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.
Showing posts with label super-hero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label super-hero. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
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.
Sunday, 19 October 2014
The Fishman of Alcatraz (1965)
D. Harry Paddock
B&W
After the success of 'The Birdman of Alcatraz' (and maybe even the lesser success of 'The Jazzman of Alcatraz') lots of Hollywood producers felt the need to make a movie with the suffix 'of Alcaraz'. After all it was the most famous prison in the world, in the news because it had recently shut down and so rather than just making A.N. Other prison film, an ALCATRAZ film made sound of commercial sense of the kind that makes dollar signs flash in the eyes of Hollywood producers and thin lines of drool to run from the corners of their greedy fat mouths. Most of these films though had ridiculously little to actually do with Alcatraz (as we'll see in the next entry), this one does though - and clearly even managed to film some scenes on the island. Not great scenes admittedly, not even memorable scenes, but enough for the film to yell out “Hey bozos! We actually fucking went there!”
I'll be honest, when I first saw the title 'The Fishman of Alcatraz' I seriously misjudged the film’s content. My obviously distressingly adolescent mind, crammed full of images of Spiderman and Batman, just imagined that Alcatraz was a really stupid place to send the captured superhero, Fishman. This is after all a prison surrounded by water and so would be a terrible location in which to hold the mighty Fishman. (Clearly my mind is full of cut-price versions of Aquaman). If one was to have Fishman in custody a prison far in land would be miles better. On Alcatraz, Fishman’s escape is inevitable.
However my super hero fantasies proved to be as unfounded and inaccurate as mermaids, mermen and that whole Atlantis myth, as this film turned out to be about a man who just really liked fish.
Following all the beats of the Burt Lancaster movie, here a doggery Elisha Cook jr is a convict who really likes fish and through correspondence courses and careful examination of his surroundings, becomes an expert on them. Therefore Alcatraz becomes his salvation, as he has lots of time to examine fish and even discovers a new breed. Set in the 1930s, there are cameos from an overweight and sweating Al Capone and a Machine Gun Kelly who ends his sentences with “rat-tat-tat” just so we know who he is. Cook looks old, but is still convincing as a small crook who got in above his head, and the whole is in many ways quite a sweet film. However whereas birds have beautiful plumage and a distinct look on screen, fish either swim away or just flop about. And after 90 minutes watching a kindly old man pursue this Piscean interest, if you haven’t flopped limp to your seat yourself, you’ll almost certainly have swum hurriedly away.
B&W
After the success of 'The Birdman of Alcatraz' (and maybe even the lesser success of 'The Jazzman of Alcatraz') lots of Hollywood producers felt the need to make a movie with the suffix 'of Alcaraz'. After all it was the most famous prison in the world, in the news because it had recently shut down and so rather than just making A.N. Other prison film, an ALCATRAZ film made sound of commercial sense of the kind that makes dollar signs flash in the eyes of Hollywood producers and thin lines of drool to run from the corners of their greedy fat mouths. Most of these films though had ridiculously little to actually do with Alcatraz (as we'll see in the next entry), this one does though - and clearly even managed to film some scenes on the island. Not great scenes admittedly, not even memorable scenes, but enough for the film to yell out “Hey bozos! We actually fucking went there!”
I'll be honest, when I first saw the title 'The Fishman of Alcatraz' I seriously misjudged the film’s content. My obviously distressingly adolescent mind, crammed full of images of Spiderman and Batman, just imagined that Alcatraz was a really stupid place to send the captured superhero, Fishman. This is after all a prison surrounded by water and so would be a terrible location in which to hold the mighty Fishman. (Clearly my mind is full of cut-price versions of Aquaman). If one was to have Fishman in custody a prison far in land would be miles better. On Alcatraz, Fishman’s escape is inevitable.
However my super hero fantasies proved to be as unfounded and inaccurate as mermaids, mermen and that whole Atlantis myth, as this film turned out to be about a man who just really liked fish.
Following all the beats of the Burt Lancaster movie, here a doggery Elisha Cook jr is a convict who really likes fish and through correspondence courses and careful examination of his surroundings, becomes an expert on them. Therefore Alcatraz becomes his salvation, as he has lots of time to examine fish and even discovers a new breed. Set in the 1930s, there are cameos from an overweight and sweating Al Capone and a Machine Gun Kelly who ends his sentences with “rat-tat-tat” just so we know who he is. Cook looks old, but is still convincing as a small crook who got in above his head, and the whole is in many ways quite a sweet film. However whereas birds have beautiful plumage and a distinct look on screen, fish either swim away or just flop about. And after 90 minutes watching a kindly old man pursue this Piscean interest, if you haven’t flopped limp to your seat yourself, you’ll almost certainly have swum hurriedly away.
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
Robin Hood and the Vampires (1962)
D. Henry Jagol
Gruesome and rich Colour, the way gothic should be
Putting Robin Hood in opposition to Dracula is actually a pretty good idea. After all vampires are the most aristocratic of all mythical monsters. Anybody can become a werewolf, but vampires have castles and huge tracts of land and servants and titles. They’re not the upwardly mobile screen monsters – that’s Frankenstein, who is self-making men wherever he goes; instead they’re the inherited wealth, excellent pedigree, Tatler-subscribing creatures of the undead. As such, who better to pit against them than a man who specialises in removing wealthy people from their wealth? A hero who has thrown away his own title and is now intent on making the aristocrats of this world more like the rest of us. Yes, true friend of the masses, Robin Hood, against serial exploiter of the blood of the proletariat, Count Dracula, makes loads of sense. Let’s bring on the ultimate class battle!
Unfortunately, this being a cheaply made AIP Hammer knock-off of the early Sixties, these kinds of issues are never raised. Indeed what the film is most interested in is shots of vampires with arrows bursting through their chests.
So we’re in the forest with Robin Hood (Stewart Granger, painfully aware that he’s slumming it) and his merry men. They’re having fun singing songs as they liberate the riches of the local aristocracy, but the nearby castle has a new tenant and he has plans for the region much darker than Robin Hood has ever imagined.
(Where all this is set is a bit up in the air. The word ‘Sherwood’ is never mentioned; neither is the word ‘Nottingham’. But presumably this is Robin Hood’s home-patch so this is Sherwood Forest and this is Nottingham and that’s a bizarrely gothic version of Nottingham Castle Dracula has just moved into. But then some of the locals know Dracula of old, which would suggest Transylvania. Whoever did the research for this movie really gave a slapdash effort.)
Before long the night time woods are filled with blood-suckers and the merry men are fighting to save every soul they can. This is fairly low-rent fun, but it’s not without moments of quality. Boris Karloff is clearly far too old to be Dracula (though it’s nice he finally got to play the old fangmeister), but Jack Nicholson as Reinfeld is there for the heavy lifting and does it with all the creepiness and malice as you’d expect from Jack; while some of the fight scenes have their moments – particularly Friar Tuck first trying to exorcise a female vampire, then waving his cross at her, then pleading with her about the rightness of God, then giving up on the holy stuff and simply setting fire to her.
So a film that misses the social message which should have been obvious in this story, is geographically confused and only just scrapes up to the level its ambition aims for. But in its Robin Hood/Dracula idea – even in an unambitious, ill thought out version of that idea – you just know it’s a movie Quentin Tarantino thinks is decidedly cool.
Gruesome and rich Colour, the way gothic should be
Putting Robin Hood in opposition to Dracula is actually a pretty good idea. After all vampires are the most aristocratic of all mythical monsters. Anybody can become a werewolf, but vampires have castles and huge tracts of land and servants and titles. They’re not the upwardly mobile screen monsters – that’s Frankenstein, who is self-making men wherever he goes; instead they’re the inherited wealth, excellent pedigree, Tatler-subscribing creatures of the undead. As such, who better to pit against them than a man who specialises in removing wealthy people from their wealth? A hero who has thrown away his own title and is now intent on making the aristocrats of this world more like the rest of us. Yes, true friend of the masses, Robin Hood, against serial exploiter of the blood of the proletariat, Count Dracula, makes loads of sense. Let’s bring on the ultimate class battle!
Unfortunately, this being a cheaply made AIP Hammer knock-off of the early Sixties, these kinds of issues are never raised. Indeed what the film is most interested in is shots of vampires with arrows bursting through their chests.
So we’re in the forest with Robin Hood (Stewart Granger, painfully aware that he’s slumming it) and his merry men. They’re having fun singing songs as they liberate the riches of the local aristocracy, but the nearby castle has a new tenant and he has plans for the region much darker than Robin Hood has ever imagined.
(Where all this is set is a bit up in the air. The word ‘Sherwood’ is never mentioned; neither is the word ‘Nottingham’. But presumably this is Robin Hood’s home-patch so this is Sherwood Forest and this is Nottingham and that’s a bizarrely gothic version of Nottingham Castle Dracula has just moved into. But then some of the locals know Dracula of old, which would suggest Transylvania. Whoever did the research for this movie really gave a slapdash effort.)
Before long the night time woods are filled with blood-suckers and the merry men are fighting to save every soul they can. This is fairly low-rent fun, but it’s not without moments of quality. Boris Karloff is clearly far too old to be Dracula (though it’s nice he finally got to play the old fangmeister), but Jack Nicholson as Reinfeld is there for the heavy lifting and does it with all the creepiness and malice as you’d expect from Jack; while some of the fight scenes have their moments – particularly Friar Tuck first trying to exorcise a female vampire, then waving his cross at her, then pleading with her about the rightness of God, then giving up on the holy stuff and simply setting fire to her.
So a film that misses the social message which should have been obvious in this story, is geographically confused and only just scrapes up to the level its ambition aims for. But in its Robin Hood/Dracula idea – even in an unambitious, ill thought out version of that idea – you just know it’s a movie Quentin Tarantino thinks is decidedly cool.
Sunday, 5 October 2014
The Return of Lancelot (1974)
D. Ted Obery
Colour
You can see the thought processes at work here.
Someone, somewhere must have been pitching a version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. No doubt facing some dubious Hollywood exec in a riot of beige, who was wondering why the hell the kids of today would want to see anything about poncy, fruity Englishmen in tights and strange women in ponds distributing swords willy-nilly, the no doubt perspiring filmmaker uttered the line: “They were just like the cowboys of their day!” At that moment the meeting had a little jolt of electricity and some wet behind the sideburns bright young thing leapt up to say that rather than just claim Arthur, Lancelot and crew were the cowboys of their day, why don’t we bring them together with actual cowboys? “Excellent!” shouts everybody, and there are Cuban cigars and lines of coke all round. Of course the little filmmaker celebrated with everyone else, even as he saw his dreams of a great Arthurian epic die.
And so here we have it:
Lancelot is cursed by Mordred to sleep for a thousand years (the maths aren’t going to work here, but just go with it). But when he wakes up, he is no longer in Wales or Cornwall or wherever the hell Camelot is thought to have been these days, he’s in Arizona (the geography isn’t going to work here either, but just go with it). He’s still in his Arthurian garb, he’s still speaking a distinctly flowery form of olde Englishe, but there he is – a new warrior in the Wild West.
Richard Chamberlain plays Lancelot and does so with a certain steely prissiness. This man is fussy on manners and etiquette and will kill you if you go against his rules, but is a true hero. Geoffrey Lewis is Mad Bill, the first cowboy Lancelot encounters. He looks flea-bitten and sunburnt, and has rotten teeth as well a booze-filled cackle borrowed from Edmund O’Brien in ‘The Wild Bunch’. But after a stand-off played for both tension and laughs, mutual respect breaks out, and it becomes clear that underneath it all Mad Bill is a good man and not that mad at all (he might not even be called Bill).
Let the legendary tales of this mis-matched pair begin!
Unfortunately this time travel adventure with an English hero has exactly the same flaw as last week’s time travel adventure with an English hero, in that having set up a fantastic premise it then proceeds to follow normal genre tropes and becomes a western The two get involved with a villainous land barren (Richard Widmark) and after various skirmishes, win the day because one of their number is an expert swordsman (I don’t want to ruin the suspense, so won’t tell you which one). Obviously the fact that one of these characters is an Arthurian knight, spouting the kind of dialogue which only comes from a well-thumbed thesaurus, means it’s not totally devoid of fun. But it’s horribly and depressingly predictable and if it had turned into the TV series it so clearly wants to be, we’d have had week after week of this unambitious twaddle.
What it really needed was Mordred to have slept as well and the whole thing to be a showdown between these two ancient warriors, but that would have required a more ambitious film with an actual ending in mind, not one that seemed desperate to coast along for the next five years on just the one mutant of an idea.
Colour
You can see the thought processes at work here.
Someone, somewhere must have been pitching a version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. No doubt facing some dubious Hollywood exec in a riot of beige, who was wondering why the hell the kids of today would want to see anything about poncy, fruity Englishmen in tights and strange women in ponds distributing swords willy-nilly, the no doubt perspiring filmmaker uttered the line: “They were just like the cowboys of their day!” At that moment the meeting had a little jolt of electricity and some wet behind the sideburns bright young thing leapt up to say that rather than just claim Arthur, Lancelot and crew were the cowboys of their day, why don’t we bring them together with actual cowboys? “Excellent!” shouts everybody, and there are Cuban cigars and lines of coke all round. Of course the little filmmaker celebrated with everyone else, even as he saw his dreams of a great Arthurian epic die.
And so here we have it:
Lancelot is cursed by Mordred to sleep for a thousand years (the maths aren’t going to work here, but just go with it). But when he wakes up, he is no longer in Wales or Cornwall or wherever the hell Camelot is thought to have been these days, he’s in Arizona (the geography isn’t going to work here either, but just go with it). He’s still in his Arthurian garb, he’s still speaking a distinctly flowery form of olde Englishe, but there he is – a new warrior in the Wild West.
Richard Chamberlain plays Lancelot and does so with a certain steely prissiness. This man is fussy on manners and etiquette and will kill you if you go against his rules, but is a true hero. Geoffrey Lewis is Mad Bill, the first cowboy Lancelot encounters. He looks flea-bitten and sunburnt, and has rotten teeth as well a booze-filled cackle borrowed from Edmund O’Brien in ‘The Wild Bunch’. But after a stand-off played for both tension and laughs, mutual respect breaks out, and it becomes clear that underneath it all Mad Bill is a good man and not that mad at all (he might not even be called Bill).
Let the legendary tales of this mis-matched pair begin!
Unfortunately this time travel adventure with an English hero has exactly the same flaw as last week’s time travel adventure with an English hero, in that having set up a fantastic premise it then proceeds to follow normal genre tropes and becomes a western The two get involved with a villainous land barren (Richard Widmark) and after various skirmishes, win the day because one of their number is an expert swordsman (I don’t want to ruin the suspense, so won’t tell you which one). Obviously the fact that one of these characters is an Arthurian knight, spouting the kind of dialogue which only comes from a well-thumbed thesaurus, means it’s not totally devoid of fun. But it’s horribly and depressingly predictable and if it had turned into the TV series it so clearly wants to be, we’d have had week after week of this unambitious twaddle.
What it really needed was Mordred to have slept as well and the whole thing to be a showdown between these two ancient warriors, but that would have required a more ambitious film with an actual ending in mind, not one that seemed desperate to coast along for the next five years on just the one mutant of an idea.
Sunday, 28 September 2014
Jungle Jim (1984)
D. Hackworth Hopes
Colour
Ah, Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimmer turned Tarzan, who once the most famous period of his career was over, picked up a jungle suit and a paunch and became Jungle Jim on both film and TV. “Who’s Jungle Jim?” I hear you cry. Well, Jungle Jim was another character created by the same guy who dreamt up Flash Gordon and was kind of a fully dressed western version of Tarzan, but one who operated in Asia rather than Africa. So he’s a sanitised take on the great white hunter, suitable for kids of all ages – even if Weissmuller looked a bit too portly and the jungle couldn’t be any more fake if Johnny was just stood in front of a plain background with the words ‘Trees Go Here’ scrawled on it.
The same year that director Hugh Hudson gave us a truly self-serious version of Tarzan in ‘Greystoke’, we had the other side of the coin with a remake of ‘Jungle Jim’. Here was Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones, tackling another of Alex Raymond’s creations and proving once again that he was born at completely the wrong time. If ever there was a one dimensional actor who was good at striking heroic poses in the face of all kinds of monster nonsense, it was Sam Jones. But he needed to either exist in the time of B movie madness or the kind of schlock the Sci-fi channel turns out week after week now. The 1980s were really no good for him.
Having been knocked out and dumped in the jungle, Jim awakes in the mythical country of Muthapetox wearing an outfit that makes him look like Indiana Jones just after he’s been to the dry cleaners. Ever the adventurer, it isn’t long before he’s earned the wrath of white jungle priestess, Barbara Carrera (another performer who screams the 1980s and another performer who wasn’t given proper chance to put her bad acting skills to good use), and then rescued damsel in distress, Emma Samms, and her incredible shrinking skirt. Samms and Jones bicker and fight and flirt and fall in love as they trek their way out of the jungle and towards ‘civilisation’. But Jim realises that the legendary lost city of Nig-taca is not far away and determines to visit it.
So we’re in the land of made up places with obviously made up names, but unlike the same year’s Tarzan movie, that means it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Interestingly the film ends with an alien spaceship rising out of the lost city where it’s been buried for thousands of years. That’s of course the same ending as ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ and yet in this far more preposterous film such an occurrence doesn’t seem to so utterly preposterous. The Indiana Jones film spent its length stretching our credibility (fridges that survive nukes; Shia Le Bouef channelling Tarzan, the entire Shia Le Boeuf performance in fact) until it reached the point of tearing that credibility completely asunder. ‘Jungle Jim’ though doesn’t require any credibility, in fact it demands you leave your credibility at the door at the start, and it’s all the better for it.
Colour
Ah, Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimmer turned Tarzan, who once the most famous period of his career was over, picked up a jungle suit and a paunch and became Jungle Jim on both film and TV. “Who’s Jungle Jim?” I hear you cry. Well, Jungle Jim was another character created by the same guy who dreamt up Flash Gordon and was kind of a fully dressed western version of Tarzan, but one who operated in Asia rather than Africa. So he’s a sanitised take on the great white hunter, suitable for kids of all ages – even if Weissmuller looked a bit too portly and the jungle couldn’t be any more fake if Johnny was just stood in front of a plain background with the words ‘Trees Go Here’ scrawled on it.
The same year that director Hugh Hudson gave us a truly self-serious version of Tarzan in ‘Greystoke’, we had the other side of the coin with a remake of ‘Jungle Jim’. Here was Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones, tackling another of Alex Raymond’s creations and proving once again that he was born at completely the wrong time. If ever there was a one dimensional actor who was good at striking heroic poses in the face of all kinds of monster nonsense, it was Sam Jones. But he needed to either exist in the time of B movie madness or the kind of schlock the Sci-fi channel turns out week after week now. The 1980s were really no good for him.
Having been knocked out and dumped in the jungle, Jim awakes in the mythical country of Muthapetox wearing an outfit that makes him look like Indiana Jones just after he’s been to the dry cleaners. Ever the adventurer, it isn’t long before he’s earned the wrath of white jungle priestess, Barbara Carrera (another performer who screams the 1980s and another performer who wasn’t given proper chance to put her bad acting skills to good use), and then rescued damsel in distress, Emma Samms, and her incredible shrinking skirt. Samms and Jones bicker and fight and flirt and fall in love as they trek their way out of the jungle and towards ‘civilisation’. But Jim realises that the legendary lost city of Nig-taca is not far away and determines to visit it.
So we’re in the land of made up places with obviously made up names, but unlike the same year’s Tarzan movie, that means it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. Interestingly the film ends with an alien spaceship rising out of the lost city where it’s been buried for thousands of years. That’s of course the same ending as ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ and yet in this far more preposterous film such an occurrence doesn’t seem to so utterly preposterous. The Indiana Jones film spent its length stretching our credibility (fridges that survive nukes; Shia Le Bouef channelling Tarzan, the entire Shia Le Boeuf performance in fact) until it reached the point of tearing that credibility completely asunder. ‘Jungle Jim’ though doesn’t require any credibility, in fact it demands you leave your credibility at the door at the start, and it’s all the better for it.
Wednesday, 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.
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Three Cheers for Captain England (1978)
D.
Joseph Losey
Colour
Henry Cavill as Superman. Christian Bale as Batman. Andrew Garfield as Spiderman. Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass. But who amongst us really remembers either Michael Crawford as Condorman, or Dirk Bogarde as Captain England? Yes, British actors have been playing superheroes for quite some time, it’s just that the heroes have got bigger.
‘Three Cheers for Captain England’ is a fascinating gem of a film, both for its searing portrayal of a certain type of Englishman, and for the way it predicts a lot that will come in more mainstream superhero adventures. At the time it was a barely released curio and maybe its influence is accidental (how many people have ever seen this after all?) but if not influential, it’s definitely prescient
Bogarde is Henry Davenport, who in the glorious 1950s fought for civilisation against chaos as Captain England. There he is: mocked up photos of the young Bogarde at the Coronation; at the Festival of Britain; and a very amusing (although not that well mocked up) snap of Captain England leading Guy Burgess and Donald McLean into custody – as if the entire spying farrago of the third man, fourth man and fifth man could have been stopped by just one super powerful and righteous Englishman. This is the kind hero Bulldog Drummond would have looked up to. This is the kind of hero James Bond would have looked up to. How he got his powers is never explained, nor really what his powers were. Clearly he could fly and was extremely strong, but we don’t know how fast he was or whether he had x-ray vision – while no lab accident or encounter with alien life is ever even hinted at. He was powerful in the same way that England was powerful and glorious. And he wasn’t alone. In the background of the fifties were other heroes – Major Tunbridge-Wells and The Cockney – but it was Captain England everyone cheered.
Now though Captain England has retired, grown into a graceful old age. Occasionally he makes chat-show appearances, but his time has gone; remembered as one of sepia, a better place when England was truly great. However he is about to gain himself a new foe, as a young man (Paul Nicholas) threatens to expose his homosexuality.
Clearly Bogarde is supposed to represent a certain type of Englishman. One who is complacent, conservative with a small c and has had rose-tinted glasses welded to his face. He is the Englishman who revels in the glorious past and doesn’t care about the present. One who knows that England is going down the toilet, but thinks there’s nothing he – even an individual as powerful as Captain England – can do about it. Bogarde is brilliant in the role, beautifully capturing a sense of vainglorious disappointment.
Actually there are no slouches anywhere in the cast, with John Gielgud a particular hoot in his cameo as the now elderly Major Tunbridge-Wells; dressed in colonial garb and ranting at how everything these days “just isn’t on, old boy.”
And yet for all the swipes at the ruling class and middle aged and narrow minded of England, this is a superhero film. And in that brooding behind closed doors about the things he has done and what he was, we can see a lot of what Batman has become. In the cadre of costumed superheroes who have long since broken up, we see The Watchmen and The Incredibles. And in an impregnable hero with one fatal flaw, we surely substitute kryptonite for homosexuality and have a satire of Superman.
(How brilliant, though incredibly unlikely, would it be for Hollywood to fund a multi-million dollar superhero film where the hero is gay? That’s the way to reinvent your franchise right there! And no, Wonder Woman won't cut the mustard.)
This is a really perverse superhero film. One where the hero thinks decidedly small, lives in a dingy city (London has rarely looked dirtier or more provincial than this 1978 version does) and doesn’t use his powers until the end. And then we can see how much work Hollywood had to do the same year to get Christopher Reeve to fly properly as Superman. It’s not just the visible wires, it’s his shadow on the sky and the look on Bogarde’s face which seems to suggest that we all know he’s just an idiot hanging off a rig in a studio. So okay the effects don’t work, but this isn’t a film about effects. It’s a frequently brilliant superhero tale. A broken superhero, a faded superhero, an obsolete superhero, a superhero no longer that heroic or super. But a British superhero certainly, and maybe the only superhero film anywhere which doesn’t go out of its way to ape the Americans.
Colour
Henry Cavill as Superman. Christian Bale as Batman. Andrew Garfield as Spiderman. Aaron Johnson as Kick-Ass. But who amongst us really remembers either Michael Crawford as Condorman, or Dirk Bogarde as Captain England? Yes, British actors have been playing superheroes for quite some time, it’s just that the heroes have got bigger.
‘Three Cheers for Captain England’ is a fascinating gem of a film, both for its searing portrayal of a certain type of Englishman, and for the way it predicts a lot that will come in more mainstream superhero adventures. At the time it was a barely released curio and maybe its influence is accidental (how many people have ever seen this after all?) but if not influential, it’s definitely prescient
Bogarde is Henry Davenport, who in the glorious 1950s fought for civilisation against chaos as Captain England. There he is: mocked up photos of the young Bogarde at the Coronation; at the Festival of Britain; and a very amusing (although not that well mocked up) snap of Captain England leading Guy Burgess and Donald McLean into custody – as if the entire spying farrago of the third man, fourth man and fifth man could have been stopped by just one super powerful and righteous Englishman. This is the kind hero Bulldog Drummond would have looked up to. This is the kind of hero James Bond would have looked up to. How he got his powers is never explained, nor really what his powers were. Clearly he could fly and was extremely strong, but we don’t know how fast he was or whether he had x-ray vision – while no lab accident or encounter with alien life is ever even hinted at. He was powerful in the same way that England was powerful and glorious. And he wasn’t alone. In the background of the fifties were other heroes – Major Tunbridge-Wells and The Cockney – but it was Captain England everyone cheered.
Now though Captain England has retired, grown into a graceful old age. Occasionally he makes chat-show appearances, but his time has gone; remembered as one of sepia, a better place when England was truly great. However he is about to gain himself a new foe, as a young man (Paul Nicholas) threatens to expose his homosexuality.
Clearly Bogarde is supposed to represent a certain type of Englishman. One who is complacent, conservative with a small c and has had rose-tinted glasses welded to his face. He is the Englishman who revels in the glorious past and doesn’t care about the present. One who knows that England is going down the toilet, but thinks there’s nothing he – even an individual as powerful as Captain England – can do about it. Bogarde is brilliant in the role, beautifully capturing a sense of vainglorious disappointment.
Actually there are no slouches anywhere in the cast, with John Gielgud a particular hoot in his cameo as the now elderly Major Tunbridge-Wells; dressed in colonial garb and ranting at how everything these days “just isn’t on, old boy.”
And yet for all the swipes at the ruling class and middle aged and narrow minded of England, this is a superhero film. And in that brooding behind closed doors about the things he has done and what he was, we can see a lot of what Batman has become. In the cadre of costumed superheroes who have long since broken up, we see The Watchmen and The Incredibles. And in an impregnable hero with one fatal flaw, we surely substitute kryptonite for homosexuality and have a satire of Superman.
(How brilliant, though incredibly unlikely, would it be for Hollywood to fund a multi-million dollar superhero film where the hero is gay? That’s the way to reinvent your franchise right there! And no, Wonder Woman won't cut the mustard.)
This is a really perverse superhero film. One where the hero thinks decidedly small, lives in a dingy city (London has rarely looked dirtier or more provincial than this 1978 version does) and doesn’t use his powers until the end. And then we can see how much work Hollywood had to do the same year to get Christopher Reeve to fly properly as Superman. It’s not just the visible wires, it’s his shadow on the sky and the look on Bogarde’s face which seems to suggest that we all know he’s just an idiot hanging off a rig in a studio. So okay the effects don’t work, but this isn’t a film about effects. It’s a frequently brilliant superhero tale. A broken superhero, a faded superhero, an obsolete superhero, a superhero no longer that heroic or super. But a British superhero certainly, and maybe the only superhero film anywhere which doesn’t go out of its way to ape the Americans.
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