D. Albert Ross
Colour
Let’s be honest, ‘The Sound of Music’ has caused more deaths than any other movie.
I know that might sound like a contentious theory at first, but bear with me. There’s something about those nuns singing such terrible sickly songs to those creepy, godawful kids that just makes the blood of hitherto right minded people boil. (The old joke is that ‘The Sound of Music’ is a frustrating story of how the Nazis failed to kill seven revolting children.) ‘Natural Born Killers’ and ‘Dexter’ may get the headlines, but I think if an enterprising criminologist was looking for instances where someone snapped – where some sane and peaceful part of a hitherto upstanding member of the community just broke – he or she would find that in the background was a viewing of Robert Wise’s ‘The Sound of Music’. I speak from personal experience: that shot of Dame Julie spinning around on the hill makes me want to go out and bludgeon kittens.
So it’s interesting that right after that movie was made, Julie Andrews herself seemed to respond with violence.
In this genteel, but bloody, comedy Dame Julie plays the eponymous Mrs Garter, a widow who lives in a delightfully opulent house in Bloomsbury and apart from wearing black every day seems to lead a charmed life. Seeking to seduce this charming bereaved lady is Peter Sellers, as Wilberforce Cartwright-Smyth, a dapper and fake white hunter and the bluebeard of the Victorian age. He intends to marry Mrs Garter and take possession of all her money. So begins an expert seduction, which Mrs Garter seems to find impossible to resist. However Mrs Garter has her own secret – she poisoned her last husband and the husband before that and the husband before that. So both parties have murder on their mind, but who will succeed first and will they fall in love beforehand?
Andrews does nothing here that would be considered particularly funny, but in her prim and proper, no fuss approach to murder, she’s absolutely perfect for this movie and the perfect foil for Sellers. (If she couldn’t sing, she might have found her niche as a counter culture version of Margaret Dumont.) Everything he does becomes funnier because it’s so grounded by her. Indeed she brings him back down from the high moments of excitement and loudness that he was prone to at this point in his career – a mugging desperation in the pursuit of laughs. This was the period of ‘Hoffman’, ‘The Ad Man’ and ‘There’s a Girl in My Soup’ all of which show a somewhat misogynistic star. This movie could have been distasteful in the same way, but Andrews’ charm and strength of her performance negates that. She makes even the most unbearably excited version of Peter Sellers bearable (and funnier).
Apparently the two actors couldn’t stand each other (and Andrews would soon marry another of Sellers’s nemeses [he was a man who had more than one], Blake Edwards), but maybe that helped as well – as much like Alec Guinness and Hayley Mills the other week, these two would be murderers retain a certain wariness to each other even in the wooing, and the whole drips with delicious malice.
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Atom-Man!!!
D. Stanley Kirby
That really faded and dank colour I am constantly amused and depressed by in 1970s British films
So here we have the second of this week’s ‘man at the centre of a nuclear explosion isn’t blown into a million pieces as you’d expect, but instead absorbs the frightening powers of radiation and becomes something akin to a super man’ movies. The first was a tense, taut cold war thriller, hampered by the fact that the man on the run looked so blatantly suspicious it was like he had a big self-powered neon sign saying “Radioactive man here!” above his head.
So now we come to this, the more heroic and the more moronic version.
The first thing to notice is the date off release, 1978. That’s 19-fucking-78! What this is aiming for is the wild psychedelic James Bond spoof, of the kind that I’ve covered on this blog before. But all those films come from the late 1960s, when Bond-mania is at its height. There are very few of them after that, because James Bond movies started to aggressively spoof themselves – so that if you wanted ‘James Bond thriller’ and ‘spoof of James Bond thriller’ you only needed to buy the one ticket. 1978 is not the time of Bond spoofs
The second thing you immediately notice is who is playing our heroic lead, it’s Oliver Reed. That’s Oliver bloody Reed. I appreciate that after a career playing brooding and sinister outsiders, Oliver probably leapt at the chance of being an actual hero. He has the looks, he has a certain dash to him and he even appears to be sober. But there’s still something so menacing about him, a stillness that makes it seem like, even though he’s the hero, he’s considering randomly killing everyone else in the room.
Atom Man is a world hero who lives in London and has the secret identity of super spy, Gregory Smythe. Yes, the film really is having its greedy teenage geek’s birthday cake and stuffing its face full of it. But he faces a two pronged attack: the Russians have a ray that they hope will render Atom-Man powerless; AND there’s a secret agent who is going to seduce and make Gabriel Smythe switch sides. To be fair it’s more invested in the spy stuff as it actually doesn’t have the budget to do the super hero stuff, being set again and again in boring rooms and having Adam West-esque sound effects when Atom-Man throws a punch. It also has female nipples, which as far as cinema is concerned, were invented in 1969.
It’s interesting to watch this film next to Christopher Reeve’s Superman, which was released a few weeks earlier. One is top quality superhero antics which still resonates today, the other is a cheap British romp – which in its final run around in a nudist camp seems to just give up all pretence and admit to just being a cheap British romp. But in the anti-heroic performance of its hero, you can’t help thinking that there’s a far darker and weirder film completely untapped here. People speak of having a darker Batman, but no one thought of handing it to someone like Oliver Reed. Except that one day in the forgotten mists of cheap British movies, somebody actually did.
That really faded and dank colour I am constantly amused and depressed by in 1970s British films
So here we have the second of this week’s ‘man at the centre of a nuclear explosion isn’t blown into a million pieces as you’d expect, but instead absorbs the frightening powers of radiation and becomes something akin to a super man’ movies. The first was a tense, taut cold war thriller, hampered by the fact that the man on the run looked so blatantly suspicious it was like he had a big self-powered neon sign saying “Radioactive man here!” above his head.
So now we come to this, the more heroic and the more moronic version.
The first thing to notice is the date off release, 1978. That’s 19-fucking-78! What this is aiming for is the wild psychedelic James Bond spoof, of the kind that I’ve covered on this blog before. But all those films come from the late 1960s, when Bond-mania is at its height. There are very few of them after that, because James Bond movies started to aggressively spoof themselves – so that if you wanted ‘James Bond thriller’ and ‘spoof of James Bond thriller’ you only needed to buy the one ticket. 1978 is not the time of Bond spoofs
The second thing you immediately notice is who is playing our heroic lead, it’s Oliver Reed. That’s Oliver bloody Reed. I appreciate that after a career playing brooding and sinister outsiders, Oliver probably leapt at the chance of being an actual hero. He has the looks, he has a certain dash to him and he even appears to be sober. But there’s still something so menacing about him, a stillness that makes it seem like, even though he’s the hero, he’s considering randomly killing everyone else in the room.
Atom Man is a world hero who lives in London and has the secret identity of super spy, Gregory Smythe. Yes, the film really is having its greedy teenage geek’s birthday cake and stuffing its face full of it. But he faces a two pronged attack: the Russians have a ray that they hope will render Atom-Man powerless; AND there’s a secret agent who is going to seduce and make Gabriel Smythe switch sides. To be fair it’s more invested in the spy stuff as it actually doesn’t have the budget to do the super hero stuff, being set again and again in boring rooms and having Adam West-esque sound effects when Atom-Man throws a punch. It also has female nipples, which as far as cinema is concerned, were invented in 1969.
It’s interesting to watch this film next to Christopher Reeve’s Superman, which was released a few weeks earlier. One is top quality superhero antics which still resonates today, the other is a cheap British romp – which in its final run around in a nudist camp seems to just give up all pretence and admit to just being a cheap British romp. But in the anti-heroic performance of its hero, you can’t help thinking that there’s a far darker and weirder film completely untapped here. People speak of having a darker Batman, but no one thought of handing it to someone like Oliver Reed. Except that one day in the forgotten mists of cheap British movies, somebody actually did.
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
Bonfire Man (1982)
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.
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.
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, 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, 13 August 2014
Over the Threshold (2004)
D. Mike Culumbus
Colour
Nicole Kidman should not be allowed to do comedy.
It’s a fact that should be as clear as the flipping moon by now.
Obviously she’s an extremely good dramatic actress and clearly a very attractive woman (there are blind man in lost tribes of the Amazon who fancy Nicole), but to cast her in a comedy is always huge and regrettable mistake. It’s as if she doesn’t understand the concept of jokes or laughter or punchlines, even prat-falls are beyond her – there’s just something too delicate and restrained about Nicole for her to ever fall over in a funny way. Evidently she thinks she can do it, but that’s because she has watched other people be funny and imagines she can copy them. But there isn’t an amusing, witty or humorous sinew in her whole body, so she just ends up working her way through comic scripts in dead-eyed incomprehension – and that is not good for the health of any comedy project. (For another red headed actress similarly affected, see Moore, Julianne). By all means cast her in drama, let her do big emotional, tragic, scenes with swelling scores that make Oscar voters sit up and salivate like juicy prunes, but just keep her away from comedy. There are some people who can get laughs and there are some who really, really can’t. She is the latter.
Here’s an example, with Nicole playing against Hugh Grant in a culture clash comedy that was actually released in 2004 but feels like it’s been sat on a shelf since about 1958. Giving an early sketch of her white trash role from ‘The Paperboy’, but this time broader and less subtle, NIcole is a Kentucky waffle waitress who is wooed and married by visiting English aristocrat Grant. After the wedding she’s whisked back to England where fish out of water comedy ensues. It’s not a particularly original scenario for a film, is it? And believe me the script does it no favours by being half-baked, underwritten and about an eighth as funny as a 1980’s ITV sitcom.
So we have comedy yokels, sniffy aristocratic relatives, cheerful barmen, flirty antique dealers, a brassy would-be mistress for Grant, and – as counter-balance – a sleazy aristo interested in the delectable Nicole. The jokes are asthmatic and seemingly riddled with hay-fever in the English sunshine, so Grant does what he always does in these situations and starts to flail wildly in an attempt to make things funny just through a kind of polite mania. It results in him playing every scene slightly too loud in an attempt to bring life to them, but really he just sucks all the fun away in his desperation. Yet because Nicole just doesn’t understand comedy and doesn’t understand that this won’t work, she starts to imitate him, as if believing that since Grant does know about comedy this must be the way to do it. And so we have both of them horribly over the top, both of them waving their arms and bulging their eyes, until the two of them are caught in a despairing and terrible death spiral of unfunniness.
It’s terrible to watch, and on a blog where I’m supposed to be recommending obscure films I have to say that you should avoid this one like a virulent plague-zone. I just bring it forth as Exhibit A in why Nicole most absolutely, totally and certainly shouldn’t do comedy.
Colour
Nicole Kidman should not be allowed to do comedy.
It’s a fact that should be as clear as the flipping moon by now.
Obviously she’s an extremely good dramatic actress and clearly a very attractive woman (there are blind man in lost tribes of the Amazon who fancy Nicole), but to cast her in a comedy is always huge and regrettable mistake. It’s as if she doesn’t understand the concept of jokes or laughter or punchlines, even prat-falls are beyond her – there’s just something too delicate and restrained about Nicole for her to ever fall over in a funny way. Evidently she thinks she can do it, but that’s because she has watched other people be funny and imagines she can copy them. But there isn’t an amusing, witty or humorous sinew in her whole body, so she just ends up working her way through comic scripts in dead-eyed incomprehension – and that is not good for the health of any comedy project. (For another red headed actress similarly affected, see Moore, Julianne). By all means cast her in drama, let her do big emotional, tragic, scenes with swelling scores that make Oscar voters sit up and salivate like juicy prunes, but just keep her away from comedy. There are some people who can get laughs and there are some who really, really can’t. She is the latter.
Here’s an example, with Nicole playing against Hugh Grant in a culture clash comedy that was actually released in 2004 but feels like it’s been sat on a shelf since about 1958. Giving an early sketch of her white trash role from ‘The Paperboy’, but this time broader and less subtle, NIcole is a Kentucky waffle waitress who is wooed and married by visiting English aristocrat Grant. After the wedding she’s whisked back to England where fish out of water comedy ensues. It’s not a particularly original scenario for a film, is it? And believe me the script does it no favours by being half-baked, underwritten and about an eighth as funny as a 1980’s ITV sitcom.
So we have comedy yokels, sniffy aristocratic relatives, cheerful barmen, flirty antique dealers, a brassy would-be mistress for Grant, and – as counter-balance – a sleazy aristo interested in the delectable Nicole. The jokes are asthmatic and seemingly riddled with hay-fever in the English sunshine, so Grant does what he always does in these situations and starts to flail wildly in an attempt to make things funny just through a kind of polite mania. It results in him playing every scene slightly too loud in an attempt to bring life to them, but really he just sucks all the fun away in his desperation. Yet because Nicole just doesn’t understand comedy and doesn’t understand that this won’t work, she starts to imitate him, as if believing that since Grant does know about comedy this must be the way to do it. And so we have both of them horribly over the top, both of them waving their arms and bulging their eyes, until the two of them are caught in a despairing and terrible death spiral of unfunniness.
It’s terrible to watch, and on a blog where I’m supposed to be recommending obscure films I have to say that you should avoid this one like a virulent plague-zone. I just bring it forth as Exhibit A in why Nicole most absolutely, totally and certainly shouldn’t do comedy.
Sunday, 10 August 2014
Honeymoon of Horrors (1945)
D. Jack van Dougel
B&W
‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ is a dark comedy of the type that you just feel Cary Grant wished he did more of. Obviously he knew his image and was fond of his image as it paid for him to be, well, Cary Grant, but there was always something about him that strained to be darker than that image. You can see it in the films he made with Alfred Hitchcock; you see it in the films he made with Howard Hawks. But this is one of those rare movies where he just really goes for it. From talking of the horrendous fate meted out to Archibald Leach in ‘His Girl Friday’, to murderous aunts in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, to bloody honeymoons here: this, my friends, is the dark side of Cary Grant.
Upping the tempo of his normal screen persona, this is Grant as full-on frazzled. The most famous example of a frazzled Cary Grant is of course ‘North by Northwest’, but there he’s a proto James Bond, which you have to admit is pretty damn suave. ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ though is an increasingly macabre comedy, where laughs and deaths are piled on top of each other in frantic and haphazard fashion, and Grant is frazzled to the max. At points he doesn’t even look like Cary Grant: his face is grubby, that normally pristine hair finds itself ruffled and spiked, and his eyes are well and truly bulging. This is a Cary Grant lost in a situation he can’t control, as a newly-wed husband who starts to believe that his wife is a mass murderer.
The fact that the wife is played by Joan Fontaine makes this a delicious spin on Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’. In that film Joan plays a newlywed who starts to be suspicious about the murderous intentions of her husband, Cary Grant, suspicions which build to a disappointing ending. Here it’s Joan Fontaine as the suspected murderess, but it still builds to a disappointing ending. It’s much like Karl Marx said: good Hollywood ideas repeat themselves, first as suspense and then as farce.
Starting out as what looks like a blissful Hollywood romance, the two drive to the beautiful country hotel they’re staying in for their honeymoon, all loved up and with dreams of their future. They check in with the charming receptionist, kiss as they go up to their hotel room and everything looks rosy. But there’s a guest in reception who seems to recognise Fontaine and greets her by another name, before long he’s dead, and not long after all the other guests start dropping like particularly diseased flies. Grant grows suspicious that his lovely bride is responsible, and investigates even when trying to throw the suspicions of others away from her.
If we’re honest Fontaine isn’t much of a comedienne, but her icy, implacable cool serves the film well. It’s left to Grant to do all the heavy lifting laughs-wise and this he achieves with a truly manic unhinged performance. Think of some wild, lost Abbott & Costello movie with Grant in the Costello role; or a Marx Brothers film where Grant has moments of impersonating both Groucho and Harpo – then you have an idea of the joy that lies within ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’.
The dark tone and clearly cynical world view mean it won’t be for everyone’s tastes, but Grant is brilliant and serves yet another reminder why we should never forget what a fantastic, wonderful, always impeccable actor he was.
B&W
‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ is a dark comedy of the type that you just feel Cary Grant wished he did more of. Obviously he knew his image and was fond of his image as it paid for him to be, well, Cary Grant, but there was always something about him that strained to be darker than that image. You can see it in the films he made with Alfred Hitchcock; you see it in the films he made with Howard Hawks. But this is one of those rare movies where he just really goes for it. From talking of the horrendous fate meted out to Archibald Leach in ‘His Girl Friday’, to murderous aunts in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, to bloody honeymoons here: this, my friends, is the dark side of Cary Grant.
Upping the tempo of his normal screen persona, this is Grant as full-on frazzled. The most famous example of a frazzled Cary Grant is of course ‘North by Northwest’, but there he’s a proto James Bond, which you have to admit is pretty damn suave. ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ though is an increasingly macabre comedy, where laughs and deaths are piled on top of each other in frantic and haphazard fashion, and Grant is frazzled to the max. At points he doesn’t even look like Cary Grant: his face is grubby, that normally pristine hair finds itself ruffled and spiked, and his eyes are well and truly bulging. This is a Cary Grant lost in a situation he can’t control, as a newly-wed husband who starts to believe that his wife is a mass murderer.
The fact that the wife is played by Joan Fontaine makes this a delicious spin on Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’. In that film Joan plays a newlywed who starts to be suspicious about the murderous intentions of her husband, Cary Grant, suspicions which build to a disappointing ending. Here it’s Joan Fontaine as the suspected murderess, but it still builds to a disappointing ending. It’s much like Karl Marx said: good Hollywood ideas repeat themselves, first as suspense and then as farce.
Starting out as what looks like a blissful Hollywood romance, the two drive to the beautiful country hotel they’re staying in for their honeymoon, all loved up and with dreams of their future. They check in with the charming receptionist, kiss as they go up to their hotel room and everything looks rosy. But there’s a guest in reception who seems to recognise Fontaine and greets her by another name, before long he’s dead, and not long after all the other guests start dropping like particularly diseased flies. Grant grows suspicious that his lovely bride is responsible, and investigates even when trying to throw the suspicions of others away from her.
If we’re honest Fontaine isn’t much of a comedienne, but her icy, implacable cool serves the film well. It’s left to Grant to do all the heavy lifting laughs-wise and this he achieves with a truly manic unhinged performance. Think of some wild, lost Abbott & Costello movie with Grant in the Costello role; or a Marx Brothers film where Grant has moments of impersonating both Groucho and Harpo – then you have an idea of the joy that lies within ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’.
The dark tone and clearly cynical world view mean it won’t be for everyone’s tastes, but Grant is brilliant and serves yet another reminder why we should never forget what a fantastic, wonderful, always impeccable actor he was.
Sunday, 3 August 2014
Two Bouquets, Two Husbands , Only One Bride (1965)
D. Donald Howard
Colour
I got married yesterday!
There’s a fairly loud statement with which to begin a blog-post, but it’s true. I am now a married man.
The thing is though, that I’m writing this piece far in advance as I need a buffer to keep this blog chugging merrily along while I head off on honeymoon, so as I type this I’m not actually married at all. I’m writing in the past tense about things which haven’t actually happened yet. But all will be fine and by the time you read this I will be married and nursing my post-bash hangover with my gorgeous, young bride.
Anyway, this seems a perfect opportunity to look at some of the interesting wedding movies out there.
Why don’t we try this one on for size?
Kenneth Williams and Sid James both finding themselves married to Jayne Mansfield?
A preposterous idea, you say?
It happened on the big screen, my friend.
Kenneth Williams and Sid James were never a comedy double act, in fact they didn’t even really like each other that much (although that actually makes them sound a lot like most comedy double acts). But I can see how the American producers of this British production may have got the impression that they were a comedy double act. They offer a nice line in contrasts: James wiry, tough and wrinkled, against Williams’ smooth, slight figure; James’ crudeness against Williams’ fastidious prissiness; James’ dirty, salt of the earth cackle, against Williams head thrown back, nostrils flared, superior howl of laughter. This movie was an attempt to throw a budget behind them and make them a proper double act, and to really give it zing, faded glamour-puss Jayne Mansfield – the woman who practically coined the word ‘pneumatic’* – was flown over from The States. Her name is obviously the big drawer on the poster, but it truly wasn’t really that big a deal, by this point she was well into the ‘will do anything for money’ phase of her career.
Mansfield is an American gold-digger who simultaneously marries Williams’ spoilt and effete aristocrat, and James’ scrap metal dealer made good. It’s then high farce of the doors slamming, compromising situations, rushed excuses and arms well and truly flailing kind, as she tries to keep them from finding out about each other. When they get suspicious that she’s just in this for their money, all it takes is the innocent wide eyes to Williams, and a sultry pose to James and they’re wrapped back around her little finger again. (I’m sure you can picture it: Williams gurning with excitement and amazement at his bride; James giving his biggest lascivious grin). The real problems come though when she realises she’s fallen in love with both of them.
This could have been a great bawdy 60s farce, but really it’s just not that funny. It relies on the chemistry of the leads to paper over the fact that there aren’t that many good lines, and then doesn’t put the leads together often enough to make it work. Anyone who has seen a later Carry On film will know how good James and Williams are at scraping thin samples of life off even the most stale and putrid material, so it’s galling that most of what we would loosely describe at the best lines go to Mansfield. Really, you don’t want Jayne Mansfield to be your main comic force, her talents rise and fall much more in decoration.
Maybe Williams/James could have become international stars in the Martin/Lewis mould, but it seems odd to think of them in Bel-Air, sipping cocktails and winning honorary Oscars. Theirs is a lot more pleasant, down at heal glamour. This film went nowhere (earning less and being substantially poorer in quality than the same year’s ‘Carry on Cowboy’). They may have been disappointed, but I’m glad things went this way, as they were always a better fit for a nice pair of slippers and a pint of stout at the BBC and Thames TV.
* It was either her or Aldous Huxley, I always get those two mixed up.
Colour
I got married yesterday!
There’s a fairly loud statement with which to begin a blog-post, but it’s true. I am now a married man.
The thing is though, that I’m writing this piece far in advance as I need a buffer to keep this blog chugging merrily along while I head off on honeymoon, so as I type this I’m not actually married at all. I’m writing in the past tense about things which haven’t actually happened yet. But all will be fine and by the time you read this I will be married and nursing my post-bash hangover with my gorgeous, young bride.
Anyway, this seems a perfect opportunity to look at some of the interesting wedding movies out there.
Why don’t we try this one on for size?
Kenneth Williams and Sid James both finding themselves married to Jayne Mansfield?
A preposterous idea, you say?
It happened on the big screen, my friend.
Kenneth Williams and Sid James were never a comedy double act, in fact they didn’t even really like each other that much (although that actually makes them sound a lot like most comedy double acts). But I can see how the American producers of this British production may have got the impression that they were a comedy double act. They offer a nice line in contrasts: James wiry, tough and wrinkled, against Williams’ smooth, slight figure; James’ crudeness against Williams’ fastidious prissiness; James’ dirty, salt of the earth cackle, against Williams head thrown back, nostrils flared, superior howl of laughter. This movie was an attempt to throw a budget behind them and make them a proper double act, and to really give it zing, faded glamour-puss Jayne Mansfield – the woman who practically coined the word ‘pneumatic’* – was flown over from The States. Her name is obviously the big drawer on the poster, but it truly wasn’t really that big a deal, by this point she was well into the ‘will do anything for money’ phase of her career.
Mansfield is an American gold-digger who simultaneously marries Williams’ spoilt and effete aristocrat, and James’ scrap metal dealer made good. It’s then high farce of the doors slamming, compromising situations, rushed excuses and arms well and truly flailing kind, as she tries to keep them from finding out about each other. When they get suspicious that she’s just in this for their money, all it takes is the innocent wide eyes to Williams, and a sultry pose to James and they’re wrapped back around her little finger again. (I’m sure you can picture it: Williams gurning with excitement and amazement at his bride; James giving his biggest lascivious grin). The real problems come though when she realises she’s fallen in love with both of them.
This could have been a great bawdy 60s farce, but really it’s just not that funny. It relies on the chemistry of the leads to paper over the fact that there aren’t that many good lines, and then doesn’t put the leads together often enough to make it work. Anyone who has seen a later Carry On film will know how good James and Williams are at scraping thin samples of life off even the most stale and putrid material, so it’s galling that most of what we would loosely describe at the best lines go to Mansfield. Really, you don’t want Jayne Mansfield to be your main comic force, her talents rise and fall much more in decoration.
Maybe Williams/James could have become international stars in the Martin/Lewis mould, but it seems odd to think of them in Bel-Air, sipping cocktails and winning honorary Oscars. Theirs is a lot more pleasant, down at heal glamour. This film went nowhere (earning less and being substantially poorer in quality than the same year’s ‘Carry on Cowboy’). They may have been disappointed, but I’m glad things went this way, as they were always a better fit for a nice pair of slippers and a pint of stout at the BBC and Thames TV.
* It was either her or Aldous Huxley, I always get those two mixed up.
Sunday, 13 July 2014
The Dracula Twins (1965)
D. Norman Taurog
Colour
I remember as a small child being fascinated by the Hammer Horror film ‘Twins of Evil’. I hadn’t actually seen the movie, but it had been adapted as a comic strip in a horror annual I owned. For those who don’t know it, it’s a gothic set tale of twin raven-haired beauties who become vampires and attack their community. I didn’t realise as a small child that the twins were Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson, the first identical twins to appear in a Playboy centre-fold. Nor did I realise until I actually saw the film quite how much nudity there was (although a lot of the violence was included in this comic version for kids). Certainly I didn’t realise how bad the actual film was. The acting is poor, the sets are cheap, the script abysmal and not even the great Peter Cushing can save it.
All in all a bit of a disappointment then, but as an adult I heard about a film called ‘The Dracula Twins’ and for a moment my heart skipped a beat as I thought that maybe – just maybe – I’d found the great twin-centric vampire film I’d been hunting for most of my life.
Made six years before ‘Twins of Evil’, this movie sees another seemingly cut-off community where two young twin sisters, at their most attractively ripe, are turned suddenly into vampires and terrorise those around them. There’s probably even more gore in this than there is ‘Twins of Evil’, certainly lot of that bright red stuff that used to pass for blood in 1960s movies. But oddly, rather than an oppressive European atmosphere, this actually tries for a lighter tone; including comedy, jokes and even a musical number. You see the whole thing is set in Malibu and plays like one of those old Annette/Frankie beach movies, but one where – amidst the Pina Coladas – gruesome, painful death is never far away. That’s a little jarring in itself, but what made my excited heart sink further was the realisation of who is playing the twins.
Yes, it’s Raquel Welch.
Yes, she’s playing both of them.
That really was a blow to the stomach, as Ms Welch is frequently unconvincing in films where she’s called upon to play just one person, let alone two. And somehow, a film about vampires at the beach, didn’t seem like it would be one that would tap into hitherto unseen thespian skills. She plays Margo and Chantel, two gorgeous (although suspiciously mature) teenagers who look great in bikinis. One wears a blue bikini and one wears a red; while one has her hair over her left shoulder and the other favours the right. This isn’t Jeremy Irons in ‘Dead Ringers’ though, even the most perceptive viewer will have difficulty telling the two Raquels apart. After being attacked one night, they became predators in the beach community, both heading out after dark to kill their prey.
This truly is a mess of a movie, too gory to be funny and not funny enough on its own terms anyway. Welch’s favourite pose is to stare with her eyes wide and her lips slightly apart, but that isn’t enough to look truly seductive or truly sexy, and certainly not enough to differentiate one character let alone two.
Another disappointment then, but at least people like me who are hunting down bloodsucking twins films, can cross it off the list.
Colour
I remember as a small child being fascinated by the Hammer Horror film ‘Twins of Evil’. I hadn’t actually seen the movie, but it had been adapted as a comic strip in a horror annual I owned. For those who don’t know it, it’s a gothic set tale of twin raven-haired beauties who become vampires and attack their community. I didn’t realise as a small child that the twins were Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson, the first identical twins to appear in a Playboy centre-fold. Nor did I realise until I actually saw the film quite how much nudity there was (although a lot of the violence was included in this comic version for kids). Certainly I didn’t realise how bad the actual film was. The acting is poor, the sets are cheap, the script abysmal and not even the great Peter Cushing can save it.
All in all a bit of a disappointment then, but as an adult I heard about a film called ‘The Dracula Twins’ and for a moment my heart skipped a beat as I thought that maybe – just maybe – I’d found the great twin-centric vampire film I’d been hunting for most of my life.
Made six years before ‘Twins of Evil’, this movie sees another seemingly cut-off community where two young twin sisters, at their most attractively ripe, are turned suddenly into vampires and terrorise those around them. There’s probably even more gore in this than there is ‘Twins of Evil’, certainly lot of that bright red stuff that used to pass for blood in 1960s movies. But oddly, rather than an oppressive European atmosphere, this actually tries for a lighter tone; including comedy, jokes and even a musical number. You see the whole thing is set in Malibu and plays like one of those old Annette/Frankie beach movies, but one where – amidst the Pina Coladas – gruesome, painful death is never far away. That’s a little jarring in itself, but what made my excited heart sink further was the realisation of who is playing the twins.
Yes, it’s Raquel Welch.
Yes, she’s playing both of them.
That really was a blow to the stomach, as Ms Welch is frequently unconvincing in films where she’s called upon to play just one person, let alone two. And somehow, a film about vampires at the beach, didn’t seem like it would be one that would tap into hitherto unseen thespian skills. She plays Margo and Chantel, two gorgeous (although suspiciously mature) teenagers who look great in bikinis. One wears a blue bikini and one wears a red; while one has her hair over her left shoulder and the other favours the right. This isn’t Jeremy Irons in ‘Dead Ringers’ though, even the most perceptive viewer will have difficulty telling the two Raquels apart. After being attacked one night, they became predators in the beach community, both heading out after dark to kill their prey.
This truly is a mess of a movie, too gory to be funny and not funny enough on its own terms anyway. Welch’s favourite pose is to stare with her eyes wide and her lips slightly apart, but that isn’t enough to look truly seductive or truly sexy, and certainly not enough to differentiate one character let alone two.
Another disappointment then, but at least people like me who are hunting down bloodsucking twins films, can cross it off the list.
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
The World Cup and Saucer (1967)
D. Spike Milliga (and apparently an uncredited Richard Lester)
B&W
No doubt this would have been more successful and better known if it had been released actually during the World Cup in 1966, but since it was made on the fly during the tournament itself by two friends primarily concerned with amusing themselves, then commercial prospects weren’t high on anyone’s agenda. Working with no script and seemingly no idea what to do at the start of each day, the two friends ad-lib their way through the entire 64 minute running length of the film, making silly jokes, putting on ridiculous accents and appearing in ludicrously hit and miss (mainly miss) sketches. It all sounds incredibly tedious, doesn’t it? The kind of movie that would now appear on Youtube, the braying laughter of the cameraman accompanying every moment that’s supposed to be remotely funny. It sounds like the kind of thing most people would rather poke their eyes out with sharpened sticks rather than watch; but then given the old friends in question are Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, even self-indulgence is not going totally devoid of comedy.
Some of it is, to be fair, almost inspired. The ongoing travails of World Cup Willy – the lion which served as a mascot for the whole tournament – who at various points finds himself stuck outside a palace with his tail caught in the door, attacked by poodles and propositioned by an overly-amorous gay lion, did make me laugh. The highlight though is the insert of a long piece of stock footage of a bus caught in traffic with Sellers dubbed over bus driver trying to explain to the Argentinian team that they are not lost, all the time it being clear they are very, very lost. (“This is the Norwich district of London.”) I also enjoyed Spike Milligan’s Swedish man who clearly is only using the World Cup as an excuse to eat in every restaurant in London. Fifteen years later that character would be called Mr Creosote.
Unfortunately we also get the other side of the Sellers/Milligan dynamic, which is what we would call ‘ethnic humour’. The presence of so many people of different nationalities, of different skin colours, just lets these two white boys crack out the make-up and funny accents. Some of it isn’t bad, I suppose: Milligan’s Mexican footballer and Seller’s Spanish footballer meeting up and just being totally unable to understand each other, for instance. But then elsewhere we have Nazi West Germans and overly lazy Portuguese in skits that don’t start well and don’t get better the longer they go on. Most distressingly though is Milligan’s Pakistani meeting Sellers’ Indian both under the impression that this is a cricket tournament, and the comic misunderstandings that occur as they try to find the game with the bats. Milligan grew up in India and denied that any of this was meant in a racist fashion, but even if we take that at face value it’s incredibly regressive, more than a little unfortunate and a sign that sometimes even comic geniuses have feet of clay.
B&W
No doubt this would have been more successful and better known if it had been released actually during the World Cup in 1966, but since it was made on the fly during the tournament itself by two friends primarily concerned with amusing themselves, then commercial prospects weren’t high on anyone’s agenda. Working with no script and seemingly no idea what to do at the start of each day, the two friends ad-lib their way through the entire 64 minute running length of the film, making silly jokes, putting on ridiculous accents and appearing in ludicrously hit and miss (mainly miss) sketches. It all sounds incredibly tedious, doesn’t it? The kind of movie that would now appear on Youtube, the braying laughter of the cameraman accompanying every moment that’s supposed to be remotely funny. It sounds like the kind of thing most people would rather poke their eyes out with sharpened sticks rather than watch; but then given the old friends in question are Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, even self-indulgence is not going totally devoid of comedy.
Some of it is, to be fair, almost inspired. The ongoing travails of World Cup Willy – the lion which served as a mascot for the whole tournament – who at various points finds himself stuck outside a palace with his tail caught in the door, attacked by poodles and propositioned by an overly-amorous gay lion, did make me laugh. The highlight though is the insert of a long piece of stock footage of a bus caught in traffic with Sellers dubbed over bus driver trying to explain to the Argentinian team that they are not lost, all the time it being clear they are very, very lost. (“This is the Norwich district of London.”) I also enjoyed Spike Milligan’s Swedish man who clearly is only using the World Cup as an excuse to eat in every restaurant in London. Fifteen years later that character would be called Mr Creosote.
Unfortunately we also get the other side of the Sellers/Milligan dynamic, which is what we would call ‘ethnic humour’. The presence of so many people of different nationalities, of different skin colours, just lets these two white boys crack out the make-up and funny accents. Some of it isn’t bad, I suppose: Milligan’s Mexican footballer and Seller’s Spanish footballer meeting up and just being totally unable to understand each other, for instance. But then elsewhere we have Nazi West Germans and overly lazy Portuguese in skits that don’t start well and don’t get better the longer they go on. Most distressingly though is Milligan’s Pakistani meeting Sellers’ Indian both under the impression that this is a cricket tournament, and the comic misunderstandings that occur as they try to find the game with the bats. Milligan grew up in India and denied that any of this was meant in a racist fashion, but even if we take that at face value it’s incredibly regressive, more than a little unfortunate and a sign that sometimes even comic geniuses have feet of clay.
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.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
The (Mis)Adventures of Kitty Spectacular (1966)
D. Ken Annakin
Colour
I like to think that Honor Blackman had more money shovelled in her direction than she’d ever seen before to get her to appear in this fluffy and unsatisfying Euro-meringue. A high-farce, broad James Bond spoof where she trades completely off her most famous cinema character seemingly without a hint of shame. Does that name in the title strike a chord with you? Does it look eerily familiar? Of course it does. It’s almost as if the producers couldn’t acquire the rights for the name of ‘Pussy Galore’ and so did the next best thing and just took a cat euphemism and a superlative and Bond’s your uncle. So of course it was a coup to get the actual Pussy Galore to play this completely new character. Actually in the first instance it would never have worked unless they had Honor Blackman smiling on the bright colour poster to let people know that, okay, they weren’t quite seeing a spin-off of ‘Goldfinger’, but they were seeing the next best thing.
This is one of a number of films that sprang up in the late 1960s to take advantage of James Bond’s popularity. The most famous is, of course, ‘Casino Royale’, the cultural memory of which has not at all been extinguished by the Daniel Craig version, we all still revel in David Niven/Peter Sellers/Woody Allen’s glory and the jaunty Burt Bacharach theme. However, the film this bears closest resemblance to is ‘OK Connery’, the bizarre spoof where Neil Connery plays a spy along with half of the Bond movies regular cast. I say that as showing up as the antagonist here, albeit in a small role, as a humourless and possibly frigid British spy is the one and only Neil Connery. When the British secret service gets the nod that Kitty Spectacular and her troupe of slim, attractive, sexually provocative female pilots are planning to rob the bank in Monte Carlo, they try to stop her. It’s up to Kitty to stay one step ahead and win the day with a saucy wiggle and a feline smile.
(Just as an aside, what must it have been like to be Neil Connery? You have such a resemblance to your famous big brother, but none of the excessive Y chromosome manliness which actually makes the Connery name work. I’m going to guess that the 1960s, although he clearly took advantage of Sean’s success, was a bit of a depressing time for young Neil.)
Much like ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’, this is bizarre, silly and all realised in bright Technicolor. Although here the film seems a lot more self-conscious, as if straining constantly for a higher level of ridiculousness that it has neither the wit nor intelligence to achieve. There are schoolboy assassins, a submarine shaped like a hot-dog, robot duplicates of the world’s leaders and the whole thing ends with the British government planning to stop Kitty Spectacular and her gal-pals by dropping large circus tents onto their planes – which is exactly the kind of scheme some tripping film executives might conceive, but you can’t believe it would really pass muster with the more stuffy mandarins in Whitehall.
I wrote last time about the lesbianism in that film maybe being a French thing, but here it shows up again. Predictably, much like Pussy Galore, Kitty Spectacular has an eye for the ladies. There she is admiring the tight jodhpurs of the girls and telling her favourites that she’ll miss them in a most fulsome way. We even have her waking up next to the young Felicity Kendall (although here the film is oddly coy and suggests they just cuddled). James Bond is obviously a male fantasy, but so are these ladies. It might look from the outside like these female led films are the stuff of feminism (without a doubt this would pass The Bechdel Test), but in reality they’re about tight and skimpy outfits, lipstick lesbianism and allowing boys to be boys. They might look like feminism, but they’ve as much interest in inspiring young women as Maxim Magazine.
Don’t be smug though, if you’ve ever seen either of McG’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ movies, you’ll know we haven’t moved on that far.
Colour
I like to think that Honor Blackman had more money shovelled in her direction than she’d ever seen before to get her to appear in this fluffy and unsatisfying Euro-meringue. A high-farce, broad James Bond spoof where she trades completely off her most famous cinema character seemingly without a hint of shame. Does that name in the title strike a chord with you? Does it look eerily familiar? Of course it does. It’s almost as if the producers couldn’t acquire the rights for the name of ‘Pussy Galore’ and so did the next best thing and just took a cat euphemism and a superlative and Bond’s your uncle. So of course it was a coup to get the actual Pussy Galore to play this completely new character. Actually in the first instance it would never have worked unless they had Honor Blackman smiling on the bright colour poster to let people know that, okay, they weren’t quite seeing a spin-off of ‘Goldfinger’, but they were seeing the next best thing.
This is one of a number of films that sprang up in the late 1960s to take advantage of James Bond’s popularity. The most famous is, of course, ‘Casino Royale’, the cultural memory of which has not at all been extinguished by the Daniel Craig version, we all still revel in David Niven/Peter Sellers/Woody Allen’s glory and the jaunty Burt Bacharach theme. However, the film this bears closest resemblance to is ‘OK Connery’, the bizarre spoof where Neil Connery plays a spy along with half of the Bond movies regular cast. I say that as showing up as the antagonist here, albeit in a small role, as a humourless and possibly frigid British spy is the one and only Neil Connery. When the British secret service gets the nod that Kitty Spectacular and her troupe of slim, attractive, sexually provocative female pilots are planning to rob the bank in Monte Carlo, they try to stop her. It’s up to Kitty to stay one step ahead and win the day with a saucy wiggle and a feline smile.
(Just as an aside, what must it have been like to be Neil Connery? You have such a resemblance to your famous big brother, but none of the excessive Y chromosome manliness which actually makes the Connery name work. I’m going to guess that the 1960s, although he clearly took advantage of Sean’s success, was a bit of a depressing time for young Neil.)
Much like ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’, this is bizarre, silly and all realised in bright Technicolor. Although here the film seems a lot more self-conscious, as if straining constantly for a higher level of ridiculousness that it has neither the wit nor intelligence to achieve. There are schoolboy assassins, a submarine shaped like a hot-dog, robot duplicates of the world’s leaders and the whole thing ends with the British government planning to stop Kitty Spectacular and her gal-pals by dropping large circus tents onto their planes – which is exactly the kind of scheme some tripping film executives might conceive, but you can’t believe it would really pass muster with the more stuffy mandarins in Whitehall.
I wrote last time about the lesbianism in that film maybe being a French thing, but here it shows up again. Predictably, much like Pussy Galore, Kitty Spectacular has an eye for the ladies. There she is admiring the tight jodhpurs of the girls and telling her favourites that she’ll miss them in a most fulsome way. We even have her waking up next to the young Felicity Kendall (although here the film is oddly coy and suggests they just cuddled). James Bond is obviously a male fantasy, but so are these ladies. It might look from the outside like these female led films are the stuff of feminism (without a doubt this would pass The Bechdel Test), but in reality they’re about tight and skimpy outfits, lipstick lesbianism and allowing boys to be boys. They might look like feminism, but they’ve as much interest in inspiring young women as Maxim Magazine.
Don’t be smug though, if you’ve ever seen either of McG’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ movies, you’ll know we haven’t moved on that far.
Sunday, 4 May 2014
Agent Marie Lautrec (1964)
D. André Hunebelle
Colour
I’ve read in other guides that this is a French James Bond imitation/spoof, but surely it has as much to do with OSS 117 as it does with 007. We might not want to admit it in our smug Anglo-Saxon way, but Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath actually precedes James Bond in both books and films – so maybe we should salute the French for their own originality in this regard. Although given the popularity of the two franchises, let’s make it a small salute. I can see though why the James Bond element is concentrated on more than anything else; as in this zany, Technicolor, bright, loud, flashy and explosive film, we have not only the over the top quality of 1960s Bond spoofs, but also how untethered from reality and ridiculous James Bond would himself become.
Brigitte Bardot, here the sex symbol to end all sex symbols, is our title character: the stunning, super, secret-agent Marie Lautrec. We know how brilliant she is as everybody in the (unnamed) French secret service keeps telling us. However from watching the film, it seems that her main talent is wearing lots of ridiculously tight and skimpy outfits. There she is doing some espionage work while dressed as a French maid (or maybe in the context of this film, just a maid), a Catholic school girl, in a ridiculously low-cut top and tight shorts as a cow-girl, and even for a brief scene as the kind of dominatrix who would give Emma Peel a run for her money. Beyond taking the odd covert picture or listening in to other people’s conversations, there’s little in the way of espionage involved. But hey, ‘Diamonds are Forever’ or ‘Moonraker’ weren’t likely to be shown as MI6 training films either.
The plot is similarly full of Bond spoof ludicrousness, involving as it does flies with cameras on their backs, de-thawed hibernating Nazis who just can’t get their feet warm, robotic dragons piloted by midgets and an attempt to crash the moon into North America. It’s all stupendously and utterly bonkers. This is a movie which would look at the concept of a mad, bald super villain living in a hollowed out volcano and decide it wanted to steer away from such social realism. But then ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’ doesn’t want you to concentrate on the plot, it exists for loud colours, cackling villains and Brigitte Bardot pouting and playing with her hair while dressed in very little.
But elsewhere in the movie we have the odd contrast of the lovely French chanteuse, Francoise Hardy, as a colleague of Bardot’s and a possible double agent. In the restraint of her performance, in how demure her outfits are in comparison with the star, we have a glimpse of a whole other film.
Whereas Bardot is predicting Bond at its most unrestrained, Hardy seems to want to play a part in a particularly dour John Le Carre adaptation. Her more reigned in performance slows the film down and the scenes between her and Bardot are absolutely beautiful. Yes, its style clashing with brassiness, but it’s also that rare moment when the film allows itself to breathe, giving us something actually tense and interesting. Predictably these scenes also have a distinct lesbian edge, which at the time I thought it might just be the French being the French, although as we’ll see in the next film – it was a trait 1960s female-led adventure films seemed really eager to explore.
Colour
I’ve read in other guides that this is a French James Bond imitation/spoof, but surely it has as much to do with OSS 117 as it does with 007. We might not want to admit it in our smug Anglo-Saxon way, but Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath actually precedes James Bond in both books and films – so maybe we should salute the French for their own originality in this regard. Although given the popularity of the two franchises, let’s make it a small salute. I can see though why the James Bond element is concentrated on more than anything else; as in this zany, Technicolor, bright, loud, flashy and explosive film, we have not only the over the top quality of 1960s Bond spoofs, but also how untethered from reality and ridiculous James Bond would himself become.
Brigitte Bardot, here the sex symbol to end all sex symbols, is our title character: the stunning, super, secret-agent Marie Lautrec. We know how brilliant she is as everybody in the (unnamed) French secret service keeps telling us. However from watching the film, it seems that her main talent is wearing lots of ridiculously tight and skimpy outfits. There she is doing some espionage work while dressed as a French maid (or maybe in the context of this film, just a maid), a Catholic school girl, in a ridiculously low-cut top and tight shorts as a cow-girl, and even for a brief scene as the kind of dominatrix who would give Emma Peel a run for her money. Beyond taking the odd covert picture or listening in to other people’s conversations, there’s little in the way of espionage involved. But hey, ‘Diamonds are Forever’ or ‘Moonraker’ weren’t likely to be shown as MI6 training films either.
The plot is similarly full of Bond spoof ludicrousness, involving as it does flies with cameras on their backs, de-thawed hibernating Nazis who just can’t get their feet warm, robotic dragons piloted by midgets and an attempt to crash the moon into North America. It’s all stupendously and utterly bonkers. This is a movie which would look at the concept of a mad, bald super villain living in a hollowed out volcano and decide it wanted to steer away from such social realism. But then ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’ doesn’t want you to concentrate on the plot, it exists for loud colours, cackling villains and Brigitte Bardot pouting and playing with her hair while dressed in very little.
But elsewhere in the movie we have the odd contrast of the lovely French chanteuse, Francoise Hardy, as a colleague of Bardot’s and a possible double agent. In the restraint of her performance, in how demure her outfits are in comparison with the star, we have a glimpse of a whole other film.
Whereas Bardot is predicting Bond at its most unrestrained, Hardy seems to want to play a part in a particularly dour John Le Carre adaptation. Her more reigned in performance slows the film down and the scenes between her and Bardot are absolutely beautiful. Yes, its style clashing with brassiness, but it’s also that rare moment when the film allows itself to breathe, giving us something actually tense and interesting. Predictably these scenes also have a distinct lesbian edge, which at the time I thought it might just be the French being the French, although as we’ll see in the next film – it was a trait 1960s female-led adventure films seemed really eager to explore.
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Arranging My Affairs (1979)
D. Bob Spiers
Colour
Fans of ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ should seek out this rare starring role in cinema for Leonard Rossiter. Normally on the big screen he was limited to playing weary policemen in ‘Pink Panther’ sequels, or small roles in Stanley Kubrick movies, but here he is the star and centre of everything. Playing an unnamed Cabinet Minister in the British government, Rossiter is absolutely astounding. Speaking as quickly as Reggie Perrin, Rossiter presents his politician as that rare thing – an almost still whirling dervish. He doesn’t charge or race around, but clearly his mind is always whirring and spinning, with words spilling out of him so fast, constantly twisting one way or another. He obfuscates, he misleads, he tells half-truths, semi-truths and even resorts to just lying, all to get out of various jams of his own making. And it’s brilliant to watch, as Rossiter makes this man immensely likeable, even when ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are clearly just half remembered words in the dictionary. This, without a doubt, is one of the most cynical films ever made about politics and politicians.
Suddenly finding himself at risk of exposure for his various misdeeds, our political hero has a day or so to get all his affairs into order so that he can present a squeaky clean image to the general public. This includes sorting out some dubious loans from his ultra-seedy cousin (Peter Sallis, in a role which seems like the dark twisted mirror to Norman Clegg; the antichrist to Wallace); getting hold of some compromising snaps from a brothel madam (Kate O’Mara, purring over line like creamy liquor); and ending affairs with a duo of glamorous mistresses, Joanna Lumley and Lynn-Holly Johnson (both actual Bond girls) and ridiculously handsome toy-boy, Anthony Andrews (who surely must have been considered for Bond). In addition he has the attention of a blackmailer (Michael Ripper), a problem which may need more drastic measures to resolve. All the way through Rossiter talks, carving and chipping away with words, as if they can alter reality itself. This is a man who is dangling by a thread, but who won’t admit that the thread is anything other than a sturdy rope and far from dangling he is floating above serenely taking in the panorama of the situation. He sweats, undoubtedly the panic rises, but no matter how dire the predicament he doesn’t give up. He just keeps on talking and talking and talking. It’s no wonder that when his wife, Sian Phillips, stares at him it’s with a smile of pride rather than a snarl of frustration.
If we’re honest it looks more like a TV movie than an actual film. It’s made by television professionals and never really escapes that. But in Rossiter’s magnificently shifty yet sincere performance, in the seediness of the tabloids which pursue him, in the way that the political establishment rallies around and supports him when the danger is not just hammering his door but trying to climb through the window, we have an extremely cynical and wonderfully funny film which is just as horribly applicable today.
Colour
Fans of ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ should seek out this rare starring role in cinema for Leonard Rossiter. Normally on the big screen he was limited to playing weary policemen in ‘Pink Panther’ sequels, or small roles in Stanley Kubrick movies, but here he is the star and centre of everything. Playing an unnamed Cabinet Minister in the British government, Rossiter is absolutely astounding. Speaking as quickly as Reggie Perrin, Rossiter presents his politician as that rare thing – an almost still whirling dervish. He doesn’t charge or race around, but clearly his mind is always whirring and spinning, with words spilling out of him so fast, constantly twisting one way or another. He obfuscates, he misleads, he tells half-truths, semi-truths and even resorts to just lying, all to get out of various jams of his own making. And it’s brilliant to watch, as Rossiter makes this man immensely likeable, even when ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ are clearly just half remembered words in the dictionary. This, without a doubt, is one of the most cynical films ever made about politics and politicians.
Suddenly finding himself at risk of exposure for his various misdeeds, our political hero has a day or so to get all his affairs into order so that he can present a squeaky clean image to the general public. This includes sorting out some dubious loans from his ultra-seedy cousin (Peter Sallis, in a role which seems like the dark twisted mirror to Norman Clegg; the antichrist to Wallace); getting hold of some compromising snaps from a brothel madam (Kate O’Mara, purring over line like creamy liquor); and ending affairs with a duo of glamorous mistresses, Joanna Lumley and Lynn-Holly Johnson (both actual Bond girls) and ridiculously handsome toy-boy, Anthony Andrews (who surely must have been considered for Bond). In addition he has the attention of a blackmailer (Michael Ripper), a problem which may need more drastic measures to resolve. All the way through Rossiter talks, carving and chipping away with words, as if they can alter reality itself. This is a man who is dangling by a thread, but who won’t admit that the thread is anything other than a sturdy rope and far from dangling he is floating above serenely taking in the panorama of the situation. He sweats, undoubtedly the panic rises, but no matter how dire the predicament he doesn’t give up. He just keeps on talking and talking and talking. It’s no wonder that when his wife, Sian Phillips, stares at him it’s with a smile of pride rather than a snarl of frustration.
If we’re honest it looks more like a TV movie than an actual film. It’s made by television professionals and never really escapes that. But in Rossiter’s magnificently shifty yet sincere performance, in the seediness of the tabloids which pursue him, in the way that the political establishment rallies around and supports him when the danger is not just hammering his door but trying to climb through the window, we have an extremely cynical and wonderfully funny film which is just as horribly applicable today.
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Hey, I Used To Write Books (2005)
D. Peter Bogdanovitch
Colour
I’d like to think that Robert De Niro saw the irony in making this little seen film. I’d like to think that he approached it with a degree of self-awareness about what he was doing, an understanding of what he was taking on. I hope he didn’t arrive on the first day treating it in exactly the same bored and disinterested way he no doubt treated the other fourteen films he was appearing in that year. As even though the name of the character is wrong, even though the profession is wrong, this film is almost ridiculously autobiographical for Bobby De Niro. It’s a movie which is reaching into the soul of its star and trying to display it to the world. And I just hope that Bobby figured that out, that the irony of playing this character with these problems wasn’t lost on him in his usual of haze of disinterestedly going through the motions.
Bobby is Toby Rushkin, a one-time brilliant and fêted young novelist who has hit hard times and now churns out scripts for what looks like an incredibly tacky and unfunny sitcom. (Basically it looks like a less funny, less classy, more sexist version of ‘Two and a Half Men’. It’s therefore ridiculously easy to see why the character feels such contempt for the source of his paycheques.) Bobby spends the whole film striving to get back to where he thinks he belongs, reminding himself and others around him of how big a deal he once was. This doesn’t have the effect of building him up in the way he hopes, though it just shows how far and horribly he has fallen. The title comes from the sentence he uses to justify himself; wheels out when he tumbles into the pits into self-pity; even wields as a boast as he introduces himself to new people. We follow him as he tries repeatedly to pull himself up before falling back again; whilst the whole time having to deal with his boss Andy Garcia and his on/off girlfriend Jennifer Tilly. (Yes, De Niro, Garcia and Tilly really do make a cast list which would have been a whole lot more exciting ten years earlier.) It’s a maudlin comedy, one about failure and the fear of failure and the trap of failure.
And of course it all applies to Bobby. Here is a man who used to do absolutely incredible, awe inspiring work, but who is now trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of soulless hackery. This is a story about Bobby’s own predicament, about what’s happened to him and his career. But the thing is, from his low energy and bored look in his eye, it’s not at all convincing that Bobby has figured this out. It seems almost as if this is just another job for Bobby, another paycheque, one which will be over in a couple of weeks and then he’ll head onto his next film. You watch it and want him to realise that he’s making autobiography, you want him to rise to the challenge, but it never comes off. Obviously the ‘great work to will work for food’ path is one taken by the film’s director, Peter Bogdanowitz, and I hope he at least figured out the irony of what he was doing. As the only thing Bobby appears interested in throughout this film, throughout this story which could be his life story, is whether the limo which takes him back and forth the studio is comfy enough.
Colour
I’d like to think that Robert De Niro saw the irony in making this little seen film. I’d like to think that he approached it with a degree of self-awareness about what he was doing, an understanding of what he was taking on. I hope he didn’t arrive on the first day treating it in exactly the same bored and disinterested way he no doubt treated the other fourteen films he was appearing in that year. As even though the name of the character is wrong, even though the profession is wrong, this film is almost ridiculously autobiographical for Bobby De Niro. It’s a movie which is reaching into the soul of its star and trying to display it to the world. And I just hope that Bobby figured that out, that the irony of playing this character with these problems wasn’t lost on him in his usual of haze of disinterestedly going through the motions.
Bobby is Toby Rushkin, a one-time brilliant and fêted young novelist who has hit hard times and now churns out scripts for what looks like an incredibly tacky and unfunny sitcom. (Basically it looks like a less funny, less classy, more sexist version of ‘Two and a Half Men’. It’s therefore ridiculously easy to see why the character feels such contempt for the source of his paycheques.) Bobby spends the whole film striving to get back to where he thinks he belongs, reminding himself and others around him of how big a deal he once was. This doesn’t have the effect of building him up in the way he hopes, though it just shows how far and horribly he has fallen. The title comes from the sentence he uses to justify himself; wheels out when he tumbles into the pits into self-pity; even wields as a boast as he introduces himself to new people. We follow him as he tries repeatedly to pull himself up before falling back again; whilst the whole time having to deal with his boss Andy Garcia and his on/off girlfriend Jennifer Tilly. (Yes, De Niro, Garcia and Tilly really do make a cast list which would have been a whole lot more exciting ten years earlier.) It’s a maudlin comedy, one about failure and the fear of failure and the trap of failure.
And of course it all applies to Bobby. Here is a man who used to do absolutely incredible, awe inspiring work, but who is now trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of soulless hackery. This is a story about Bobby’s own predicament, about what’s happened to him and his career. But the thing is, from his low energy and bored look in his eye, it’s not at all convincing that Bobby has figured this out. It seems almost as if this is just another job for Bobby, another paycheque, one which will be over in a couple of weeks and then he’ll head onto his next film. You watch it and want him to realise that he’s making autobiography, you want him to rise to the challenge, but it never comes off. Obviously the ‘great work to will work for food’ path is one taken by the film’s director, Peter Bogdanowitz, and I hope he at least figured out the irony of what he was doing. As the only thing Bobby appears interested in throughout this film, throughout this story which could be his life story, is whether the limo which takes him back and forth the studio is comfy enough.
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.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
French Leave (1967)
D. Blake Edwards
Colour
Ah, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The great fun of men in spats pretending to be girls in flapper dresses; gaping at Marilyn Monroe as she wiggles her way down a train platform; “Nobody’s perfect!” Seriously, who doesn’t love ‘Some Like It Hot’? As close to perfect as any film made by humans is going to get! But it’s curious how some films live long in the memory while others just fade away (this blog of course exists for films that fade away). For instance, for all the high praise lavished upon the Paul Newman and Robert Redford pairing, it’s forgotten that Redford has actually made more movies with Jane Fonda (go on, I bet you can’t name more than one). Similarly the great chemistry of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was actually spread across three films. There was the magnificent and utterly unimpeachable ‘Some Like It Hot’, there was the really underwhelming and disappointing ‘The Great Race’ and then there was ‘French Leave’ – which sits more at ‘The Great Race’ end of the spectrum, but – given current events - is really worth taking another peek at.
Here’s the set up. On a promotional trip to France, married Hollywood star Tony Curtis encounters Italian sex kitten Claudia Cardinale and begins to pursue her for an affair. At much the same time, married French President Jack Lemmon (with a truly shocking accent, making Inspector Clouseau sound like he’s authentic to every tortured syllable) is introduced to Cardinale at a party and also tries to seduce her. The two men become aware of each other’s attentions and attempt to thwart each other at every turn, the grandeur of the French presidency put into conflict with the largesse of Hollywood as each vies to make Cardinale his bit on the side.
That’s right, they don’t want the gorgeous, delightful, pouting Claudia Cardinale to be their girlfriend or their wife – each man want hers to be his illicit mistress. The first time I saw this film it made me feel a bit “Uck!” This loud and brash farce where married men try to capture a woman to serve their sexual needs away from their wives, just felt like part of the swinging sixties we were happy to discard. The gender politics could be politely described as antediluvian. But looking at Francois Holland’s travails in the last few weeks has made me revisit ‘French Leave’. It seems that even today – even if you’re the socialist new broom there to clean up the system – it’s the done thing for French Presidents to keep mistresses. Mitterrand of course had his, there were always rumours about Chirac and now Holland finds himself an international scandal. (Not necessarily a national one though, the French press and the French public seem really accepting of this kind of thing. They just give a Gallic shrug and go back to their coffee and baguettes. Imagine, as a comparison, if this was David Cameron with a mistress and Sam Cameron in hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. The tabloids would sing loud and ebullient praises to the god of mammon from the rooftops, and even Nick Robinson would tear out his remaining hair in excitement). On the other side of the coin nobody thinks movie stars are unimpeachable. It’s downright naïve to believe that Hollywood types don’t have affairs. And so suddenly this film, which I initially dismissed as a sexist relic of a less enlightened time, feels like it could be a free-wheeling docu-drama of NOW where the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
And if I’m honest it’s not that bad. I like Jack Lemmon a lot, but find he mugs too much in broad comedy (and I hate his over the top accent here, but I also hate his equally over the top accent in ‘The Great Race’). I like Tony Curtis a lot, but the laziness in his performance evident here would soon kill his big screen career. And in common with all straight men, I like Claudia Cardinale a lot and will not hear a word against her. So two thirds of the performances could be better, but Blake Edwards does execute the farce quite well. The old money of Versailles against the nouveau riche of Bel Air has good comic potential and everything gets bigger and bigger (if not necessarily that much funnier). It’s a very 1960s movie, which does have a few genuine laughs and has more to say about the morals and peccadillos of certain people today that I initially – in my prudish British way – realised.
Colour
Ah, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The great fun of men in spats pretending to be girls in flapper dresses; gaping at Marilyn Monroe as she wiggles her way down a train platform; “Nobody’s perfect!” Seriously, who doesn’t love ‘Some Like It Hot’? As close to perfect as any film made by humans is going to get! But it’s curious how some films live long in the memory while others just fade away (this blog of course exists for films that fade away). For instance, for all the high praise lavished upon the Paul Newman and Robert Redford pairing, it’s forgotten that Redford has actually made more movies with Jane Fonda (go on, I bet you can’t name more than one). Similarly the great chemistry of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was actually spread across three films. There was the magnificent and utterly unimpeachable ‘Some Like It Hot’, there was the really underwhelming and disappointing ‘The Great Race’ and then there was ‘French Leave’ – which sits more at ‘The Great Race’ end of the spectrum, but – given current events - is really worth taking another peek at.
Here’s the set up. On a promotional trip to France, married Hollywood star Tony Curtis encounters Italian sex kitten Claudia Cardinale and begins to pursue her for an affair. At much the same time, married French President Jack Lemmon (with a truly shocking accent, making Inspector Clouseau sound like he’s authentic to every tortured syllable) is introduced to Cardinale at a party and also tries to seduce her. The two men become aware of each other’s attentions and attempt to thwart each other at every turn, the grandeur of the French presidency put into conflict with the largesse of Hollywood as each vies to make Cardinale his bit on the side.
That’s right, they don’t want the gorgeous, delightful, pouting Claudia Cardinale to be their girlfriend or their wife – each man want hers to be his illicit mistress. The first time I saw this film it made me feel a bit “Uck!” This loud and brash farce where married men try to capture a woman to serve their sexual needs away from their wives, just felt like part of the swinging sixties we were happy to discard. The gender politics could be politely described as antediluvian. But looking at Francois Holland’s travails in the last few weeks has made me revisit ‘French Leave’. It seems that even today – even if you’re the socialist new broom there to clean up the system – it’s the done thing for French Presidents to keep mistresses. Mitterrand of course had his, there were always rumours about Chirac and now Holland finds himself an international scandal. (Not necessarily a national one though, the French press and the French public seem really accepting of this kind of thing. They just give a Gallic shrug and go back to their coffee and baguettes. Imagine, as a comparison, if this was David Cameron with a mistress and Sam Cameron in hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. The tabloids would sing loud and ebullient praises to the god of mammon from the rooftops, and even Nick Robinson would tear out his remaining hair in excitement). On the other side of the coin nobody thinks movie stars are unimpeachable. It’s downright naïve to believe that Hollywood types don’t have affairs. And so suddenly this film, which I initially dismissed as a sexist relic of a less enlightened time, feels like it could be a free-wheeling docu-drama of NOW where the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
And if I’m honest it’s not that bad. I like Jack Lemmon a lot, but find he mugs too much in broad comedy (and I hate his over the top accent here, but I also hate his equally over the top accent in ‘The Great Race’). I like Tony Curtis a lot, but the laziness in his performance evident here would soon kill his big screen career. And in common with all straight men, I like Claudia Cardinale a lot and will not hear a word against her. So two thirds of the performances could be better, but Blake Edwards does execute the farce quite well. The old money of Versailles against the nouveau riche of Bel Air has good comic potential and everything gets bigger and bigger (if not necessarily that much funnier). It’s a very 1960s movie, which does have a few genuine laughs and has more to say about the morals and peccadillos of certain people today that I initially – in my prudish British way – realised.
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
The Caribou Caper (1978)
D. Clive Donner
Colour
Peter Sellers, that gifted and subtle character actor of the 1950s, had truly morphed into a monster of a performer by the latter half of the 1970s. One who was quite happy to crash through all his scenes with as broad a characterisation as possible and carrying a side of ham on a platter the whole way. This was the period where he had just returned to prominence thanks to 'The Pink Panther' movies, never the most understated (or by this point reliably funny) of films and Sellers now seemed to regard any movie he was in as an extension of Inspector Clouseau. Everything he did had to be as loud and brash and hi-hi-hi-larious as possible, except when Sellers is on the screen generally only the first two apply.
And that’s a shame as this is a film that really cries out for a subtler Peter Sellers, perhaps not the everyman performer of the 1950s, but the 1960s model who could glide through the original 'Pink Panther' without deliberately pushing over every apple cart he could find.
Peter Sellers and Michael Caine are brothers, I know it’s difficult to believe when you look at them, but then elsewhere in cinema history Sean Connery played Dustin Hoffman’s dad and a woman named Katy Elder managed to birth two sons with a 36 year age difference. Sometimes you just have to go with these things. They’re not just any brothers mind you, but high-end criminal brothers who have carried out a series of daring jewel thefts across Europe. Now they want one more job, Caine so he can have security on the yacht he plans to sail around the world, and Sellers because it will help him fulfil his life-long dream of buying Napoleon’s underpants. And to do this they target wealthy American movie star, Caribou Curvaluv, (played with her usual levels of bored adequacy by Raquel Welch), but what happens when they each fall in love with her?
First things first, this is a film way out of time. In the sixties Sellers had the original ‘Pink Panther’, Caine had ‘Gambit’ and Welch had ‘Fathom’ – but nobody was making this kind of high-class caper romp in 1978. It’s perversely, ridiculously out of time and no amount of jokes about OPEC, President Carter and the British letting a woman lead a political party is going to solve that. What’s more these are three actors who could easily have made this film ten years earlier, and now seem a bit – well – gone to seed. Sellers, as was starting to be apparent in ‘The Ideas Man’, can’t help but look like a creepy uncle as he ogles young women in bikinis; Caine has that red-faced, sweaty, over-done potato look that he would later wheel out for the likes of ‘Blame it on Rio’, while Welch does shape up well, but one wouldn’t want to leave her in front of a radiator for too long. Let’s be fair, the set-up, the script, the leads would all have appeared better and more fitting in 1968.
It’s an odd film then and that’s before we get to the Peter Sellers factor.
You can really see the importance of collaboration in a film when it isn’t happening properly. Here is a case in point. Sellers and Caine don’t actually have that many scenes together. In the few they do, there is an easy camaraderie between there, a mutual respect. One wouldn’t really believe they were brothers, but they certainly come across as two people who have known each other a long time. When they’re apart though it’s perfectly clear they’re in completely different films. Caine is a likeable cockney, a classy villain, who is looking for one final job to assuage his mid-life crisis; Sellers is a barnpot who speaks constantly in a loud, manic voice and dreams of owning Napoleon’s underpants. It seems that on getting the script for a ‘classy crime comedy’, Caine paid attention to the word ‘classy’, while Sellers blew up the word ‘comedy’ into eighteen foot high letters.
Sellers tramples over everything in his path in his desire to get a laugh. Clearly not listening to Welch’s lines so he can comically leer at her and mug to straight to camera – in addition we have raising of eyebrows, desperate hand gestures and jumping over other actor’s lines, even when they’re seemingly crucial to the plot. It’s clearly the performance of a man out of control. And Caine’s subtler take on his part just makes it look worse.
As such this is a strange out of place, utterly disjointed, film – but one which, I suppose makes you feel like you’re getting two movies for the price of one.
Colour
Peter Sellers, that gifted and subtle character actor of the 1950s, had truly morphed into a monster of a performer by the latter half of the 1970s. One who was quite happy to crash through all his scenes with as broad a characterisation as possible and carrying a side of ham on a platter the whole way. This was the period where he had just returned to prominence thanks to 'The Pink Panther' movies, never the most understated (or by this point reliably funny) of films and Sellers now seemed to regard any movie he was in as an extension of Inspector Clouseau. Everything he did had to be as loud and brash and hi-hi-hi-larious as possible, except when Sellers is on the screen generally only the first two apply.
And that’s a shame as this is a film that really cries out for a subtler Peter Sellers, perhaps not the everyman performer of the 1950s, but the 1960s model who could glide through the original 'Pink Panther' without deliberately pushing over every apple cart he could find.
Peter Sellers and Michael Caine are brothers, I know it’s difficult to believe when you look at them, but then elsewhere in cinema history Sean Connery played Dustin Hoffman’s dad and a woman named Katy Elder managed to birth two sons with a 36 year age difference. Sometimes you just have to go with these things. They’re not just any brothers mind you, but high-end criminal brothers who have carried out a series of daring jewel thefts across Europe. Now they want one more job, Caine so he can have security on the yacht he plans to sail around the world, and Sellers because it will help him fulfil his life-long dream of buying Napoleon’s underpants. And to do this they target wealthy American movie star, Caribou Curvaluv, (played with her usual levels of bored adequacy by Raquel Welch), but what happens when they each fall in love with her?
First things first, this is a film way out of time. In the sixties Sellers had the original ‘Pink Panther’, Caine had ‘Gambit’ and Welch had ‘Fathom’ – but nobody was making this kind of high-class caper romp in 1978. It’s perversely, ridiculously out of time and no amount of jokes about OPEC, President Carter and the British letting a woman lead a political party is going to solve that. What’s more these are three actors who could easily have made this film ten years earlier, and now seem a bit – well – gone to seed. Sellers, as was starting to be apparent in ‘The Ideas Man’, can’t help but look like a creepy uncle as he ogles young women in bikinis; Caine has that red-faced, sweaty, over-done potato look that he would later wheel out for the likes of ‘Blame it on Rio’, while Welch does shape up well, but one wouldn’t want to leave her in front of a radiator for too long. Let’s be fair, the set-up, the script, the leads would all have appeared better and more fitting in 1968.
It’s an odd film then and that’s before we get to the Peter Sellers factor.
You can really see the importance of collaboration in a film when it isn’t happening properly. Here is a case in point. Sellers and Caine don’t actually have that many scenes together. In the few they do, there is an easy camaraderie between there, a mutual respect. One wouldn’t really believe they were brothers, but they certainly come across as two people who have known each other a long time. When they’re apart though it’s perfectly clear they’re in completely different films. Caine is a likeable cockney, a classy villain, who is looking for one final job to assuage his mid-life crisis; Sellers is a barnpot who speaks constantly in a loud, manic voice and dreams of owning Napoleon’s underpants. It seems that on getting the script for a ‘classy crime comedy’, Caine paid attention to the word ‘classy’, while Sellers blew up the word ‘comedy’ into eighteen foot high letters.
Sellers tramples over everything in his path in his desire to get a laugh. Clearly not listening to Welch’s lines so he can comically leer at her and mug to straight to camera – in addition we have raising of eyebrows, desperate hand gestures and jumping over other actor’s lines, even when they’re seemingly crucial to the plot. It’s clearly the performance of a man out of control. And Caine’s subtler take on his part just makes it look worse.
As such this is a strange out of place, utterly disjointed, film – but one which, I suppose makes you feel like you’re getting two movies for the price of one.
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