My Wife's Affair (1961)

Director: Randal MacDougall
Colour

Here’s a film which no doubt had the studio salivating at the dollar signs of controversy: the sex + the scandal = the sales. And yet, even before the swinging sixties really got going, it’s noticeable how little fuss ‘My Wife’s Affair’ caused. Yes, the catholic church condemned it, but back then the Catholic church condemned everything (even ‘Bambi’ was probably flagged up for notice), but the rest of the world carried on with its business as if nothing happened.

Wife Joan Collins comes home one evening and announces to her husband, George Peppard, that she wants an affair. They argue, make up, argue again, but she refuses to relent on her decision. She is bored and stifled by her marriage – she still loves George, but just wants some thrills. This then is a full-on assault on the idea of marriage and the 1961 American ideal of what womankind should be: no longer is she promising to obey, no longer is she promising to even be faithful. And for a while the film revels in the neon decadence of this. Joan’s life becomes one of singles’ bars, casual pick-ups and wild times with young and dangerous friends. Meanwhile George looks maudlin, sulkily drinks a bit too much whisky and eventually takes solace in the arms of an accommodating secretary, the supposedly dowdy Tuesday Weld. But of course even in a Hollywood studio film desperate to scandalise, the old orders can’t be completely shattered. By the end, as this is a film which in reality wants more to titillate than challenge, the order of the happy American couple and the happy American family are reset. Yes there’s a divorce, but Joan is a broken woman existing in whatever purgatory is reserved for wanton sluts, while George and Tuesday are happily married and living in domestic bliss expecting their first child. All is right in the moral universe again.

(It’s over fifty years later and such has been the change in values, that now the woman’s adventures would probably be a lot more graphic, including threesomes and lesbian trysts; while the dull, ditched, reliable husband consoled himself by having comic chats with his more raucous buddies. She may end up okay, but he’d definitely emerge something of a winner. Such is progress).

So a year after the Lady Chatterley trial, why didn’t ‘My Wife’s Affair’ start any fires? Probably because it never catches fire itself. Peppard is a block of finely sculptured ice throughout. I’m not sure what he’s aiming for in his performance, perhaps it’s a solid yet bruised masculinity (or perhaps it’s how good he’d look as an ornate wedding decoration), but it comes across as unyielding and frigid. Those blue eyes don’t look capable of being excited by passion or exciting anyone else, in fact they seem frozen to the point of rigor mortis. And that unyielding coldness is never going to be smouldered by Joan Collins' fitful sparks of sexuality, which like a damp match doesn't ignite no matter how many times it's struck against the side of the box. Collins is the poster girl for a certain type of English actress (see also Hurley, Liz), one with the beautiful face and gorgeous figure to be a sex symbol, and yet on screen she cannot actually radiate sex appeal. Here she poses, she pouts, she picks up and stares admiringly at a copy of Playboy at one point, and yet she never catches fire. What this film needs is a seductress, a siren – what it gets is an overly self-confident little girl who’s been allowed in her mother’s dressing up box. It’s no wonder she only made it big as a middle aged bitch, rather than a young sexpot – middle aged bitch suits her talents a lot more.

‘My Wife’s Affair’ should have scandalised at the time, but didn’t – and now just feels so dated and conservative. It’s a film that wants to be sexy, yet ends up staring at the viewer like a cold, damp fish with a miserable headache. 

Captain Dinsdale (1969)

D. Cy Endfield
Colour

For someone writing a blog about neglected films with that touch of quality, the career of Mr Michael Caine is a godsend. There are so many forgotten movies, spanning so many different genres, that one sees it as a possibly never ending bounty. On a recent visit to Ireland, I found in my in-law’s cottage a newspaper box-set of Michael Caine films from the 70s and 80s, half of which I had never heard of. It has long been a hobby of mine to seek out strange and little-remembered films, and half of them I hadn’t heard of. And the great thing is, even though quality control has never been particularly high on the agenda, Michael Caine is always a class actor. Rarely will you see him sleepwalk through a film. True, he may aim for a higher performance in some movies than others, but you don’t ever see him coast. There’s always a spark of quality, a glint of something worthwhile.

So we have dozens, if not a hundred-plus films that have been pretty much forgotten but are made worthwhile by Caine’s performance.

What are we waiting for?

Sean Connery had ‘Shalako’, Elvis Presley had ‘Charro’ and Caine had ‘Captain Dinsdale’, each of them an attempt by the Hollywood studios – for whom westerns had been a staple since John Wayne swapped his bib and dummy for a six-shooter – to tap into these new young stars and that Spaghetti Western vibe. No longer would the good guy wear a white hat, no longer would one hero bring justice to a righteous town, instead there would be moral anarchy, bloody chaos and nihilism in what was now the brutal wilderness of storybook America.

Caine is the eponymous Captain Dinsdale, a British soldier now working as a bounty hunter and charged with bringing three outlaws across the desert to a military stockade. Still dressed in the battered reds of Her Majesty’s uniform, Caine rides stern faced across the desert looking like his character from ‘Zulu’ gone west and gone to seed. The convicts in his charge are the over-qualified trio of Robert Duvall, Robert Wagner and Robert Stack – and the four of them bicker and fight as they make their way over this endless sand. (Throughout it, as befits a soldier of Her Majesty’s army, Caine refers to each of these convicts by his surname. I like to imagine though that each character kept his real first name and that in other – more perverse – hands this would have become a distinctly confusing film. Gus van Sant’s ‘Gerry’ with more kick-ass explosions.) The hot sun bakes down and our foursome looks likely to plod on forever, until one day they see a green train, and Caine hatches a plan.

It might sound silly written down to think that a captor would start plotting with his captives – the three Roberts – each of whom he has spent the first half an hour of the film bickering with, the moment some easily got loot arrives in the story. But Caine manages to sell it. He is this hard and unyielding soldier, a man of determination, but not one to miss an opportunity. Before long the four of them are working together in the desert heat and we all know that cross and double cross and most likely triple cross and even quadruple cross squared are all making their way up the track.

Neither of the aforementioned ‘Charro’ or ‘Shalako’ is worthy of any note, but ‘Captain Dinsdale’ is a tense and finger-nail biting thriller. Essentially a chamber piece for the four actors, the film manages to be claustrophobic even in the expanse of the desert. Of course Caine and Duvall are by far the best performers on show and it boils down to a clash between the two of them – with Duvall excelling as the shifty, lisping, possibly gay con with an eye for the chance. It’s a characterisation which is always going to clash with Caine’s faded martinet.

Sir Michael is equally superb as Her Majesty’s soldier transported to the Western desert and remaining ever-so British. More than that, he remains ever-so cockney. It’s a wonderful performance, because it’s so incongruous in that dusty setting. Yes, this is the Michael Caine who became a Hollywood star, but it’s also the one who was Alfie and he never lets you forget it. The name ‘Alabama’, for instance, is curled so delightfully out of his South London tongue that it ends up sounding like somewhere just beyond Tooting Bec and left.

I’d recommend ‘Captain Dinsdale’ for its tense set up, great acting and by the end loads of stuff just blowing up while Caine stares impassively on. I’d recommend it for Caine’s sandy battered uniform, Robert Duvall’s ginger wig and the look on Robert Stack’s face the moment he clearly realises that the two younger actors have much better parts than he does. I’d recommend it for the bright sunlight, the chaos of the conclusion and the way Duvall stretches out the word “casssshhhh” with such vainglorious glee. I’d recommend it for Caine’s unremitting Elephant and Castle tones and the look on his face which says he knows how far he has come. And finally I’d recommend it for the sight of Sir Michael’s skin in the desert heat, and how by the end of the film he genuinely and marvellously does look like an overdone baked potato in military uniform. 

Dropper Harris and the Speeding Bullet (1937)

D. Ted Green
B&W


It’s no doubt Cary Grant’s later association with Alfred Hitchcock which ensures that the Dropper Harris films are now forgotten relics of a more dashing age. And that’s a shame, as they’re a bit creaky and stiff (but then a lot of films in 1937 are a bit creaky and stiff) but these are sharp and suspenseful movies, which are a lot more fun and free-wheeling than most American thrillers of the age. Yes, the plot doesn’t make much sense. Yes, the version of England it pedals couldn’t be any more obviously California unless the Hollywood sign appeared and all the houses of parliament started to sing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, but I have a massive soft spot for this film and its sequels. Whatever their flaws, they’re a lot of fun. And Cary Grant is a great choice for the square jawed hero, as even when he’s playing it straight he can’t help but seem to subvert the whole concept.


We’re in London, the home of pea-soupers and cheerful cockneys and the occasional horse drawn hansom carriage (the last detail is particularly baffling, as otherwise this is set in what is then the present day). Grant is Hugh ‘Dropper’ Harris, the finest investigator in the British service. His job title is as vague as ‘consulting detective’ and it’s never clear throughout the series whether he’s a policeman or a spy, but it doesn’t really matter. He is Richard Hannay with a license, or Bulldog Drummond in spats. What he calls himself doesn’t matter, his job is to have adventures, and along with his sidekick Binky (Tommy Harrison) he’s about to find that the case of the speeding bullet is one of the most dangerous he’s ever had.


The conductor of the London Philharmonic is gunned down mid performance (shades of the original ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’), but it seems that the bullet struck before the shot was fired. How is that possible and – more importantly – who did it? Dropper Harris is on the case. Of course this is just a creaky hat-stand on which to hang the whole thrilling adventure, and you may wonder if it’s actually sturdy enough or whether it will collapse with a thud and the swishing of tailored jackets – but, rest assured, it may wobble from time to time but there’s enough ballast to provide 84 minutes of top quality black & white hi-jinks.


So off we go: there’s Sylvia Sydney as the most fatale of femme fatales, smoking through a cigarette holder as if brandishing a weapon; there’s Madeline Carroll as the good girl possibly gone bad, clutching both pigtails and a revolver; there’s Spencer Tracey as the businessman who may be behind it all; and Humphrey Bogart as his menacing henchman.  (Grant, Tracey and Bogart all in one film together, and still it’s only remembered by geeks like me. Go figure!) Most of them don’t even bother to tackle the accent, which combined with Grants transatlantic tones make this London one of the most international cities in the world.


It’s a film with some of the best scenes anywhere in cinema. Here’s Spencer Tracey trying to intimidate Cary Grant over cocktails – a triumph of cracking dialogue and clinking glasses and lots of good natured smiling. It’s two friends together, laughing and telling jokes, with one friend making it clear he’d like to murder the other. Elsewhere we have Bogart trying to do a bit of menacing while he and Grant try out pogo-sticks in a Bloomsbury toy shop. Just watching those two icons of cinema bouncing up and down while exchanging breathless dialogue is one of the most joyful sights I’ve ever witnessed. Clearly they felt that joy, as the camera is constantly cutting to obviously let them laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, And finally there’s Sylvia Sydney cornering Grant in front of the monkey cage in private zoo in Kensington Palace, launching into a long and wide-eyed speech about how she likes thick and long lasting cigars, the kind only the right kind of handsome Englishman possesses. It’s a triumph of innuendo, double entendre, a shared bag of peanuts and a chimpanzee who mugs as if in a silent comedy, clearly wanting star-billing in his own right.


(On a side note, is there really a private zoo in Kensington Palace? I think The Tax Payer’s Alliance should investigate.)


It sounds exactly what it is, a very Manhattan film – not Bloomsbury or Chelsea or Waterloo or Mansion House or any of the other names the film’s characters drop in without having a clue what they’re talking about. But that doesn’t matter. This is set in London like Terry Gilliam’s film is set in Brazil, it’s a glamorous state of mind, a fantasy world of beautiful woman, guns, danger and an impossibly dashing leading man.


As its Grant who truly makes this film great. In the wrong hands it could have been po-faced, but Grant is so convincing as this super secret agent even as he has fun with the material. It’s what makes him the finest cinema leading man there ever was. Cary Grant always manages to be convincing in every role he does, even when he’s being Cary Grant. Here he winks at the audience to let them know that it’s all a joke, even as he carries us along with the excitement and danger. He know this isn’t a serious film, he know that the rope isn’t going to burn and that the safe is not going to drop on Dropper Harris’s handsome skull, but he takes us through and lets us both take it seriously and laugh at it and have an absolute whale of a time as we do.

Roseanna (1974)

D. Jack Smight
Colour

It’s downright odd that one would take a bleak Scandinavian crime thriller, full of gloomy and moody Swedes, and transport it to sunny and bright Los Angeles.

 

It’s utterly peculiar that having taken this dark and existential story, one would then cast a talented light comic actor like George Segal in the lead.

 

No matter how witty the banter, one would normally be really quite suspicious that the audience will find it distasteful to see male cops wisecracking over a violent sex crime.

 

And  it’s frankly and maddeningly bizarre that amidst the bright Los Angeles sunshine (with all the lingering shots of beautiful blondes in bikinis that implies), the charmingly smiling leading man and all the jokes, one would not only keep the brutality of the crime but try to hold onto some of the book’s existential angst as well.

 

All of the above makes the adaptation of ‘Roseanna’ a distinctly head spinning experience.

 

Sometimes films are schizophrenic, sometimes films have two distinct personalities struggling to get out. It’s not just that a film struggles to find a tone, it’s that it’s so totally tonally deaf, so unable to engage with its own subject matter, that it becomes a warped piece of cinema that nobody is possibly going to get to handle on. I don’t want to mock the mentally ill, I don’t want to joke about the poor souls who were hauled around in cages a hundred years ago by shysters who charged the public a penny a gander, but this is a freak film, a genuinely split personality, mad and unstable movie.

 

And as you know by now, this website exists to put its arms around genuinely split personality, mad and unstable movies.

 

In 1964 the Swedish crime writing team, Sjöwall and Wahlöö, introduced their character Martin Beck In ‘Rosanna’. It’s a compulsive police procedural, but a very dark and Swedish book which lays the miserabilism on hard. It adopts a questioning and disorientated stand against the world, to the point where there’s a police officer actually named Kafka. The story concentrates on the sexually-motivated murder of a young tourist in Sweden and the way the case gets under the skin of the team investigating it, obsessing them and torturing them with the thought that the man who did this is still out there. In short, it isn’t a crammed barrel full of chuckles. Whether when Sjöwall and Wahlöö wrote this book they thought there was a film in it, I don’t know. But if they did, they probably thought it would be made by Ingmar Bergman on one of his less cheery days.

 

However, fast forward ten years and Hollywood decides to take a bash at it.

 

At the time this wouldn’t have necessarily seemed such a bad idea. A year earlier, Walter Matthau had scored a success with his version of Martin Beck in ‘The Laughing Policeman’. That was also set in California (San Francisco rather than LA), but managed to maintain the grim procedural qualities of the book. Presumably Mr Matthau was unavailable for this second go around, so instead another actor known for comedy roles was hired – George Segal. Now this might also have been a good thing, it could have expanded his range away from comedy to something with more depth. And as long as the plot wasn’t messed around with (which substantially it isn’t) and the horror wasn’t muted (which it is, but only slightly) then this may have been a gripping and scary thriller.

 

Instead we get this bloody mess, a diluted thriller which just wants to be loved and ends up being the awkward guy at a party – there to make friends, but just a bit too creepy to succeed. I like George Segal, I think he’s an engaging presence, but obsessive and moody brooding is not his thing. The film does give him a few moments of staring at the Pacific with a furrow on his brow, but it is only a moment – then the grin snaps into place and we’re back to wisecracking. And that’s the problem, the film doesn’t trust itself to do the serious material and so tries to make it more palatable with jokes. But because it doesn’t actually tone down the serious material, the end result is either a harsh film which inexplicable keeps racing off to do some clowning, or a comedy with a far too dark and brutal heart.

 

Amongst Segal’s colleagues are an hilarious bunch of LA police officers, forever telling jokes and joshing with each other – but more than anything they show the warped and flawed sheer wrongness of this film. Watching men stand over the naked body of a girl while joking about what their girlfriend likes to do with ketchup is just too weird. Words cannot express how odd it is to watch and how uncomfortable the audience feels as a consequence. The film becomes even worse than the awkward guy at the party, now instead the awkward guy at the funeral, trying to lighten the mood with some ill advised blue comedy.

 

The whole thing – the sunshine, George Segal, the jokes – just twist what should be an unrelenting thriller completely out of shape . The brutality of the plot is kept, but this film doesn’t have the palate to do brutality, it can only do bright and primary colours. As such it fails at every conceivable level. But then if ‘Dirty Harry’ had featured a scene in which Harry Callaghan – just after having been to the mortuary –  put on a Groucho mask, picked up a ukulele and mugged frantically while singing a medley of show tunes to a simpering, leggy, lab technician, that would have been something  a fail as well.

The Power of the Daleks (1968)

D. Gordon Flemyn
Colour

When we arrange to meet up with a Dalek, what exactly are we getting? Is it an armoured case specifically designed to shelter the mutated remains of a race from the planet Skaro, or is it a killer robot which can be presumably programmed to do other things but kill? And whichever one it is, are we supposed to be scared of them, or are we supposed to find them quite funny too? Although not framed that way by plot or dialogue, ‘The Power of the Daleks’ is a film which struggles to answer both of those questions. It’s a film which has a back and fore with itself, at points thinking that Daleks are truly scary, at others smiling with indulgence at the exploits of these colourful pepper pot scamps. It’s a movie where a family being brutally cut down can sit side by side with Michael Bentine messing about with some test-tubes and nonsense words. It’s a Doctor Who adventure which really should be family entertainment, but would also quite like you to see its dark side – like a drunk elderly uncle at a Christmas party, threatening to show the six year olds his war wounds.

On TV, in the continuing adventures of the alien known as The Doctor, this was the first story of the Patrick Troughton era. A chance to show that even though the leading man had changed, his most hated enemies were still there and that they recognised him. Of course the films are the adventures of Doctor Who, son of Mr and Mrs Who, and grandfather to Susan Who and various other girls with the unlikely surname, Who. He hasn’t altered his face, he hasn’t altered his demeanour, he’s exactly the man he was and given they spent most of the last film hunting him down, it isn’t such a big deal here when the Daleks do recognise him. Except it takes them a little time for them to acknowledge who he is, or indeed who they are.

Here’s the plot. Doctor Who and his two granddaughters Susan (played by the maturing Roberta Tovey and Felicity (played by the impossibly cute Felicity Kendell) arrive on Earth Colony 7. (The planet had no more original name than that). There, to their horror, they find the Daleks. But these Daleks aren’t like the ones we’ve previously seen, no, they’re working as servants and regarded by the humans who greet them as subservient and friendly robots who exist to bring drinks and snacks. All is bliss on Earth Colony 7 and Doctor Who is looked at as mad for claiming that these robots are emotionless killers or “fiends in shiny metallic cloaking” as he at one point memorably calls them. (If I was trying to scare people, and I have done that in my time, I’m not sure that that’s the choice of words I’d go for). Meanwhile the Dalek leader (he’s bigger and shiner than the others) sees Doctor Who’s presence and accelerates their underlying plan.

What follows is one of the most schizophrenic films you’re ever likely to witness. On one hand we have various Daleks sliding out of darkness to kill guards and other people who get in their way. These scenes are shot with full shadowy terror (Flemyng excels himself), an almost black and white creepiness which really emphasises these Daleks as metallic seraphs of death. But elsewhere there’s Michael Bentine as Professor Yakabult, who demonstrates experiments with the aid of his assistant, Doris the Dalek. These scenes are inserted into the film as broadcasts on Earth Colony 7’s TV station, illustrating just how friendly these Daleks are. Bentine and the other characters in the film never interact, instead he goggles at the Dalek with wide eyes, he dances a waltz with it, the two of them sing “Earthling’s Eyes are Gleaming” in horrible tunelessness. It’s clearly designed for the kids, it’s clearly designed as light entertainment. The idea from a plot point of view is to show how inured everybody on Earth Colony 7 has become to the Daleks, how unthreatening they are, but my word it’s excruciating. One can only breathe a sigh of relief when the plot catches up with the horrible twosome and Doris exterminates him.

The plot gets faster and faster and more exciting and exciting, and this is actually – once it settles down and answers its own question – one of the best, scariest and most adrenalin filled entries in the series. The base under siege set-up (even though it’s under siege from the inside) and the running down corridors does make it resemble The Doctor’s exploits on TV, and yet there’s something about this which is its own film. Yes, there are Daleks and they are the true money spinners, but at the centre is the human man and the film is determined in its point that – without any alien help whatsoever – man will always win out against the monsters, no matter how ridiculous they first appear.

Liberace!!! (1955)

D. George Sidney
Colour

One of the three Robert Mitchum/Jane Russell musicals made by Columbia in the 1950s, but the one that really demands to be taken as a screaming camp classic. A biopic (although I’m aware that’s totally the wrong word) of ‘Lee’ Liberace and Tallulah: “the woman he loved and lost”.

Cole Porter also had a film made in his lifetime where he was portrayed as heterosexual and Hollywood conventional, but then while Cole Porter’s tunes were known, there was no real public persona. Liberace was a whole other matter. When this film was made Liberace was a very public presence, his TV show was still on air and he was a favourite of magazines. Later that year he would make his own film debut (also in a heterosexual role) in ‘Sincerely Yours’. It’s therefore particularly bizarre to watch him impersonated (again that’s totally the wrong word) by Robert Mitchum – a man who had his own very public, and truly different, persona. The results, as you can well imagine, are hilarious.

Mitchum makes no effort to pretend to be Liberace, merely adopting the coiffered hairstyle and the sparkly jackets, but giving no hint of anything which could be summed up as “deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love” – a description of Liberace which appeared this very same year (although he did sue). This Liberace is a young man with a gift for the piano, who works his way up through the clubs, always dedicated to his craft. The ladies like him, but he’s shy and so just concentrates on tickling the ivories. Then one day he meets Tallulah, a chanteuse who blows him away. They begin a torrid affair which throws passion into both of their acts. Eventually though they can take it no longer and tearfully part, Liberace moving on to dedicate his life to his fans.

What we have then is utter fiction, and if the film was about a made up character named Ken Kiperace, one that would be utterly forgettable. However the lights, the glamour, the candelabras and the fact that this is supposed to be about the Liberace, just makes the whole thing a riot. Mitchum doesn’t even pretend to play the piano and just sings in his normal drawling tone. He obviously knows this is nonsense and so has determined to just get through it and pick up his pay cheque – which one imagines must have been sizeable. Russell however (in what is, to be fair, a completely fictional role) is a thirty foot high sex goddess, dancing and swinging her hips and showing her legs at every opportunity. Rarely did she sizzle more radiantly on the screen and – even with him being particularly languid and laid-back (to the point you wonder what kind of cigarettes he’s actually smoking) – the sparks are luminous in this Mitchum/Russell combination. It’s great viewing, all that heat and passion and lust, and then you remember this film is supposedly about Liberace.

Really, do such song titles as: “You’re the Woman for Me”; “Married in the Morning, Divorced by Noon”; and “The Best Looking Girl in Kansas” really have a place in a film purportedly about Lee Liberace?

I think, on balance, probably not.

Obviously it suffers in comparison to Michael Douglas in ‘Behind the Candelabra’, and is based on fact in the same way that ‘Star Wars’ is based on fact; but on its own giddy, eye popping terms, it’s a real treat.

Herbie Goes to East Berlin (1981)

D. Vincent McEveety
Colour

I’m not sure a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle is the best way to tackle the rights and wrongs of communism. But then on the flip-side I’m equally not sure that a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle is the best way to advertise Reagan-era American capitalism. From top to bottom there’s something amazingly off-kilter about ‘Herbie Goes to East Berlin’. It’s bright and gaudy, empty headed and crass, and amazingly untroubled by any doubts about its own brilliance.

In the days before Gorbachov and Glastnost, it probably seemed that the best way to take on the communist East was with a cute Volkswagen beetle. After all the grey, stiffness of communist bureaucrats was something which had never been done by Hollywood before and some broad satire was long overdue. So to begin with we have Madeline Khan doing her best German accent, with a performance that’s like a softer Rosa Krebb. I say softer in the sense that her clothes are more fetching and she doesn’t actually kill anyone. We have Christopher Lee’s stern eyebrows. Sir Chris is an actor I like a great deal, but it’s noticeable that in that long stretch where he couldn’t get work which matched his talent, he often let his eyebrows do the heavy-lifting. And below them we have numerous young men and women ground down by the drudge of work, when all they really want to do is listen to rock’n’roll. East Berlin a place of greyness, a city of repression, a haven of stern and no  fun adults – and what it really needs is some Americans to arrive who’ll shake things up.

The inevitable culture clash comes by way of the East Germans trying to show off their superiority. They invite the winner of The Coast to Coast race in the States to take on their champion car, a black Trabant – which no amount of camera tricks can make look fast or intimidating. So out go Larry Wilcox, from TV’s ‘CHiPS’, playing the nephew of Dean Jones’s character from The Love Bug (but obviously a different nephew from the one in ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’), and girlfriend Catherine Bach, from TV’s ‘The Duke of Hazards’. They arrive in East Berlin as honoured guests with the challenge to race Lee and comedy sidekick Dom Deluise. At stake is not only cultural honour, but which system is better – communism or capitalism.

You just know the kind of Wacky Races style high jinks which will follow.

The problem is that although in the context of the film, the US of A is proved to be best – the good guys are just so brash and bellicose, that they’re much more unbearable than the communists. Herbie and his team’s arrival is loud to the point of boorish and interrupts a rather sombre parade – this is seen as the bright fun of the Americans destroying the grey dullness of the Russians (yes, it’s actually Germans, but I think we can all see the real targets). But if you think about it, wouldn’t just crashing in and destroying all the hard work your hosts have clearly put into a party to greet you, be the pinnacle of bad manners? Surely people who do that are not really people to admire.

Then (unusual for a film in 1981, but perhaps not so unusual for a Disney film), there is – what can only be described – as a shit-load of product placement: Coca-Cola, Hershey, Atari and even Budweiser all have lovingly long shots. These shiny things are supposed to be envied, but come off looking the height of crass consumerism. The girls in their dowdy grey dresses are contrasted with Catherine Bach in her tight racing leathers, somehow looking even more voluptuous and naked than she did in her Daisy Dukes. But because these girls appear so modest and demure next to her, she can’t help but resemble a corn-fed stripper. Our heroes fly a stars and stripes behind their car, tell their hotel manager ‘Fritz’ to take a hike and demand that the local bar plays Chuck Berry records (because that’s really down with the kids in 1981). As such they look like the most obnoxious brats, jumped-up bullies who’ll slap the face of anyone who disagrees with them.

And that’s really what I like about this film. Ostensibly it’s dull and repressive commie-land = bad; free and capitalist America = good. Yet it’s done with such an alarming lack of subtlety, such an amazing over confidence that it almost makes the opposite point. The East Germans are restrained people who get on with their jobs and live their lives (what kind of message is it really that it’s better to dance to rock’n’roll than work in a factory? Okay, the kids in question seem to be working in a very grey looking factory – but even so…); while the Americans are loud, self-absorbed and intolerant of other people’s points of view. This myopia is there to such an extent that the film has East German locals marvelling at the American wonder that is Herbie. The Volkswagen Beetle, lest we forget, is a German car.

I like to think that behind the scenes there was someone, perhaps the director or the screenwriter, who decided to add another layer of satire to the very broad front satire. Much like Gore Vidal being told not to let Chuck Heston into the secret of the gay subtext in ‘Ben Hur’, the cast weren’t to know, the studio weren’t to know and most of the audience would never realise – but there it is, peeking out from behind Herbie and smirking.  

Ms Honesty (1995)

D. Michael Lehmann
Colour

One of Jennifer Aniston’s first wild flails at turning her distinctly small screen charms into cinema success, was this oddly conceived, frustrating and actually quite infuriating little number. Ms Aniston plays Ms Honesty (Tracey Honesty, if you’re on familiar terms) who has a compulsion to always tell the truth. It doesn’t matter what the circumstance, how politic is it, or what offence she might cause, Ms Honesty cannot keep her honest mouth shut. Now an eight year old knows why a white lie exists, yet the fact that Ms Honesty doesn’t know and is so brutally honest is seen by the film as a loveable quirk. Her friends all adore her and her unfiltered opinions, strangers on the street are charmed by her frankness and her life glides by on a stream of happiness.

What’s even weirder than hanging a film around the shoulders of this guileless child woman who everyone loves, is that some of these ‘truths’ are really just a matter of taste (the clothes someone wears, for example), and when they aren’t immediately accepted with good grace, Ms Honestly has something of a meltdown. There are two such scenes in the film, both of which see Ms Honesty ranting and raving about the flaws of the person opposite her, furious that her opinion isn’t being immediately accepted. To be fair, Ms Aniston does manage to portray a truly psychotic bitch really well, but the film clearly doesn’t see her behaviour in those terms. Instead this ranting and raving is a good thing, a sign of at how intensely passionate she is.

I ask you, really?

Surely freaking out completely when someone doesn’t immediately agree with you (or even does agree with you, but has decided they are not going to alter their life just over one woman’s opinion), is surely the behaviour of someone mentally ill. No sane and rational person would feel the need to start screaming abuse at someone they knew (or didn’t know) just because that person doesn’t happen to share their opinion. It’s what a lunatic would do, an insane person, a – to use one of my dad’s West Country expression – barnpot.

And yet the film sets it up as somewhat charming, easily forgivable – enviable even. Ms Honesty just cares too much; is so passionate and only says these truths because they are in the other person’s interests (even when they’re clearly not) and besides she‘s as cute as the twenty-five year old Jennifer Aniston – so what’s not to love? And that’s the true message of this film, that Ms Aniston is really pretty and her character is the ultimate manic pixie dream girl we should all adore.  But it didn’t work on me. I just felt the urge to scream and pelt her with rotten fruit.

The plot – such as it is – sees Ms Honesty (is the title supposed to be a pun btw?) telling some home truths to her friend, Jason Lee. When these aren’t immediately accepted, she freaks out and tells him every bad thing about himself. They fight for a few weeks, then they calm down, realise that they’re in love with each other and live happily ever after – Ms Honesty keeping up with her honest ways.

Meanwhile the audience is left giddily disorientated and throwing up in corner.

If you want to know the real truth, this is one of the most disturbing and blood-boiling pieces of celluloid it has ever been my misfortune to witness.

The Crossing Guard (1965)

D. Michael De Roma             
Colour

‘The Crossing Guard’ has to be one of the most oddly, yet delightfully, casted films in the history of cinema. It’s a long film and one that’s so plodding and lost in the minutiae of life that it frequently seems static; sitting inert and unmoving in front of the viewer as if indulging in some kind of boringness staring contest to see who will lapse into a coma first. But what will keep you watching – what kept me watching anyway – is the sheer ludicrousness of the casting, the absolute perverseness of who is on the screen pretending to be boring and oh so ordinary.

In Montreal, a middle aged European crossing guard goes through his day. He arrives at work early and chats briefly with the owner of a café, then performs his job of helping children cross the road on their way to school. One would have thought that a few shots would have been enough to illustrate what a crossing guard does (or a lollypop man, if you’re in this neck of the woods), but this is a sequence that goes on for a seemingly endless ten minutes. And in that ten minutes there are no speeding cars or arguing parents, there are just children being helped calmly and efficiently across the road. The crossing guard finishes his shift and wanders through the parks of Montreal, whistling away and taking in the sights – both of interesting monuments and passing young ladies in short skirts. For lunch he goes to a different café, but has almost word for word the same conversation as he had with the original café owner earlier that day. His afternoon is spent killing time in a museum and chatting vague current events with a friendly newspaper vendor. He then heads back to the school and there’s another ten minute sequence of him doing his job, as if we’d somehow forgotten the tedium of the first sequence. At the end of the day he wipes his brow and heads home, where he has a brief spat with his stay at home wife, before making up over dinner and settling down to an evening together. The film concludes with him setting his alarm, ready to do the whole day all over again.

The actor playing the crossing guard? Step forward, Sir Noel Coward.

The actress playing his wife? Ah, Gina Lollobrigida.

Oh, the style and glamour these two names conjure. The jet-setting caper movie they should have made together (although, let’s be honest, I’m not sure I’d ever have bought them as a love match). Instead we get them as dowdy immigrants in this slice of new wave realism; living humdrum existences in washed out and faded downtown Montreal. Coward’s acting choices consist of little more than sad eyes and the occasional smile. The script requires Lollobrigida to be more firey as his Italian wife, but the sparks between them (very predictably) don’t fly.

The casting director clearly had a great sense of humour or had taken vast amounts of acid in the run up to this film. The audience is left wishing that the director, screenwriter and cinematographer had similarly developed one or procured the other before embarking on the project.