
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/werewolf-vs-samurai.html

Howl Of The Devil
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/howl-of-devil.html

Mama

Mama - M.I.A.

Mama
Spain/Canada 2013
Directed by Andrés Muschietti
Playing at cinemas now.

Mama is a movie written by Andrés Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Neil Cross. A Spanish/Canadian production shot in English, I’m guessing it’s inspired by a three minute short the same director did a few years back, of the same title (although I haven’t actually seen the short myself). It’s also just about as good a modern era ghost story/horror film as you’re likely to see these days.

The film starts off in tragedy as a man who has just rampaged and murdered his wife, takes his two very young daughters far away into some snow covered woods to kill both them and, presumably, himself. They stumble into a deserted cabin and then... something happens to the man.

After 5 years of spending all his money on looking for the man and his two daughters, the man’s brother Lucas (played by the same actor, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) finds the two young girls who have, by now, gone almost totally feral. However, if you were following the opening titles sequence of children’s drawings with the attention you should have been paying, you’ll know there’s more to the story than that. As Lucas and his sexy ass, rock-chick galfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) strike a deal with a therapist working with the children to win custody of the children on the condition that they move into a very specific house the therapist chooses, things start to get decidedly spooky and, oh heck, drop dead scary as the film ticks away at a very even pace, designed to chip away at any resistance you have to the regular scares of the horror movie environment.

While this movie does have plenty of “jump shock” moments in it, it’s the slow, lurking sense of dread that keeps your delicate, viewers psyche on the edge of its fear precipice. The storyline is pretty much a retread of dozens of other ghost tales from the past but, fortunately for all involved (and especially fortunate for the jaded, modern horror movie audience), the film is stylishly put together and, although there’s a lot of CGI involved, it’s much more creatively used and is actually quite good for a change. When the ghost is finally, properly seen, in one of it’s many unique manifestations, the director has no qualms about showing it off properly and the special effects are much more reminiscent of the dark CGI fantasy work featured in the films of Guillermo del Toro, who is credited as executive producer. I’d say that I would recognise his hallmark stamp a little on the film but, then again, I’m just not too confident in exactly how much direct contact and impact on the final product the executive producer on these things has these days... so I don’t think it’s necessarily his doing.

Whoever’s fault it is, though, it’s all a good thing for the film and the way certain parts of the story are visually expressed by the “DNA” of the title creature are a great help in moving the story along too... and not just used as an “illustrative element”. I don’t want to explain that visual element too much, however, because I’m trying to keep this review pretty spoiler free.

One of the other things that keeps the film from ever slipping into the realm of the dull or the humdrum is the four or five notable performances in the film, especially those of the two sisters who really sell it right from the start. This is a real collaborative effort and a great outpouring of combined creative energy which covers all the production aspects of the film, including some great sound design and a nice little score I’ll need to keep an ear out for too.

It all makes for a film which will continue to play out in your mind for a day or two and that’s one thing I am grateful for. The other thing I’m equally grateful for is my inadvertent delay in writing this review because it let the film do its work in my head and I suddenly had a bit of an epiphany on the bus coming home tonight, because I’d let the film take possession of my soul and haunt me when I was least expecting it...

Essentially, there's a neat little twist towards the end of this movie and, normally, just my pre-knowledge of that fact (which I did have, actually) is enough to allow me to figure it out within the first 5 or 10 minutes of a film. This time, however, I hadn’t even perceived that there was a twist when I actually saw it... I just let the hypnotically beautiful visuals wash over me and missed it completely, I guess. There was something the director took time to carefully highlight a few times before the end of the film (aka visually bash me over the head with) but, unusually for me, I just didn’t pick up on it at all and, whereas that should have ensured I was even more surprised at the finale, all it meant was I just didn’t even perceive that there was anything more to the ending than what I saw on the surface.

In this particular instance, it was probably me just being stupid but all I will say to those of you who have not gone out to see this one yet, is that you should really watch those opening credits very closely... and if you do you will be rewarded. I’m now definitely picking up the blu-ray of this thing when it comes out because I want to watch it again and go in knowing what I know about the ending now... it will be a much more rewarding experience because of it, I suspect.

So there you go... mostly traditional ghost story but with a slight twist, well written, beautiful CGI on the “Mama ghost creature” who is a character in her own right, a cool dream/nightmare sequence (I didn’t mention this before but the Mama back story dream sequence is amazingly well presented), brilliant performances from the actors and actresses involved, a sexy rock chic (okay, so I might be a bit biased on that count) and some truly stunning visuals.

Oh... and it’s scary, which is something maybe a lot more modern horror movies should try to remember to be these days. If you’re a fan of ghostly apparitions with a beautiful, dark fantasy world element, then Mama is right up your street... and if you’re not careful she may just haunt you on a bus a few days later.

A Good Day To Die Hard

Die Society

A Good Day To Die Hard
USA 2013
Directed by John Moore
Playing at cinemas now.

Okay. So there’s a lot of negative criticism about this fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise going around at the moment and all I can say, really, is that while I can well understand where all the backlash on this one is coming from, if you are one of those people who are okay with films which are non-stop action, then this really isn’t all that bad, just taking it in those terms.

I’ve also heard some comments that this doesn’t really feel like a Die Hard film and on that point I’d really have to disagree. It may not be a very good Die Hard film, I’d let you get away with that one, but it’s certainly got enough in common in terms of the main John McClane character, the way in which lead actor Bruce Willis chooses to play him and other elements in the periphery of the character, to provide adequate links to the tone of the preceding four movies. There’s also another strong binding force on this one, which helps the film glue together with the lead character’s previous outings... but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Unlike the first two films in the series (reviewed here) this movie is not based on anyone’s novel and whereas they got away with this approach fine with both the third Die Hard movie (my favourite in the sequence) and the fourth one, it has to be said that the script to this one doesn’t really seem to have a lot going for it, to be fair. In fact, there’s hardly any plot at all and I don’t think its really giving too many spoilers away to briefly summarise that plot here... bearing in mind all this stuff is shown in the trailers and promos for the film anyway.

John McClane goes to see his estranged son stand trial for an assassination in Russia, but it turns out his kid is actually a spy who is facing off against a terrorist threat and soon the McClanes find themselves patching up old differences and “bonding in action” as they wage back to back war against the fairly obvious “bad guys”, all punctuated by a number of bangs, whistles, staccato bursts of machine gun fire and loud explosions as man and machine alike are subject to large explosions and other, various amounts of “an American in Russia”-appropriate carnage.

It doesn’t help too much that the dialogue in the movie isn’t that sparkly either, to be honest. I guess it might be some tribute to the actors in question (all of whom were excellent and doing their best, I have to say) that the characters look like they’re just making up their dialogue as they go along, and it’s more true to life in terms of those kinds of considerations... but it’s possibly something less special when it looks like the actors in question actually are also probably just making up things as they go along too. Sometimes, naturalistic dialogue in the arts needs a little more push to keep it real.

However, there are some nice things about the movie too and some of the action sequences are quite exciting, if that’s your bag. The editing on these kinds of segments which, if I’m honest, make up almost all of the film’s running time, is pretty good in terms of modern day action editing... in the sense that you can at least make out what is actually going on in them without any jarring juxtapositions to jangle your brain cells. However, the downside to this is that there do seem to be a fair few continuity errors throughout the length of the movie which are quite glaring, actually... but at least you can watch them and pick holes in those fairly easily, without getting completely “lost in the edit”, I guess.

Another nice thing is the way the movie does, in fact, gel with the previous movies.

Back in my review of The Detective (right here) I highlighted the fact that the John McClane character originated from the character in this novel/film and that, once Sinatra had turned the sequel down, the character was renamed John McClane and the sequel novel was retooled for Bruce Willis... and here we are. Well, there’s a nice little tip of the hat to this in this fifth installment where a Russian taxi cab driver sings a Sinatra hit to Bruce Willis, so I quite enjoyed the irony of that little scene.

Also, this is the first time for a while that two Die Hard movies have had a running character other than John McClane played by the same person. The film features both McClane’s son and daughter (originally seen as kids in the first installment of the series) and in this one, the always excellent Mary Elizabeth Winstead is back from her stint of playing his daughter, Lucy McClane, in the previous film in the series Die Hard 4.0 (aka Live free Or Die Hard). She’s not in it much but she bookends the film somewhat and thats kinda okay (even if the film does end on a 1970s TV freeze frame... oops).

The opening titles are nicely handled too, paying homage in the style of the typography, perhaps, to the late great graphic designer Saul Bass, although the words are way too small, I expect, to be easy for anyone to read them watching on a normal sized TV screen or monitor, which is the way these films tend to get remembered historically, once they’ve passed their original theatrical release.

One great thing, which I alluded to earlier and which keeps good continuity with the previous films, is Marco Beltrami’s excellent score. He also scored the last movie in the franchise because the guy who did such an outstanding job on the first three films, Michael Kamen, had died since scoring the third. Here, Beltrami not only brings back the influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to give it continuity with the first film (although the exact reason he’s brought back this particular piece of leitmotif is unclear as the characters it’s associated with are not in this movie) but he also gives a lot of this score a very Kamenesque sound, especially in the action cues which echo the previous composers specific kind of histrionics and it’s really great that Beltrami is happy to blend his own style with elements of Kamen’s distinctive musical voice so much. I don’t know, yet, whether this holds up as a stand alone listen away from the visuals and sound mix it often gets buried under in this entry, but in terms of playing out within the context of the movie and hitting the spot in terms of franchise recognition, Beltrami does a really good job on this one.

And there you have it. This movie isn’t going to win any awards, I suspect, and personally I can agree with what seems to be the general opinion on this one in that it’s certainly the worst in the franchise... but it still delivers most of the required thrills as an action piece so I’m cutting it some slack here. I also hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of this series either. I think a more restrained (in terms of over the top action) and tighter, cleverer script could see a real return to form for the series if the studio were willing to pump in some more time and talent to the project. Bruce Willis may be an awkward cuss to work with sometimes but he’s certainly a great performer and one of the few modern “stars” out there. Give him a decent screenplay and he’ll come up trumps. Meanwhile, if you like action movies and you’re a fan of the franchise in general, the links to the previous movies really aren’t all that tenuous and you may well find yourself having a good time with this one if you give it a go and you’ve got a couple of hours to waste at your local cinema. Maybe give this one a look sometime.

You Only Live Twice

Another Pleasence
Valley Sin Day

You Only Live Twice
1967 UK
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

With a screenplay by noted children's writer Roald Dahl, You Only Live Twice is a pretty good Bond film with lots and lots of stories surrounding it which I could talk about: the recasting and reshooting of Blofeld, the frightened cat that got lost for days/weeks in the volcano set, the almost suicide of one of the leading actresses who wasn’t working out until she was welcomed back and switched roles with another actress. Loads of stories but too many to tell on one of my small reviews.

Instead, I’m going to just write about some of my own observations on the film and if I find them leading into stories, so be it. I also want to push a speculative idea about the pre-credits sequence of this and a much later Bond film, The World Is Not Enough... but I’ll circle around back to that in a minute.

I first saw this movie as part of a double bill with either Thunderball, From Russia With Love or Diamonds Are Forever, back in either 1973 or 1974, and since then I must have seen it maybe a dozen times over the intervening years. It’s a quite powerful Bond film with a bit more of an epic feel than the previous movie, although I can’t explain why that is since the underwater battles in Thunderball were what epic excess is all about. Maybe it’s the great, hulking volcano interior set designed by Ken Adam, where Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld has his villainous lair, that helps gives the feeling of everything being generally larger than life. Whatever it is though, this Bond film has a certain sense of power to it which maybe some of the other directors in the series sometimes lacked.

Looking back on it now, I find the editing to be a lot more jumpy than I remembered. In a lot of sequences in the film, editor Peter Hunt takes natural “journeys” and “routines” and instead of showing A followed by B followed by C followed by D, for instance, he just cuts straight from A to D in this one and relies on the collective brain of the audience to just fill in the gaps. It used to work fine on me because I never noticed it before, but viewing it this time around it felt a little more jarring in some places.

This was supposed to be Connery’s last film in the series and knowing that nowadays, he does look kinda unhappy in the role in certain key scenes... playing things maybe a little more glumly than usual. Maybe my brain is just making that up but he just doesn’t seem that enthusiastic in the role anymore. This wasn’t his last Bond film, of course, as he would return in both the EON series film Diamonds Are Forever and, of course, the non-EON Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again, in the 1980s. But more on those when I get around to watching them again.

So maybe some of Connery’s performance is a bit wooden but he certainly still carries the movie on his able shoulders and he has some excellent co-stars, especially in the form of famous Japanese actor Tetsurô Tanba, who was in such things as the original version of Hari Kiri (alongside the great  Tatsuya Nakadai) and Three Outlaw Samurai. He was also in some pretty interesting Japanese exploitation movies including one of my all time favourite, outrageous Japanese movies, Bohachi Bushido: Code Of The Forgotten Eight!

Add to this an excellent John Barry score (and a “pieced together from a gazillion different, challenging takes” song sung by Nancy Sinatra) which includes the third use of his 007 sub theme which was first heard in the gypsy camp shoot out in From Russia With Love, in a fresh and brilliant arrangement for the scenes with the gyrocopter “Little Nellie”, and you have a sure fire winner of a film. I read a book about the music of the James Bond films just recently (reviewed here) and I was surprised that the author didn’t mention the, to me quite obvious, fact that the opening title theme to the next Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, started out life in the music to this film. There are a few instances in the film, most notably highlighted on the original release soundtrack album on the cue Fight At Kobe Dock - Helga, where a complicated base line is the absolute dead spit of the bass line on which the main theme to the next film is hung on, albeit in a slightly simpler form than it is here. I don’t think I’m wrong on this count... go check it out!

The film also has a memorable pre-credits sequence which actually turns out to be more like three pre-credits sequence... and I have a theory about this but this theory also applies to the Brosnan starring The World Is Not Enough... so I’ll start there.

The pre-credits sequence of The World Is Not Enough is actually three pre-credits sequences joined together. You have a) Bond escaping from the bank in Balboa, followed by b) a debriefing session with M, followed by c) the assassination and subsequent, epic speedboat chase (one of my personal favourite Bond pre-credits sequences). However, this all goes on for a bit and, anyway, why three? Now, I’ve never seen this confirmed anywhere but it’s my belief that the bank scene in itself was originally meant to be the pre-title sequence but then it was deemed to be not exciting enough maybe (I’d agree) and so they let the film play through and used the speedboat chase to be the climax of the pre-credits. No idea if that’s right or not but that’s my personal belief. I reckon the titles were originally supposed to have started with Bond sliding down into them, not falling into them and had to be slightly adjusted at a later stage.

Now then, back to You Only Live Twice. 

You have the film starting with such “British resident USA guys” as Ed Bishop and Shane Rimmer, plus Barry’s iconic and driven fugue accompanying the equally iconic kidnapping of a spaceship by SPECTRE. There is an establishing shot of a radar dish shortly after and I believe that’s where the original credits were supposed to have started, especially when the first graphic image on screen of a parasol or whatever is obviously a parody of the satellite dish... however, I think the producers lost faith in the pre-credits sequence not having Bond in it and chickened out and recut things around as this is followed by a United Nations style conference and then followed by the machine gunning to death of James Bond... which then leads into the credits. I think this was a case of the film-makers changing their minds because of the lack of the main protagonist before the credits in this one but, as it happens, it does tie nicely into their almost obsession with having some movies in the series starting with the apparent death of the hero...

From Russia With Love had Bond garroted to death before revealing it was another character wearing a Bond mask, for example, and Thunderball teases the audience with a glimpse of the initials JB on a coffin. So this intro, where you see Bond seemingly betrayed and then machine gunned to death (before being “resurrected” in the post credits sequence), is certainly in keeping with the style of a couple of the Bonds that had gone before it and, of course, it’s still a preoccupation with the producers of these movies to this day. Last year’s Skyfall (reviewed here) started off with a pre-credits sequence which left Bond shot dead until a point a little later in the film. Another tradition that the latter film revisited amongst others.

You Only Live Twice is a good, solid entry into the Bond series and, although not the best of the Connery Bonds, it could certainly make a good jumping on point if you’ve never seen one of these things before. A respectable and highly recommended addition to the series, then, but, the best was yet to come...

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E