1968 - HAMMERHEAD - More Eurospy foolishness, part 3

NATO's defense plans are in jeopardy.  The evil villain Hammerhead is going to steal them and sell them to the highest bidder or something.  We know that Hammerhead is evil because he has a porno collection stashed away on his magnificent yacht.  To save the day the West's top spy played by Vince Edwards (?) is called into stop him.   

This film has the usual assortment of fights, car chases and leering shots of women in tight outfits.  For some reason cute Judy Geeson has decided she has "taken a shine" to Edwards and tags along for all the action and adventure.

As with all of these films there is on location photography this time in Portugal.  The action is pretty standard stuff.  The light touch is missing and the film plods along from one action sequence to another.  The villain Hammerhead is also kind of a cut rate Goldfinger with the usual quirks and a Oddjob like henchman to show how scary he is.

About the only thing to recommend this film is watching Judy Geeson run around in lots of "mod" 60's outfits, you could do a lot worse.

 99 minutes, written by John Briley ( Gandhi ?),  Herbert Baker and William Bast.

1953 - KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, pretty disappointing considering the talent involved

Considering all the talent involved in this film this should have been a much better picture. 

The director was old studio pro Henry King.  Tyrone Power was always worth watching.  The film was shot in CinemaScope.  The problem with this film is that for an adventure epic it is extremely boring. 

This is another one of those British Army puts down the crazy Muslims in Indian during the early 1900's story I guess.  Naturally this being Hollywood, Arizona has to substitute for the Indian frontier for the location filming.

Tyrone Power is the half caste British officer who has to earn the respect of the command.  He falls in love with the General's daughter played by a way to young Terry Moore.  Well I guess you can figure where this plot if going.  

This is film is supposed to be an adventure film but it's mostly Tyrone Power romancing Terry Moore at the expense of the action aspects of the film.  Good looking production but again kind of boring film.

100 minutes, written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts.

1954 - SECRET OF THE INCAS, early version of Indiana Jones film

This film is usually cited as the inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Arc.  There certainly are a lot of very unusually close similarities. 

To begin, Harrison Ford's costume is an exact replica for Charlton Heston's outfit right down to the hat.  Both men are on a search for archeological treasure and both films have that reflected light trick in the tomb that leads to the discovery of the treasure.  There are however a few differences.

The chief difference is that Secret of the Incas has of all things several musical numbers. These sequences feature a singer names Yma Sumac who has an incredible vocal range which apparently runs about five octaves.  As interesting as these musical numbers are they do kind of bring the action to a halt at times. 

Secret of the Incas is a good adventure film with lots of on location photography in Peru and a fascinating insight into how Hollywood essentially makes the same film over and over with all due respect to Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas.


 98 minutes.

2014 - JOHN WICK, first in a series apparently

After John Wick's car is stolen and dog murdered by Russian gangsters who apparently can run amok in the United States.  Wick seeks revenge which means he shoots lots of people.

This film strikes me as a fairly mediocre action film that somehow did OK at the box office and got decent reviews, go figure.

Apparently no one remembers John Woo's classic Hong Kong films The Killer and Hard Boiled because John Wick is basically those films.  I can assure you the director of John Wick remembers those films because he definitely stages a lot of the shoot em up scenes in the style of those Woo films.



For all the beatings and blood spilling the film is curiously uninvolving.  It's hard to care about these nonexistent characters.

101 minutes.

1953 - SEMINOLE, The US Army vs Indians except in the swamps.

It's the United States Army vs the Seminole Indians fighting it out in the Florida swamps.  The director is cult filmmaker Budd Boetticher although you would find it pretty hard to believe he has a describable style based on this by the book studio production. 

Rock Hudson in one of his many Universal Studios films is the Army officer who wants to live in peace with the Seminoles.  Richard Carlson is his superior who is one of those crazy martinet officers like Henry Fonda in Fort Apache who just wants to kill all the Indians.  Anthony Quinn is the leader of the Seminoles, Barbara Hale is the love interest stuck in a silly love triangle between Quinn and Hudson.  You get the picture.  Did I mention that Lee Marvin turns up in a small part with black hair no less?

The film is a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans which was somewhat rare for a western in this time period.  The action scenes are not that bad but for the most part this is pretty standard stuff.  At least it's short.

87 minutes.

1976 - CANNONBALL, aka CARQUAKE

Yet another film based on the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash a cross country race that was popular in the 1970's.  This illegal race spawned 5 movies including this one.  The Cannonball Run, The Cannonball RUN II, The Gumball Rally and Speed Zone. 

The film was produced by Roger Corman and directed by Paul Bartel who had filmed Death Race 2000 the previous year.  Paul Bartel was sort of a cult director who apparently wasn't entirely happy to be stuck in the car race genre. But Bartel stuck enough of his sense of humor into the story to make the film a lot of fun to watch.

From left to right Scorcese, Paul Bartel and Sylvester Stallone.

The film has a real interesting cast to put it mildly.  David Carradine, Carradne's brother Robert, Gerritt Graham, Judy Canova, Carl Gottlieb, Dick Miller and James Keach.  In addition there are lots of directors in the film.  Paul Bartel plays a role as a bad guy.  Martin Scorcese and Sylvester Stallone show up in one scene eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Joe Dante, Don Simpson, Roger Corman, Jonathan Kaplan and Alan Akrush all have small parts.  

Cannonball follows the Corman formula as usual, a little sex, a little action and a little social commentary.  This is a fun film and I would dare say a better one than the Burt Reynolds Cannonball films.

93 minutes. Written by Paul Bartel and Donald Simpson.

1960 - THE LOVES OF HERCULES, whacky Italian Hercules movie

See the two famous love birds Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay star together in another goofy Italian Hercules movie.  Mansfield is 4 months pregnant at the time of filming so we don't get to see a lot of her famous figure.  Hargitay runs around in a short skirt for the length of the film.

See Hargitay as Hercules knock down an Iron gate with a big phony tree which he can barely hang on to.  Watch as Hargitay does battle with the Hydra a life sized monster that can barely keep it's heads in motion much less move. Be astounded as Hargitay fights a gorilla monster with really bad teeth as it slobbers all over Mansfield. 

See the viewer try to decipher this ridiculous plot which has something to do with Mansfield's evil father killing Hercules first wife and Hargitay as Hercules almost immediately falling in love with Mansfield while his wife is barely in the ground.  It all ends with Hargitay leading some kind of revolution in the end.

See this writer trying to give this film some sort of rating is it camp or is it just plain bad?  Only the gods on Olympus will have that answer.

98 minutes.

1962 - IN THE FRENCH STYLE, a showpiece for actor Jean Seberg

Irwin Shaw took two of his short stories and turned them into a script for Jean Seberg.  The film is about the life and loves of Seberg as she lives in Paris from age 19 until age 24.  Seberg gets to play a teenager who matures into a young woman.  She becomes more sophisticated as she gets involved with several men and becomes a "woman of the world," as they say.

Seberg is best remembered in the film world for working with Godard on Breathless.  She started her career being discovered and abused by Otto Preminger in Saint Joan.  She had a tragic life and committed suicide at the age of 40

The director was Robert Parrish who had begun his career as a child actor and editor for John Ford.  Parrish was probably a better editor than a director since most of his films are not really anything special.  Parrish was a good story teller and has book on John Ford is one of the definitive portrayals of that director.

In The French Style is not without interest.  It's not really anything special but the story is kind of fascinating as we watch the Seberg character mature throughout the film as she journey's to her personal self discovery.

105 minutes.

1995 - MIAMI RHAPSODY, poor copy of a Woody Allen film

A very poor excuse of a film.  The writer/director David Frankel copies a Woody Allen movie without any of the wit of Woody's view of relationships.  

 

The film stars Sarah Jessica Parker in the Woody Allen role, the neurotic Jew trying to sort out her various relationships.  Instead of being set in Manhattan this film uses Miami for it's location and I suppose Frankel thought it was clever to do a sex change with a female playing the neurotic character. Parker apes Woody's character so closely that about the only thing she doesn't do is stammer.

It doesn't help the film that Mia Farrow, Woody's muse in a number of his films is cast as Parker's mother.  It just makes the cribbing from Woody even more obvious.  

Woody Allen is a hit or miss filmmaker these days but films like Miami Rhapsody make you appreciate how hard it is to do this type of bittersweet comedy.

105 minutes. 

1966 - AGENT 505: DEATH TRAP IN BEIRUT - Eurospy stuff part 2

Entertaining if completely forgettable foolishness.  Fredrick Stafford, star of Alfred Hitchcock's dullest film Topaz is the spy who has to save Beirut from being destroyed.  Somehow the chief bad guy has got it in his head that if he destroys Beirut he can take over the world.

Stafford definitely is copying Connery's Bond.  He walks around in a suit knocking off enemy agents without barely breaking a sweat like he was snacking on a bag of peanuts.

The film has some good action sequences and a "boat car" which predates James Bond's submarine Lotus. 

 

There's always a lot of action and shooting of enemy agents going on in these films, but this one has a couple of sequences to lift it out of mediocrity.  An action scene involving a helicopter is extremely well done in particular.  However a big problem with film is Stafford who is as stiff as a board.  The other issue I have with this film is that a lot of the scenes are clearly reworked from previous James Bond films.  Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery frequently it's just plain stealing.

93 minutes written by Manfred R. Köhler.

1657 - THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON , aka PARADISE LAGOON

Kenneth More is Crichton the resourceful butler in the James Barrie play about a manservent  and the upper class people he serves.  The Barrie play speculates about what happens to class structure when situations are reversed and the masters become the servants. 

The satire and social commentary are mild for the most part.  Barrie makes his points but nothing is really taken very seriously.  This film is far from a rallying cry to overthrow the British ruling class.

The film is well done, the acting fine, this is what was called a civilized entertainment once upon a time.

 94 minutes.

1955 - UNTAMED, poor man's GONE WITH THE WIND

Large scale film about the birth of South Africa and the fight for independence.  Tyrone Power is the heroic leader fighting off Zulus and romancing hot Susan Hayward.  Power eventually picks freedom fighting instead of staying with Hayward which is a pretty poor pick in my mind.

Power rides around with a bunch of commandos righting wrongs and helping the people of South Africa gain their freedom (unless you are black but that's a different story).

 

Untamed was directed by studio veteran Henry King so it's well staged and acted.  The film was apparently shot on location, a least some of it anyway. 

The film mostly focuses on Susan Hayward's character.  She's kind of a poor man's Scarlett O'Hara as she goes from poor to rich to poor again.  In fact I think it would be safe to say the film definitely revolves around Hayward at the expense of the Tyrone Power character. 

111 minutes, written by Michael Blankfort, Frank Fenton and Talbot Jennings.

1966 - REQUIEM FOR A SECRET AGENT - Italian Eurospy stuff part 1

During the height of the 60's James Bond film craze almost every studio and production company had to get in on the act.  The movie going audience was assaulted with spy movies in about every language possible.  Almost every major star had to make a spy thriller.  Few of the films actually captured the special qualities of the Sean Connery Bond films but it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying.

Chief among those making these ripoff James Bond films were the Italians.  Their formula seemed to be copy and rework as many scenes from the James Bond movies that they could.  In most cases imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery.  The films had too many girls, too many guns and too many car chases.  The leading men usually had a passing resemblance to Sean Connery.

Requiem for a Secret Agent is a good a place to start with this stuff as any.  The film starred Stewart Granger a one time star in the 1950's particularly at MGM.  The producers also were able to lure one of the James Bond women Daniela Bianchi in to the film as well. 

These films are basically critic proof.  I think it's safe to say they are what they are, cheap and kind of lame reworkings of the James Bond series.  Still the films have shall we say I certain charm to them.  One can't help but admire the blatant recycling of scenes from the better Bond films.  Let's begin the journey.

102 minutes, written by Sergio Donati, Antonio del Amo and Sergio Sollima.