Night-Train to Budapest (1968)

D. Terrence Fisher
Colour

I like that there’s the odd film out there where Christopher Lee actually gets to play the hero. One is the Hammer semi-classic ‘The Devil Rides Out’, where for once he finds himself on the right side of satanic events; while this – from the very same year – is a much more 1960s steampunk effort. Here the now Sir Christopher Lee is Sir Michael Wooton, an Edwardian gentleman and adventurer. He’s a derring-do hero of the old school (no doubt the kind of very English place that never admitted oiks and bred distrust of greasy foreigners). He sports the natural grace and charm of a true aristocrat, all exuded through his exquisitely tailored suit and form-fitting topcoat. He’s undoubtedly the handsomest, best-dressed man in the room, but one who has more than a little danger about him.

We open swarmed with paperboys, all yelling stories of Sir Michael’s latest exploits. Clearly he’s a star of the Edwardian age and has hired Sherlock Holmes’s publicist to boot. An adoring crowd follows him to the train station and he waves to them and thanks them for all their cockney compliments (it’s good actually that this gang of extras got work, as they’d been roaming feral since the film of ‘My Fair Lady’). He then boards the train for what for anyone else would be a pleasant journey into Europe. But given what we know of his track record, this particular journey is not likely to be peaceful – and that no doubt suits him fine.

As I said I like Christopher Lee as a hero, he seems a lovely man in reality and so it’s great that he gets to have the odd heroic moment. But if I’m honest he makes a really odd hero. When he’s supposed to be bad, Sir Chris knows how to sink his teeth into the role (pun intended); but being good doesn’t suit him as well and his discomfort leads him to becoming stiff and patrician. It means we have a hero it’s often difficult to warm to, no matter how brave or noble he proves himself to be. Here that’s thrown into stark contrast by his train-raiding nemesis, played by Orson Welles at his most avuncular. There’s the bad guy roaring with laughter over drink and food, while the reserved hero stares on with a slightly supercilious air. In addition Orson’s scheme is pleasingly bizarre, involving as it does arming the train with “a photon coal engine” and some wrought iron warheads then turning it into a bomb. (The actual plan is too big to be anything other than hazy, but there also seem to be skis and livestock involved.) Such is the mad audacious brilliance it all, combined with Welles’ sparkle and charm, that the audience is really left wondering who exactly to root for.

But more than that, on top of this fascinating good/bad dichotomy of a concoction we find, perched fetchingly, a fascinator: as Sir Chris’s sidekick, the man helping him beat this overweight, over-loud, overly-charming bad guy, is a pre-Doctor Who Roger Delgado. The saturnine looks are there, as well the dark and menacingly hypnotic eyes; although here – along with Sir Chris – he’s supposed to be one of the good guys.

So we have Dracula and The Master teaming up to thwart Charles Foster Kane on a speeding train, what kind of freak wouldn’t want to watch this movie?

We Cease to Grow! (1972)

D. Damien Nostro
B&W

Much like the Doctor Who serial ‘The Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ and the forthcoming ‘Kingsman: Secret Service’, this obscure grainy 1970s film features a mad environmentalist who decides that the best way to solve the population problem is to wipe out most of mankind. Obviously Paul R. Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’ has, and continues to have, some effect – although possibly not the one the good doctor was expecting. Let’s look at this closely, what kind of absolute nutter thinks that the best way to save the human population is to wipe out 99.9% of it? Okay, let’s say that there are people like that out there, misanthrope extremis, how would they persuade anyone else to go along with their scheme? Surely anyone propositioned to help implement this plan of mass slaughter, would back slowly away with a distinctly scared and freaked out look in their eyes. In both ‘The Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ and ‘Kingsman: Secret Service’ it’s the elite who are saved (although in the 1970s that meant intellectuals; in 2014 it apparently means celebrities), while in ‘We Cease to Grow!’ it’s less clear – but even then, surely members of any elite know people who aren’t in the elite? Surely they’re not so blasé in their lifestyle they’re happy to watch everyone else die just so they can hang out and procreate with people like themselves. Perhaps I’m being horribly naive, but I’d like to think that when some billionaire megalomaniac does come along and suggests this scheme, that most people (although certainly not all, I admit that) will say that they don’t want to be a party to the genocide of most of humanity, thank you very much.


Orson Welles plays the lead role – although even then he probably knocked out his part in about four days – as a wheelchair bound mad genius who has unleashed a terrible chemical bug into the world. Now locked down in his bunker, and resembling a bigger and scarier Raymond Burr, he ruminates on his reasons and rationale whilst chaos takes hold outside. Welles’s voice as he intones is like the rumble of the apocalypse, so it’s appropriate he’s there literally narrating the end of the world. Statistics purr out of this wounded lion, as he tells of how much food the world has left, the spread of diseases and the rise of the oceans. Outside we see the chaos starting, rioting on the streets; as well as more individual vignettes, where sad and desperate people come to the end of their sad and desperate lives. It’s not a film to make you feel good about yourself; in fact it’s difficult to work out what kind of mood the film makers want you to leave the cinema in, because as far as I can see Welles is supposed to be right here. Yes he has carried out this drastic act, but he is a sage, a seer, he is salvation. So who knows what the audience was supposed to do with it? Maybe the film makers just wanted enough people to see it so that if some megalomaniac did suggest killing most of humanity, somebody would actually say yes.

The Sexy Goth Detective (2003)

D. Otto Van De Mille
Colour


Liddy D’eath could undoubtedly scrub off that dark make-up, take out those intimidating piercings and sling on some loose fitting pastels, then leave all this sexy goth girl stuff behind forever. But really that would make her just another pretty girl in an entertainment industry full of pretty girls – all of whom are looking for that one break. So there’s no point her doing that, she has her niche and it’s a good niche, even if it isn’t that big a niche. And to help her exploit it she always seems to have Otto Van De Mille on hand, like some kind of faithful, salivating lap-dog with a viewfinder.

Rarely has such an enduring cinematic relationship been created by two such uneven talents. At his best Van De Mille looks like he’s directing adverts, he has a way of capturing the sharp, memorable, but ultimately meaningless image. At his worst though, he’s basically a porn director, voyeuristic with an alarming lack of subtlety. (Although, to be fair, the same criticisms could be made of Michael Bay, but at least he knows how to blow shit up). Whereas Liddy D’Eath can be a brilliant and transcendent and often darkly erotic actress, Van De Mille films her in such a way that at his best makes the actress look striking and incredible and you want whatever she’s selling; but at his worst it’s like she’s just going to hump whoever else happens to be in the room with her.

Fortunately Van De Mille’s skills with dialogue haven’t yet deserted him. And it’s double, roll-over fortunate that this time they seem to have been married to an actual grasp of plot (as if he’d spent the last two years sat at home reading a book entitled ‘How to Plot Your Way out of a Paper Bag’), making this movie their best since the first sexy goth girls film.

How best to describe what we have here? Well, think of ‘Columbo’, with the killer all smug as he commits the perfect crime and then high-handedly underestimates the shabby, trench-coated detective. Now think of a ‘Columbo’ with the same kind of recognisable guest villain (Eric Roberts, if you’re interested), but instead of a shabby cop investigating him, it’s a “goth, lesbian bitch with bad PMT.” And there you have ‘Sexy Goth Detective’.

Clearly Von De Mille is going for the mainstream, a lot of this film couldn’t be any more pitched at easy Sunday night viewing if John Nettles showed up as a put upon senior detective. But in his leading lady, he has a presence – which no matter how much he wants to sanitise it – remains spectacularly dark, weird and off-kilter. D’Eath dominates this film and even though she’s the heroine, she makes every scene she is in much more tense and scary than it ever need be. It’s a disturbing and fascinating performance which truly upsets Van De Mille’s stabs for some kind of respectability and creates a disturbing and fascinating movie.

The Last of the Mohicans (1964)

D. Peter Potinstoff
Colour

Something I’ve rarely touched upon so far is how good an actor Elvis was. Okay, I can see you rolling your eyes and smirking, but let me finish. Clearly he wasn’t allowed to be a great actor, the material just wasn’t there for him to demonstrate that even if he’d had the talent. But often the material isn’t there for him to show himself to be a good actor either, and yet somehow Elvis mostly manages to turn in a good performance. And by good I don’t mean simply adequate, I mean he truly inhabits his character within the context of the world around him. That’s different from creating a fully rounded, living and breathing character – as most Elvis films would have been deeply unsettled by having a fully rounded, living and breathing character in their midst – but in the light and fluffy world that most Elvis movies inhabit, Elvis fills his role with aplomb. He never embarrasses himself, and even when he’s clearly bored by the music, his acting performance retains masses of grace and soul. Elvis was never allowed to be a great actor, but then he was rarely given the material to shine as a truly good actor, yet he nearly always showed himself to be inherently gifted and as a man who could have had a proper career in the cinema if he’d been given the chance.

That’s my really long winded prelude to saying that despite all of that, ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ stinks.

And Elvis is fucking terrible in it!

Even I’m not going to try and defend this one.

Actually casting Elvis as Hawkeye is a fantastic idea. After all Elvis was often reputed to have Native American heritage and he has the skin tone, the eyes and the cheekbones to pull it off. He also has a certain stillness about him on the screen, and stillness is a quality that American movies loved to use for braves and chiefs (seriously, why aren’t there any jittery and nervous Native Americans on the big screen?) In practice though Elvis has no idea what to do with the part and is deeply and obviously uncomfortable within it. I think as a young boy Elvis always wanted to be a cowboy rather than an Indian and it shows in every stilted movement. Many scenes go by with him standing arms crossed in his headdress, looking like one of those old statues – creating a lifeless immobility that is at times so convincing it surprises you when he speaks. His dialogue is no help at all though, it’s supposed to be wise aphorisms in pigeon-English but he actually comes across like a less convincing Yoda: “Speak English, proper, he cannot”. Okay, the character comes more alive in the stunt scenes, but that’s more to do with an enthusiastic stuntman than anything else.

‘Harum Scarum’ and this are the Elvis films that suffer most from being shot entirely within the confines of the studio, with a few leaves and unconvincing shrubs at Paramount unable to replicate the great American wilderness. And the supporting cast of Shelley Fabares (later seen again with Elvis in ‘Spinout’), and Deforest Kelly (looking stunned at the absurdity around him, and this is a man who managed to act like he believed in William Shatner’s toupee) don’t manage to lift things any higher. This is a strange misfiring film, where everything goes wrong and one can only be amazed that every copy of it wasn’t dramatically hurled off some waterfall in North Carolina.

Daleks in New York (1972)

D. Henry Q. Fleming
Colour


Four years after their amicable split, which saw The Doctor fail to fight the daleks on TV for four years and the daleks get their own movie which at points seemed to last four years, we have their reunion. Despite Terry Nation’s best efforts the daleks hadn’t been successful by themselves. Most sensible observers saw that coming, as after all murderous pepper pots who bicker amongst themselves in grating metallic voices aren’t actually inherently cool. So we’re back to where we began, with him licensing his monsters for the TV show again and as a quid pro quo, that strange Victorian human inventor with a doctorate and the unlikely surname of ‘Who’ returning to the films.


Yes, here is Peter Cushing in his velvet coat, looking much the same but now sporting exciting 1970s side-burns.


There has been a change though, as whereas the first dalek story was a horror film for kids, with human beings on a strange planet in terrible danger, here we get – well, a mess. The tone of this film is so schizophrenic that it’s unclear whether the director, writer, crew or cast gave any thought at all to what this movie was aiming for. It’s both brooding urban menace and broad comedy, almost as if two films were actually shot and then haphazardly edited together by some cracked old drunk. The scary and ruthless army of daleks of the last (underperforming) film are replaced by battered daleks who’ve only just managed to drag themselves by their suckers out of their crashed spaceship. But having six daleks rather than six hundred works, as inspiration strikes and we have the great image of killer daleks lurking like muggers down dark New York alleyways. (Although clearly this production never went to New York as the film is either shot on sets or on that rare London street which could conceivably pretend to be New York.) Unfortunately, in-between the scary exterminations, we also have a couple of fun and playful daleks. And the silly daleks make their more ruthless brethren look by association just a bit, well, silly.


Cushing and his granddaughters arrive in New York (I’ve lost track at this point of the granddaughters’ names and the actresses playing them; for a character who seems so sexless, this Doctor Who’s progeny really do seem to go at it). What follows is a cat and mouse game with these rogue and dangerous creatures of Skaro, but at the same time the audience is supposed to find a couple of them sweet and endearing in their incompetent pootling around the Big Apple. So we have the daleks killing a mother who is pushing a pram, but we also have them trying to recruit a bubble-gum machine to their cause. We have them melting locks as they pursue the doctor, but then being befuddled by an escalator. It makes for a really mind-bending film and that’s before we get to Binky7.2.


My friends, if you ever wanted to see where George Lucas got inspiration for Jar-Jar Binks, then look no further than Binky7.2, the friendly dalek. This is a dalek who appreciates poetry, who tries to sing in his grating metallic voice and spends the film learning about humour and how to crack wise. This is the dalek the doesn’t buy into the others’ killing and world domination plans and the one who (SPOILER ALERT) ends up saving Doctor Who’s life and joining the Tardis as a companion by the end. Certainly a friendly travelling dalek goes a bit against expectations and makes a nice twist, but let’s be fair, it doesn’t bode well for more serious films ahead.

Over the Threshold (2004)

D. Mike Culumbus
Colour


Nicole Kidman should not be allowed to do comedy.


It’s a fact that should be as clear as the flipping moon by now.


Obviously she’s an extremely good dramatic actress and clearly a very attractive woman (there are blind man in lost tribes of the Amazon who fancy Nicole), but to cast her in a comedy is always huge and regrettable mistake. It’s as if she doesn’t understand the concept of jokes or laughter or punchlines, even prat-falls are beyond her – there’s just something too delicate and restrained about Nicole for her to ever fall over in a funny way. Evidently she thinks she can do it, but that’s because she has watched other people be funny and imagines she can copy them. But there isn’t an amusing, witty or humorous sinew in her whole body, so she just ends up working her way through comic scripts in dead-eyed incomprehension – and that is not good for the health of any comedy project. (For another red headed actress similarly affected, see Moore, Julianne). By all means cast her in drama, let her do big emotional, tragic, scenes with swelling scores that make Oscar voters sit up and salivate like juicy prunes, but just keep her away from comedy. There are some people who can get laughs and there are some who really, really can’t. She is the latter.


Here’s an example, with Nicole playing against Hugh Grant in a culture clash comedy that was actually released in 2004 but feels like it’s been sat on a shelf since about 1958. Giving an early sketch of her white trash role from ‘The Paperboy’, but this time broader and less subtle, NIcole is a Kentucky waffle waitress who is wooed and married by visiting English aristocrat Grant. After the wedding she’s whisked back to England where fish out of water comedy ensues. It’s not a particularly original scenario for a film, is it? And believe me the script does it no favours by being half-baked, underwritten and about an eighth as funny as a 1980’s ITV sitcom.


So we have comedy yokels, sniffy aristocratic relatives, cheerful barmen, flirty antique dealers, a brassy would-be mistress for Grant, and – as counter-balance – a sleazy aristo interested in the delectable Nicole. The jokes are asthmatic and seemingly riddled with hay-fever in the English sunshine, so Grant does what he always does in these situations and starts to flail wildly in an attempt to make things funny just through a kind of polite mania. It results in him playing every scene slightly too loud in an attempt to bring life to them, but really he just sucks all the fun away in his desperation. Yet because Nicole just doesn’t understand comedy and doesn’t understand that this won’t work, she starts to imitate him, as if believing that since Grant does know about comedy this must be the way to do it. And so we have both of them horribly over the top, both of them waving their arms and bulging their eyes, until the two of them are caught in a despairing and terrible death spiral of unfunniness.


It’s terrible to watch, and on a blog where I’m supposed to be recommending obscure films I have to say that you should avoid this one like a virulent plague-zone. I just bring it forth as Exhibit A in why Nicole most absolutely, totally and certainly shouldn’t do comedy.

Honeymoon of Horrors (1945)

D. Jack van Dougel
B&W


‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ is a dark comedy of the type that you just feel Cary Grant wished he did more of. Obviously he knew his image and was fond of his image as it paid for him to be, well, Cary Grant, but there was always something about him that strained to be darker than that image. You can see it in the films he made with Alfred Hitchcock; you see it in the films he made with Howard Hawks. But this is one of those rare movies where he just really goes for it. From talking of the horrendous fate meted out to Archibald Leach in ‘His Girl Friday’, to murderous aunts in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, to bloody honeymoons here: this, my friends, is the dark side of Cary Grant.


Upping the tempo of his normal screen persona, this is Grant as full-on frazzled. The most famous example of a frazzled Cary Grant is of course ‘North by Northwest’, but there he’s a proto James Bond, which you have to admit is pretty damn suave. ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ though is an increasingly macabre comedy, where laughs and deaths are piled on top of each other in frantic and haphazard fashion, and Grant is frazzled to the max. At points he doesn’t even look like Cary Grant: his face is grubby, that normally pristine hair finds itself ruffled and spiked, and his eyes are well and truly bulging. This is a Cary Grant lost in a situation he can’t control, as a newly-wed husband who starts to believe that his wife is a mass murderer.


The fact that the wife is played by Joan Fontaine makes this a delicious spin on Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’. In that film Joan plays a newlywed who starts to be suspicious about the murderous intentions of her husband, Cary Grant, suspicions which build to a disappointing ending. Here it’s Joan Fontaine as the suspected murderess, but it still builds to a disappointing ending. It’s much like Karl Marx said: good Hollywood ideas repeat themselves, first as suspense and then as farce.


Starting out as what looks like a blissful Hollywood romance, the two drive to the beautiful country hotel they’re staying in for their honeymoon, all loved up and with dreams of their future. They check in with the charming receptionist, kiss as they go up to their hotel room and everything looks rosy. But there’s a guest in reception who seems to recognise Fontaine and greets her by another name, before long he’s dead, and not long after all the other guests start dropping like particularly diseased flies. Grant grows suspicious that his lovely bride is responsible, and investigates even when trying to throw the suspicions of others away from her.


If we’re honest Fontaine isn’t much of a comedienne, but her icy, implacable cool serves the film well. It’s left to Grant to do all the heavy lifting laughs-wise and this he achieves with a truly manic unhinged performance. Think of some wild, lost Abbott & Costello movie with Grant in the Costello role; or a Marx Brothers film where Grant has moments of impersonating both Groucho and Harpo – then you have an idea of the joy that lies within ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’.


The dark tone and clearly cynical world view mean it won’t be for everyone’s tastes, but Grant is brilliant and serves yet another reminder why we should never forget what a fantastic, wonderful, always impeccable actor he was.

The Sound of Wedding Bells (1960)

D. Nigel Ramsbotham
B&W


‘The Sound of Wedding Bells’ is runt of the litter of Cliff Richard movies, and given what that litter looks like you can imagine that it’s a very malformed and feeble runt indeed. It’s the only one of Cliff’s movies to not be a musical, the only one that aims at proper drama and a movie that manages to be both tediously stilted and decidedly weird at the same time. Okay, there are two songs, but one of them is over the end credits and the film seems there to show off Cliff’s acting skills, or at least how far he has to go until he becomes a proper actor


Here Cliff is as a young lad in Northern English town who works in the factory and still lives with his widowed mother. So far so ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, though don’t expect the brooding machismo of an Albert Finney (or for that matter, an Albert Steptoe). What’s truly interesting though is that Cliff’s character is named Harry Webber, which of course is only one syllable off his real name. So there’s almost a sense that Cliff is playing himself: the good and dutiful son who is dedicated to his career and his mother. He does seem happy with his lot at the start of the film, but soon a good-time girl arrives to throw off all the certainties of his world with just a casual glance over her beautiful shoulder.


This sweetheart is Jeanette Scott, a sexy blonde who wants to go to the bright lights of London. In her skin-tight white trousers and pink angora jumper she looks every inch the 1950’s American pin-up girl, and plays the role with appropriate American brassiness. Unfortunately that truly unsettles a film where she’s supposed to be all hot and wild for a far more frigid Cliff. Imagine the twenty-five year old Angelina Jolie trying to get it on with Sir John Gielgud and you have a good idea of their scenes together. But the script says there has to be sparks between them: so they meet, kiss, seem to fall in love (although interestingly those words are never used) and before they know it they’re engaged. As their relationship progresses it becomes clear that Cliff is going to have to decide whether to marry this fast woman follow her to a fast lifestyle in London. That would mean leaving his life, and most importantly his mother behind.


What’s interesting, for the accepted narrative that it was The Beatles who came along in 1962/1963 to blow Cliff away, is how neutered he was even a year before. Already his image is safe and dutiful and as far from a rock’n’roll child as it would be possible to be. The ending sees him separate from the gorgeous, yet wild fiancée, leaving her to head off to London by herself (where she’ll certainly meet a much more exciting man), while Cliff stays behind with his dear old mother. Yes there’s the possibility of romance with safe and conservative librarian, Una Stubbbs, but this is a film about a boy who loves his mother above all else. For a movie starring a rock’n’roller at the height of his fame that’s a decidedly odd note to end up on – and yet given how Cliff’s career and life has progressed – a really appropriate one.

Two Bouquets, Two Husbands , Only One Bride (1965)

D. Donald Howard
Colour


I got married yesterday!


There’s a fairly loud statement with which to begin a blog-post, but it’s true. I am now a married man.


The thing is though, that I’m writing this piece far in advance as I need a buffer to keep this blog chugging merrily along while I head off on honeymoon, so as I type this I’m not actually married at all. I’m writing in the past tense about things which haven’t actually happened yet. But all will be fine and by the time you read this I will be married and nursing my post-bash hangover with my gorgeous, young bride.


Anyway, this seems a perfect opportunity to look at some of the interesting wedding movies out there.


Why don’t we try this one on for size?


Kenneth Williams and Sid James both finding themselves married to Jayne Mansfield?


A preposterous idea, you say?


It happened on the big screen, my friend.


Kenneth Williams and Sid James were never a comedy double act, in fact they didn’t even really like each other that much (although that actually makes them sound a lot like most comedy double acts). But I can see how the American producers of this British production may have got the impression that they were a comedy double act. They offer a nice line in contrasts: James wiry, tough and wrinkled, against Williams’ smooth, slight figure; James’ crudeness against Williams’ fastidious prissiness; James’ dirty, salt of the earth cackle, against Williams head thrown back, nostrils flared, superior howl of laughter. This movie was an attempt to throw a budget behind them and make them a proper double act, and to really give it zing, faded glamour-puss Jayne Mansfield – the woman who practically coined the word ‘pneumatic’*  – was flown over from The States. Her name is obviously the big drawer on the poster, but it truly wasn’t really that big a deal, by this point she was well into the ‘will do anything for money’ phase of her career.


Mansfield is an American gold-digger who simultaneously marries Williams’ spoilt and effete aristocrat, and James’ scrap metal dealer made good. It’s then high farce of the doors slamming, compromising situations, rushed excuses and arms well and truly flailing kind, as she tries to keep them from finding out about each other. When they get suspicious that she’s just in this for their money, all it takes is the innocent wide eyes to Williams, and a sultry pose to James and they’re wrapped back around her little finger again. (I’m sure you can picture it: Williams gurning with excitement and amazement at his bride; James giving his biggest lascivious grin). The real problems come though when she realises she’s fallen in love with both of them.


This could have been a great bawdy 60s farce, but really it’s just not that funny. It relies on the chemistry of the leads to paper over the fact that there aren’t that many good lines, and then doesn’t put the leads together often enough to make it work. Anyone who has seen a later Carry On film will know how good James and Williams are at scraping thin samples of life off even the most stale and putrid material, so it’s galling that most of what we would loosely describe at the best lines go to Mansfield. Really, you don’t want Jayne Mansfield to be your main comic force, her talents rise and fall much more in decoration.


Maybe Williams/James could have become international stars in the Martin/Lewis mould, but it seems odd to think of them in Bel-Air, sipping cocktails and winning honorary Oscars. Theirs is a lot more pleasant, down at heal glamour. This film went nowhere (earning less and being substantially poorer in quality than the same year’s ‘Carry on Cowboy’). They may have been disappointed, but I’m glad things went this way, as they were always a better fit for a nice pair of slippers and a pint of stout at the BBC and Thames TV.



* It was either her or Aldous Huxley, I always get those two mixed up.