D. Henry Jagol
Gruesome and rich Colour, the way gothic should be
Putting Robin Hood in opposition to Dracula is actually a pretty good idea. After all vampires are the most aristocratic of all mythical monsters. Anybody can become a werewolf, but vampires have castles and huge tracts of land and servants and titles. They’re not the upwardly mobile screen monsters – that’s Frankenstein, who is self-making men wherever he goes; instead they’re the inherited wealth, excellent pedigree, Tatler-subscribing creatures of the undead. As such, who better to pit against them than a man who specialises in removing wealthy people from their wealth? A hero who has thrown away his own title and is now intent on making the aristocrats of this world more like the rest of us. Yes, true friend of the masses, Robin Hood, against serial exploiter of the blood of the proletariat, Count Dracula, makes loads of sense. Let’s bring on the ultimate class battle!
Unfortunately, this being a cheaply made AIP Hammer knock-off of the early Sixties, these kinds of issues are never raised. Indeed what the film is most interested in is shots of vampires with arrows bursting through their chests.
So we’re in the forest with Robin Hood (Stewart Granger, painfully aware that he’s slumming it) and his merry men. They’re having fun singing songs as they liberate the riches of the local aristocracy, but the nearby castle has a new tenant and he has plans for the region much darker than Robin Hood has ever imagined.
(Where all this is set is a bit up in the air. The word ‘Sherwood’ is never mentioned; neither is the word ‘Nottingham’. But presumably this is Robin Hood’s home-patch so this is Sherwood Forest and this is Nottingham and that’s a bizarrely gothic version of Nottingham Castle Dracula has just moved into. But then some of the locals know Dracula of old, which would suggest Transylvania. Whoever did the research for this movie really gave a slapdash effort.)
Before long the night time woods are filled with blood-suckers and the merry men are fighting to save every soul they can. This is fairly low-rent fun, but it’s not without moments of quality. Boris Karloff is clearly far too old to be Dracula (though it’s nice he finally got to play the old fangmeister), but Jack Nicholson as Reinfeld is there for the heavy lifting and does it with all the creepiness and malice as you’d expect from Jack; while some of the fight scenes have their moments – particularly Friar Tuck first trying to exorcise a female vampire, then waving his cross at her, then pleading with her about the rightness of God, then giving up on the holy stuff and simply setting fire to her.
So a film that misses the social message which should have been obvious in this story, is geographically confused and only just scrapes up to the level its ambition aims for. But in its Robin Hood/Dracula idea – even in an unambitious, ill thought out version of that idea – you just know it’s a movie Quentin Tarantino thinks is decidedly cool.
Showing posts with label boy's own. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boy's own. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
Sunday, 5 October 2014
The Return of Lancelot (1974)
D. Ted Obery
Colour
You can see the thought processes at work here.
Someone, somewhere must have been pitching a version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. No doubt facing some dubious Hollywood exec in a riot of beige, who was wondering why the hell the kids of today would want to see anything about poncy, fruity Englishmen in tights and strange women in ponds distributing swords willy-nilly, the no doubt perspiring filmmaker uttered the line: “They were just like the cowboys of their day!” At that moment the meeting had a little jolt of electricity and some wet behind the sideburns bright young thing leapt up to say that rather than just claim Arthur, Lancelot and crew were the cowboys of their day, why don’t we bring them together with actual cowboys? “Excellent!” shouts everybody, and there are Cuban cigars and lines of coke all round. Of course the little filmmaker celebrated with everyone else, even as he saw his dreams of a great Arthurian epic die.
And so here we have it:
Lancelot is cursed by Mordred to sleep for a thousand years (the maths aren’t going to work here, but just go with it). But when he wakes up, he is no longer in Wales or Cornwall or wherever the hell Camelot is thought to have been these days, he’s in Arizona (the geography isn’t going to work here either, but just go with it). He’s still in his Arthurian garb, he’s still speaking a distinctly flowery form of olde Englishe, but there he is – a new warrior in the Wild West.
Richard Chamberlain plays Lancelot and does so with a certain steely prissiness. This man is fussy on manners and etiquette and will kill you if you go against his rules, but is a true hero. Geoffrey Lewis is Mad Bill, the first cowboy Lancelot encounters. He looks flea-bitten and sunburnt, and has rotten teeth as well a booze-filled cackle borrowed from Edmund O’Brien in ‘The Wild Bunch’. But after a stand-off played for both tension and laughs, mutual respect breaks out, and it becomes clear that underneath it all Mad Bill is a good man and not that mad at all (he might not even be called Bill).
Let the legendary tales of this mis-matched pair begin!
Unfortunately this time travel adventure with an English hero has exactly the same flaw as last week’s time travel adventure with an English hero, in that having set up a fantastic premise it then proceeds to follow normal genre tropes and becomes a western The two get involved with a villainous land barren (Richard Widmark) and after various skirmishes, win the day because one of their number is an expert swordsman (I don’t want to ruin the suspense, so won’t tell you which one). Obviously the fact that one of these characters is an Arthurian knight, spouting the kind of dialogue which only comes from a well-thumbed thesaurus, means it’s not totally devoid of fun. But it’s horribly and depressingly predictable and if it had turned into the TV series it so clearly wants to be, we’d have had week after week of this unambitious twaddle.
What it really needed was Mordred to have slept as well and the whole thing to be a showdown between these two ancient warriors, but that would have required a more ambitious film with an actual ending in mind, not one that seemed desperate to coast along for the next five years on just the one mutant of an idea.
Colour
You can see the thought processes at work here.
Someone, somewhere must have been pitching a version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. No doubt facing some dubious Hollywood exec in a riot of beige, who was wondering why the hell the kids of today would want to see anything about poncy, fruity Englishmen in tights and strange women in ponds distributing swords willy-nilly, the no doubt perspiring filmmaker uttered the line: “They were just like the cowboys of their day!” At that moment the meeting had a little jolt of electricity and some wet behind the sideburns bright young thing leapt up to say that rather than just claim Arthur, Lancelot and crew were the cowboys of their day, why don’t we bring them together with actual cowboys? “Excellent!” shouts everybody, and there are Cuban cigars and lines of coke all round. Of course the little filmmaker celebrated with everyone else, even as he saw his dreams of a great Arthurian epic die.
And so here we have it:
Lancelot is cursed by Mordred to sleep for a thousand years (the maths aren’t going to work here, but just go with it). But when he wakes up, he is no longer in Wales or Cornwall or wherever the hell Camelot is thought to have been these days, he’s in Arizona (the geography isn’t going to work here either, but just go with it). He’s still in his Arthurian garb, he’s still speaking a distinctly flowery form of olde Englishe, but there he is – a new warrior in the Wild West.
Richard Chamberlain plays Lancelot and does so with a certain steely prissiness. This man is fussy on manners and etiquette and will kill you if you go against his rules, but is a true hero. Geoffrey Lewis is Mad Bill, the first cowboy Lancelot encounters. He looks flea-bitten and sunburnt, and has rotten teeth as well a booze-filled cackle borrowed from Edmund O’Brien in ‘The Wild Bunch’. But after a stand-off played for both tension and laughs, mutual respect breaks out, and it becomes clear that underneath it all Mad Bill is a good man and not that mad at all (he might not even be called Bill).
Let the legendary tales of this mis-matched pair begin!
Unfortunately this time travel adventure with an English hero has exactly the same flaw as last week’s time travel adventure with an English hero, in that having set up a fantastic premise it then proceeds to follow normal genre tropes and becomes a western The two get involved with a villainous land barren (Richard Widmark) and after various skirmishes, win the day because one of their number is an expert swordsman (I don’t want to ruin the suspense, so won’t tell you which one). Obviously the fact that one of these characters is an Arthurian knight, spouting the kind of dialogue which only comes from a well-thumbed thesaurus, means it’s not totally devoid of fun. But it’s horribly and depressingly predictable and if it had turned into the TV series it so clearly wants to be, we’d have had week after week of this unambitious twaddle.
What it really needed was Mordred to have slept as well and the whole thing to be a showdown between these two ancient warriors, but that would have required a more ambitious film with an actual ending in mind, not one that seemed desperate to coast along for the next five years on just the one mutant of an idea.
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
The Trials and Tribulations of Mister Henry Church (1984)
D. Russ Maybery
Colour
1984 seems as good a time as any to hire Simon MacCorkindale to appear in a blatant rip-off of ‘The Saint’. MacCorkindale was definitely up to the task; he more than had the charm and arrogance to pull off the role and if given a proper chance would have been a Simon Templar to match Roger Moore (or a James Bond for that matter). MacCorkindale’s other US foray was a legendary mess named ‘Manimal’. This, for the uninitiated, saw him play a doctor who could shape-shift into any animal of prey and who used his talents to help police with their investigations. Sounds brilliant, doesn’t it? Actually it was wildly mocked, but I’ll be honest I always rather enjoyed it as a small child. As such he needed a chance to get his career back on track, and it’s a shame it went nowhere as this is a role which fits him like a burglar’s glove.
The thing is though, MacCorkindale isn’t actually playing Simon Templar. Maybe there was a rights issue, or maybe Ian Ogilvy’s agent threw the mother of all hissy fits, but here MacCorkindale is Henry Church – a master thief, adventurer, charmer, a man about town and one of the most famous men of his age.
Except he isn’t in his age anymore, as well as all his other achievements, he’s become an inadvertent time traveller.
One can only guess that Adam Ant’s success as an international popstar was enough for the producers to throw the premise of Sixties time travel show ‘Adam Adamant Lives’ in there as well. Or perhaps no one could think of any reason for a dashing 1930s English adventurer type to suddenly appear in 1980s LA, unless he was some kind of nostalgia fetishist – and nostalgia fetishists are hardly likely to appeal to that key demographic: the kids. So we have a prologue where Church fights his main adversary The Hood (a prologue so stuffed with terrible expositional dialogue that you wonder if the script is credited to one G. Lucas) before Church falls into a tank of dry ice where he’s frozen for nearly fifty years. Then one day Henry Church awakes in the 1980s, a curious place where even his unflappable English charm will be put sorely to the test.
There’s a lot of promise in this scenario, essentially a dapper English gentleman with self-assurance beyond anything that modern man can reach makes his way in the modern world. He hooks up with investigative reporter. Erin Gray, and the sparks do fly between him and this 1980s girl. (Gray I also watched as a small child in ‘Buck Rogers’, where she introduced me to the whole concept of withering looks – she really does have a fine selection of them). But the fact that this is a back-door pilot means that a lot of what’s promising about this scenario is lost in handling a case of the week. So we see Henry Church amazed by big TV sets and dealing with skinheads in leather jackets who play their music too loud on huge speakers, but most of what makes this so promising is lost among the tropes of a generic American detective show.
A promising and intriguing idea then, but a waste of talent and effort – and the first part of that sentence is more than could be said about ‘Manimal’ at least.
Colour
1984 seems as good a time as any to hire Simon MacCorkindale to appear in a blatant rip-off of ‘The Saint’. MacCorkindale was definitely up to the task; he more than had the charm and arrogance to pull off the role and if given a proper chance would have been a Simon Templar to match Roger Moore (or a James Bond for that matter). MacCorkindale’s other US foray was a legendary mess named ‘Manimal’. This, for the uninitiated, saw him play a doctor who could shape-shift into any animal of prey and who used his talents to help police with their investigations. Sounds brilliant, doesn’t it? Actually it was wildly mocked, but I’ll be honest I always rather enjoyed it as a small child. As such he needed a chance to get his career back on track, and it’s a shame it went nowhere as this is a role which fits him like a burglar’s glove.
The thing is though, MacCorkindale isn’t actually playing Simon Templar. Maybe there was a rights issue, or maybe Ian Ogilvy’s agent threw the mother of all hissy fits, but here MacCorkindale is Henry Church – a master thief, adventurer, charmer, a man about town and one of the most famous men of his age.
Except he isn’t in his age anymore, as well as all his other achievements, he’s become an inadvertent time traveller.
One can only guess that Adam Ant’s success as an international popstar was enough for the producers to throw the premise of Sixties time travel show ‘Adam Adamant Lives’ in there as well. Or perhaps no one could think of any reason for a dashing 1930s English adventurer type to suddenly appear in 1980s LA, unless he was some kind of nostalgia fetishist – and nostalgia fetishists are hardly likely to appeal to that key demographic: the kids. So we have a prologue where Church fights his main adversary The Hood (a prologue so stuffed with terrible expositional dialogue that you wonder if the script is credited to one G. Lucas) before Church falls into a tank of dry ice where he’s frozen for nearly fifty years. Then one day Henry Church awakes in the 1980s, a curious place where even his unflappable English charm will be put sorely to the test.
There’s a lot of promise in this scenario, essentially a dapper English gentleman with self-assurance beyond anything that modern man can reach makes his way in the modern world. He hooks up with investigative reporter. Erin Gray, and the sparks do fly between him and this 1980s girl. (Gray I also watched as a small child in ‘Buck Rogers’, where she introduced me to the whole concept of withering looks – she really does have a fine selection of them). But the fact that this is a back-door pilot means that a lot of what’s promising about this scenario is lost in handling a case of the week. So we see Henry Church amazed by big TV sets and dealing with skinheads in leather jackets who play their music too loud on huge speakers, but most of what makes this so promising is lost among the tropes of a generic American detective show.
A promising and intriguing idea then, but a waste of talent and effort – and the first part of that sentence is more than could be said about ‘Manimal’ at least.
Sunday, 28 September 2014
Jungle Jim (1984)
D. Hackworth Hopes
Colour
Ah, Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimmer turned Tarzan, who once the most famous period of his career was over, picked up a jungle suit and a paunch and became Jungle Jim on both film and TV. “Who’s Jungle Jim?” I hear you cry. Well, Jungle Jim was another character created by the same guy who dreamt up Flash Gordon and was kind of a fully dressed western version of Tarzan, but one who operated in Asia rather than Africa. So he’s a sanitised take on the great white hunter, suitable for kids of all ages – even if Weissmuller looked a bit too portly and the jungle couldn’t be any more fake if Johnny was just stood in front of a plain background with the words ‘Trees Go Here’ scrawled on it.
The same year that director Hugh Hudson gave us a truly self-serious version of Tarzan in ‘Greystoke’, we had the other side of the coin with a remake of ‘Jungle Jim’. Here was Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones, tackling another of Alex Raymond’s creations and proving once again that he was born at completely the wrong time. If ever there was a one dimensional actor who was good at striking heroic poses in the face of all kinds of monster nonsense, it was Sam Jones. But he needed to either exist in the time of B movie madness or the kind of schlock the Sci-fi channel turns out week after week now. The 1980s were really no good for him.
Having been knocked out and dumped in the jungle, Jim awakes in the mythical country of Muthapetox wearing an outfit that makes him look like Indiana Jones just after he’s been to the dry cleaners. Ever the adventurer, it isn’t long before he’s earned the wrath of white jungle priestess, Barbara Carrera (another performer who screams the 1980s and another performer who wasn’t given proper chance to put her bad acting skills to good use), and then rescued damsel in distress, Emma Samms, and her incredible shrinking skirt. Samms and Jones bicker and fight and flirt and fall in love as they trek their way out of the jungle and towards ‘civilisation’. But Jim realises that the legendary lost city of Nig-taca is not far away and determines to visit it.
So we’re in the land of made up places with obviously made up names, but unlike the same year’s Tarzan movie, that means it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Interestingly the film ends with an alien spaceship rising out of the lost city where it’s been buried for thousands of years. That’s of course the same ending as ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ and yet in this far more preposterous film such an occurrence doesn’t seem to so utterly preposterous. The Indiana Jones film spent its length stretching our credibility (fridges that survive nukes; Shia Le Bouef channelling Tarzan, the entire Shia Le Boeuf performance in fact) until it reached the point of tearing that credibility completely asunder. ‘Jungle Jim’ though doesn’t require any credibility, in fact it demands you leave your credibility at the door at the start, and it’s all the better for it.
Colour
Ah, Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimmer turned Tarzan, who once the most famous period of his career was over, picked up a jungle suit and a paunch and became Jungle Jim on both film and TV. “Who’s Jungle Jim?” I hear you cry. Well, Jungle Jim was another character created by the same guy who dreamt up Flash Gordon and was kind of a fully dressed western version of Tarzan, but one who operated in Asia rather than Africa. So he’s a sanitised take on the great white hunter, suitable for kids of all ages – even if Weissmuller looked a bit too portly and the jungle couldn’t be any more fake if Johnny was just stood in front of a plain background with the words ‘Trees Go Here’ scrawled on it.
The same year that director Hugh Hudson gave us a truly self-serious version of Tarzan in ‘Greystoke’, we had the other side of the coin with a remake of ‘Jungle Jim’. Here was Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones, tackling another of Alex Raymond’s creations and proving once again that he was born at completely the wrong time. If ever there was a one dimensional actor who was good at striking heroic poses in the face of all kinds of monster nonsense, it was Sam Jones. But he needed to either exist in the time of B movie madness or the kind of schlock the Sci-fi channel turns out week after week now. The 1980s were really no good for him.
Having been knocked out and dumped in the jungle, Jim awakes in the mythical country of Muthapetox wearing an outfit that makes him look like Indiana Jones just after he’s been to the dry cleaners. Ever the adventurer, it isn’t long before he’s earned the wrath of white jungle priestess, Barbara Carrera (another performer who screams the 1980s and another performer who wasn’t given proper chance to put her bad acting skills to good use), and then rescued damsel in distress, Emma Samms, and her incredible shrinking skirt. Samms and Jones bicker and fight and flirt and fall in love as they trek their way out of the jungle and towards ‘civilisation’. But Jim realises that the legendary lost city of Nig-taca is not far away and determines to visit it.
So we’re in the land of made up places with obviously made up names, but unlike the same year’s Tarzan movie, that means it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Interestingly the film ends with an alien spaceship rising out of the lost city where it’s been buried for thousands of years. That’s of course the same ending as ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ and yet in this far more preposterous film such an occurrence doesn’t seem to so utterly preposterous. The Indiana Jones film spent its length stretching our credibility (fridges that survive nukes; Shia Le Bouef channelling Tarzan, the entire Shia Le Boeuf performance in fact) until it reached the point of tearing that credibility completely asunder. ‘Jungle Jim’ though doesn’t require any credibility, in fact it demands you leave your credibility at the door at the start, and it’s all the better for it.
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
There Be Monsters!!! (1945)
D. Raoul Walsh
B&W
James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart: two actors so much of their age. Two actors who specialised in ripped from the headlines dramas of the thirties, before the latter became the definitive leading man of the 1940s. If you think of either, it’s likely to be with sharp suits, spats, guns and snarling faces. That’s why ‘The Oklahoma Kid’, where the two play cowboys and try to send the whole thing up, is held as something of a cult classic. An example of how badly wrong casting can go. It’s odd then that their last onscreen appearance together, a film that makes ‘The Oklahoma Kid’ look like it has the gravitas of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in comparison, is so obscure. As ‘There Be Monsters!!!’ isn’t just Cagney and Bogart as cowboys, it’s Cagney and Bogart as a proto Butch and Sundance taking on Nazis and dinosaurs in the Arizona desert.
Our heroes are cowboys at the turn of the Twentieth Century, rogues perhaps, but essentially that heart of gold type outlaw so prominent in the movies but markedly less visible in real life. Framed for a crime they didn’t commit by a ruthless sheriff (Lon Chaney Jr – playing it straight and probably delighted not to be playing the monster role in a film with ‘monster’ in the title), they break out of their latest prison cell, ride into the desert and straight into a mist which takes them to – who the hell knows? The film isn’t clear on that point and it will only hurt your head to think about it. But before long our heroes are battling pterodactyls, tyrannosauruses and an oddly ferocious brontosaurus. What’s more, they find themselves up against Nazis, who are trying to capture the biggest carnivore of all – the mighty Galactisaurous – and have it lead their army to victory.
So we have dinosaurs and Nazis, at which point we rub our aching heads and presume that our heroes have somehow gone simultaneously back and forward in time. What’s really peculiar though is that Cagney and Bogart – despite being turn of the century roughneck men – instantly recognise the Nazis. They know who they are, what they’re up to and set out to stop them with the help and hindrance of the various dinosaurs.
It really is ridiculously potty – but if you just go with it, a ridiculously potty and exciting ride. In the distance Willis O’Brien’s dinosaurs are even more impressive than they were in ‘King Kong’. It’s when they’re up close that they cause problems, as it can only raise smiles to watch such tough guy actors (and various blokes faking German accents) pretending to be menaced by pieces of rubber. But they do give it their all even in those scenes. Bogart makes these monsters seem real by sneering them in much the same way he does Peter Lorre; while Cagney acts the hell out of a confrontation with the most ridiculous and rubbery snake seen this side of an Ed Wood movie, as if defying the audience to find anything at all silly in what he’s doing. And that commitment is what makes this film so wonderful; throughout it our two leads really do give their all. Even when they’re winking at the camera and saying: “Hey! We know this is nonsense, but it’s fun!”
Raoul Walsh directs with panache and a ceaseless sense of adventure, and if you remove your brain and your sneer at the start, it’s most entertaining. But clearly we needed special effects to advance and Steven Spielberg to arrive to make this kind of nonsense as beautiful and as gripping as it could be.
B&W
James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart: two actors so much of their age. Two actors who specialised in ripped from the headlines dramas of the thirties, before the latter became the definitive leading man of the 1940s. If you think of either, it’s likely to be with sharp suits, spats, guns and snarling faces. That’s why ‘The Oklahoma Kid’, where the two play cowboys and try to send the whole thing up, is held as something of a cult classic. An example of how badly wrong casting can go. It’s odd then that their last onscreen appearance together, a film that makes ‘The Oklahoma Kid’ look like it has the gravitas of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in comparison, is so obscure. As ‘There Be Monsters!!!’ isn’t just Cagney and Bogart as cowboys, it’s Cagney and Bogart as a proto Butch and Sundance taking on Nazis and dinosaurs in the Arizona desert.
Our heroes are cowboys at the turn of the Twentieth Century, rogues perhaps, but essentially that heart of gold type outlaw so prominent in the movies but markedly less visible in real life. Framed for a crime they didn’t commit by a ruthless sheriff (Lon Chaney Jr – playing it straight and probably delighted not to be playing the monster role in a film with ‘monster’ in the title), they break out of their latest prison cell, ride into the desert and straight into a mist which takes them to – who the hell knows? The film isn’t clear on that point and it will only hurt your head to think about it. But before long our heroes are battling pterodactyls, tyrannosauruses and an oddly ferocious brontosaurus. What’s more, they find themselves up against Nazis, who are trying to capture the biggest carnivore of all – the mighty Galactisaurous – and have it lead their army to victory.
So we have dinosaurs and Nazis, at which point we rub our aching heads and presume that our heroes have somehow gone simultaneously back and forward in time. What’s really peculiar though is that Cagney and Bogart – despite being turn of the century roughneck men – instantly recognise the Nazis. They know who they are, what they’re up to and set out to stop them with the help and hindrance of the various dinosaurs.
It really is ridiculously potty – but if you just go with it, a ridiculously potty and exciting ride. In the distance Willis O’Brien’s dinosaurs are even more impressive than they were in ‘King Kong’. It’s when they’re up close that they cause problems, as it can only raise smiles to watch such tough guy actors (and various blokes faking German accents) pretending to be menaced by pieces of rubber. But they do give it their all even in those scenes. Bogart makes these monsters seem real by sneering them in much the same way he does Peter Lorre; while Cagney acts the hell out of a confrontation with the most ridiculous and rubbery snake seen this side of an Ed Wood movie, as if defying the audience to find anything at all silly in what he’s doing. And that commitment is what makes this film so wonderful; throughout it our two leads really do give their all. Even when they’re winking at the camera and saying: “Hey! We know this is nonsense, but it’s fun!”
Raoul Walsh directs with panache and a ceaseless sense of adventure, and if you remove your brain and your sneer at the start, it’s most entertaining. But clearly we needed special effects to advance and Steven Spielberg to arrive to make this kind of nonsense as beautiful and as gripping as it could be.
Sunday, 21 September 2014
Bloody McDougall of the Black Seas (1955)
D. Alfred E. Green
B&W
What on Earth is ‘Bloody McDougall of the Black Seas’?
Well, you’re not going to believe this, but it’s Groucho Marx as a pirate.
Really? That seems an absurd film even for you to have found.
No, I’m being serious.
Tell me more!
Well, here’s the Marx Brother with the longest career (and one that actually makes sense to a modern audience) yukking it up in a puffy shirts, dark pantaloons and a nice triangular hat. Of course even as a pirate the very modern glasses, cigar and moustache stay in place.
Is it a real moustache?
Yes, by the 1950s Groucho was able to afford a real moustache.
Is he a good pirate?
I think so. Certainly he’s more of a precursor to Captain Jack Sparrow than a successor to Long John Silver. He’s, as you’d no doubt expect, more of a funny pirate, rather than a psychotic pirate. His heart is in the right place.
I actually meant good as in successful.
Oh, there are so many ways you can define the word ‘good’, aren’t there?
Don’t worry, we go back – I knew you’d pick the wrong one.
Sorry. Well that’s the thing, no he’s not a good pirate, or remotely adequate come to that. But he’s a braggart and a dreamer and so boasts about his pirate escapades, but these pirate escapades don’t really exist.
So he’s just saying them for larks?
Well, that and because they impress bad girl of the sea, Jane Russell.
Oh, Jane Russell is in it as well? I do like Jane Russell.
Don’t we all? She has a particularly fetching sneer in this film, which doesn’t leave her even in those moments when she is well disposed towards Groucho. As such she gives the impression of a cat toying with a mouse. Also, her cleavage here would undoubtedly have pleased Howard Hughes.
Um, a bit sexist, isn’t it?
Sorry, given the nature of her career break, one is always more inclined to discuss Jane Russell’s neckline than any other actress.
Okay, as long as you don’t make a habit out of it.
I promise I won’t.
So who’s the bad guy in this film?
Well, what passes as the bad guy is actually the force of authority, in the prim and prissy form of Claude Rains.
Claude Rains too? This just gets better and better.
I know. So the film is largely Groucho as Randell Q MacDougall, who is basically a land lubber, talking up his murderous exploits to impress Russell, then when he is arrested for said murderous exploits having to talk his way out of custody with Rains. It’s Groucho talking and insulting and wheedling and spinning nonsense in the way only Groucho can.
Sounds fun, if a little repetitive.
It is fun, if a little repetitive.
So are there any actual hi-jinx on the high seas?
It takes almost the whole length for Groucho, and the movie, to leave dry land. Once there it’s all played for laughs rather than drama though.
I’m guessing a happy ending then?
Kind of, Groucho gets the girl, but the fact that she’s still sneering means that she no doubt has other plans for him.
You’ve convinced me. I’ll have to check it out.
My work here is done!
B&W
What on Earth is ‘Bloody McDougall of the Black Seas’?
Well, you’re not going to believe this, but it’s Groucho Marx as a pirate.
Really? That seems an absurd film even for you to have found.
No, I’m being serious.
Tell me more!
Well, here’s the Marx Brother with the longest career (and one that actually makes sense to a modern audience) yukking it up in a puffy shirts, dark pantaloons and a nice triangular hat. Of course even as a pirate the very modern glasses, cigar and moustache stay in place.
Is it a real moustache?
Yes, by the 1950s Groucho was able to afford a real moustache.
Is he a good pirate?
I think so. Certainly he’s more of a precursor to Captain Jack Sparrow than a successor to Long John Silver. He’s, as you’d no doubt expect, more of a funny pirate, rather than a psychotic pirate. His heart is in the right place.
I actually meant good as in successful.
Oh, there are so many ways you can define the word ‘good’, aren’t there?
Don’t worry, we go back – I knew you’d pick the wrong one.
Sorry. Well that’s the thing, no he’s not a good pirate, or remotely adequate come to that. But he’s a braggart and a dreamer and so boasts about his pirate escapades, but these pirate escapades don’t really exist.
So he’s just saying them for larks?
Well, that and because they impress bad girl of the sea, Jane Russell.
Oh, Jane Russell is in it as well? I do like Jane Russell.
Don’t we all? She has a particularly fetching sneer in this film, which doesn’t leave her even in those moments when she is well disposed towards Groucho. As such she gives the impression of a cat toying with a mouse. Also, her cleavage here would undoubtedly have pleased Howard Hughes.
Um, a bit sexist, isn’t it?
Sorry, given the nature of her career break, one is always more inclined to discuss Jane Russell’s neckline than any other actress.
Okay, as long as you don’t make a habit out of it.
I promise I won’t.
So who’s the bad guy in this film?
Well, what passes as the bad guy is actually the force of authority, in the prim and prissy form of Claude Rains.
Claude Rains too? This just gets better and better.
I know. So the film is largely Groucho as Randell Q MacDougall, who is basically a land lubber, talking up his murderous exploits to impress Russell, then when he is arrested for said murderous exploits having to talk his way out of custody with Rains. It’s Groucho talking and insulting and wheedling and spinning nonsense in the way only Groucho can.
Sounds fun, if a little repetitive.
It is fun, if a little repetitive.
So are there any actual hi-jinx on the high seas?
It takes almost the whole length for Groucho, and the movie, to leave dry land. Once there it’s all played for laughs rather than drama though.
I’m guessing a happy ending then?
Kind of, Groucho gets the girl, but the fact that she’s still sneering means that she no doubt has other plans for him.
You’ve convinced me. I’ll have to check it out.
My work here is done!
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
Tarzan in Hollywood (1978)
D. Frank Avanage
Colour
The King of the Jungle becomes the King of Hollywood?!
Where do we start?
We all know the Tarzan story.
Well, I think you know the Tarzan story.
Basically a good son of England finds himself stranded as a boy in the wilds of Africa and grows up to King of the Jungle. Eventually the Western world finds him again and the ensuing culture clash mines seams of drama or comedy (or a little of both), but certainly that big seam called adventure.
Every Tarzan adventure is basically the same, which means that filmmakers can do ANYTHING with them.
Here pretty freelance journalist, Stephanie Zimbalist (apparently one of those freelance journalists who just hang out in jungles for no apparent reason), stumbles across Tarzan and amidst swiftly arising passion between the two (he’s never seen a woman before; most of the guys she hangs out with are effete LA tossers) she introduces him to America.
So far, so Tarzan.
Here’s the twist though, such is the sensation her newspaper article causes and such are Tarzan’s good looks and obvious charisma, he becomes a major Hollywood star. Just like that. A montage makes clear his rapid rise to fame, as well as making clear how ludicrous a proposition this is. We see some of the films he stars in: western, science fiction, romance, period drama; but in each he’s wearing a loin cloth and still talking in stilted half-learnt English. Now lots of actors get by just playing versions of themselves, but here Tarzan is literally playing himself in every single film and apparently it’s a recipe for huge success.
Being a jungle man who largely follows his own whims means Tarzan fits right in to his new Hollywood lifestyle. He and Cheetah both go a little wild (Cheetah a little wilder), and both do things they regret (Cheetah much more so). But eventually Tarzan misses the simple ways of his jungle home and heads back, promising to look after the accompanying Stephanie and teach her the law of the jungle. Having frowned for a good half an hour of the film’s length, as Tarzan slips away from Hollywood he beams a big triumphant grin. Cheetah seems fucking gutted though.
It’s the predictable message and good low stakes fun, but you could easily have made this film about a farm boy from Kansas. Tom Selleck makes an appropriate macho and alpha-male Tarzan though. (My colleague has a massive crush on Tom Selleck. My colleague is married man with small children. My colleague is straight, but still not at all shy about voicing his adoration for the Selleck. I really must introduce him to this film.) As Tarzan, Selleck wears a loin cloth, an ill-fitting wig and delivers all his lines in comical stuttering English. He looks so right for the part, but also so deeply and obviously uncomfortable.
That Kansas reference has triggered something in me though.
When this Zach Snyder thing is finished, can we please have ‘Superman in Hollywood’?
Can’t you just picture him playing all his roles in tights and cape, before realising that a simple life of fighting Lex Luther is more for him?
If it happens, I want a cut.
Colour
The King of the Jungle becomes the King of Hollywood?!
Where do we start?
We all know the Tarzan story.
Well, I think you know the Tarzan story.
Basically a good son of England finds himself stranded as a boy in the wilds of Africa and grows up to King of the Jungle. Eventually the Western world finds him again and the ensuing culture clash mines seams of drama or comedy (or a little of both), but certainly that big seam called adventure.
Every Tarzan adventure is basically the same, which means that filmmakers can do ANYTHING with them.
Here pretty freelance journalist, Stephanie Zimbalist (apparently one of those freelance journalists who just hang out in jungles for no apparent reason), stumbles across Tarzan and amidst swiftly arising passion between the two (he’s never seen a woman before; most of the guys she hangs out with are effete LA tossers) she introduces him to America.
So far, so Tarzan.
Here’s the twist though, such is the sensation her newspaper article causes and such are Tarzan’s good looks and obvious charisma, he becomes a major Hollywood star. Just like that. A montage makes clear his rapid rise to fame, as well as making clear how ludicrous a proposition this is. We see some of the films he stars in: western, science fiction, romance, period drama; but in each he’s wearing a loin cloth and still talking in stilted half-learnt English. Now lots of actors get by just playing versions of themselves, but here Tarzan is literally playing himself in every single film and apparently it’s a recipe for huge success.
Being a jungle man who largely follows his own whims means Tarzan fits right in to his new Hollywood lifestyle. He and Cheetah both go a little wild (Cheetah a little wilder), and both do things they regret (Cheetah much more so). But eventually Tarzan misses the simple ways of his jungle home and heads back, promising to look after the accompanying Stephanie and teach her the law of the jungle. Having frowned for a good half an hour of the film’s length, as Tarzan slips away from Hollywood he beams a big triumphant grin. Cheetah seems fucking gutted though.
It’s the predictable message and good low stakes fun, but you could easily have made this film about a farm boy from Kansas. Tom Selleck makes an appropriate macho and alpha-male Tarzan though. (My colleague has a massive crush on Tom Selleck. My colleague is married man with small children. My colleague is straight, but still not at all shy about voicing his adoration for the Selleck. I really must introduce him to this film.) As Tarzan, Selleck wears a loin cloth, an ill-fitting wig and delivers all his lines in comical stuttering English. He looks so right for the part, but also so deeply and obviously uncomfortable.
That Kansas reference has triggered something in me though.
When this Zach Snyder thing is finished, can we please have ‘Superman in Hollywood’?
Can’t you just picture him playing all his roles in tights and cape, before realising that a simple life of fighting Lex Luther is more for him?
If it happens, I want a cut.
Sunday, 27 July 2014
Skeleton Island (1971)
D. Don Chaffey
Colour
This is one of those epic swords and sorcery, men in short tunics (and let’s be fair more than slightly homo-erotic) movies which seems to have fallen through the net of our cultural memory. Perhaps because Ray Harryhausen himself didn’t do the effects (although when he saw it, even he must have been suspicious that he had done the effects – given how familiar they all are); or maybe it’s because it’s not actually based on some pre-existing myth or legend, and is in fact lovingly ripped off from ‘The Night of the Living Dead’. But even if this is a minor effort when compared to ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, it’s still rollicking entertainment that deserves to be better known.
In a premise lifted straight from Homer, a group of battle-scarred warriors sailing home get horribly lost on the high seas. In the break of a storm they espy an island, with a castle sat imperiously on top of a sheer cliff. Seeking sanctuary, and a much needed break from being tossed about on the waves, they make their way ashore. In bright sunlight they climb to the castle, finding it empty but seemingly idyllic. There is shelter, comfort, and even some food for them to eat. But then at nightfall something terrible happens: a huge army of skeletons rises from the earth and lays siege to the castle. Our brave warriors are forced to fight for their lives to keep them out. Their trouble intensified by the fact that if any of the men dies, his skeleton breaks loose of his body and suddenly the danger is inside the castle as well.
That’s basically it. It lacks the epic sweep of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and the political message and subtlety of ‘The Night of the Living Dead’, but it’s a hell of a fun ride. It’s full-on swords breaking skeleton bones, bony hands grabbing at flesh (and sometimes grabbing through flesh), skeletons popping out of shadows when you least expect it, skull-like faces looming from darkness. The stop-motion will no doubt be mocked by snooty people for whom old films are endless source of fun (basically because they’re idiots). But really, more troubling from an enjoyment point of view is the characterisation (or lack of characterisation) in the script and performances (or lack of differentiating performances) of the cast – all of whom are stocky men with beards dressed in brown leather tunics. It’s hard to actually give a damn about who survives and who doesn’t when you’re not really sure which character is which.
A film crying out for a Hollywood remake then, one with new computer effects, a better script and a stronger set of actors. That Hollywood version of ‘Troy’ never got the sequel its source material so clearly demanded. Let’s give Sean Bean a call and see if he wants to do this.
Colour
This is one of those epic swords and sorcery, men in short tunics (and let’s be fair more than slightly homo-erotic) movies which seems to have fallen through the net of our cultural memory. Perhaps because Ray Harryhausen himself didn’t do the effects (although when he saw it, even he must have been suspicious that he had done the effects – given how familiar they all are); or maybe it’s because it’s not actually based on some pre-existing myth or legend, and is in fact lovingly ripped off from ‘The Night of the Living Dead’. But even if this is a minor effort when compared to ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, it’s still rollicking entertainment that deserves to be better known.
In a premise lifted straight from Homer, a group of battle-scarred warriors sailing home get horribly lost on the high seas. In the break of a storm they espy an island, with a castle sat imperiously on top of a sheer cliff. Seeking sanctuary, and a much needed break from being tossed about on the waves, they make their way ashore. In bright sunlight they climb to the castle, finding it empty but seemingly idyllic. There is shelter, comfort, and even some food for them to eat. But then at nightfall something terrible happens: a huge army of skeletons rises from the earth and lays siege to the castle. Our brave warriors are forced to fight for their lives to keep them out. Their trouble intensified by the fact that if any of the men dies, his skeleton breaks loose of his body and suddenly the danger is inside the castle as well.
That’s basically it. It lacks the epic sweep of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and the political message and subtlety of ‘The Night of the Living Dead’, but it’s a hell of a fun ride. It’s full-on swords breaking skeleton bones, bony hands grabbing at flesh (and sometimes grabbing through flesh), skeletons popping out of shadows when you least expect it, skull-like faces looming from darkness. The stop-motion will no doubt be mocked by snooty people for whom old films are endless source of fun (basically because they’re idiots). But really, more troubling from an enjoyment point of view is the characterisation (or lack of characterisation) in the script and performances (or lack of differentiating performances) of the cast – all of whom are stocky men with beards dressed in brown leather tunics. It’s hard to actually give a damn about who survives and who doesn’t when you’re not really sure which character is which.
A film crying out for a Hollywood remake then, one with new computer effects, a better script and a stronger set of actors. That Hollywood version of ‘Troy’ never got the sequel its source material so clearly demanded. Let’s give Sean Bean a call and see if he wants to do this.
Wednesday, 11 June 2014
Dropper Harris and the Menace from Beyond (1939)
D. Ted Green
B&W
The third Dropper Harris film clearly realises it’s the last in the series. That’s not to say it’s lazy, everybody involved is clearly giving a hundred percent even when they know the material they’ve been given is utterly ludicrous. Cary Grant in particular looks like he’s relishing the absolutely ridiculous dialogue and lunatic scenario, knowing that this isn’t something he’d find himself doing for Howard Hawks or George Cukor. This has the feel of everybody letting their hair down, of an entire production team chilling out and just throwing stuff to the wall to see what would stick. Cary Grant later wrote (and indeed directed a film) about his experiments with LSD, and this feels like he’s slipped some to the crew to give the whole production that blissed out, psychedelic, “logic is there to be broken, man” type of atmosphere. As here we have a plot involving Dropper Harris, London citizen and number one agent for the British secret service, taking a trip into space. Yes, this is Dropper Harris goes to the moon.
If you were expecting some common-sense plot to explain this development, then I’m sorry you’re out of luck. There are reasons given for why all this happens, explanations offered for all that takes place, but they don’t stand up to even the briefest scrutiny. Indeed this is the second version of this paragraph I’ve written, in the first I tried to explain the plot, but after much head scratching and confusion I just gave up. Again the makers aren’t being slap-dash, this is a film that knows its money shot is Dropper Harris (Cary Grant) and Binky (Tommy Harrison) bouncing around in Flash Gordon outfits on the moon with big silly grins on their faces. That’s what’s on the poster, that’s what the public wanted to see and – goddamnit! – that’s what we got.
Yes, there’s some nonsense about the Russians having opened a moon-base and sending rays back to Earth, but it’s purely window dressing. This is about Dropper, Binky and new team member/love interest Catarina (Dorothy Lamour) going to the moon. That’s where the fun lies and everybody is set to have the time of their lives. Grant in particular has a big, very un-Cary Grant-like goofy grin, as he prances around in Buster Crabbe’s cast-offs spouting alternatively meaningless mumbo-jumbo or over the top atrocious dialogue. He’s still brilliant in this film. Indeed the genius of Cary Grant’s acting is that even when he knows what he’s doing is totally ridiculous, even when part of him is obviously making fun of each scene even as he acts in it, he still takes the audience with him. He never capsizes the film, never ruins it by playing it like panto – somehow he manages to be both serious and in on the joke at the same time, and the result is some of the most joyful silliness you will ever see.
There was nowhere else for Dropper Harris to go after this (except, perhaps, Mars), but we should be thankful these movies exist. A gleeful series of mad, lunatic 1930s adventure films, which always felt out of this world even before they actually went there.
B&W
The third Dropper Harris film clearly realises it’s the last in the series. That’s not to say it’s lazy, everybody involved is clearly giving a hundred percent even when they know the material they’ve been given is utterly ludicrous. Cary Grant in particular looks like he’s relishing the absolutely ridiculous dialogue and lunatic scenario, knowing that this isn’t something he’d find himself doing for Howard Hawks or George Cukor. This has the feel of everybody letting their hair down, of an entire production team chilling out and just throwing stuff to the wall to see what would stick. Cary Grant later wrote (and indeed directed a film) about his experiments with LSD, and this feels like he’s slipped some to the crew to give the whole production that blissed out, psychedelic, “logic is there to be broken, man” type of atmosphere. As here we have a plot involving Dropper Harris, London citizen and number one agent for the British secret service, taking a trip into space. Yes, this is Dropper Harris goes to the moon.
If you were expecting some common-sense plot to explain this development, then I’m sorry you’re out of luck. There are reasons given for why all this happens, explanations offered for all that takes place, but they don’t stand up to even the briefest scrutiny. Indeed this is the second version of this paragraph I’ve written, in the first I tried to explain the plot, but after much head scratching and confusion I just gave up. Again the makers aren’t being slap-dash, this is a film that knows its money shot is Dropper Harris (Cary Grant) and Binky (Tommy Harrison) bouncing around in Flash Gordon outfits on the moon with big silly grins on their faces. That’s what’s on the poster, that’s what the public wanted to see and – goddamnit! – that’s what we got.
Yes, there’s some nonsense about the Russians having opened a moon-base and sending rays back to Earth, but it’s purely window dressing. This is about Dropper, Binky and new team member/love interest Catarina (Dorothy Lamour) going to the moon. That’s where the fun lies and everybody is set to have the time of their lives. Grant in particular has a big, very un-Cary Grant-like goofy grin, as he prances around in Buster Crabbe’s cast-offs spouting alternatively meaningless mumbo-jumbo or over the top atrocious dialogue. He’s still brilliant in this film. Indeed the genius of Cary Grant’s acting is that even when he knows what he’s doing is totally ridiculous, even when part of him is obviously making fun of each scene even as he acts in it, he still takes the audience with him. He never capsizes the film, never ruins it by playing it like panto – somehow he manages to be both serious and in on the joke at the same time, and the result is some of the most joyful silliness you will ever see.
There was nowhere else for Dropper Harris to go after this (except, perhaps, Mars), but we should be thankful these movies exist. A gleeful series of mad, lunatic 1930s adventure films, which always felt out of this world even before they actually went there.
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Argonauts of the Air (1937)
D. Jimmy Cowdell
B&W
It’s H.G. Wells week this week on The Alternative History of Cinema. There’s no specific reason for this, on this blog I just pick things on a whim and whimsy and go from there. And since in recent weeks, two H.G. Wells adaptations have occurred to me, I thought I’d create thematic unity by running them together. Yes, I really should have done it in September for his birthday or something like that, but sod it! All year around is a good time for Bromley’s finest literary son. First up we have a stilted, cut glass tale of British derring-do in outer space. Set in the wonderful year of 2014, but clearly much more the 1930s. The future, much like the present, is British and nothing is going to stop that. Get your Union Jack marked spaceships at the ready, put your stiff upper lip in place, and off we go.
Based on the very short Wells story of the same name, this is the almost Monty Python set-up of spaceflight from the suburbs. Just outside the two up, two down of the new suburban developments, there are rockets lined up ready to fly to the furthest reaches of space. There dashing young men queue up to be spacemen and take the glory of Britain to the further possible horizon, while dowdier men in pinstripe suits and bowler hats man Mission Control – just like Mr Benn’s most out of this world adventure. We hear tales of a moon-base, a Martian colony (where in a throwaway line it seems we are teaching the Martians about civilised government), of how the Saturn fleet is now mighty. But a threat is coming from closer to home that could seriously harm this brilliant endeavour.
For the most part this is derring-do of a Bulldog Drummond style. Lewis Coleman is Captain Jack Cook, a legendary figure in the space corps – the kind of man with a pencil thin moustache, slicked back hair, a rakish grin and a glint in the eye bright enough to weaken the knee of any poor susceptible member of the female species. He’s the type of Englishman who is every woman’s dream (although that dream probably involves pounding her lover’s buttocks once a week with a cane to really get him off. Yes, he’s that type of Englishman!) Clearly the film makers have seen Flash Gordon as there are the plastic rocket ships, onesie space uniforms, strange new planets. But at the forefront, hands on hips, staring handsomely into the distance, looking both heroic and rather repressed, is our very English hero.
But there’s a problem, the large staff back at space-fleet command has been infiltrated. It hasn’t been infiltrated by a Martian, or a Venusian or a moon person – no the big threat comes from closer to home, it comes from the anarchists. Arthur Simkins, as rat-faced an actor as ever lived, is Karl Mannix, an anarchist who is determined to destroy the space-fleet. He doesn’t dream of a glorious space Empire, he dreams of bringing England to its knees. After a few acts of sabotage a general meeting is called and after a bumpy opening, Captain Jack carries the day and gets the workforce on its side. It’s then that Mannix, and his sinister foreign cohorts, decide to step the plan up and kill Captain Jack, slaughter the glorious symbol of the British Space Empire itself. But the will of the people is stronger. Joined together – every member of the space corps, from Captain Jack Cook down to a lowly cleaner named Marjorie (who stares at Captain Jack with a mix of motherly pride and lustful wantonness) is able to root out and get rid of the these subversive infiltrators. Space flight is for all and the all join together to make sure that the malcontent few do not destroy the great dream of mankind.
It’s a beautiful image, one that precedes ‘Star Trek’ by thirty years, and chimes well with Wells’ own political views. But it also makes for an oddly confusing movie. The anarchists are clearly portrayed as left wing themselves. There they are with their pamphlets, their copies of Marx, their exaggerated (as it turns out) claims about poor working conditions. And so they don’t seem to be that different from the grouping which eventually crushes them. Yes, socialism without Marx is an ideal Wells is on record as desiring, and this is a film where the Marx is forcibly removed from socialism. Yet there is little on the screen to truly explain what that means and we’re left with a story where some left wing patriots get rid of some really left wing malcontents so that the bowler hatted fellows of Wimbledon, Surbiton and Worcester Park can continue their work in Britain’s glorious imperial space-race.
B&W
It’s H.G. Wells week this week on The Alternative History of Cinema. There’s no specific reason for this, on this blog I just pick things on a whim and whimsy and go from there. And since in recent weeks, two H.G. Wells adaptations have occurred to me, I thought I’d create thematic unity by running them together. Yes, I really should have done it in September for his birthday or something like that, but sod it! All year around is a good time for Bromley’s finest literary son. First up we have a stilted, cut glass tale of British derring-do in outer space. Set in the wonderful year of 2014, but clearly much more the 1930s. The future, much like the present, is British and nothing is going to stop that. Get your Union Jack marked spaceships at the ready, put your stiff upper lip in place, and off we go.
Based on the very short Wells story of the same name, this is the almost Monty Python set-up of spaceflight from the suburbs. Just outside the two up, two down of the new suburban developments, there are rockets lined up ready to fly to the furthest reaches of space. There dashing young men queue up to be spacemen and take the glory of Britain to the further possible horizon, while dowdier men in pinstripe suits and bowler hats man Mission Control – just like Mr Benn’s most out of this world adventure. We hear tales of a moon-base, a Martian colony (where in a throwaway line it seems we are teaching the Martians about civilised government), of how the Saturn fleet is now mighty. But a threat is coming from closer to home that could seriously harm this brilliant endeavour.
For the most part this is derring-do of a Bulldog Drummond style. Lewis Coleman is Captain Jack Cook, a legendary figure in the space corps – the kind of man with a pencil thin moustache, slicked back hair, a rakish grin and a glint in the eye bright enough to weaken the knee of any poor susceptible member of the female species. He’s the type of Englishman who is every woman’s dream (although that dream probably involves pounding her lover’s buttocks once a week with a cane to really get him off. Yes, he’s that type of Englishman!) Clearly the film makers have seen Flash Gordon as there are the plastic rocket ships, onesie space uniforms, strange new planets. But at the forefront, hands on hips, staring handsomely into the distance, looking both heroic and rather repressed, is our very English hero.
But there’s a problem, the large staff back at space-fleet command has been infiltrated. It hasn’t been infiltrated by a Martian, or a Venusian or a moon person – no the big threat comes from closer to home, it comes from the anarchists. Arthur Simkins, as rat-faced an actor as ever lived, is Karl Mannix, an anarchist who is determined to destroy the space-fleet. He doesn’t dream of a glorious space Empire, he dreams of bringing England to its knees. After a few acts of sabotage a general meeting is called and after a bumpy opening, Captain Jack carries the day and gets the workforce on its side. It’s then that Mannix, and his sinister foreign cohorts, decide to step the plan up and kill Captain Jack, slaughter the glorious symbol of the British Space Empire itself. But the will of the people is stronger. Joined together – every member of the space corps, from Captain Jack Cook down to a lowly cleaner named Marjorie (who stares at Captain Jack with a mix of motherly pride and lustful wantonness) is able to root out and get rid of the these subversive infiltrators. Space flight is for all and the all join together to make sure that the malcontent few do not destroy the great dream of mankind.
It’s a beautiful image, one that precedes ‘Star Trek’ by thirty years, and chimes well with Wells’ own political views. But it also makes for an oddly confusing movie. The anarchists are clearly portrayed as left wing themselves. There they are with their pamphlets, their copies of Marx, their exaggerated (as it turns out) claims about poor working conditions. And so they don’t seem to be that different from the grouping which eventually crushes them. Yes, socialism without Marx is an ideal Wells is on record as desiring, and this is a film where the Marx is forcibly removed from socialism. Yet there is little on the screen to truly explain what that means and we’re left with a story where some left wing patriots get rid of some really left wing malcontents so that the bowler hatted fellows of Wimbledon, Surbiton and Worcester Park can continue their work in Britain’s glorious imperial space-race.
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Dropper Harris and the Opera of Doom (1938)
D. Ted Green
B&W
A year after the first Dropper Harris movie, Cary Grant was back. This is interesting in itself, as sequels were far from the norm back then and certainly not the done thing for major stars. They were the preserve of men with the surnames Weissmuller and Crabbe, Olympic swimmers who’d turned to – what could loosely be described as – acting, rather than serious cinema players. Yet the ‘Dropper Harris’ movies, although clearly made with a higher budget and better actors, are trading in the same language as your Tarzans and Flash Gordons. They are popcorn, adventure films, there to provide mindless entertainment, but of a higher quality and with bigger thrills. Which means that decades before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took those old adventure films and turned them into ‘Indiana Jones’, Cary Grant was – as always – already leading the way.
Here we are back in a London of the mind, a London that bears as much resemblance to the 1930s or the 1890s as it does to now. There are horse drawn carts and Dropper Harris’s housekeeper seems to be wed to an old fashioned mangle. But there are also speeding black Ford automobiles and gangsters, some of whom would not be out of place in Chicago. Harris catches what he refers to “the London tube”, but it’s one of those sleek trains you imagine carrying you from Grand Central to Union Station. It even has a bar for god’s sake! Most jarring of all though is Harris’s portable communication device, which he keeps in his pocket and looks and treats just like a mobile phone (albeit it’s something like a Nokia from the turn of the century, rather than an iPhone. This film isn’t that forward looking!) This is a mix of the present, the past and a million possible futures. This is Dropper Harris’s world and we’re supposed to goggle at it.
Along with his trusty sidekick Binky (Tommy Harrison), Harris finds himself again investigating a music based case. This time they are backstage at the opera where two warring parties of gangsters are prone to machine-gunning each other at the crescendos of arias. One is your standard group of hard-faced, monosyllabic muscle, the others are Charles Laughton’s antiquarian gangsters. Hoodlums, known as The Charing Cross Road Gang who – and I’m not making this up – love nothing better than first editions and are running a protection racket involving all the libraries in London. Elsewhere we have the delicious Margaret Lockwood as a femme fatale soprano, and Claude Rains as an ineffective policeman. The plot, once it gets there, never really leaves backstage of The Royal Opera House – and so we have something like ‘Night at the Opera’ meets ‘Scarface’ meets ‘The 39 Steps’ but even more complex than such a bizarre mash-up would suggest. Mystery piles on top of mystery until it all falls over into a conclusion which is brilliant, but doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. That doesn’t matter though, as by the end, all we want to know is what is Leslie Howard’s conductor really up to?
It’s incredibly fun and fast paced (seriously, the way Grant rat-tat-tats the dialogue here makes it seem like he was doing ‘His Girl Friday’ while on mogadon). If you tried to think about how all the strands actually tie together your brain would explode, but this is one of the most invigorating films the 1930s ever produced.
B&W
A year after the first Dropper Harris movie, Cary Grant was back. This is interesting in itself, as sequels were far from the norm back then and certainly not the done thing for major stars. They were the preserve of men with the surnames Weissmuller and Crabbe, Olympic swimmers who’d turned to – what could loosely be described as – acting, rather than serious cinema players. Yet the ‘Dropper Harris’ movies, although clearly made with a higher budget and better actors, are trading in the same language as your Tarzans and Flash Gordons. They are popcorn, adventure films, there to provide mindless entertainment, but of a higher quality and with bigger thrills. Which means that decades before George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took those old adventure films and turned them into ‘Indiana Jones’, Cary Grant was – as always – already leading the way.
Here we are back in a London of the mind, a London that bears as much resemblance to the 1930s or the 1890s as it does to now. There are horse drawn carts and Dropper Harris’s housekeeper seems to be wed to an old fashioned mangle. But there are also speeding black Ford automobiles and gangsters, some of whom would not be out of place in Chicago. Harris catches what he refers to “the London tube”, but it’s one of those sleek trains you imagine carrying you from Grand Central to Union Station. It even has a bar for god’s sake! Most jarring of all though is Harris’s portable communication device, which he keeps in his pocket and looks and treats just like a mobile phone (albeit it’s something like a Nokia from the turn of the century, rather than an iPhone. This film isn’t that forward looking!) This is a mix of the present, the past and a million possible futures. This is Dropper Harris’s world and we’re supposed to goggle at it.
Along with his trusty sidekick Binky (Tommy Harrison), Harris finds himself again investigating a music based case. This time they are backstage at the opera where two warring parties of gangsters are prone to machine-gunning each other at the crescendos of arias. One is your standard group of hard-faced, monosyllabic muscle, the others are Charles Laughton’s antiquarian gangsters. Hoodlums, known as The Charing Cross Road Gang who – and I’m not making this up – love nothing better than first editions and are running a protection racket involving all the libraries in London. Elsewhere we have the delicious Margaret Lockwood as a femme fatale soprano, and Claude Rains as an ineffective policeman. The plot, once it gets there, never really leaves backstage of The Royal Opera House – and so we have something like ‘Night at the Opera’ meets ‘Scarface’ meets ‘The 39 Steps’ but even more complex than such a bizarre mash-up would suggest. Mystery piles on top of mystery until it all falls over into a conclusion which is brilliant, but doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. That doesn’t matter though, as by the end, all we want to know is what is Leslie Howard’s conductor really up to?
It’s incredibly fun and fast paced (seriously, the way Grant rat-tat-tats the dialogue here makes it seem like he was doing ‘His Girl Friday’ while on mogadon). If you tried to think about how all the strands actually tie together your brain would explode, but this is one of the most invigorating films the 1930s ever produced.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
The Black Flamingo (1948)
D. Raoul Walsh
Glorious Technicolor
It’s been a long time since we had a proper pirate film. These days the closest we get is ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’, which is much more post-modern and ironic (as well as being happy to arse about and throw goggle-eyes at the supernatural). But those films don’t feel like proper pirate films to me, they’re almost spoofs of a pirate films which just coast along on the affection we apparently all feel for Johnny Depp’s performance. (And seriously, if we don’t love it and think it’s merely okay – and if we’re honest increasingly served with lashings of self-indulgence which makes it go WAY over the top - then those films can be more than somewhat tedious). Before that we had ‘Cutthroat Island’, which I saw in the cinema and greatly enjoyed, and am always a little baffled that it was such a flop and has so much bad press. But really if we want a proper pirate film – one with ruffled shirts and cutlasses and impossibly handsome leading men with earrings pretending to sail the seven seas in a large tank in the studio – we have to go back even further to the 1940s/1950s and the true age of the pirate film.
This is one of my favourites. Here we have Clark Gable roaring it up as the titular Black Flamingo – who according to his star-struck first mate is “a rogue, a fighter, a lover.” (It goes without saying that the first mate has a bit of a crush on Clark, indeed the moony way he utters the word “lover” suggests this affection may have been reciprocated.) Out at sea one day (or in a tank in the studio) Clark and his crew catch sight of a listing frigate. They’re pirates of the old school so of course they raid, and on board they find nobody but wealthy London trader Sidney Greenstreet and his delectable daughter, Virginia Mayo. Obviously there’s a mystery as to why the ship is otherwise empty, but first – and to save his own life – Greenstreet tells them of some treasure he has stowed away. Filled with greed, the pirates sail out to find it, taking Greenstreet and Mayo with them as hostages. And that’s the film. It’s a breezy and exciting adventure yarn which is filled with the thrill of sailing the mighty oceans, wielding cutlasses, and wearing big frilly shirts (in particular Clark’s luridly red frilly shirt). It’s about Clark Gable’s dashing moustache, it’s about his romancing the absolute peach of a beauty that is Virginia Mayo and it’s about Clark’s less than trustworthy relationship with Sidney Greenstreet. The two of them facing off in a battle of wills, a battle of styles, a battle of rogues who look so distinctive in profile.
And that’s what makes this film so brilliant, it keeps everything simple. Rather than lots of complex plot points and supernatural nonsense, ‘The Black Flamingo’ presents its strengths and proceeds to expertly play to them. Raoul Walsh clearly believes that the dashing enthusiasm of Clark Gable will contrast fantastically with the conniving stillness of Greenstreet, and so it’s worthwhile giving them lots of scenes together. Similarly he thinks that Virginia Mayo looks absolutely ravishing in Technicolor (seriously Virginia Mayo does look absolutely, jaw droppingly, sex on legs, magnificent in Technicolor; her peaches and cream complexion is absolutely delicious – seriously it’s possible that no woman was ever photographed as well in Technicolor as Virginia Mayo) and it will be a male audience fantasy to see her seduced by Clark Gable. (And women, let’s be honest, the sight of an expert seduction by Clark Gable must offer a vicarious thrill). Okay the mystery of the empty ship isn’t as resolved as well as it should be, but everyone has had so much fun on the way that only the most finicky will really care. As what this film is trying to be is The Perfect Pirate Movie, with catchy sea-shanties, a cheerfully roguish crew, betrayal and distrust, romance and adventure laced through every frame. All of that is true and Walsh magnificently steers this mighty ship to give us a truly wonderful hour and a half.
Glorious Technicolor
It’s been a long time since we had a proper pirate film. These days the closest we get is ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’, which is much more post-modern and ironic (as well as being happy to arse about and throw goggle-eyes at the supernatural). But those films don’t feel like proper pirate films to me, they’re almost spoofs of a pirate films which just coast along on the affection we apparently all feel for Johnny Depp’s performance. (And seriously, if we don’t love it and think it’s merely okay – and if we’re honest increasingly served with lashings of self-indulgence which makes it go WAY over the top - then those films can be more than somewhat tedious). Before that we had ‘Cutthroat Island’, which I saw in the cinema and greatly enjoyed, and am always a little baffled that it was such a flop and has so much bad press. But really if we want a proper pirate film – one with ruffled shirts and cutlasses and impossibly handsome leading men with earrings pretending to sail the seven seas in a large tank in the studio – we have to go back even further to the 1940s/1950s and the true age of the pirate film.
This is one of my favourites. Here we have Clark Gable roaring it up as the titular Black Flamingo – who according to his star-struck first mate is “a rogue, a fighter, a lover.” (It goes without saying that the first mate has a bit of a crush on Clark, indeed the moony way he utters the word “lover” suggests this affection may have been reciprocated.) Out at sea one day (or in a tank in the studio) Clark and his crew catch sight of a listing frigate. They’re pirates of the old school so of course they raid, and on board they find nobody but wealthy London trader Sidney Greenstreet and his delectable daughter, Virginia Mayo. Obviously there’s a mystery as to why the ship is otherwise empty, but first – and to save his own life – Greenstreet tells them of some treasure he has stowed away. Filled with greed, the pirates sail out to find it, taking Greenstreet and Mayo with them as hostages. And that’s the film. It’s a breezy and exciting adventure yarn which is filled with the thrill of sailing the mighty oceans, wielding cutlasses, and wearing big frilly shirts (in particular Clark’s luridly red frilly shirt). It’s about Clark Gable’s dashing moustache, it’s about his romancing the absolute peach of a beauty that is Virginia Mayo and it’s about Clark’s less than trustworthy relationship with Sidney Greenstreet. The two of them facing off in a battle of wills, a battle of styles, a battle of rogues who look so distinctive in profile.
And that’s what makes this film so brilliant, it keeps everything simple. Rather than lots of complex plot points and supernatural nonsense, ‘The Black Flamingo’ presents its strengths and proceeds to expertly play to them. Raoul Walsh clearly believes that the dashing enthusiasm of Clark Gable will contrast fantastically with the conniving stillness of Greenstreet, and so it’s worthwhile giving them lots of scenes together. Similarly he thinks that Virginia Mayo looks absolutely ravishing in Technicolor (seriously Virginia Mayo does look absolutely, jaw droppingly, sex on legs, magnificent in Technicolor; her peaches and cream complexion is absolutely delicious – seriously it’s possible that no woman was ever photographed as well in Technicolor as Virginia Mayo) and it will be a male audience fantasy to see her seduced by Clark Gable. (And women, let’s be honest, the sight of an expert seduction by Clark Gable must offer a vicarious thrill). Okay the mystery of the empty ship isn’t as resolved as well as it should be, but everyone has had so much fun on the way that only the most finicky will really care. As what this film is trying to be is The Perfect Pirate Movie, with catchy sea-shanties, a cheerfully roguish crew, betrayal and distrust, romance and adventure laced through every frame. All of that is true and Walsh magnificently steers this mighty ship to give us a truly wonderful hour and a half.
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
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.
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.
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