D. Tommy Bond
Colour
Looking like one of those old health and safety cartoons that for some reason has been blown up into an actual movie (although with animation so unsophisticated it actually makes those creaky old ‘Bananaman’ cartoons seem like cutting edge Anime) we have a movie superhero who totally fails to ignite. The mighty Bernard Cribbins voices the not quite so mighty Bonfire Man, who dresses in a cape and tights (in an outfit so like Superman’s, the lawyers at DC must have been twitching in their crypts), but who has the strange but apparently mighty power of bonfires. It’s important to distinguish that from the power of fire which would of course make him The Human Torch, as although he has these incredible and amazing talents, he’s only able to use these incredible and amazing talents every November the 5th.
Why? You might ask. It’s a fair question and the film does try to answer but does so with such magical, mystical, science fiction mumbo jumbo that the answer might as well be blah blah blah.
Anyway just accept that we have a superhero who can only use his talents one day a year. Now mostly he uses these talents to start large bonfires. He stands on a podium in front of a screaming and braying crowd, and with a click of his fingers and a whoosh of his hands, he ignites the giant neighbourhood bonfire. As such he is a minor British celebrity, feted every time Guy Fawkes Night comes around. But he’s also a man who at the dawn of each November the 6th takes off his outfit and returns to his life as Arthur Stewart, the local fish and chip shop owner. His powers vanish, his muscles and chiselled jaw sink away, and he’s back to serving up saveloy and battered sausage.
But with Bonfire Night coming up this year, a criminal gang is planning to use the noise of the fireworks to rob the local bank. This year it seems that Bonfire Man may have to step out of his shell and use his powers for real and proper good.
Okay, one can see how blowing a bank vault on bonfire night would cause less attention than blowing it on, say, Easter Sunday. The plan makes sense from that point of view. But if in the town there is a superhero named Bonfire Man, who only has super powers one day a year, then maybe that day is not the best one on which to embark on a nefarious scheme. Wait until Chinese New Year, for god’s sake!
It’s a kids film so one shouldn’t be overly hard on the simplicity of its logic, but it’s a kids film with such low ambitions, it’s frankly quite depressing. One could make a really interesting film about what it would mean to have such ephemeral powers, about what it’s like to be a lonely man who is treated as a god for one day a year. Sadly this isn’t that film.
It’s worth watching though as the thing which really works in this movie is Cribbins voice work, which is truly brilliant – managing to distinguish Arthur Stewart from Bonfire Man, but keeping them recognisably the same person; as well as finding emotions and depth in lines that even the scriptwriter clearly thought were just throwaway crap. Everyone in the UK is genetically programmed to love Bernard Cribbins and this is yet another reason why.
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 November 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, 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, 17 August 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
Gransel & Hetel (1958)
D. Jago Mirelles
B&W
Much like ‘The Third Man’, a film in which Orson Welles only really makes a brief appearance, but which looks from every lop-sided camera-shot and stark black and white image like your actual Orson Welles movie; this is another film in which Welles does little more than cameo, but which seems like Orson Welles directing at his most menacing. Of course ‘Gransel & Hetel’ is a lot more obscure and nowhere near as good as ‘The Third Man’ (that’s fine though, it’s hardly a badge of shame to be less good than ‘The Third Man’), but one which in its Grimm Brothers gothic stands out as being possibly the most Welles films the great Orson never directed.
A boy named Gransel and a girl named Hetel wander too far into the woods one day where they meet a wicked witch who makes no secret of the fact she’d like to eat them. Actually this is one damned scary witch. Imagine the bleached face of a worm with the razor-like teeth of a tiger shark, then picture that looming out of black & white darkness and we have here the kind of evil queen Alvy Singer is never ever going to fall in love with. The plucky kids make their escape, but are trapped in the increasingly dark wood with their would-be devourer in pursuit. A terrified elf tells them that the only way they can save themselves is to head to the ogre’s castle at the centre of the woods.
The ogre is, of course, Orson Welles, shot constantly from low angles to make him look twice as big and three times as menacing. He looms into frame, dominates it, his big and bushy beard seems to jut right out of the screen, he laughs twice as loud as any other sound in the film. Of course this opens up a lot of fat jokes at poor Orson’s expense (he after all looks more likely to eat the kids than the scrawny witch), but I’m going to (mostly) rise above that and just say how great his performance is: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ played not as a kindly charlatan, but as a malevolent and changeable monster who can help you on a whim, but easily destroy you too.
(It amuses me to do this film right next to Peter Sellers in ‘Mr Hargreaves’, as part of the reason production on the original ‘Casino Royale’ went so badly awry was the spectacular falling out between the two men. In these films each seems to be playing versions of their public personas. Sellers is outwardly affable and witty, but underneath something distinctly more unpleasant; while Welles is a quixotic, occasionally charming, walking appetite. If I had to pick, I think I’d rather have an evening out with Orson.)
Like an earlier, less well-formed ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, this is a movie which takes European fairy tales and decides not to downplay the horror elements Disney-style, but instead ramp them up so each of the ogres, witches and fairies is screaming at you. What we have is an Orson Welles’s children’s film – one that’s a compendium of creepy old books, scary backdrops, horrible monsters with horrible appetites, and a sense of doom that doesn’t really let up.
B&W
Much like ‘The Third Man’, a film in which Orson Welles only really makes a brief appearance, but which looks from every lop-sided camera-shot and stark black and white image like your actual Orson Welles movie; this is another film in which Welles does little more than cameo, but which seems like Orson Welles directing at his most menacing. Of course ‘Gransel & Hetel’ is a lot more obscure and nowhere near as good as ‘The Third Man’ (that’s fine though, it’s hardly a badge of shame to be less good than ‘The Third Man’), but one which in its Grimm Brothers gothic stands out as being possibly the most Welles films the great Orson never directed.
A boy named Gransel and a girl named Hetel wander too far into the woods one day where they meet a wicked witch who makes no secret of the fact she’d like to eat them. Actually this is one damned scary witch. Imagine the bleached face of a worm with the razor-like teeth of a tiger shark, then picture that looming out of black & white darkness and we have here the kind of evil queen Alvy Singer is never ever going to fall in love with. The plucky kids make their escape, but are trapped in the increasingly dark wood with their would-be devourer in pursuit. A terrified elf tells them that the only way they can save themselves is to head to the ogre’s castle at the centre of the woods.
The ogre is, of course, Orson Welles, shot constantly from low angles to make him look twice as big and three times as menacing. He looms into frame, dominates it, his big and bushy beard seems to jut right out of the screen, he laughs twice as loud as any other sound in the film. Of course this opens up a lot of fat jokes at poor Orson’s expense (he after all looks more likely to eat the kids than the scrawny witch), but I’m going to (mostly) rise above that and just say how great his performance is: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ played not as a kindly charlatan, but as a malevolent and changeable monster who can help you on a whim, but easily destroy you too.
(It amuses me to do this film right next to Peter Sellers in ‘Mr Hargreaves’, as part of the reason production on the original ‘Casino Royale’ went so badly awry was the spectacular falling out between the two men. In these films each seems to be playing versions of their public personas. Sellers is outwardly affable and witty, but underneath something distinctly more unpleasant; while Welles is a quixotic, occasionally charming, walking appetite. If I had to pick, I think I’d rather have an evening out with Orson.)
Like an earlier, less well-formed ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, this is a movie which takes European fairy tales and decides not to downplay the horror elements Disney-style, but instead ramp them up so each of the ogres, witches and fairies is screaming at you. What we have is an Orson Welles’s children’s film – one that’s a compendium of creepy old books, scary backdrops, horrible monsters with horrible appetites, and a sense of doom that doesn’t really let up.
Sunday, 29 June 2014
The New Cross Eleven (1946)
D. Randall Smyth
Dusty B&W
In British cinema there have always been films which look back at the Second World War with something approaching fondness. Ah, the memories – all those kids playing on the bomb sites, the camaraderie, the sheltering in the tubes, the interminable sing alongs. As long as one ignores the doodlebugs, husbands and fathers fighting overseas, the victims of the blitz, then clearly it was a bloody great time. This is one of those movies with a halcyon glow, made just as the war was ending and so managing to combine a war time story with a pleasure and relief of a job well done.
It’s an optimistic film, a film about promise from the rubble of the past, a film about youth. That’s what I particularly like about it, the fact that the cast is so goddamn young. The principals are all fifteen and younger, and they look it. This is the British youth of 1945: gawky, all elbows and knees and terrible, terrible teeth. If anything is going to reinforce our American cousin’s impression of our dental work, it would be this movie and its pre NHS gnashers. (It’s a shame that barely any of the cast stayed in acting, as Hammer Horror could have used their faces ten years later.) On one hand it’s a sweet film and an innocent film, but it’s also a film about still lingering threats and that adds a jab of cold steel to the centre of it.
‘The New Cross Eleven’ is a boy’s brigade football team, who might look rag-tag but are apparently the best side in their division. The scenes on the football pitch are lovely, even with the bomb sites in the background – they have a charming fluidity that feels fresh and real. It’s as if they’ve just filmed these lads actually playing and captured all the exuberance and fearlessness of youth. It’s particularly stunning – with this soulless, corporate football spectacular going on at the other side of the world – just how divorced what we have today is from this film. The looseness of the football, the length of the shorts, the sense of mischievous community, even the Knobbly knees – all this has gone now. These are not pampered and preening popinjays. They would take one look at Ronaldo and decide he needs to be made less pretty; although spud-faced nipper Wayne Rooney has very much the right appearance. What we have here are good, down to Earth lads. They may be a little scampish at times, but they’re definitely warm and happy presences. Probably I could have just watched them play football in their bombed-out South London suburb for the entire film, but before long the plot kicks in when they start to suspect that the new referee in their league may be a German spy.
Our boys start to investigate.
There’s probably more broad humour in the investigation than I would ideally have liked (certainly most of the toilet jokes fail to flush satisfactorily), but the charm remains and the story takes some fun twists and turns. No doubt the executives behind the much maligned Children’s Film Foundation saw this and thought they saw the future: fun and undemanding films about children solving mysteries and being heroes. However unlike a lot of that body’s output, this film actually works. This isn’t spoon in the mouth drama school kids pretending to be working class, but the real thing; and this isn’t a shaggy dog story where the stakes are only high when looked at from a very middle class nursery in Hampstead, but something that matters. This is a kids’ film but it isn’t a soft film. Indeed anyone who has ever been to New Cross would know that I’d be impossible to make a soft film there. Even at the end of the war, a war that people were already starting to be fond of, there are dangers still apparent and this film isn’t shy of them.
Dusty B&W
In British cinema there have always been films which look back at the Second World War with something approaching fondness. Ah, the memories – all those kids playing on the bomb sites, the camaraderie, the sheltering in the tubes, the interminable sing alongs. As long as one ignores the doodlebugs, husbands and fathers fighting overseas, the victims of the blitz, then clearly it was a bloody great time. This is one of those movies with a halcyon glow, made just as the war was ending and so managing to combine a war time story with a pleasure and relief of a job well done.
It’s an optimistic film, a film about promise from the rubble of the past, a film about youth. That’s what I particularly like about it, the fact that the cast is so goddamn young. The principals are all fifteen and younger, and they look it. This is the British youth of 1945: gawky, all elbows and knees and terrible, terrible teeth. If anything is going to reinforce our American cousin’s impression of our dental work, it would be this movie and its pre NHS gnashers. (It’s a shame that barely any of the cast stayed in acting, as Hammer Horror could have used their faces ten years later.) On one hand it’s a sweet film and an innocent film, but it’s also a film about still lingering threats and that adds a jab of cold steel to the centre of it.
‘The New Cross Eleven’ is a boy’s brigade football team, who might look rag-tag but are apparently the best side in their division. The scenes on the football pitch are lovely, even with the bomb sites in the background – they have a charming fluidity that feels fresh and real. It’s as if they’ve just filmed these lads actually playing and captured all the exuberance and fearlessness of youth. It’s particularly stunning – with this soulless, corporate football spectacular going on at the other side of the world – just how divorced what we have today is from this film. The looseness of the football, the length of the shorts, the sense of mischievous community, even the Knobbly knees – all this has gone now. These are not pampered and preening popinjays. They would take one look at Ronaldo and decide he needs to be made less pretty; although spud-faced nipper Wayne Rooney has very much the right appearance. What we have here are good, down to Earth lads. They may be a little scampish at times, but they’re definitely warm and happy presences. Probably I could have just watched them play football in their bombed-out South London suburb for the entire film, but before long the plot kicks in when they start to suspect that the new referee in their league may be a German spy.
Our boys start to investigate.
There’s probably more broad humour in the investigation than I would ideally have liked (certainly most of the toilet jokes fail to flush satisfactorily), but the charm remains and the story takes some fun twists and turns. No doubt the executives behind the much maligned Children’s Film Foundation saw this and thought they saw the future: fun and undemanding films about children solving mysteries and being heroes. However unlike a lot of that body’s output, this film actually works. This isn’t spoon in the mouth drama school kids pretending to be working class, but the real thing; and this isn’t a shaggy dog story where the stakes are only high when looked at from a very middle class nursery in Hampstead, but something that matters. This is a kids’ film but it isn’t a soft film. Indeed anyone who has ever been to New Cross would know that I’d be impossible to make a soft film there. Even at the end of the war, a war that people were already starting to be fond of, there are dangers still apparent and this film isn’t shy of them.
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Sticky Back Plastic (2003)
D. Simon Olson
Colour
For those not in the know (which should read in this instance, those of you who aren’t British) ‘Blue Peter’ is a BBC television institution. On air for more than fifty years now, ‘Blue Peter’ has been aiding kids in having safe, parental approved, do it yourself fun for over half a century. Imagine having a really uncool older brother or sister, always enthusiastic, never dressed fashionably, but forever incredibly eager to help you out with worthy and educational projects. Projects like building a birds nest out of twine, or making a Tracey Island from some bog roll and cardboard, or constructing a fully operational Tardis out of some string and a biscuit barrel. If you can picture such a sibling, then imagine him or her shrunk in height and confined to a corner of the room – and there you have ‘Blue Peter’. There are three or four presenters, all of an early twenties vintage, a menagerie of cats and dogs to act as pets, a garden to dig when the weather is good, and safe and uncomplicated educational fun for children from three to fifteen. That’s Blue Peter and every single person in Britain knows it.
‘Sticky Back Plastic’ is a barely released British horror film that exists to take the ‘Blue Peter’ ideal apart.
Although the show is carefully never named throughout the film, we’re clearly backstage at ‘Blue Peter’. But – much as ‘Meet The Feebles’ did to The Muppets – the clean cut façade is torn down to reveal a truly sordid and seedy underbelly. One of the male presenters is gay and spends most of his time backstage in increasingly torrid and masochistic encounters with the crew, the other male presenter likes nothing better than to masturbate in front of porn enacted by a revolving cast of sock puppets; while the blonde and bubbly female presenter is a coked up mess in a very twisted relationship with her boss (the sexual encounter we see involves glue, cotton wool and rubber gloves). The levels of disorganisation and disarray are so high, that when a serial killer strikes the studio, these people are truly helpless.
The set rules of serial killer films mean that those who have morally transgressed are the obvious victims, as such there is no shortage of candidates here. And the bodies do pile up in nice homemade Blue Peter style. The gay male presenter suffers a version of a death of a thousand cuts by being stapled hundreds of times until blood is spewing everywhere. The other male presenter is taught the lesson that you should always get a responsible adult to help you with scissors, when a sock puppet buries one in his eyeball. But the most gruesome death is saved for our perky blonde messed-up presenter, when the show’s beautiful golden Labrador – named ‘Goldie’ – is infected by rabies and rips her to pieces in lingering slow motion. This really is a very gory film.
It’s left to the show’s remaining presenter, the plucky Asian girl (presumably modelled on Konnie Huq, at this point an actual presenter on ‘Blue Peter’) who is untarnished compared to the rest of them, to save the day. The film becomes a battle of wills backstage at BBC Television centre, as our heroine uses all the skills she’s picked up presenting a magazine show aimed at kids, to save her life and save the day. This isn’t the most original film ever made – its novelty lies in its setting – so we all know the path it will take. The mask will be torn away, the bad guy will be revealed and he will fall to his death (although we probably don’t expect him to fall to death into a papier mâché volcano which spews out styrofoam and is lit by a torch with a red filter, that one of the presenters made earlier). The film of course ends with the bloodied heroine staring back ruefully at the carnage that has been wrought.
I’m guessing the reason ‘Sticky Back Plastic’ is almost impossible to get hold of is that the BBC wasn’t happy with this take on one of their most famous and enduring properties, which is a shame as – even though a horror film set in the world of kids TV should be funnier – this is far from the worst cheap, schlocky, gruesome horror with crap acting you could possibly stumble across.
Colour
For those not in the know (which should read in this instance, those of you who aren’t British) ‘Blue Peter’ is a BBC television institution. On air for more than fifty years now, ‘Blue Peter’ has been aiding kids in having safe, parental approved, do it yourself fun for over half a century. Imagine having a really uncool older brother or sister, always enthusiastic, never dressed fashionably, but forever incredibly eager to help you out with worthy and educational projects. Projects like building a birds nest out of twine, or making a Tracey Island from some bog roll and cardboard, or constructing a fully operational Tardis out of some string and a biscuit barrel. If you can picture such a sibling, then imagine him or her shrunk in height and confined to a corner of the room – and there you have ‘Blue Peter’. There are three or four presenters, all of an early twenties vintage, a menagerie of cats and dogs to act as pets, a garden to dig when the weather is good, and safe and uncomplicated educational fun for children from three to fifteen. That’s Blue Peter and every single person in Britain knows it.
‘Sticky Back Plastic’ is a barely released British horror film that exists to take the ‘Blue Peter’ ideal apart.
Although the show is carefully never named throughout the film, we’re clearly backstage at ‘Blue Peter’. But – much as ‘Meet The Feebles’ did to The Muppets – the clean cut façade is torn down to reveal a truly sordid and seedy underbelly. One of the male presenters is gay and spends most of his time backstage in increasingly torrid and masochistic encounters with the crew, the other male presenter likes nothing better than to masturbate in front of porn enacted by a revolving cast of sock puppets; while the blonde and bubbly female presenter is a coked up mess in a very twisted relationship with her boss (the sexual encounter we see involves glue, cotton wool and rubber gloves). The levels of disorganisation and disarray are so high, that when a serial killer strikes the studio, these people are truly helpless.
The set rules of serial killer films mean that those who have morally transgressed are the obvious victims, as such there is no shortage of candidates here. And the bodies do pile up in nice homemade Blue Peter style. The gay male presenter suffers a version of a death of a thousand cuts by being stapled hundreds of times until blood is spewing everywhere. The other male presenter is taught the lesson that you should always get a responsible adult to help you with scissors, when a sock puppet buries one in his eyeball. But the most gruesome death is saved for our perky blonde messed-up presenter, when the show’s beautiful golden Labrador – named ‘Goldie’ – is infected by rabies and rips her to pieces in lingering slow motion. This really is a very gory film.
It’s left to the show’s remaining presenter, the plucky Asian girl (presumably modelled on Konnie Huq, at this point an actual presenter on ‘Blue Peter’) who is untarnished compared to the rest of them, to save the day. The film becomes a battle of wills backstage at BBC Television centre, as our heroine uses all the skills she’s picked up presenting a magazine show aimed at kids, to save her life and save the day. This isn’t the most original film ever made – its novelty lies in its setting – so we all know the path it will take. The mask will be torn away, the bad guy will be revealed and he will fall to his death (although we probably don’t expect him to fall to death into a papier mâché volcano which spews out styrofoam and is lit by a torch with a red filter, that one of the presenters made earlier). The film of course ends with the bloodied heroine staring back ruefully at the carnage that has been wrought.
I’m guessing the reason ‘Sticky Back Plastic’ is almost impossible to get hold of is that the BBC wasn’t happy with this take on one of their most famous and enduring properties, which is a shame as – even though a horror film set in the world of kids TV should be funnier – this is far from the worst cheap, schlocky, gruesome horror with crap acting you could possibly stumble across.
Sunday, 15 December 2013
The Adventures of Little Pea and Petits Pois (1968)
D.
Victor Hill
Colour
There was always something so worthy about The Children’s Film Foundation. For the uninitiated (who never saw their body of work repeated ad nauseam on kid’s TV through the early 1980s) it was a body set up by the British government to make films for children. However with government money and civil service oversight, it was a body that never ever felt the need to take risks. Its product was as safe as it was twee as it was bland. In a way it was what the BBC would have become if it hadn’t been hijacked by enterprising talents who wanted to do something unique with television. In the Children’s Film Foundation there was very little striving for originality (unless you count casting Keith Chegwin as a teen Robin Hood, which is pretty original), there was just safe play by the numbers and tick all the right boxes.
That’s not to say their work is completely lacking the odd curiosity though.
What, for example, are we to make of ‘The Adventures of Little Pea and Petit Pois’? One of the few animations the foundation ever produced. On first blush you’d think that any animated film made in 1968 that concerned two big, round, green peas wandering through a wild jungle would be a LSD, surrealist treat. You’d think it was the kind of film made for stoners to stare at and find newer and stranger meanings each and every time. And yet with the best will in the world, making films for the counter-culture wasn’t really in the Children’s Film Foundation’s remit. And besides, for all the madness of its set-up, the film is just so bloody tame. All the characters speak in very pucker, received pronunciation – with the exception, of course, of Petit Pois who talks in comedy French. And when I say it’s a wild jungle, it’s the most harmless and child appropriate wild jungle ever committed to celluloid. The kind of wild jungle specifically created not to scare the three year olds. On their travels, Little Pea and Petits Pois meet El Rico, a grain of rice who speaks and sings in a Spanish accent and is desperate for Petits Pois and Little Pea to join his gang (some peas coming together with a Spanish grain of rice, it does feel like a subliminal paella recipe). They meet a lettuce called Hans who travels with them while talking and singing of his childhood in Dusseldorf; then they hang out with a bouncing orange bean named Victor who duets long and loud with them in the most over the top Dutch accent seen on screen until ‘Goldmember’; before they picnic with some brussel sprouts from – well – Brussels. It’s all so utterly bizarre, all so unspeakably surreal – and yet still so totally bland. And that’s the really incredible thing about this film: it takes all these amazing concepts and makes them so utterly safe and anodyne. It’s 1960s counter culture reimagined as an advert for your greens. It’s the avant grade as seen through the eyes of a civil servant.
So, what the hell is all this about?
Maybe its meaning is something to do with better cooperation with our European cousins. Here we have a British pea and a French pea who walk hand in hand and get along oh so well. Along the way they meet Spanish, German, Dutch and Belgium vegetables and have fun with them (there is no conflict in this movie, no antagonist. It is 72 minutes of getting along, which may partly explain why it’s so strange and stultifying). It’s brotherly love in produce form. But even more than that, with the exception of Spain, these food substances are all members of the new EEC. Is this then a plea that Britain should join up with the Commonmarket? Obviously Spain wasn’t yet a member, but then the Spanish accent on display is quite funny (and camp, unbelievably camp – the campest Spanish grain of rice I have ever witnessed) and maybe that’s why he’s included.
But then did The Children’s Film Foundation ever do politics, even in the form of cartoons? I think possibly not. So that brings us back to what the bloody hell is this film for? A surreal food substance romp which manages to null most of its surrealness and is just too sedate to be all that rompy; a wild and psychedelic ride which manages to be neither that wild or that psychedelic (and making a film about anthropomorphic vegetables in a wood and not making it psychedelic is quite a feat); a truly bizarre and weird film which is made even more bizarre and weird by the fact that clearly there were civil servants in the background doing their utmost best not to make it look bizarre and weird.
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you ‘The Adventures of Little Pea and Petits Pois’ – one of the strangest, most middle of the road, head-spinningly, safe pieces entertainment you will ever see.
Colour
There was always something so worthy about The Children’s Film Foundation. For the uninitiated (who never saw their body of work repeated ad nauseam on kid’s TV through the early 1980s) it was a body set up by the British government to make films for children. However with government money and civil service oversight, it was a body that never ever felt the need to take risks. Its product was as safe as it was twee as it was bland. In a way it was what the BBC would have become if it hadn’t been hijacked by enterprising talents who wanted to do something unique with television. In the Children’s Film Foundation there was very little striving for originality (unless you count casting Keith Chegwin as a teen Robin Hood, which is pretty original), there was just safe play by the numbers and tick all the right boxes.
That’s not to say their work is completely lacking the odd curiosity though.
What, for example, are we to make of ‘The Adventures of Little Pea and Petit Pois’? One of the few animations the foundation ever produced. On first blush you’d think that any animated film made in 1968 that concerned two big, round, green peas wandering through a wild jungle would be a LSD, surrealist treat. You’d think it was the kind of film made for stoners to stare at and find newer and stranger meanings each and every time. And yet with the best will in the world, making films for the counter-culture wasn’t really in the Children’s Film Foundation’s remit. And besides, for all the madness of its set-up, the film is just so bloody tame. All the characters speak in very pucker, received pronunciation – with the exception, of course, of Petit Pois who talks in comedy French. And when I say it’s a wild jungle, it’s the most harmless and child appropriate wild jungle ever committed to celluloid. The kind of wild jungle specifically created not to scare the three year olds. On their travels, Little Pea and Petits Pois meet El Rico, a grain of rice who speaks and sings in a Spanish accent and is desperate for Petits Pois and Little Pea to join his gang (some peas coming together with a Spanish grain of rice, it does feel like a subliminal paella recipe). They meet a lettuce called Hans who travels with them while talking and singing of his childhood in Dusseldorf; then they hang out with a bouncing orange bean named Victor who duets long and loud with them in the most over the top Dutch accent seen on screen until ‘Goldmember’; before they picnic with some brussel sprouts from – well – Brussels. It’s all so utterly bizarre, all so unspeakably surreal – and yet still so totally bland. And that’s the really incredible thing about this film: it takes all these amazing concepts and makes them so utterly safe and anodyne. It’s 1960s counter culture reimagined as an advert for your greens. It’s the avant grade as seen through the eyes of a civil servant.
So, what the hell is all this about?
Maybe its meaning is something to do with better cooperation with our European cousins. Here we have a British pea and a French pea who walk hand in hand and get along oh so well. Along the way they meet Spanish, German, Dutch and Belgium vegetables and have fun with them (there is no conflict in this movie, no antagonist. It is 72 minutes of getting along, which may partly explain why it’s so strange and stultifying). It’s brotherly love in produce form. But even more than that, with the exception of Spain, these food substances are all members of the new EEC. Is this then a plea that Britain should join up with the Commonmarket? Obviously Spain wasn’t yet a member, but then the Spanish accent on display is quite funny (and camp, unbelievably camp – the campest Spanish grain of rice I have ever witnessed) and maybe that’s why he’s included.
But then did The Children’s Film Foundation ever do politics, even in the form of cartoons? I think possibly not. So that brings us back to what the bloody hell is this film for? A surreal food substance romp which manages to null most of its surrealness and is just too sedate to be all that rompy; a wild and psychedelic ride which manages to be neither that wild or that psychedelic (and making a film about anthropomorphic vegetables in a wood and not making it psychedelic is quite a feat); a truly bizarre and weird film which is made even more bizarre and weird by the fact that clearly there were civil servants in the background doing their utmost best not to make it look bizarre and weird.
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you ‘The Adventures of Little Pea and Petits Pois’ – one of the strangest, most middle of the road, head-spinningly, safe pieces entertainment you will ever see.
Sunday, 3 November 2013
Bonfire Bill (1964)
D.
Sidney Hayers
Colour
Equally there’s something quite terrifying about the being known as Cliff Richard. It’s the fact that he’s so perky and smiling, and yet so absolutely sexless. He should have – as the first British rock star – been a figure of snarling, rebellious, unfettered libido. Instead he was a eunuch type character who maiden aunts thought would be quite nice for cuddle. Of course we mock him for having sung ‘Bachelor Boy’ and then never marrying. But I think we should take it more seriously than just a joke. I think Cliff Richard has taken the word ‘bachelor’ and absolutely ruined it. Back in the day your ‘confirmed bachelor’ was a swinging and happening ladies’ man, a proto Don Draper. Now it’s a euphemism for a man who is a bit creepy and odd, but – hey – is okay with that. Thanks a lot, Sir Cliff. And it’s amazing how early in his career this happened, how young a man he was when he truly embraced this oddball image. Here he is in 1964, totally anodyne and as unthreatening as a corner table. Elvis is similarly declared to be neutered post-Army, but this is the same year he had ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (with ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ not long behind him). Cliff however is already your granny’s favourite, and not a very discerning granny at that.
Here we have an oddball children’s film which shows how utterly irrelevant these original British rock stars had become in the mid-sixties. All the cool kids are screaming at The Beatles and The Stones, while Tommy and Cliff sing to their younger brothers and sisters while idly remembering how nice it was to have testicles. Cliff is the eponymous Bonfire Bill, the man who brings bonfires to all communities every November the fifth. He’s a spectral and other worldly being, but one with boyish charm and a great singing voice. We get to watch him sing songs like ‘Party Every Year’ and ‘November the Fifth – The Day for Fire’ which are every bit as boring and pedestrian as those titles suggest. More impressively, he performs Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with so little heat it wouldn’t even singe the thinnest slice of bacon. On the other side is Tommy Steele as Councilman Ciljoy, wearing a grimace which has served him well in dozens of revivals of ‘The Christmas Carol’. He's a sour-faced misery who doesn’t want bonfires in his town this year, thank you very much, and so bans them.
I think we all know who will win this battle of the out of time 50s’ singers though.
What’s truly depressing about this film is not how toothless (and it is quite a feat to make a toothless film starring Tommy Steele) and sexless these pop stars were by 1964, but how this film exists having torn the guts out of its own setting. There is no mention of Guy Fawkes, there is no mention of the actual roots of bonfire night. That is a story which involves oppression and brutality, one which ends with hanging, drawing and quartering. All of those details are ignored. Instead we get bonfire night as the gift of this impish Easter Bunny-eque character, albeit one with less sex-drive than any rabbit ever born. It’s a dispiriting watch, and the audience can only wish that the chief antagonist – instead of just glowering – would make good use of those teeth and eat Cliff instead.
Colour
There’s something quite terrifying about Tommy Steele’s
teeth. They loom out of his face at you, seeming to lurk and then leap forward,
far further than could humanly be possible. They’re floating white obelisks which
will hide in the dark determined to gnash at you when your weakest moment
arrives. They are not just too big for his mouth, they’re too big for his head,
too big for his entire flipping body. They are horrifying teeth, monstrous
teeth, the kind of teeth great white sharks would be intimidated by. I have
written a lot of horror in my time, but I can think of no more terrifying image
than Tommy Steele’s teeth in 3D cinemascope. Can you imagine those giant, shiny
whites thirty foot high and reaching out to you? It’s the kind of sight which
would make the toughest strong man wet himself with fear.
Equally there’s something quite terrifying about the being known as Cliff Richard. It’s the fact that he’s so perky and smiling, and yet so absolutely sexless. He should have – as the first British rock star – been a figure of snarling, rebellious, unfettered libido. Instead he was a eunuch type character who maiden aunts thought would be quite nice for cuddle. Of course we mock him for having sung ‘Bachelor Boy’ and then never marrying. But I think we should take it more seriously than just a joke. I think Cliff Richard has taken the word ‘bachelor’ and absolutely ruined it. Back in the day your ‘confirmed bachelor’ was a swinging and happening ladies’ man, a proto Don Draper. Now it’s a euphemism for a man who is a bit creepy and odd, but – hey – is okay with that. Thanks a lot, Sir Cliff. And it’s amazing how early in his career this happened, how young a man he was when he truly embraced this oddball image. Here he is in 1964, totally anodyne and as unthreatening as a corner table. Elvis is similarly declared to be neutered post-Army, but this is the same year he had ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (with ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ not long behind him). Cliff however is already your granny’s favourite, and not a very discerning granny at that.
Here we have an oddball children’s film which shows how utterly irrelevant these original British rock stars had become in the mid-sixties. All the cool kids are screaming at The Beatles and The Stones, while Tommy and Cliff sing to their younger brothers and sisters while idly remembering how nice it was to have testicles. Cliff is the eponymous Bonfire Bill, the man who brings bonfires to all communities every November the fifth. He’s a spectral and other worldly being, but one with boyish charm and a great singing voice. We get to watch him sing songs like ‘Party Every Year’ and ‘November the Fifth – The Day for Fire’ which are every bit as boring and pedestrian as those titles suggest. More impressively, he performs Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with so little heat it wouldn’t even singe the thinnest slice of bacon. On the other side is Tommy Steele as Councilman Ciljoy, wearing a grimace which has served him well in dozens of revivals of ‘The Christmas Carol’. He's a sour-faced misery who doesn’t want bonfires in his town this year, thank you very much, and so bans them.
I think we all know who will win this battle of the out of time 50s’ singers though.
What’s truly depressing about this film is not how toothless (and it is quite a feat to make a toothless film starring Tommy Steele) and sexless these pop stars were by 1964, but how this film exists having torn the guts out of its own setting. There is no mention of Guy Fawkes, there is no mention of the actual roots of bonfire night. That is a story which involves oppression and brutality, one which ends with hanging, drawing and quartering. All of those details are ignored. Instead we get bonfire night as the gift of this impish Easter Bunny-eque character, albeit one with less sex-drive than any rabbit ever born. It’s a dispiriting watch, and the audience can only wish that the chief antagonist – instead of just glowering – would make good use of those teeth and eat Cliff instead.
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
Herbie Goes to East Berlin (1981)
D.
Vincent McEveety
Colour
In the days before Gorbachov and Glastnost, it probably seemed that the best way to take on the communist East was with a cute Volkswagen beetle. After all the grey, stiffness of communist bureaucrats was something which had never been done by Hollywood before and some broad satire was long overdue. So to begin with we have Madeline Khan doing her best German accent, with a performance that’s like a softer Rosa Krebb. I say softer in the sense that her clothes are more fetching and she doesn’t actually kill anyone. We have Christopher Lee’s stern eyebrows. Sir Chris is an actor I like a great deal, but it’s noticeable that in that long stretch where he couldn’t get work which matched his talent, he often let his eyebrows do the heavy-lifting. And below them we have numerous young men and women ground down by the drudge of work, when all they really want to do is listen to rock’n’roll. East Berlin a place of greyness, a city of repression, a haven of stern and no fun adults – and what it really needs is some Americans to arrive who’ll shake things up.
The inevitable culture clash comes by way of the East Germans trying to show off their superiority. They invite the winner of The Coast to Coast race in the States to take on their champion car, a black Trabant – which no amount of camera tricks can make look fast or intimidating. So out go Larry Wilcox, from TV’s ‘CHiPS’, playing the nephew of Dean Jones’s character from The Love Bug (but obviously a different nephew from the one in ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’), and girlfriend Catherine Bach, from TV’s ‘The Duke of Hazards’. They arrive in East Berlin as honoured guests with the challenge to race Lee and comedy sidekick Dom Deluise. At stake is not only cultural honour, but which system is better – communism or capitalism.
You just know the kind of Wacky Races style high jinks which will follow.
The problem is that although in the context of the film, the US of A is proved to be best – the good guys are just so brash and bellicose, that they’re much more unbearable than the communists. Herbie and his team’s arrival is loud to the point of boorish and interrupts a rather sombre parade – this is seen as the bright fun of the Americans destroying the grey dullness of the Russians (yes, it’s actually Germans, but I think we can all see the real targets). But if you think about it, wouldn’t just crashing in and destroying all the hard work your hosts have clearly put into a party to greet you, be the pinnacle of bad manners? Surely people who do that are not really people to admire.
Then (unusual for a film in 1981, but perhaps not so unusual for a Disney film), there is – what can only be described – as a shit-load of product placement: Coca-Cola, Hershey, Atari and even Budweiser all have lovingly long shots. These shiny things are supposed to be envied, but come off looking the height of crass consumerism. The girls in their dowdy grey dresses are contrasted with Catherine Bach in her tight racing leathers, somehow looking even more voluptuous and naked than she did in her Daisy Dukes. But because these girls appear so modest and demure next to her, she can’t help but resemble a corn-fed stripper. Our heroes fly a stars and stripes behind their car, tell their hotel manager ‘Fritz’ to take a hike and demand that the local bar plays Chuck Berry records (because that’s really down with the kids in 1981). As such they look like the most obnoxious brats, jumped-up bullies who’ll slap the face of anyone who disagrees with them.
And that’s really what I like about this film. Ostensibly it’s dull and repressive commie-land = bad; free and capitalist America = good. Yet it’s done with such an alarming lack of subtlety, such an amazing over confidence that it almost makes the opposite point. The East Germans are restrained people who get on with their jobs and live their lives (what kind of message is it really that it’s better to dance to rock’n’roll than work in a factory? Okay, the kids in question seem to be working in a very grey looking factory – but even so…); while the Americans are loud, self-absorbed and intolerant of other people’s points of view. This myopia is there to such an extent that the film has East German locals marvelling at the American wonder that is Herbie. The Volkswagen Beetle, lest we forget, is a German car.
I like to think that behind the scenes there was someone, perhaps the director or the screenwriter, who decided to add another layer of satire to the very broad front satire. Much like Gore Vidal being told not to let Chuck Heston into the secret of the gay subtext in ‘Ben Hur’, the cast weren’t to know, the studio weren’t to know and most of the audience would never realise – but there it is, peeking out from behind Herbie and smirking.
Colour
I’m not sure a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle is the
best way to tackle the rights and wrongs of communism. But then on the
flip-side I’m equally not sure that a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle
is the best way to advertise Reagan-era American capitalism. From top to bottom
there’s something amazingly off-kilter about ‘Herbie Goes to East Berlin’. It’s
bright and gaudy, empty headed and crass, and amazingly untroubled by any
doubts about its own brilliance.
In the days before Gorbachov and Glastnost, it probably seemed that the best way to take on the communist East was with a cute Volkswagen beetle. After all the grey, stiffness of communist bureaucrats was something which had never been done by Hollywood before and some broad satire was long overdue. So to begin with we have Madeline Khan doing her best German accent, with a performance that’s like a softer Rosa Krebb. I say softer in the sense that her clothes are more fetching and she doesn’t actually kill anyone. We have Christopher Lee’s stern eyebrows. Sir Chris is an actor I like a great deal, but it’s noticeable that in that long stretch where he couldn’t get work which matched his talent, he often let his eyebrows do the heavy-lifting. And below them we have numerous young men and women ground down by the drudge of work, when all they really want to do is listen to rock’n’roll. East Berlin a place of greyness, a city of repression, a haven of stern and no fun adults – and what it really needs is some Americans to arrive who’ll shake things up.
The inevitable culture clash comes by way of the East Germans trying to show off their superiority. They invite the winner of The Coast to Coast race in the States to take on their champion car, a black Trabant – which no amount of camera tricks can make look fast or intimidating. So out go Larry Wilcox, from TV’s ‘CHiPS’, playing the nephew of Dean Jones’s character from The Love Bug (but obviously a different nephew from the one in ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’), and girlfriend Catherine Bach, from TV’s ‘The Duke of Hazards’. They arrive in East Berlin as honoured guests with the challenge to race Lee and comedy sidekick Dom Deluise. At stake is not only cultural honour, but which system is better – communism or capitalism.
You just know the kind of Wacky Races style high jinks which will follow.
The problem is that although in the context of the film, the US of A is proved to be best – the good guys are just so brash and bellicose, that they’re much more unbearable than the communists. Herbie and his team’s arrival is loud to the point of boorish and interrupts a rather sombre parade – this is seen as the bright fun of the Americans destroying the grey dullness of the Russians (yes, it’s actually Germans, but I think we can all see the real targets). But if you think about it, wouldn’t just crashing in and destroying all the hard work your hosts have clearly put into a party to greet you, be the pinnacle of bad manners? Surely people who do that are not really people to admire.
Then (unusual for a film in 1981, but perhaps not so unusual for a Disney film), there is – what can only be described – as a shit-load of product placement: Coca-Cola, Hershey, Atari and even Budweiser all have lovingly long shots. These shiny things are supposed to be envied, but come off looking the height of crass consumerism. The girls in their dowdy grey dresses are contrasted with Catherine Bach in her tight racing leathers, somehow looking even more voluptuous and naked than she did in her Daisy Dukes. But because these girls appear so modest and demure next to her, she can’t help but resemble a corn-fed stripper. Our heroes fly a stars and stripes behind their car, tell their hotel manager ‘Fritz’ to take a hike and demand that the local bar plays Chuck Berry records (because that’s really down with the kids in 1981). As such they look like the most obnoxious brats, jumped-up bullies who’ll slap the face of anyone who disagrees with them.
And that’s really what I like about this film. Ostensibly it’s dull and repressive commie-land = bad; free and capitalist America = good. Yet it’s done with such an alarming lack of subtlety, such an amazing over confidence that it almost makes the opposite point. The East Germans are restrained people who get on with their jobs and live their lives (what kind of message is it really that it’s better to dance to rock’n’roll than work in a factory? Okay, the kids in question seem to be working in a very grey looking factory – but even so…); while the Americans are loud, self-absorbed and intolerant of other people’s points of view. This myopia is there to such an extent that the film has East German locals marvelling at the American wonder that is Herbie. The Volkswagen Beetle, lest we forget, is a German car.
I like to think that behind the scenes there was someone, perhaps the director or the screenwriter, who decided to add another layer of satire to the very broad front satire. Much like Gore Vidal being told not to let Chuck Heston into the secret of the gay subtext in ‘Ben Hur’, the cast weren’t to know, the studio weren’t to know and most of the audience would never realise – but there it is, peeking out from behind Herbie and smirking.
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