1978 - SHE FELL AMONG THIEVES, entertaining old school thriller

This entertaining throwback to a 1930's type of British thriller, i.e. the stuff Hitchcock and Carol Reed did, has a good cast to recommend it.  Malcolm McDowell is the intrepid hero Richard Chantos.  While vacationing in France the French Pyrenees he stumbles onto a plot to rob a heiress out of her considerable fortune.  With the help of the British foreign office he springs into action.

 

The heiress is played by one time Disney star Karen Dotrice who today is chiefly remembered as Jane Banks from Mary Poppins.  Dotrice is in full damsel in distress mode in this film.  The rest of the cast is made up of the usual British supporting players.  However the standout performance in this film is from Eileen Atkins one of those distinguished grand dame British performers who show up in films to class the show up.  Atkins plays a character called "Vanity Fair." She's a villainous schemer in the grand tradition of over the top evil doers. 

 

The film consists of  Richard Chantos matching wits with Vanity Fair in a series of amusing encounters.  In this type of story tone is everything, the actors play the whole thing fairly straight and the film clips along at a decent pace.  If you like your mystery/adventure stories with a heavy dash of British stiff upper lip stuff you should enjoy this film.

 

The film was written by  Tom Sharpe, the running time is 79 minutes.

1977 - SPECTRE, failed Gene Roddenberry pilot

This is a failed pilot from Gene Roddenbery the creator of Star Trek.  After the cancellation of Star Trek Roddenberry struggled with getting another TV series launched.  One of his ideas was to do a supernatural series with two protagonists taking on devils and demons and whatever each week.  This show was basically an update of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character with Robert Culp playing a paranormal investigator modeled on Holmes and Gig Young in the Dr. Watson part.

The TV pilot is generally diverting stuff mostly due to the cast and the director Clive Donner doing their best to move things along.  Anyway the plot is about the heir to a British family being menaced by some kind of demon who looks a lot like one of Star Trek's aliens aka kind of phony.  

 

There is an extended sequence with Gig Young being hit on by a group of sexy women which seems like a hold over from Roddenberry's film Pretty Maids All in a Row which probably could have been cut out of the script as it is not sexy or funny.

 Well anyway the film ends with one of those sacrifice the innocent victims on the alter of evil conventionally located under neath the British family's estate.  

 

I watched the European cut of this film which includes female nudity towards the end of the film.  Never ones to miss a buck, Hollywood studios would frequently release their TV films as actual films and insert some salacious stuff in them for the European audiences.

The running time is 98 minutes.

1984 - A CHRISTMAS CAROL, yet another version

Yes it's another version of A Christmas Carol, this time with George C Scott in the role of Mister you know who.

This film was directed by one time British wonder boy Clive Donner.  What ever happened to his career anyway?  It has good production values, was photographed in England and with the exception of Scott has an English cast.

Considered to be one of the better and most faithful versions of the Dicken's warhorse of a story.  This strikes me as just another unecessary version of A Christmas Carol.  Filmmakers really need to take a nice long break before anyone tackles this story yet again.

Screenplay by Roger Overholt Hirson the running time is 100 very familiar minutes.