1969 - BATTLE OF BRITAIN , big expensive dud of a war film

This is one misfire of a war film.  Battle of Britain was supposedly a tribute to the English pilots that held off the German air force in the summer of 1940 before the United States entered the war.  The film had about every living British actor who was ambulatory in it.

However this is one snooze inducing mess of a film.  The screenplay can't even begin to explain the battle plans that the German's drew up for the invasion of England.  It seems their strategy was "lets bomb the hell out of them."  On the other hand a lot of time is spent on how the English would by overwhelmed by the German Luftwaffe.  Thankfully a plucky bunch of Limey pilot lads held off the German war machine.

In reality the Northern part of England was able to produce plenty of fighters to supplement the British air force and the British had a substantial number of foreign pilots to fly them.  Instead what we get are lame Polish jokes

What you also get for the time invested in this film are some large scale dogfights. This production was amazingly able to find enough planes to stage and photograph these fights.  However after a while one dogfight starts to look like all the others so a kind of viewer boredom sets in. There isn't even any point discussing the subplots of the personal lives of the pilots, it's just the usual bunch of war cliches.  

Battle of Britain was clearly a very costly film to make.  Acquiring all of those planes and pilots to fly them couldn't have been easy or cheap.  Freddie Young photographed the film, he was usually associated with David Lean so I'm sure he didn't come cheap.  The director Guy Hamilton did an adequate job but he doesn't seem to be able to work up much enthusiasm for the story.  Perhaps the large scale production was a little to much for him. In a film like this the second unit directors and action coordinators really run the show.  

The film was written by James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex.  the running time is 133 minutes.

1969 - THE VALLEY OF THE GWANGI, it's cowboys vs. dinosaurs.

This cowboys versus dinosaurs fantasy originated with Willis O'Brien who was never able to get a studio to back his film.  Years later stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen resurrected the property and with his producing partner Charles Schneer filmed this story in Spain.

Initially popular with a series of stop motion science fiction and fantasy films in the 1950's, Harryhausen had always labored with tight budgets as most Hollywood studios looked at special effects films as  poor stepchildren to their usual output.  Relocating to England Harryhausen produced some of this most entertaining films, Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon and One Million B.C. come to mind.

Even though the popularity of traditional special effects fantasy films had diminished by the mid 1960's with the film audience, Harryhausen soldiered on.   Valley of the Gwangi is a very entertaining fantasy film in the classic tradition.  The film has some entertaining sequences particularity the cowboys roping the Tyrannosaurus scene which was one of the most challenging stop motion scenes Harryhausen had ever filmed.  

Valley of the Gwangi was a victim of a studio regime change and was patronized by critics at the time of release.  With the passage of time the reality is that this is a very fun film   The film's reputation has actually continued to grow over time.  Steven Spielberg and his production team obviously took a look at this film before they made Jurassic Park.  One sequence in Spielberg's film was directly lifted from this film.

The film was written by William Bast, Julian More and Willis O'Brien, the film runs 96 minutes.

1969 - THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, outer space invasion with a twist

An invasion from outer space from an extraterrestrial life form.  In this film the twist is that they are micro organisms, captured by a United States space probe.  When the probe lands in a small town in Arizona it ends up killing most of the residents of the town.  The Department of Defense has a secret laboratory built for studying bio weapons where the organism is transported.  The drama in this film is created by a team of scientists who must study this organism and identify how to control it.

This is the director Robert Wise's second shot at the science fiction genre.  Wise was responsible for the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, and he brought all of skill as a filmmaker to what is essentially a film about scientists looking at stuff under a microscope.

 

Wise carefully cast the film with character actors instead of movie stars to give the film some verisimilitude.  The film's secret germ laboratory set was designed by production designer Boris Leven who early in his career had designed the impressionistic sets for that 1950's science fiction classic,  Invaders From Mars.

 

The Andromeda Strain is an excellent film from one of Hollywood's old pro's who in his 50's could still make interesting and entertaining films in many genres,

The film was written by Nelson Gidding, the running time is 130 minutes.

1973 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, large scale production of this often told story

The director Richard Lester who had not exactly been hitting it out of the box office park with his recent films was hired by the producer Ilya Salkind to film a large scale version of that old war horse of a story The Three Musketeers.  Lester signed on for this film and brought his usual bag of cinematic tricks with him. Lester was known for adding comedic touches and slapstick scenes throughout his films along with a kind of a frenzied editing style. Viewed today, Lester's films are in many ways period pieces of a certain film making style of the 1960's and 1970's.

You have to give the producers of this film credit, no expense was spared. On location filming was in Spain and the stunning photography came from a frequent Lester contributor David Watkin.  Watkin gave the film a beautiful glowing look.  The action scenes in The Three Musketeers were staged by a fencing master named William Hobbs.  Hobbs toughened up the sword fights with an anything goes approach to the fencing instead of the usual gentlemanly rules found in those old Tyrone Power and Erroll Flynn movies. The Musketeers just don't fight with swords, they kick, hit and at times bite their opponents.

The interesting cast was a mixture of British and American actors, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee in yet another villain role and Faye Dunaway as the evil Milady de Winter.  Raquel Welch was hired to bring more sex appeal to the film as the love interest of Michael York.  However Richard Lester got the inspired idea to have her play her part like a complete fool,  Welch is the victim of most of Lester's goofy gags as she is constantly getting knocked over or thrown around like a punching bag.  Needless to say the critics proclaimed Welch a comedic genius although it was all Lester's doing.

 

The Three Musketeers is an entertaining spectacle and it is also notorious as the film that the producer decided to split into two parts from it's original lengthy running time.  It's safe to say the actors were not amused by this since they had only signed up to act in one film not two.   Needless to say it was bring out the lawyers time when the second film now called The Four Musketeers was released.

The Three Musketeers looks great in it's Blu-Ray presentation and to give credit where credit is due Richard Lester did a very good job freshening up a story that had already been told many times.

George MacDonald Frasier wrote the screenplay the running time is 105 minutes.

1969 - THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, interesting story, poor presentation.

Towards the end of World War II, the citizens of the small town of Santa Vittoria hide over one million bottles of wine to keep the German army from confiscating them,  The Secret of Santa Vittoria turns into a battle of wits between the mayor and the German Army Captain to keep the Krauts from locating the hidden bottles.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria was a well regarded novel by the author Robert Crichton.  Somehow producer/director Stanley Kramer acquired the rights to the book and got United Artists to finance it.  Kramer had made his reputation producing low budget message films early in his career. He was lucky to have decent filmmakers like Fred Zinneman, Richard Fleischer, Carl Foreman and Mark Robson work with him.  After a string of successes with Champion, Home of the Brave and The Men.  Kramer got it into his head that he wanted to direct as well as produce his own films.

 

Kramer turned out to be a film director who wasn't particularly good at directing.  Among the films that Kramer had a hand in were, The Pride and the Passion, a film about a bunch of guys dragging an enormous cannon around.  On the Beach the end of the world nuclear war film had more soap opera than message.  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Kramer's sort of comedy film about interracial marriage and race relations was so free of conflict it's safe to say there was no conflict.  All of these films suffered from Kramer's inability to tell a story while at the same time bludgeoning the movie viewer with his sanctimonious liberal sentiments.  Kramer was reasonably successful for a while but as he moved into the 1960's his liberal themes seemed extremely dated.  Kramer actually thought the tepid Guess Who's Coming Dinner put him in the category of major directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria is a very good example of a late in his career film. Written by his longtime screenwriting associate William Rose who in this case had certainly seen better days.  Kramer signed up and interesting cast to say the least.  Anthony Quinn who only had one performance level which was always over the top. Anna Magnani was a performer who could match Quinn for exaggerated and hysterical acting.  Hardy Kruger the German officer looking for the wine seemed frightened dealing with these bombastic actors.  The great Virna Lisi had a nothing part as Kruger's love interest.

 

The film is an overlong mess with Kramer indulging in that 1960's photography crutch, the zoom lens to drive home any plot point he had already driven home. It's unfortunate that a better filmmaker and writer weren't involved in this movie, the plot is actually kind of interesting.  But as they say it's how you tell the story that counts as well.  As one critic said about Kramer "he was a man directing a comedy who never understood how drama worked."

The running time is 139 minutes

1969 - THE SOUTHERN STAR aka L'Étoile du sud)

The Southern Star is supposedly based on a book by Jules Verne although I doubt Verne wrote any bathing scenes for Ursula Andress back in 1884.

The plot has American George Segal who is engaged to Ursula Andress in pursuit of a legendary diamond in West Africa.   Through a lot of rather contrived plotting they are on the run from a corrupt police official and his officers.  Things come to head when everyone ends up at a camp run by a corpulent Orson Welles in another "where's my paycheck," performance.

 

This is not a great movie but I guess if you are in the mood to watch a movie shot on location in Senegal with lots of wild animals running around and Ursuala Andress doing a nude scene, this is the film for you.  George Segal plays it light and loose with an attitude of I know this movie is preposterous.  Orson Welles probably turns in the most amusing performance he was always a real scene stealer in other director's films.

The director was Sidney Hayers who had extensive experience in TV and film with action scenes.  The oddest thing about this film is the involvement of legendary cameraman Raoul Coutard.  Coutard has always been associated with the French New Wave working with Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and later with Costa-Gavras.  I guess even Coutard had to make the house payment just like everyone else which can be the only explanation for his involvement in this film.

 The film was written by David Pursall and Jack Seddon. The running time is 106 minutes.

1969 - PROBABILTA ZERO aka Probability Zero

You kind of have to love 60's and 70's Italian film making, they never meet a successful genre film that they couldn't rework and basically rip off.  The Italian film industry also had a thing about American actors in these films.  Some sort of semi famous American actor, in this case Henry Silva, would always show up in their films.

Probabilta Zero is fairly typical of these kinds of films.  It's plot is clearly stolen, borrowed from The Guns of Navarone and Operation Crossbow.  Henry Silva is the military guy in charge who leads of team of commandos to a secret underground Nazi base in Norway, but probably northern Italy as the actual locations.  His team has to blow up a downed Spitfire which has a special radar system.  If the system falls into the hands of the Nazis it could change the outcome of the war etc.

 

This film actually isn't half bad.  The action is fairly good, the mountainous scenery makes a good location for filming and the whole thing is a fairly decent action flick when all is said and done.

  

The film was written by Dario Argento, Maurizio Lucidi and Giuseppe Mangione.  The director Maurizio Lucidi filmed a lot of spaghetti westerns and eurocime thrillers so he certainly knew his way around an action scene.

The running time is a quick 95 minutes.

1969 - THE ASSASSINATION BUREAU, amusing British comedy thriller

When you think about romantic leads in films probably the late actor Oliver Reed would have been about the last person you would hire for this clever comedy/thriller.  But Reed is certainly a presence on the screen as they like to say. 

In The Assassination Bureau, Oliver Reed mugs shamelessly and seems to work fairly hard at stealing scenes from the rest of the cast.  But Reed kind of meets his match in Diana Rigg with her amusing performance as the female lead and Telly Savalas who also knows a trick or two about grabbing attention.

The Assassination Bureau is about an organization of profession killers knocking off world leaders in the early 1900's for money.  Reed is the head of the Bureau, Diana Rigg is the heroic reporter who is out to stop Reed and the Bureau and Telly Savalas is the publisher of the newspaper that Rigg works at.

  

The film was directed by Basil Dearden who along with his associate Michael Relph the screenwriter /producer and production designer did a good job putting the film together.  Nothing in it is to be taken very seriously and the actors appear to be having a lot of fun which for a change they can communicate to the audience.

 

This is the kind of droll understated humor that the British can be very good at.  Probably the biggest disappointment in the film is the climactic battle on a Zeppelin.  This sequence suffers from very poor special effects photography, the Zeppelin looks very much like a model photographed against a very poor backdrop.  In spite of this sequence the film is still quite fun and it's also a very good looking film well photographed by the legendary British cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth.

The running time is 110 minutes, written by Michael Relph and Wolf Mankiewicz.

1969 - JUSTINE, an odd mess of a film

Justine was one of those troubled projects.  The film was based on a series of novels called "The Alexandria Quartet," which was condensed into one film by the screenwriter Lawrence Marcus. The original director Joseph Strick wanted to shoot the film in Morocco.  He was canned by 20th Century Fox and veteran director George Cukor was brought in to finish,or in this case salvage the film.

 Cukor did what he could with this film.  He had a lot of issues with Anock Aimee as the title character Justine.  Aimee was apparently fairly difficult to work with.  He didn't care for the leading man Michael York who he thought was too bland.  He was also stuck with the footage Strick had filmed and the studio wanted the production brought back to Hollywood where they could get some control over the final version.  That Cukor was able to finish this mess and turn it into a somewhat coherent fiom was probably a tribute to his professionalism.

 

Well the plot, Justine has something to do with an enigmatic woman who every guy is enamored with. She is married to a banker living in Alexandria, Egypt but having an affair with the Michael York character.  There is some kind of subplot about the Coptic religious sect running guns to Israel to aid in their struggle with the British.  But it's rather hard to understand exactly what is going on.

 

The film has a fairly good cast, beside Anock Aimee.  Dirk Borgarde,  Anna Karina, Philippe Noiret and "Dean Wormer" himself John Vernon.  George Cukor knew how to stage scenes so the film looks good.  Fox gave the production a healthy budget but the final result didn't really get any love from the critics and the audience stayed away.

The running time 116 minutes.

1969 - THE PASSION OF ANNA, aka "A Passion"

I suppose there is a "been there seen it" aspect to this film,  However Ingmar Bergman was one of the greatest writer/directors in the history of cinema, so what we have here is an excellent film about alienation and loneliness made by a master.

 

On the island of Faro, Max Von Sydow plays a man living alone after the failure of his marriage.  He becomes acquainted with another couple played by Bergman stock company regulars 'Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson.  They in turn introduce him to a friend of theirs whose husband and son died in a traffic accident.  She is played by Bergman muse Liv Ullmann.  The acting is at a very high caliber with that cast.

Throughout the film the actors step out of character and discuss their characters in a Brechtian distancing technique that sounds pretentious but actually works rather well as a dramatic device.

 

If you are familiar with Bergman  you can see a lot of his themes played out in this film.  Loneliness, emotional stress, the failure to connect with other people etc.  I don't want to make this sound like an "eat your vegetables" film.  One of Bergman's great skills was to take serious themes and present them in an interesting and engaging way.

Written by Bergman as usual, the running time is 101 minutes.

1969 - BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID - a slick film

 20th Century Fox's big hit.  It was directed by George Roy Hill a fairly decent director.  William Goldman wrote the script which he sold for $400,000 dollars, one of the highest paid scripts at the time.

The film is supposed to be the story of two real life bank robbers and it sort of follows the facts of their lives. Goldman added a lot of humor to the story and at times the film has a real case of the cutes.

Paul Newman mugs shamelessly, Robert Redford finally becomes a leading man in Hollywood and Katherine Ross looks pretty but doesn't really make an impression as Etta Place, who is playing the Sundance Kid's girlfriend.

 

All and all this is a very slick film extremely well made and kind of heartless.  Everyone is having so much fun goofing on this story that maybe a little more substance would have been nice.  Still the film does have a lot of the entertainment qualities that made it an audience favorite back in the late 60's

Running time 110 minutes.

1969 - CAPTAIN NEMO AND THE UNDERWATER CITY, is an OK children's fantasy film.

 Robert Ryan takes a shot at the role of Captain Nemo in this film that has an entirely original story from anything Jules Verne ever dreamed up for the legendary character.

The is an OK blend of fantasy and is basically aimed at children.  The sets are rather interesting and the cast which includes Chuck Conners, Nanette Newman and Luciana Paluzzi seem game.

 

The film is a decent enough entertainment, not a spectacular fantasy film but not bad either.

Written by Pip and Jane Baker and R. Wright Campbell, the running time is 105 minutes.

1969 - YOUNG BILLY YOUNG - a rather tired Western

Young Billy Young was released the same year as Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and these two films certainly are a contrast in where the state of the western film was at this time. One of the themes of the  Peckinpah film involves the end of the west as the authorities hunt a gang of outlaws who have probably lived and robbed past their time.  On the other hand,  Young Billy Young is almost an attempt to keep pumping out the same type of western film the public had been watching for years.  It is singularly lacking in any kind of interest or excitement

Robert Mitchum brings whatever authority that he can as a lawman out for revenge on a gang who killed his son. Haven't ever seen that plot before :)  Angie Dickinson is "the hooker with the heart of gold."  Robert Walker Jr. was in Easy Rider of all things.  He's the young kid who the lawman reforms after he shows him the error of his ways.

The writer and director was Burt Kennedy who at his best was usually pretty good at spoofing the western genre.  Here he doesn't seem to have worked up much enthusiasm or energy for this story.  The film moves along from one obvious scene to another.  The film is actually rather nice to look at, it has some decent photography and runs about 90 minutes.

 

Robert Mitchum sings the title tune of this film, probably the only thing interesting about this dud.

1969 -THE ITALIAN JOB, the original version

One of Michael Caine's famous roles from the the 1960's.  Caine is Charlie Croker a master thief pulling off a gold heist in Turin, Italy.  The plan involves screwing up the city with a massive traffic jam and using Mini Coopers to move the gold around the city.

 

This is a very lightweight film not particularly well directed.   Caine had pretty much polished his Cockney smart ass character by this point.  He has a decent cast to play off of.  Noel Coward, now the grand old man of the English theater is the big shot providing the funding for the heist.  Benny Hill, of dirty old man fame, is of all things the computer expert assigned to screw up the traffic during the heist.

Probably the high point of the film is the goofy car chase with the police pursing the Mini Coopers throughout the city.   The end of the film is also known for it's literal cliffhanger.  Quincy Jones wrote the score which includes "The Self Preservation Society" sung by Michael Caine himself.

 

As I said, the film is not really very well directed but the actors and situations make it some kind of minor classic.

Written by Michael Deeley.

Running time 99 minutes.

1969 - HARD CONTRACT, a so called thriller

What a pile of crap.  James Coburn is an assassin employed by the CIA.  While on a job he falls in love with the very good looking Lee Remick.  Thus an existentialist conflict is born. should he be a lover or a killer.  Time wasted on this dilemma, almost two hours.

The film has a very decent supporting cast, Lilli Palmer, Burgess Meredith and Sterling Hayden among others.  They all yammer on with a bunch of ridiculous talk about love, relationships and in this case the place of a hit man in the contemporary world.

This film has one of those ridiculous non ending endings.  Coburn decides he doesn't want to be a hired killer anymore and the film just stops.  The only people that got killed in this film were any audiences that actually payed money to see this thing.

106 minutes, written by the director S. Lee Pogostin.

1969 - THE UNDEFEATED, the western heads into the sunset...again

Everyone says that The Wild Bunch and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance signaled the end of the  western has a film genre.  However John Wayne pretty much kept this genre going in a series of rather mediocre westerns. 

The Undefeated is based on an actual historic event.  After the Civil War, a Confederate General led a group of ex soldiers down to South America to reestablish a Confederate State.  In this film Rock Hudson plays a confederate Colonel leading a group of southerners to Mexico who meets up with John Wayne's former Union Colonel. 

As with a lot of his late career films, Wayne at times seems to be sleepwalking through the story.  At other times he seems completely disengaged from what is actually going on.  Rock Hudson was always a light talent sort of like a light beer.  Not a lot of substance as an actor.  However Hudson at least attempts a southern accent and does bring a little conviction to his role.  Also in the cast are a couple of John Ford regulars, Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr..  These guys had been kicking around the film business since the 1940's.  Apparently macho actor Wayne got along very well with closeted gay actor Hudson.

The Undefeated was directed by Andrew McLaglen.  McLaglen had been an assistant director under John Ford, but he certainly didn't have Ford's flair with composition or even handling actors.  It's well known Wayne liked to boss him around on set.  Wayne pretty much directed himself towards the end of his career.  McLaglen is actually a big favorite of this blog, he was a working director.

This film is at best a time killer with enough humor, action and old fashioned star power to keep it interesting.

119 minutes, written by James Lee Barrett.

1969 - THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS, an out of it Western.

The director Burt Kennedy had some experience mixing comedy and drama in the Western genre but by the 1960's Sergio Leone and his many contemporaries had redefined the traditional western with the "Spaghetti" western.  The Good Guys and the Bad Guys seemed really old fashioned and checked out with contemporary trends in this genre.

The film has a surprisingly decent cast with actors such as Robert Mitchum, George Kennedy, Martin Balsam, David Carradine and Lois Nettleton.  Exactly how they got roped into this would probably make a more interesting story then this by the numbers plot of a former sheriff and bank robber teaming up to stop a train robbery.

The film has a decent train robbery action scene towards end and the photography and location filming in Colorado are the only things the film has going for it.

Really not much of a film.

91 minutes, written by Ronald M. Cohen and Dennis Shryak.