Don’t turn around! Don’t make a sound!
It’s been a while, and though my film watching has continued unabated (along with some half-written germs of reviews and many more semi-conceived outlines for bits of writing!) it’s been my treat to pick up the latest Hammer Icons set. Following the Adventure and Horror releases comes Icons of Suspense, a collection of six black and white offerings that show a number of different sides to the studio.
The tagline ‘Six Edge of your Seat Classics’ might be pushing it a bit, yet the Region 1 set presents some really good films that might otherwise have remained half-forgotten and unrestored in a lonely vault. As usual, the process of cleaning up these gems for DVD release is nothing short of remarkable. Digital crispness and sharp mono sound are the order of the day here. The lack of extras is a problem that lingers from Icons of Horror. All we get are trailers, which provide a typical sense of the gaudy thrills that surrounded each Hammer release, but there’s nothing else upon which to chew. The commentaries that accompanied Icons of Adventure are sadly absent, though some of the other extras on that set struck me as ‘grafted on’ rather than being essential companion pieces.
More troubling is the way the three discs are stacked onto a single hub, a sign of the lack of love that went into distributing the set that isn’t evidenced in the restoration. Surely, a bit more thought wouldn’t have gone amiss, and whilst on the subject there must be plenty of documentary material concerning Hammer that might have served as a nice addition.
Oh well, at least we have the films themselves, none of which I had seen previously. Some I will definitely watch again, particularly those with the tightest plotting, the economical storytelling that defined Hammer’s output. Others, the baggier efforts, seem to have been bulked out from short stories that were bloated to ensure a feature length release. Crucially, none are really weak, and for my money two of the pictures are bona fide classics…
Stop Me Before I Kill (1960)
The first entry in the set is this psychological thriller directed by Val Guest, which was released as The Full Treatment in the UK. We start with a car crash, and the rest of the film deals with its aftermath. Driver Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis) returns to physical health but fights a compulsion to murder his wife, Denise (Diane Cilento). Recuperating in Cannes, they meet psychiatrist, David Prade (Claude Dauphin), who offers to help Colby. The treatment can’t come too soon. Colby is unable to make love to Denise because he thinks he will throttle her. A wire he comes across in their flat becomes a near-fatal garotting weapon. Eventually, Prade helps our hero to come to terms with the car crash. He thinks he’s sane, but the following morning Denise is missing and their bathroom is a mess of blood…
Guest is a renowned writer-director in the Hammer canon, and there are moments in this film that remind you of his talent. One sequence finds Denise enjoying a skinny dip, watched by Colby but, as it turns out, also by Prade. Observing her through his binoculars, Denise’s shapely form is reflected in each voyeuristic lens. The trouble with the piece is that, at 108 minutes, it’s too long. The traditional, sub-90 minutes running time that was a hallmark of Hammer gives way to padding, too much padding, and there really isn’t enough going on to justify the extra minutes. That said, it saves its best thrills for the end, and while you might not feel much for the stiff, remote Alan, Cilento is a vision as Denise. The film also features an excessively dodgy cable car, the sort of contraption that screams ‘Abandon hope all who enter here.’
Cash on Demand (1961)
Things improve greatly with Cash on Demand, and not just for the presence of Hammer heavyweights Peter Cushing and Andre Morell. The film is based on an episode of the televised anthology series, Theatre 70, where it was called Gold Inside and featured Morell in the same role of suave robber, Colonel Gore-Hepburn. Here, Cushing is bank manager, Mr Fordyce, the sort of joy-free model of efficiency that every branch might have called for at one time. The plot is simple. Gore-Hepburn tells Fordyce that his wife is kidnapped and will be tortured and killed unless he helps him clean out the vault. The manager has no choice but to comply, knowing that one false step could leave him a widower.
The film is 80-minutes long, and an exercise in taut plotting and tension. Every ounce of suspense is etched onto Fordyce’s face as his world unravels around him. Morell appears to enjoy himself immensely, and with much of the action taking place in the manager’s office the two actors simply riff off each other. They’re note-perfect performances, particularly from Cushing whose cold veneer crumbles as he’s undermined and bullied by the robber. A scene of unexpected violence actually brings a tear to his eye, and there’s a cracking moment when he has to get a safe open before the alarm goes off, made exquisite as he fumbles for his keys cack-handedly.
Cash on Demand takes place on 23 December. The importance of Christmas is apparent, Fordyce coming across initially as Scrooge-like to his staff as they plan a seasonal party. This frostiness, particularly to his long-suffering deputy, Pearson (Richard Vernon), thaws by the film’s close, suggesting nods to ‘A Christmas Carol’ that can’t - and perhaps shouldn’t - be avoided. It’s a splendid piece of work. Incredibly, it took two years for the film to make it from completion to the screen, and then as a slimmed down support feature.
The Snorkel (1958)
The first scene of The Snorkel depicts a murder, an ingeniously planned and executed crime that isn’t unravelled until the final reel. By then, killer Paul Decker (Peter Van Eyck) believes he has gotten away with it, successfully doing away with both the mother and father of young Candy (Mandy Miller) in order to come into the family’s money. His only concern remains Candy herself. The girl is convinced that he’s responsible, and as the plot develops he realises he will need to see to her also before she figures out what’s going on and exposes him.
The Snorkel was directed by Guy Green, who had won an Oscar in 1948 for the cinematography on Great Expectations. Consequently, this is a film that looks great, even when filming in dark, confined spaces. It’s just a shame about the narrative, which slows down considerably following the first murder before picking up for the climax.Despite that, it’s a neatly made thriller. Van Eyck carries off his role superbly, at once ruthless murderer and figure of respectability whose cool never seems to break. Mandy Miller was a child star (she was BAFTA nominated for her role in 1952’s Mandy) who restricted her appearances to television following her convincing playing of Candy.
Maniac (1963)
Hammer goes all film noir for this thriller, a vehicle for matinee star Kerwin Mathews. Personally, I saw Mathews as a bland lead. Good looking yet oddly lacking in charisma in the likes of The Pirates of Blood River and Jack the Giant Killer, it’s here that he comes into his own as the roaming point of a love triangle. Dropped in sultry France (MGM’s Borehamwood backlot doubling suitably), Mathews plays a drifting painter who stays in a bar and falls for the landlady’s stepdaughter (Liliane Brousse). Little does he know that the girl is a rape victim. Her father killed the rapist and was subsequently declared criminally insane. At first, the landlady, Eve (Nadia Gray), appears to disapprove of the blossming affair, but it turns out she wants Kerwin for herself. It isn’t long before she has him ensnared and involves him in a plot to break her husband out of his asylum prison, and it’s here the troubles begin for our hero.
Several elements elevate this film into something a bit special. First, Mathews is excellent as Paul, quickly realising he’s part of a bigger plot and trying to keep from drifting out of his depth. Gray too plays a fantastic part. Eve is sexy, needy and conniving. The story burns slowly in the opening chapters but picks up after the breakout, when the man they helped to escape starts haunting his old family. The twists stack up and it’s never clear who is double-crossing who.
A dark treat, featuring a clever screenplay by Jimmy Sangster and Michael Carreras on directing duties. The latter has a tendency to stop the action in favour of some unnecessary diversion from time to time, but cranks up the sense of urgency when it matters.
Never take Candy from a Stranger (1960)
The tagline from this rarity went ‘Powerful! Shocking! Raw! Rough! Challenging! See a little girl molested!’, which lent the film a degree of luridity it didn’t need. In fact, Never take Candy from a Stranger treats its subject matter - that of child abuse - very seriously, whilst working both as a courtroom drama and latterly a thriller. When Peter Carter (Patrick Allen) takes a job as the school principal within a Canadian township, he takes with him his wife Sally (Gwen Watford) and young dauther, Jean (Janina Faye). The community is dominated by the Olderberry family, who own the area’s industrial concerns that provides work for its people. One evening, Jean reveals that she danced naked for Olderberry Snr (Felix Aylmer) in exchange for candy, and Carter files a complaint.
At this point, the film examines the prejudices of the day. It seems everyone knows that Olderberry is up to this kind of behaviour yet there’s a strong urge not to upset the applecart that involves taking him to court. The Olderberrys are just too powerful. Too much is at stake. Carter begins to experience the shunning of a town that would rather not have to deal with this sort of trouble, and sure enough the old pervert is acquitted after a harrowing courtroom experience for Jean. Let loose, the clearly demented Olderberry has one more shock left up his sleeve for Jean and her friend.
The final act, while shocking, is slightly out of kilter with what has already taken place. Never take Candy’s main message, that money can prejudice the wheels of justice, is a powerful one, today as it was fifty years ago, and director Cyril Frankel handles the sensitive nature of the trial with real intelligence. That such an ending was tacked on gives the impression the film needed to come full circle, of revealing the consequences of a wrongful acquittal, and while there’s nothing wrong with it as such it really isn’t necessary.
These are the Damned (1963)
These are the Damned opens with the story of Teddy Boy gangs mugging unsuspecting tourists and at some point enters the realm of science fiction. Of all the pieces presented in this set, it’s the most ambiguous and refuses to comply with the usual Hammer staples of tight plotting and trimming away the baggage. Of the latter, the early scenes in which Oliver Reed’s cronies terrorise an American tourist (Macdonald Carey) don’t really fit in with what the film is ultimately trying to say, though as usual Reed is suitably scary as King - was he influenced by Alex from A Clockwork Orange (Burgess’s book was published a year before this film’s release), or indeed was his performance an influence on Stanley Kubrick?
Later, via an extended chase scene the characters stumble across a government experiment, namely a group of children who are being raised in isolation from the real world. They’re radioactive, in preparation for a post-nuclear war environment where they will be able to survive and restart the human race. Carey and his girl, Joan (Shirley Anne Field) resolve to rescue the kids from this madness, with the reluctant help of King, who is already experiencing the first symptoms of radiation exposion.
These are the Damned picks up once the main characters and children come into contact with each other. But it takes so long to get there, so much nonsense involving Carey and Joan as he tries to woo her (and viewers attempt to ignore the fact that he’s fifty and easily old enough to be her father), and the pursuit by King that hints at incestual undertones. There’s another character, a sculptress, who appears to be in the film for no other reason than because her house is a convenient place for hiding out in… That said, there’s undoubted power in the film’s main message concerning anxiety over the nuclear threat, and a sense of anger at the folly of humankind that overshadows the work. The film’s very last scene is one of the bleakest you are every likely to come across.
Posted on 26th July 2010
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All that’s in the past, and the exploration of those complex emotions turning Daniel’s Craig blunt weapon into the cold-hearted killer he is in Casino Royale has lent a degree of revision to Lazenby’s turn. It’s after the depthless Roger Moore years that we can feel a sense of regret that the one-off didn’t get more chances to get to grips with his character, exposing the vulnerability of 007 yet further within a world that expects him to show little remorse. We got hints of his Bond in the character played by Timothy Dalton, and it’s little surprise that the complicated agent from The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill has turned out to be an artistic high point for the franchise, albeit one that didn’t mix too well with the public and forced it to revert to type with the safe Pierce Brosnan.
Elsewhere, Savalas adds a triumphant edge to the part of the main baddie. If Donald Pleasance suggested Blofeld as a twisted, deformed gnome, here he’s an action man, as prone to ski chases and bobsled pursuits as he is hatching fresh plans for world domination. As it is, Pleasance might sound closer to the mark, yet Savalas pulls it off through sheer charisma. His meetings with Bond - following those involving Pleasance and Connery in
This we get with the last few minutes of the film. Having left Blofeld hanging from a tree trunk by his neck, seemingly paralysed, Bond marries Tracy, inviting all his Secret Service mates and even listening to some friendly advice from Q. As James and Tracy drive off in the flower-lined car, everything feels too perfect, and of course it is. The couple indulge in some verbal foreplay as they drive along mountain roads, and then stop to remove the flowers from their car. Blofeld and hench(wo)man Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) drive past and abruptly shower them with bullets. Bond survives, hurling himself behind the car, but as he’s about to set off in pursuit, he realises with a start that Tracy has been shot, point blank, in the head. Stunned, he cradles her body, tells a passing policeman not to hurry with help because there’s all the time in the world, and drops his head into hers with a lasting sob. The moment, shocking in its quiet tragedy after all the prior action, is weighted sublimely. Lazenby nails it, coming across as neither too bluff or hysterical. It’s something Connery simply couldn’t - or wouldn’t - have managed as well. Perhaps this is because, as film critic Danny Peary noted, the original Bond was more self-assured and virile. He commanded any scene in which he appeared, whilst Lazenby was not so confident and on occasion more vulnerable. Connery’s agent would never have allowed himself to fall in love with one woman, maybe aware that life was too short and easily lost to make it work. In Lazenby’s hands, Bond dares to lose his heart, gets married and pays the ultimate price.
Badham’s edition broke with the tradition of Dracula films by concentrating far more on the Count’s sensual qualities. Up to that point, most releases suggested he had a hold over women, but the emphasis had been on his evil, his ability to draw female victims towards him via an ill-defined supernatural hypnosis. Not here. Langella, reprising his stage role for the film, is a highly sexual being. Charismatic and charming, he steals away with the fiance of Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), who never stands a chance. Once the Count takes an interest in her, Lucy (Kate Nelligan) doesn’t look back. The virtuous Jonathan has lost any allure. The film spends some time dwelling on their courtship, one where Dracula is established as being in a league above those around him. You understand why he captivates Lucy. Various perfectly intoned ‘Good evening’s from him and she’s lost to Jonathan for good. Even when the Count dies and Harker believes his power over Lucy has ended, it’s clear from the look in her eyes that the truth is quite different. She’s Dracula’s, and not through the process of turning her into a vampire but via sex. In the film’s solitary sex scene, an abstract, suggestive piece of swirling reds and silhouetted lovers that’s dated rather badly, it’s made clear that he has shown her a good time. How can Jonathan, a slightly ridiculous figure in his Toad-esque Hispano-Suiza, possibly compare?
In the film’s best scene, and by some distance its scariest, Van Helsing ventures to Mina’s grave to dispatch his daughter, who is now terrorising the community as a vampire. And what a vampire she makes! The Professor comes across an empty coffin, but one that has been ripped apart from within, leading to the labyrinth of mining tunnels below. Van Helsing descends, and in the cramped darkness drops his crucifix in a puddle. As he ferrets for the cross, the waters clear and reveal a nightmare vision of white looking down on him. It’s Mina, returning to her resting place and still wearing the tattered funereal dress she was buried in. He looks up, the full horror of what has become of her dawning on him, and the camera similarly tilts, gradually revealing a putrid, broken skinned demon with black eyes, matted hair, reddened mouth and bloodlust. Between them, Dr Seward (Donald Pleasance) and the Professor put Mina out of her misery, but the pain has told on her father. By all accounts, Olivier was a fan of Peter Cushing’s work in the Hammer Dracula franchise, and the emotional investment his tortured character puts in here gives him the advantage. It’s in his dealings with Langella where the ‘Cushing’ in his performance shines through. These are clever men, natural adversaries, and whilst you get the impression Dracula has some respect for the cross-wielding Professor all he gets in return is academic revulsion.
If there is a fault with Dracula, it is that there are few frights to be had. Apart from the scene detailed above (one I could barely watch when I first saw the film as a child), and the moment where he appears at Mina’s window (upside down, eyes glowing, after crawling down the wall outside), the scariest bits are those depicting Seward’s chaotic hospital, a real home for the mentally broken where screams are commonplace and inmates wander the stairways wearing pigs’ heads and wailing pitifully. I read a comment that Langella was just too handsome to make for an effectively creepy Dracula, and in fairness it wasn’t his brief to terrify the viewers. Though he takes Lucy and Mina, this vampire never bares his teeth, instead upping the smoulder value and leaving it to his brides to do the rest.
Given the choice between Hammer’s two giant franchises - Dracula and Frankenstein - it’s the ‘good’ Baron who gets my vote. No disrespect to Christopher Lee’s Count. He’s still my favourite incarnation of the chalk-faced Transylvanian. But in the case of Frankenstein, Hammer appear to have mined a richer vein of storytelling. These movies, invariably starring Peter Cushing, produce the same basic yarn with each release, but it’s how they get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ that never fails to entertain.
As usual, The Revenge was filmed at Hammer’s Bray Studios, and for fans the movie can become a case of spotting the sets as they appeared in many other productions. The graveyard in which the Baron is supposedly buried has served as a cemetery on numerous occasions. Frankenstein’s cellar-based laboratory doubled as Dracula’s crypt. The latter, the centrepiece to any good offering about life made from dead flesh, is a riot of flashing lights and electricity sound effects. In an early scene, Frankenstein reveals an experiment to his new assistant, Dr Hans Kleve (Francis Matthews). It’s a pair of eyes and a disembodied arm, both of which are attached to an artificial brain powered by electricity. The Baron wishes to prove how complicated the human brain is by demonstrating the reactions of the arm and eyes to fire, and sure enough both get excited as he approaches with a lit bunsen burner. Played for dark laughs it may be, but Cushing and director, Terence Fisher, wear straight faces. They realise all this is ridiculous fare, but never make the mistake of being too knowing about it.
Soon enough, Karl starts going wrong. He’s impressed initially with his handsome new face and fully functioning body, but he then begins to show psychotic tendencies, as well as the physical limitations of his old self manifesting themselves once again. As his face collapses alongside his mind, Karl turns to mindless murder. He then unwittingly reveals who Dr Stein really is, putting the Baron’s life in jeapordy. As the guillotine looms again, Frankenstein is reminded that he’s suddenly a long way from a moment earlier in the film where he treated his medical peers with utter scorn by making them wait for him in his ward, next to all those grubby, working class patients.
Hopefully, it won’t go the same way as the insipid King Arthur, the 2004 attempt to reconfigure the legendary monarch along more historically likely lines, which sounds good but produced a dull film from material that should be just about impossible to fail with. Scott has a real opportunity to create a genuinely fresh perspective on Hood, whose story been filmed many times and nearly always portrays him as the classic, noble-hearted hero who steals from the rich and, well, you know the rest. One of my favourite versions is the HTV television series from the 1980s, perhaps because it was the one I grew up with but also due to its heavy use of mythology, of setting Robin up as a hero of ages whose burden is to do right for the timeless land. True, Michael Praed looked like a L’Oreal commercial in forest green, but he was well supported by the likes of Ray Winstone as a gritty Will Scarlett, whilst Nickolas Grace made for a superb, unbalanced Sheriff.
One of the film’s many pleasures is that it takes a complicated story about the difficult relations between Saxons and Normans in an England ruled with iron by the latter, and makes it easy. In part, this is because the Norman rulers are so obviously the bad guys, self servers all whilst the noble Anglo-Saxons are reduced to serfs. Robin becomes an easy man to follow. In the lead role, Flynn oozes charisma, even though his inclination to throw his head back and laugh heartily comes across as more than a little theatrical. It’s amazing to think that the part was initially intended for James Cagney, then the biggest star in the Warner stable, whilst Flynn was just on the rise thanks to his fine turn in Captain Blood yet didn’t appear to be the obvious man for the job until he donned the green tights. Born in Tasmania and capable of speaking like a perfect English gentleman, Flynn was in fact at an ideal age and point in his career to play Robin. His lusty take on the part is sublime, particularly as it quickly becomes clear that he can’t die - even when Sir Guy captures him - and there’s a resulting tongue in cheek element to his turn that’s just irresistible.
The action moves quickly; the set pieces winning and inspired by the 1922 version starring an athletic Douglas Fairbanks who performed many of his own stunts. It’s set amidst a Sherwood Forest that appears in glorious, lustrous tones. An early instance of three-strip Technicolor, the film must have looked a real treat in 1938 when the use of colour in movies was largely an experimental process that didn’t always work and was still viewed essentially as a gimmick in order to get bums on seats. Not here. The forest looks gorgeous, due in part to technicians who sprayed the foliage to make it show up better on the film. Even better are the scenes shot against a setting sun, shown principally when the Normans are torturing Saxons against a ravishing, blood-red backdrop. On the DVD set, an hour-long documentary on the Technicolor process is far more fascinating than alluded to here. The sheer painstaking dirge for everyone involved in the film as a consequence of using Technicolor turned out to be entirely worth it, yet getting everything to look right was a tough call for the cast and crew, as explained in the feature. Colour is something we take for granted now, but back then it was new and special, and The Adventures must take some credit for promoting its usage.
So far, so Selznick, and there’s plenty in the film to keep fans of cheap morality pieces happy. Things really tip over the edge for Carter when he plugs all his money into a pleasure liner, one that promises to be a voyage of endless decadence and pleasure seeking for its high-rolling guests. But the ship is highly unsafe, and he knows it. By this point, his wife Betty (Trevor) has left him, taking their son with her as a consequence of his unscrupulous nature, yet he hasn’t learned a thing, even after Pop shows him what Dante envisaged hell to be like for unrepentant sinners.
The film’s director, Harry Lachman, started out as a painter, having emigrated to Paris in 1911 and gaining a reputation as part of the post-impressionist movement. After getting involved in film, first as a set designer within the French film industry, Lachman moved back to America as an established director and was eventually given the job of putting Dante’s Inferno onto the screen. A fan of Dore, it’s clear to see the engraver’s work in the movie’s hell scenes, while it’s also possible to detect the director letting his own artistic vision reign free over these sequences. According to the New York Times, the film employed 3,000 extras - all toned, muscular bodies, which perhaps wasn’t what Dante had in mind when he first put his image to paper but at least ensured that the damned looked good in their tiny loincloths - and an army of technicans to bring Lachman’s terrifying vision to life.
Both movies ran along the same faultline, one that proved a fatal flaw, as it has for any football-based fiction. It is that as dramatic as the Goal trilogy might have purported to be, it could never match the unscripted, arbitrary and occasionally unfair highs and lows that come with following soccer in real life. Several days before watching Goal III, I caught Brazil taking on Egypt in the Confederations Cup, a match that sounded like a procession for the former yet ended in a squeaky bum 4-3 win, the decider scored with minutes left on the clock. The game was a rollercoaster, a saga of your football minnow standing up to one of the best sides in the world and almost claiming a result. With stuff like this taking place all the time in football, there’s very little left for fiction to cling on to, and I think it speaks volumes that the most successful soccer novel critically by some distance - David Peace’s The Damned United - is an imagining of real life events that bastardises most of its characters and upset the Clough family with its one note sketching of Brian as a boorish, boozy big head.
Worse still is the fact that these budgetary limits mean there’s no tinkering with the conclusion of England’s World Cup. Anyone who knows when England were knocked out - and who by - will find no change in the narrative here because the producers can’t afford to shoot any additional footage. The tournament ends on the fluffed penalty of one of the actors and, er, that’s it once again. And what was the point of any of that? Clearly, by this stage in the franchise the soccer is no longer the point, or even a significant facet, of the story. It’s incidental, inserted by obligation to the film’s title but nothing more than a footnote of the sub-soap plotting.
The tale of how Captain Clegg made it onto the screen is legend in itself. His story is part of the adventures of the Reverend Doctor Christopher Syn, the lead character in a popular series of novels by Russell Thorndike. Anthony Hinds was forced to make changes to his screenplay for the film once it transpired that Disney had bought the rights to adapt Thorndike’s books for the screen, and sure enough the tale was dramatised in a mini-series starring Patrick McGoohan (edited for cinema audiences in the UK). The main amendment in Hammer’s version saw Clegg become Parson Blyss, removing any reference to Dr Syn in the process. The character’s mythology remains, however, almost in its entirety, as does the supporting cast. Some of the dialogue between Blyss and Mipps in the film hints at a back story that could only mean anything to followers of Thorndike’s novels and, as luck would have it, gives Captain Clegg a lot more depth than it might otherwise achieve.
The ‘night creatures’ - men on horseback wearing skeleton costumes with luminous paint - are actually the weakest element of the film. Of far more interest is the good Parson (Peter Cushing), who in his first scene admonishes his congregation for their half-hearted hymn signing. It’s clear that Cushing is having a whale of a time in this picture. Whether playing the angelic Blyss or flipping his character fluidly to become the leader of the smugglers (and Cushing is subtle enough to make his change look absolutely natural), he’s in imperial form and runs rings around Patrick Allen as the virtuous Captain Collier. Collier is in Romney Marshes to investigate a claim of smuggling but finds next to no evidence. Fortunately for him, the community is flawed enough to give him sufficient motivation to stick around, and then there are the erratic actions of his captive Mulatto (Milton Reid) to consider. Why does the mute giant, who was rendered so and left for dead by Clegg, take such a deadly interest in the Parson? What lies behind the legend of the marsh creatures? Something’s not right, whether it’s in the scarecrow that appears to be in various places at once, and might even make the occasional gesture, or the bottles of fine wine that turn up in the cabinets of the Parson and the spineless Squire (Derek Frances).
Neither does Collier bother much with the Squire’s son, Harry (Oliver Reed), Imogene’s lover and a key member of the smugglers. Reed is fantastic in Captain Clegg. Even though his role is that of a callow youth, the young gun to Clegg’s old hand, the actor has far too much smouldering intensity to be boring. Watching Reed in these early roles, it’s clear why he still commanded so much attention during his ‘Wild Thing’ years. The charismatic talent was there. Bags of it. Of the remaining cast, Michael Ripper is his usual likeable self, thoroughly enjoying himself as Mipps, a jolly jack-tar if ever there was one. Everyone knows that Hammer films are onto a winner when Ripper ‘rips’ up the stage. The man gives a full-blooded turn, as ever. And then there’s Collier, who is turned into a surprisingly sympathetic character by Allen. Despite his squarest of jaws, the good Captain has some depth in the hands of this fine actor whose brief was surely just to make a two-dimensional authority figure of his part.
But then, looking beneath YOLT to find any sense of what’s going on is virtually impossible. By now, the Bond movie franchise had moved so far from its literary roots that very little beside the book titles remained of Ian Fleming’s source material. 007 himself was less a spy and more a kind of superhero, strolling out of danger with his suit uncreased and hair in place, an appropriate quip about the only acknowledgement he’d make that anything had in fact happened. In other words, it’s pure fantasy, comic book fare. Roald Dahl was given two rules before he went off to write the screenplay - (i) it has to be set in Japan (ii) SPECTRE’s base has to be inside a volcano, and the resulting script is a wild and crazy thing. Dahl truly lets rip on the narrative, including helicopters equipped with enormous magnets that can lift a car off the ground and Bond being disguised as a Japanese peasant for almost no reason at all.
It’s widely believed that Lewis Gilbert made a fairly pedestrian fist at directing YOLT. Fortunately, he had Oscar-winning cinematographer, Freddie Young, on his staff, which means the film never looks less than gorgeous. You see Young’s hand in some of the early scenes, indulgent, expansive shots of Japan at sunset with orange skies framing the vista. Lovely stuff. Equally ravishing are the scenes where Bond flies over the countryside in Little Nellie. Below, Japan’s volcanic regions are lusciously framed and worthy of any travelogue. Elsewhere, the blistering script and high production values mean that all Gilbert really has to do is point the camera and shoot. YOLT is no director’s picture. Rarely is a great deal of imagination put into its composition, though there’s one effective shot where Bond is racing across a roof, pursued by many baddies, and the camera simply pans back to take a passive, bird’s eye view of the action.
For all the criticism, once YOLT reveals its grandest effect - Blofeld’s hollowed out volcano, which cost anything over $1m to build at Pinewood studios - all is forgiven. It’s a superb set, produced on a vast scale, and demonstrated the producers’ commitment to spectacle over gritty realism. They had a point. The takings for
Scratch beneath the surface, however, and the cracks appear. After an extravagant pre-credits sequence in which Bond breaks just about anything worth breaking during a fight before escaping with the help of a rather unecessary jet pack, we get to meet this episode’s baddie. Enter Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), also SPECTRE #2, a figure of sufficient portent to make gendarmes shy away from issuing him with a parket ticket yet in reality a hired hand to the still anonymous #1. A heavy he is, whether being effortlessly duped by 007 or letting the agent work under his nose for much of the movie’s duration. Largo has so many opportunities to see off Bond yet fails entirely to do so, instead allowing the agent to give him the slip again and again, not to mention making off with his ‘kept’ girl, Domino (Claudine Auger).
Of course, being a Terence Young movie Thunderball is never really bad. What irks is it’s nod to excess. It was felt quite clearly that high concept action is what audiences wanted, hence Thunderball’s budget being far greater than that lavished on any of the previous outings. Money was sunk into the replica model of the hijacked nuclear jet. A cool $500k went on Largo’s yacht, Disco Valante. Unfortunately, it seems this where much of the creative effort went also, leaving us with a good looking piece yet a drama that plods too often. It picks up whenever Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) is on the screen, so much so that you can almost forgive the film for its bland lead villain. Fiona is SPECTRE’s femme fatale. Like any decent Bond bad girl (see also Xenia Onatopp (groan!) in Goldeneye), she’s instantly more attractive than the heroine and uses this as a weapon. When not luring the luckless Derval (Paul Stassino) to his doom, she’s bedding Bond himself, via the slaying of his assistant Paula (an underused Martine Beswick). Later, she very nearly sees off the agent, or at least puts him in a state of some peril, which is more than can be said for the fairly rubbish Largo. His weapon of choice - a lampoon-friendly shark-infested pool - can’t match Fiona’s deadly, desirable charms.
Thunderball runs for 130 minutes, which makes it the lengthiest of the Bond movies to date and also noticeably the flabbiest. Too often the action is cut short with scenes of Largo and 007 talking, and these bits are just weird. After all, Bond’s opposition to the eyepatch wearing villain is pretty much established from their first meeting and yet they maintain a strange semblance of feigned friendliness in their conversation. Certainly, Largo is blase enough to let Bond carry on with Domino. We’re supposed to believe that she helps James because she’s Derval’s sister and the agent recruits her to the cause by telling her of his fate. By this late point, however, she’s fallen for him already, indeed there’s no question she’s his from the moment he pulls her flipper from a coral in their opening seconds together. Auger certainly makes for a comely Domino, but she’s no match for Fiona in terms of sex appeal and simperingly messes up the one favour Bond asks of her. This leads to one of Thunderball’s most unintentionally comic moments. Largo advances on her, wielding what looks like a cigarette and some ice cubes and explaining that ‘This for heat, these for cold, applied scientifically and slowly’ will lead to untold levels of pain. No please, make it stop! Then she’s rescued by a scientist who has hardly appeared in the film up to this point, no doubt a character whose scenes have nearly all been cut. It’s a bit of a mess, in truth, and just as bad as the film’s conclusion, which involves Largo’s boat heading at top speed towards a reef, which is rather clumsily represented by the outside footage being played quickly through the yacht windows.