1975 - DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE, Producer George Pal's final film

Sadly the final feature film from George Pal is not one of his best.  Pal along with the director Michael Anderson decided to make a rather campy film of a 1930's pulp fiction hero.  Doc Savage was a character who went around righting wrongs with his team he called "The Fabulous Five."

Pal who was apparently hunting around for another film project settled on an original Doc Savage story instead of adopting one of the 67 stories that were already in paperback.  Producer Pal hired Michael Anderson a British director who had a rather proficient career directing such films as Around The World In 80 Days, Logan's Run and The Dam Busters.  Towards the end of his career Anderson ended up working in television.

 Supposedly a management change at the studio doomed the film and it languished at Warner Brothers, nobody knew how to market it.  A box office failure.  The bigger problem with the film was the campy tone that was just completely out of touch with the 1970's film audience.  The film was probably about 20 years to early.  Eventually films like Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark were able to mix camp with thrills

 

Doc Savage isn't the total disaster I've been led to believe it was.  The film does have a kind of cheap studio look to it, but the actor Ron Ely does make a fairly impressive Doc Savage. The film is entertaining in it's own modest way and as I have said before, "I've seen a lot worse."

 

The running time is 112 minutes, George Pal and Joe Morhaim wrote the screenplay.

1956 - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, one of those 50's super spectaculars

 This was the big one for 1956,  It won many awards and was very popular with movie going audiences.  The producer was a man called Michael Todd who was apparently quite the showman.  He was also known for his chutzpah a man so brash he somehow got Elizabeth Taylor then in her mid twenties to marry him.  Todd was forty seven years old at the time.

Todd was one of the original founders of Cinerama, the wide screen movie process.  He split from that company and patented his own widescreen format called Todd-AO.  Looking for a suitable movie to showcase his widescreen miracle,  Todd decided to make a film out of Jules Verne's Around The World in 80 Days.  Basically pumping all of his money into the film Todd actually found himself with a substantial hit. 

 

The film today looks very much like a widescreen super spectacle.  Lots of photography of scenery, (the film was shot in a lot of different locations) at the expense of a well paced story.  The actors, particularly David Niven have to work hard to have some kind of a presence in the film.  The Mexican actor known as Cantinflas, was hired to play Niven's faithful servant. Cantinflas carries much of the load in the film with lots of unfunny physical comedy.  Cantinflas is unsual casting in that he was primarily known as a verbal comedian in Mexico.

The film is entertaining when the viewer isn't being bombarded with lots of scenic vistas.  The last hour of the film is entertaining. This film is so over the top that the ending credits by Saul Bass run six minutes. 

 

To ensure box office success, Todd loaded the film up with lots of Hollywood actors in parts he called cameos.  The film is almost a record over 1950's actors.

The running time is a whopping 182 minutes.  The screenwriters were James Poe,  John Farrow and S.J. Perelman.

1965 - OPERATION CROSSBOW, an attempt at a realistic James Bond film.

In the middle of the James Bond spy movie craze. Every film studio had to have some kind of spy movie.  Out comes this British film about the World War II German V1 and V2 rocket program.

 As the Germans perfect their "flying rocket bombs", the British mobilize their secret agents to stop them.  This involves casting practically every British character actor in the United Kingdom. All my old acting favorites show up in this film, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Richard Johnson, Tom Courtney, Richard Todd, Ferdy Mayne, Anton Differing, Anthony Quayle,  the list is endless.

 

 The producer throws a couple of ringers into the mix.  Sophia Loren, who gets top billing and George Peppard clearly cast for the American market.  Loren's husband Carlo Ponti was the producer.

The director tries for a semi documentary approach but the script can't entirely avoid going down the road of melodrama and coincidence.  Still this is a really good looking film and lots of stuff blows up at the end. 

A couple of minutes on the internet is probably in order to read about the real Operation Crossbow mission.  It's actually kind of fascinating how the British managed to deal with the V1 and V2 rockets during the war.

The writers were Emeric Pressburger (under an alias, Richard Imrie for some reason), Derry Quinn and Ray Rigby.

116 minutes.

1966 - THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM, eh

Spy vs spy stuff from the 1960's when every studio had to make a spy film in their ongoing attempts to compete with the Bond franchisee.  The Quiller Memorandum has every film's favorite villains the well cultured Nazis as the bad guys.  In any case, seen it all before.

The film has a decent cast, with Alec Guinness and Max Von Sydow the standouts.  George Segal tries to play it straight as the agent attempting to find Mr. Blond Nazi guy Von Sydow but he still goes down that wise ass quip thing that only James Bond could get away with.

The chief interest in the film was the participation of the playwright Harold Pinter a writer who was known for using dialog in a subtle and obtuse manner.  Story was not Pinter's strong point and there are a lot of plot holes and situations that don't make any sense.  Even the dialog in the film isn't particularly memorable.  It doesn't seem like the producer got his money's worth hiring Pinter.  Pinter was probably just cashing a paycheck on this film anyway.

The film was directed by Michael Anderson who probably did about as good a job as possible considering the source material.  Anderson was an assistant director to Carol Reed and he must have learned a thing or two from Reed.  The film has a fairly decent atmosphere and good filmed on location settings in Berlin.

105 minutes