Prince Valiant (1954) – Review

Hollywood loves a good swashbuckler and if it’s not Errol Flynn as Captain Blood duelling a nefarious Basil Rathbone then it’s Errol Flynn as Robin Hood duelling a nefarious Basil Rathbone – Hollywood is fond of sticking with what works – but no greater font of swordplay and action can be found than within the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Most movies based on the exploits of King Arthur and company derived their source material from the tales that Sir Thomas Mallory had collected for his book Le Morte d'Arthur but today we will be looking at a film that didn’t derive its subject matter from some dusty old tome but instead from a syndicated newspaper comic strip called Prince Valiant.

 Sadly, Errol Flynn will not be found swashing or buckling anything in this 20th Century Fox’s epic adventure film, in this instance we will have actor Robert Wagner donning a ridiculous Dutch bob haircut to face off against the nefarious James Mason. To say this was a bit of one-sided contest is a vast understatement with a horribly miscast Robert Wagner as Prince Valiant didn't stand a chance against the likes of James Mason. With an almost three million dollar budget the studio provided lavished sets, rousing action sequences and excellent location work in England but none of that could surmount the complete lack of charisma of the film's lead, even teaming him up with the amazing Sterling Hayden or the wonderful Janet Leigh couldn’t save this picture from being a bit of a cinematic dud.

 

“I would like to have a word with my agent.”

The Prince Valiant comic strip spanned over 4,000 Sunday strips so cutting that down into a movie under two hours was no easy matter – MGM had the property for years and failed to make this work – but in the mid-fifties, 20th Century Fox bought the rights to eight years of these published comic strip stories, but then only adapted a 1937 storyline. The basic plot of Prince Valiant deals with a Viking usurper called Usurper Sligon (Primo Carnera) forcing Prince Valiant (Robert Wagner) and his family to flee their kingdom of Scandia and seek refuge in Britain under the protection of King Arthur (Brian Aherne). While exiled Valiant is sent to Camelot to become a knight only to quickly find out that you actually have to earn a place at the Round Table, you can’t just ask for it because you’re a prince or something.

 

“Are you good with a lance?”

Valiant becomes squire to Sir Gawain (Sterling Hayden) and we spend a little time with him learning to wield a wooden sword and fall off his horse, yet Valiant has also caught the eye of Sir Brack (James Mason) who says he wants to help Valiant become a knight, but as he’s being played by James Mason we know he must of nefarious motives for doing so. Turns out there is this mysterious Black Knight riding around Britain stirring up trouble, Valiant even spots the Black Knight parlaying with Vikings belonging to the usurper Sligon, and when Sir Brack takes our young hero to “find” this Black Knight poor Valiant gets an arrow in his back for his troubles and is eventually captured by the Vikings.

 

Who could this black armoured nightmare be?

This film isn’t all horseplay and knightly shenanigans as it’s not a proper medieval adventure tale without a love interest and in the case of Prince Valiant we have the lovely Lady Aleta (Janet Leigh) who tends to our hero after getting that pesky arrow in his back.  She quickly falls in love with him – apparently, the Florence Nightingale Effect was alive and well in the Dark Ages – but we also have her younger sister Ilene (Debra Paget ), who is secretly in love with Sir Gawain, to complicate things. This all leads to some lame Three’s Company level of misunderstandings with Gawain believing that Aleta is in love with him while her sister is in love with Valiant, and being a complete and utter twit Valiant goes along with this misunderstanding because he doesn’t want to hurt his master’s feelings. It’s at this point we are praying for the Black Knight and his Viking compatriots to ride in and burn the place to the ground if only to ease our pain.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the Torpedo Bra was invented in 6th Century Britain?

Stray Observations:

• The wizard Merlin makes no appearance in this movie even though he was a regular character in the comic strip.
• Prince Valiant’s family sword is The Singing Sword, sadly it doesn’t do any singing at all.
• The swords used by Prince Valiant and Sir Brack looked so clunky and cheap looking I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been purchased from the local dollar store.
• This film upholds the Hollywood tradition of depicting Vikings with big dumb horned helmets.

 

Hagar the Horrible and friends.

There is some fun to be had in a viewing of 20th Century Fox’s Prince Valiant as the action sequences are fairly well handled – Prince Valiant pretty much burns down his family castle to defeat the usurping Vikings – and the pomp and pageantry of medieval fiction is all wonderfully constructed by the Fox studio artisans, and as much as a dud Robert Wagner was as Prince Valiant it’s a pure delight to watch James Mason poor on the scintillating charm with a dash of malevolence as Sir Brack.  This all goes towards making Prince Valiant an entertainingly fun ride, to say the least. This film may not be one of the better Arthurian based movies but the supporting cast has me give this one a passing recommendation.

 

P.S. Turns out that Sir Brack was the Black Knight all along. "Gasp!"

Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers (1987) – Review

With Scooby-Do Meets the Boo Brothers we get our first full-length Scooby-Doo movie, if we discount Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood as it was barely 49 minutes in length, but not only was this their first "real" movie it continued with the inclusion of real ghosts as part of the mystery, which we’d seen in the 1980s version of Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. Sadly, once again Fred, Velma and Daphne are missing and the movie is poorer for it,  love him or hate him Scrappy-Doo cannot properly replace the original members of Mystery Incorporated.

 This particular mystery starts out like many a Scooby-Doo adventure with one of the gang learning that they’ve inherited an estate – the gang has a lot of dying relatives – and in this case, it’s Shaggy’s Uncle Colonel Beauregard who has not only left him his whole estate but a hidden treasure of family jewels as well. This sends Scooby-Doo, Scrappy (Don Messick) and Shaggy (Casey Kasem) on a fright-filled adventure down south, where they will encounter an escaped circus ape, a variety of threats such as a big and nasty wolf, the ghost of Shaggy’s uncle, a floating skeleton and even a headless horseman.

 

Maybe he wants to see their driver’s permit?

As mysteries go the one that makes up Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers is of the lesser variety with it being more a scavenger hunt than an actual mystery.  At best we are trying to figure out who is behind the passel of ghosts chasing our heroes around. We do have a few suspects but the obvious one is that of the hunchbacked manservant Farquard (Arte Johnson), who makes no bones about him believing the family jewels belong to him, works as both a red herring as well as a secondary villain – he does take some of the jewels during the scavenger hunt – but we are also not given much in the way of other suspects to look at. We have Sheriff Rufus Buzby (Sorrell Booke) as the clichéd southern lawman, then there is Billy Bob Scroggins (William Callaway) who has a hillbilly hard-on for the Beauregard family, and finally, we have Sadie Mae Scroggins (Victoria Carroll ) who looks like an escapee from Li'l Abner and for some unfathomable reason has the hots for Shaggy. Now, aside from Farquad none of these individuals are given credible reasons for pretending to be ghosts and the final reveal is kind of a cheat.

 

Who could this nasty looking skeleton be?

Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy are somewhat aided in their endeavours by a trio of ghosts known as the Boo Brothers; Meako (Jerry Houser), Freako (Ronnie Schell) and Shreako (Rob Paulsen), who are brought into the fray when Scrappy gets the brilliant idea to call for ghost exterminators to aid them in their battle against this spectral army.  That they aren't fazed by fact that these “Ghost Busters” are ghosts themselves is a little odd. Sadly, this trio of ghostly numbskulls spend more time going "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" and bashing each other around the plantation then they do tackling the threat of the day. The Boo Brothers may share the title of this movie but they’re simply comic relief – we are using the word “comic” in the broadest sense of the word – and they add nothing to the story at hand. If these guys were to be some answer to the Ghostbusters I really wish Scrappy had just hung up the phone.

 

Dan Aykroyd’s lawyers will be in touch.

Stray Observations:

• Shaggy is wearing the red shirt he was last seen wearing in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.
• The Headless Horsemen is very on model with the one that appeared in Disney’s Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
• The Boo Brothers seem to be a hybrid of The Three Stooges and the Ghostly Trio from Casper the Friendly Ghost.
• Shaggy never questions why the ghost of his uncle would be trying to steal the jewels when his will clearly stated that he left them for him. Once dead did he think his uncle changed his mind?
• The witch is voiced by June Foray who is most notable for voicing Witch Hazel in Looney Tunes.
• The Confederate ghost chases our heroes around while riding a penny-farthing bicycle, which has to be the least threatening mode of transportation known to man.
• The character of Sadie-Mae Scroggins looks like she would be more at home in a Ralph Bakshi cartoon.

 

“Coffee, Tea or Me?”

Much of the humour to be found in Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers was certainly targeted at younger viewers – as this was a Saturday morning cartoon this is not surprising – but I was still impressed with not only the character designs of the ghost and beasties but of the riddles that our heroes had to solve to locate the hidden jewels, as these were puzzles that audiences of all ages could have fun trying to figure out, at least before the obnoxious Scrappy-Doo blurts out the answers. Overall, if you can get passed the annoying humour of both Scrappy and the Boo Brothers there is a lot of enjoyment to be had in this animated film.

 

Note: It’s sad when the fake ghosts are scarier than the real ones.

The Black Knight (1954) – Review

“There comes a time in every man’s life when he must fight for what he wants most,” and with those stirring words the adventures of The Black Knight begins, a film that wonderfully illustrates the dream of Camelot and the heroic ideal, unfortunately, aside from namechecking the likes of King Arthur and Guinevere there isn’t much on display here to mark this as an Arthurian movie and could have easily taken place at any point during the middle ages. That said let us slip back to the time of swords and gallantry when maidens were all beautiful, villains all nefarious and heroes always with the win at the end.

 The film’s protagonist is a renowned blacksmith and swordsmith by the name of John (Alan Ladd) who works for the Earl of Yeonil (Harry Andrews) but who is also secretly in love with his daughter the Lady Linet (Patricia Medina), and this is, of course, a forbidden love what with her being of noble birth while John of simple peasant stock, but like any star-crossed romance these two are doomed to be together and we the audience will just have to put up with eighty-minutes of obstacles being thrown in their way. The chief obstacle being the Earl of Yeonil himself, who walks in on the two lovers while they are passionately embraced, which results in John being sent away at the most inopportune time.

 

Not seen here is the apple box Alan Ladd is standing on.

Hollywood Trivia: Actress Patricia Medina was 5' 7½" while Alan Ladd was only 5' 6¼" so to create a heroic stature the camera could never show Ladd’s feet. If he was stationary he was usually standing on a box or if the scene required walking the other actors were in specially dug troughs or ditches. For everything else, the other actors were required to stand with their legs apart and their knees bent.

The main villain of this piece is the Saracen Sir Palamides (Peter Cushing) a Knight of the Round Table who is secretly in league with the pagan Cornish King Mark (Patrick Troughton) who desires Arthur’s throne as well as the extinction of Christianity. To aid in this endeavour Sir Palamides leads an attack of Cornish soldiers, disguised as Vikings, against the castle of Earl of Yeonil, killing all within except the Earl and his daughter Linet. The Earl is driven mad with grief and thus is unable to tell Linet that he had sent John away before the attack happened, this causes Linet to think her lover is nothing but a coward for running away. In fact, John returned in time to see Bernard (Bill Brandon), the brutish Saracen servant of Palamides, murder Linet’s mother. This leads to John accusing Palamides' servant of the murder in front of King Arthur (Anthony Bushell), which doesn’t go over all that well what with him being a commoner and all, but Arthur grants John three months' grace to prove the accusation or face execution himself.

 

Who wouldn’t trust Peter Cushing?

The noble Sir Ontzlake (André Morell) takes pity on John and trains him in swordplay so that he can take on the alternative secret identity of the wandering Black Knight, which they hope to use in uncovering the plot against King Arthur. Unfortunately, this spy work prevents John from immediately using his newfound sword skills against Palamides and thus his refusal to fight the evil bastard in a duel adds more evidence of his cowardice in both the eyes of Linet and that of the court, but as the heroic Black Knight he is able to rescue the lovely Linet from being sacrificed at Stonehenge.

Note: I’ll buy her not recognizing her old lover while wearing his helmet but when he speaks he does nothing to disguise his voice, so I call bullshit there.  Also, what's with the short sleeves with his armour?

What follows is your standard medieval adventure with the hero riding all over Christendom to thwart the villains and win the hand of the fair maiden. In the case of The Black Knight, we have a cast of veteran English actors who are more than up to the task inhabiting this bygone era but then we also have the very American Alan Ladd as the hero and this miscasting almost sinks the picture as he is never once believable as a knight of old.  Luckily the rest of the cast do their best to make up for this lacking – Peter Cushing especially fun as the cunning Saracen – and the exciting action sequences and medieval pageantry all go towards making this a rather fun adventure film.

 

As fun as a night out at Medieval Times.

Stray Thoughts:

• I haven’t seen an actor more out of place in a period film since I last watched Richard Gere in First Knight. Alan Ladd doesn’t even attempt to match the speech of his fellow castmates, who all give resonant Shakespearean deliveries and flourishes
• A blacksmith turned sword-wielding hero would rear its head once again in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
• The villains disguise themselves as Vikings by wearing the stereotypical horned helmet, something actual Vikings never wore.
• There actually was a Saracen knight of the Round Table named Palamedes but he was no villain as depicted here, in fact, he converted to Christianity and was actually the one to slay King Mark.
• Peter Cushing’s deaf and dumb henchman Bernard seems rather lifted from Zorro’s sidekick Bernardo, who played at being deaf so as to spy for his master.
• In literature, black knights were usually portrayed as villainous figures while this film turns that idea on its head.

 

Note: For someone called The Black Knight his outfit isn’t all that black.

As an Arthurian adventure tale The Black Knight barely checks off the boxes for it to be included in that category, aside from King Arthur, Guinevere and a barely mentioned Lancelot there isn’t much to tie this movie to the stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and they even took the noble Saracen Palamedes and turned him into a villain. Now, this kind of re-writing of history, fiction or not, was certainly nothing new to Hollywood but I’d hate to think Palamedes having brown skin had anything to do with the decision in making him the villain, but being this film was made in the 50s I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were the case.

Overall, The Black Knight is a passable medieval adventure movie, one that fans of the genre will most likely enjoy, sadly is the fact that it will be more remembered for the strange casting choice of Alan Ladd rather than for its action and pageantry.

 

Alan Ladd in “This Sword for Hire.”

Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood (1979) – Review

What exactly are the key ingredients for a good Scooby-Doo mystery? There should be a spooky locale for the gang to visit, some sort of ghost or monster and the requited comic shenanigans for our cowardly canine and friends to be caught up in, but most importantly, there should be a goddam mystery. Unfortunately, in Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood we have none of those things – there are comic shenanigans there just not all that funny – instead, we have a strangely meta-narrative that makes little to no sense.

 Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood

The first thing to realize while watching Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood is that for some strange reason this “movie” goes out of its way to point out that the Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoon was just a show and that the Scooby gang were all just actors. Were kids of the day clamouring for this kind of self-referential meta-humour? The basic premise of Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood is that Shaggy (Casey Kasem) and Scooby (Don Messick) have become dissatisfied with their roles as comedy players, with Scooby being typecast as a “Funny, cowardly, clumsy dog” stating to the head of the network (Rip Taylor) that they deserve better than being stars in what Shaggy considers a low-class Saturday morning show.

 

“First step, fire that idiot who came up with Scrappy-Doo.”

The structure of Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood follows a very repetitive theme with Shaggy and Scooby walking into the head of the studio’s office and showing him a pitch reel of one of their ideas to make Scooby a big star. This mostly consisted of brief Saturday Night Live type parody sketches of various shows like Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, Superman, The Sound of Music, Donny & Marie, The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels but the most these hack writers could come up with was just changing the names to stuff like "Scooby Days" and "The Sound of Scooby" as if that’s all you need to consider yourself a parody.

 

It takes more than this to qualify as a parody.

But lame jokes are far from the main problem here as this movie also fails to even understand its own premise. If Scooby-Doo was apparently tired of playing the “Funny, cowardly, clumsy dog” why do all these various pitches that depicted him as such? In the very first pitch we get “How Scooby Won West” a western that was apparently written, directed and stars Scooby-Doo but it then proceeded to show Scooby clumsily falling over things and running in terror from the villainous Jesse Rotten. Did Scooby not understand that the Jesse Rotten was only an actor playing a part and not actually a bad guy? Was his falling over everything in sight from the script or could they not afford retakes?

 

Blazing Saddles this is not

Throughout this entire movie, we are bombarded with Scooby-Doo’s standard comic antics that make no sense in the context of the story they are trying to tell. Sure, you still need these pitches to be funny but the jokes shouldn’t rely on those old Scooby tropes, something new and clever should have been tried.

Stray Observations:

• This is the first Scooby-Doo movie but at a mere 49 minutes in length, it can barely be called such.
• Fred, Daphne and Velma don’t seem all that concerned that Scooby quitting means they are all out of work. Velma is all about, “We have to get him back, for his own good.” That’s a lot of concern for someone who left you all in the lurch.
• In a flashback we learn that is was Velma who picked Scooby-Doo from the pet store. Wasn’t Scooby always Shaggy’s sort of pet?
• The clips used from episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! only makes us wish we were watching that show instead of this thing.
• Even in fantasy dream sequences, Scooby-Doo is a klutz, which means he must have some really deep-seated inferiority complex issues.
• For some reason their parody of The Fonz from Happy Days has him wearing a pink jacket and purple pants.

 

Is that an attempt at comedy or simply bad character design?

Lame attempts at parody aside the film also give us four musical numbers that range from sad to painfully bad. There’s a Sonny and Cher number that goes on for seemingly ever and without even a slight attempt at being funny. Sadly, humour across the board is pretty much absent throughout Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood but worse is the fact that this movie was never clear if the Scooby-Doo cartoons were supposed to be fictional or if they were based on the real adventures of the Scooby gang, then add to that the complete waste of Fred, Daphne and Velma and you have one of the worst entries in the Scooby-Doo franchise.

Note: The only joke I found even remotely funny was one exchange between Daphne and Velma.

Daphne: “I'm not sure I understand my motivation in this next scene, Velma.”
Velma: “Come on, Daphne. How much motivation do you need to run from the Crabby Creature from Creepy Crag?”

Knights of the Round Table (1953) – Review

Though credited as being based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur Richard Thorpe’s Knights of the Round Table bares but a passing resemblance to Malory’s collection of Arthurian tales, instead of covering the numerous exploits of Arthur and his knights this movie focuses almost solely on the forbidden love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere.

Knights of the Round Table begins at the Chapel of the Sword where two parties claim right to rule all of England, on one side we have Arthur Pendragon (Mel Ferrer), son of the late King Uther, and on the other is his half-sister Morgan le Fay (Anne Crawford) and her knight champion Modred (Stanley Baker), who is neither Arthur’s incestuous son or even his nephew as he’s been depicted in different versions of the Arthurian tale.   Morgan maintains that as she is the only legitimate offspring of the late king that the throne belongs to Modred, and I’m not exactly sure how that argument works.  If this version of Modred is just Morgan Le Fay’s champion and boy toy then how in the hell is he the rightful king?

 

“My boyfriend should be king, he’s so dreamy.”

Setting aside the issue of bloodlines and rightful succession to the throne Merlin (Felix Aylmer) moves on to the classic “Sword in the Stone” test to determine England's rightful ruler. Modred fails to pull Excalibur free and when Arthur easily rests the blade from the stone Modred accuses Merlin of witchcraft and demands a meeting at the Council of the Ring of Stones, where all the other tribal kings will decide if “One man shall rule them all.” Then in a bizarre twist Merlin orders Arthur to return Excalibur to the stone, telling him that he must prove himself worthy of the throne by his deeds.

So what was the bloody point of the whole Sword in the Stone test? Like many movies based on the Arthurian myth, magic is pretty much absent here and Merlin mostly fills the role of royal advisor, Morgan Le Fay is not an evil enchantress and the magical sword Excalibur is mostly forgotten.

 

“Put that silly thing away.”

As Arthurian movies go Knights of the Round Table works mostly as an episodic soap opera, one that is occasionally punctuated with sword fighting. We get introduced to those who will be become Arthur’s faithful knights; the French Knight Lancelot (Robert Taylor) – minus any semblance of a French accent – Gawain (Robert Urquhart) and Percival (Gabriel Woolf) who support Arthur against Modred, and an assembly of rival kings and general asshats to help fill out the cast. Once all of Modred’s forces are defeated Arthur calls for a truce and accepts all "enemy" knights to join the court of Camelot, which pisses off Lancelot who wants to gut the vile Modred where he stands. Lancelot storms off telling Arthur, “While that man lives I will not pay you homage,” but this tiff among friends is rather brief and only servers to separate them long enough for Lancelot to run into Guinevere (Ava Gardner) on his own, this so that he can become her champion.

 

“Let’s hook up and bring down a kingdom.”

It’s at this point that melodrama aspects of the film kicks into high gear with Morgan and Modred figuring out that Guinevere and Lancelot are in love, a perfect tool to divide Arthur’s knights, but when Merlin learns of this he advises Guinevere to break it off and convince Lancelot to marry the fair lady Elaine (Maureen Swanson) and ride off to guard the northern border from the murderous Picts. While there Lancelot mostly broods over his lost love but then Elaine eventually dies in childbirth thus Lancelot freeing him up for more evil manipulations by Morgan le Fay and company, who have murdered poor Merlin to stop his pesky meddling.

 

This is how the great wizard Merlin goes out, seriously?

What follows hits a few of the Arthurian highpoints; the affair is discovered, Lancelot and Guinevere are condemned to death but their sentence being commuted by Arthur, and Lancelot being banished from England while Guinevere is sent off to a nunnery.  This all gives Modred grounds to lead a civil war against Arthur and his faithful knights.

Knights of the Round Table does have a good sense of pageantry, not to mention being the first MGM film to be shot in CinemaScope, but most of the acting in this film comes across as either quite pompous and stilted or laughably overdramatic. We do get a fair amount of medieval action in this film but the battles are rather clumsy affairs and most examples of swordplay found here look about as convincing as eight-year-olds hacking at each other with sticks.

 

“Get on home, your mother’s calling you!”

Stray Thoughts:

• Both Merlin and Morgan le Fay are barely characters in this film, neither one shows any magical abilities and once Merlin is poisoned out of the picture Morgan le Fay is basically window dressing for Modred’s villainy.
• Elaine in Arthurian mythology tricks Lancelot into believing that she is Guinevere, and he sleeps with her. The ensuing pregnancy results in the birth of his son, Galahad. This movie’s version of Elaine is closer to that of Elayne of Ascolat, who dies of her unrequited love for Sir Lancelot.
• Though we do get the birth of Galahad in this movie he’s never seen beyond being a baby and it’s Percival who is the chosen finder of the Holy Grail rather than Galahad as in the Arthurian mythology.
• The hero of this film is clearly Lancelot’s horse Berrick, who is constantly saving his master’s life by either bringing him a much-needed weapon or pulling his sorry ass out of some predicament or other.

 

He’d be better off working for the Lone Ranger.

The only real standout performance in this film is that of Stanley Baker as Mordred, he seems to really relish the part of the villain but everyone else in the cast seems rather disconnected and when you’re dealing with one of the most famous love triangles in history having three lead actors looking about as engaged as if they were in a queue at the DMV that’s bit of a problem. Richard Thorpe’s Knights of the Round Table is far from the worst adaptations of the Arthurian myth but with all its splendour and pageantry it still couldn’t make this entry more than a mildly interesting affair.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949) – Review

Of all the stories of King Arthur one of the most adapted has to be the Mark Twain novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a tale of a modern American who finds himself thrown back through time to 6th-century England. This particular story has seen almost every possible form of adaptation, from radio play to Bugs Bunny cartoon, but the most well-known version would be the 1949 musical adaptation starring Bing Crosby.

The movie follows the basic structure of Mark Twain’s book with Hank Martin (Bing Crosby), an American blacksmith turned auto-mechanic, who is knocked out and wakes up in the time of King Arthur. After awakening under an oak tree, Hank is surprisingly accosted by a mounted knight, Sir Sagramore (William Bendix), who accuses Hank of being a monster and then drags him to the Court of Camelot. Now, I’m not saying Bing Crosby’s attire in this movie is all that stylish but it’s certainly not monstrous, which makes this whole sequence rather ridiculous. In the book, he’s just challenged to a joust for the simple crime of being a weirdly dressed stranger but in the movie it makes Sir Sagramore come across as a buffoon.

 

The Road to Camelot sure is dangerous.

Hank is brought before King Arthur (Cedric Hardwicke) and is quickly accused of being a shape-shifting ogre and sentenced to burn at the stake, but with the judicious use of a piece of glass and the sun Hank is able to create fire and impress the local nobility. This does not sit well with Merlin (Murvyn Vye), Arthur’s scheming court magician, and between him and Morgan le Fay (Virginia Field) the two put into motion a plot to get rid of Hank. This scheme hinges on the discovery of the budding romance between Hank and King Arthur’s niece Alisande la Carteloise (Rhonda Fleming), who is betrothed to Lancelot (Henry Wilcoxon), a jealous knight who challenges Hank to a duel to the death. Due to Hank’s calf-roping skills - which all auto-mechanics apparently have - this plan fails and the jousting Lancelot soon finds himself hogtied and defeated, but the humiliation of such a noble knight causes Alisande to turn her back on Hank.

 

Hank is the winner of the Camelot Stampede.

Paramount’s musical take on Mark Twain’s novel is only slightly above being an “In name only” adaptation, we do get Hank taking a disguised King Arthur out into his kingdom so as to show the monarch the true wretched condition of his subjects, but the film completely misses the satiric elements of Twain’s story. At most this movie makes fun of monarchy, with Arthur being an inept rule who is manipulated by the likes of Merlin, but the book also questioned the ideals of capitalism and the outcome of the Industrial Revolution and the power of the church. Gone is Hank industrializing the country behind the backs of the rest of the ruling class, gone are the secret schools which taught modern ideas and modern English to the peasantry and thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts, and gone is Hank’s continued debunking of all the alleged sorcerers and miracle-working church officials.  Talk about a film missing the point of the source material.

 

Note: This is one of the rare Arthurian stories where Merlin is the villain.

Stray Thoughts:

• In the novel, the knight who first encountered Hank was Sir Kay but for some reason it was changed to the lesser-known Knight of the Round Table, Sir Sagramore. A knight who in the book is eventually shot to death by Hank.
• In the book, it was an upcoming solar eclipse that Hank used to impress the court but in this movie that is saved for the last act when he, Arthur and Sagramore are to be executed as escaping slaves.
• This is another King Arthur movie that includes Merlin and Morgan le Fay but does not have actual magic as an element.  Even weirder is seeing Merlin and Morgan le Fay as partners in crime.
• The songs in this version are, as a whole, fairly forgettable and this is probably due to the fact that the studio was not allowed to use the songs from the original stage musical.
• Like most movies depicting medieval life the filmmaker chose weaponry and devices that did not exist in the 6th century – battlemented castles, full plate armour and a spyglass – but the film leaves out most of the devices that time travelling Hank did create, such as modern tools, weapons and even the telephone.
• I will freely admit that Bing Crosby had an excellent singing voice but as a romantic lead, he always left me rather cold.

 

It’s like watching your creepy uncle hit on your older sister.

I guess one could not expect to see the breadth and scope of Twain’s satiric story to make its way into a what was basically a light musical comedy – and I use the word “comedy” in the broadest sense of the word as there isn’t much one could quantify as funny in this film – but with the tepidly performed songs and the cheap sets and costuming there isn’t much in this adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to recommend, at most this film can be considered a novelty piece and shelved alongside the many other lesser Hollywood versions of Arthurian stories.

Note: Funnily enough my favourite adaptation of Twain's story is the Disney film Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979).

The Night Eats the World (2018) – Review

Most zombie films deal with a small ragtag group of survivors trying to stay alive during a zombie apocalypse, from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead to Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland, but with Dominque Rocher’s The Night Eats the World we have a story deals with the idea of one man being alone in the land of the dead and what effect that would have on the mind.

 In Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend we had a lone protagonist in a world of the undead, though in Matheson’s case it was vampires not zombies, but what if our “hero” wasn’t venturing out in the hopes of finding a cure or other survivors?  What if he had just decided to stay inside and play with his drum kit instead? This is the basic premise of The Night Eats the World where we have our protagonist Sam (Anders Danielsen Lie), a musician living in Paris, who drops by his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to recover some tapes and ends up passing out in one of the apartment’s backrooms and thus sleeping through the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse.

 

He must be one helluva heavy sleeper.

Upon discovering the apartment trashed and bloodied it soon becomes apparent that some kind of zombie outbreak has occurred – he finds his ex-girlfriend zombified and hanging outside the apartment – but once securing himself back inside the apartment he more than just retreats from the threat of the dead but from everything else as well.

These zombies are of the fast-moving variety vis-à-vis 28 Days Later and World War Z, so his reticent to leave the safety of the apartment, is understandable, he even witnesses a family trying to escape by car being torn apart by the zombie horde, but he never really tries to make contact with possible survivors. Sam spends much of his time exploring the apartment building, one that is surprisingly occupied by very few zombies.  There is a family of three zombies he locks in their apartment and a zombified elderly man in the building's lift, and they offer no real threat, but once he’s collected food and a shotgun he basically just settles in to wait. But what exactly is he waiting for?

 

Is he hoping Brad Pitt will show up?

The Night Eats the World is not an adrenalin-fueled zombie movie with characters battling through hordes of the undead; instead we have Sam sitting around his flat figuring out how to make improvised musical instruments out of toys and wine glasses. It’s clear that director Dominque Rocher was more interested in making an introspective zombie film than that of an action movie, one that would tackle the mental fallout of being alone in the world of the dead. As time passes we see Sam become increasingly lonely and unhinged, so desperate for company that engages in rather one-sided conversations with the zombie trapped in the lift, and he even risks life and limb to capture a stray cat he sees wandering outside the apartment building. Things get so bad that at one point, after looking outside and seeing that all the zombies have wandered away, he goes into a violent drum solo to lure the zombies back.

 

He’s now bigger than The Beatles.

The zombies of Rocher’s film are unique with their silent snarling aspect and only becoming animated when prey is spotted, but their tendency to wander off as if bored is easily their strangest quality. That an apartment building the size of the one we see here results only in a few of zombies hanging around is a bit of a stretch, all the rests apparently having just buggered off, and this is probably the most unbelievable aspect of this movie, but this is most likely the case because Sam is clearly not the kind of guy who would be capable of “cleaning” an infested building of hordes of zombies.  Sam is more the sort who closes a door and pretends their not there. This facet of his character will make him a protagonist that many viewers will have a hard time getting behind but actor Anders Danielsen Lie manages to bring enough heart and pathos to Sam that we truly do want to see him somehow survive his situation. He may not be your typical zombie bashing hero but he’s probably one of the more realistic.

 

If I saw this out my window I'd just poop my pants.

Without an ensemble cast director Dominque Rocher is still able to create an engaging and innovative zombie film one that challenges the viewer’s assumptions of “What you would do to survive?” and then along with the superb directing and excellent performances the film’s visuals and a musical score all work to capture Sam’s descent into a state of unhinged apathy. The Night Eats the World may not be every zombie movie fans cup of tea but I found it’s quiet and unrelenting horror to be just what the doctor ordered.

The Battery (2012) – Review

A question that often comes to mind when watching a zombie movie is “How would I personally make out if there were an actual zombie outbreak?” As most of us aren’t Woody Harrelson or Brad Pitt the odds of surviving such an event would be greatly reduced, unless you were lucky enough to be living in the Arctic or some other sparsely populated area, and thus it’s films like Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery that gives us a little more insight into how the "Average Joe" could survive the zombie apocalypse.

 This particular zombie movie follows the adventures of Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) two former minor league ballplayers who have formed a partnership not so much out of friendship but out of proximity and pure necessity. Ben is the “Alpha Male” of this pairing and is basically the only reason Mickey is still alive and we learn that at one point they were trapped in a house in Massachusetts, along with Mickey's family, for three months before the place was eventually overrun by zombies and Mickey’s family was killed.  Ben is the zombie killer while Mickey tends to spend his time listening to his CD player with headphones on as if trying to shut out the unpleasantness of their zombie reality.  And just how divorced from reality is this guy?  Well, he even gets excited when a scratch lotto ticket tells him he’s one a thousand bucks.

 

Now if only society could rebuild so he can collect.

Mickey desperately wants some semblance of a normal life and this leads to many arguments between him and Ben who is the more pragmatic of the two. Since the events with Mickey’s family, Ben refuses the idea of sleeping indoors and insists that they live like a shark, constantly moving or end up dead, but this scavenging lifestyle is clearly not something Mickey is happy with and when, by happenstance, they find a pair of walkie-talkies and make contact with a group called “The Orchard” Mickey is all for tracking this group down despite being told they will not be welcomed and not to look for them.

Mickey becomes obsessed with finding this group, making brief contact with a member named Anna (Alana O'Brien) who tells him “You’ve got to let this go” and that “This place is not what you think it is” but these cryptic warnings are not enough to deter Mickey and his hopes for some return to normalcy.

 

Mickey is not a well-adjusted survivor.

Ben makes fun of Mickey’s fantasies, saying that he has made Anna into some kind of “Post-apocalyptic pixie girl with a gun on her hip, and a maybe a garter and a scar so well placed that it shows how tough she is but doesn’t fuck up her face” but that she is more than likely to be “A softball coach with a mullet and calves like canned hams.” Unfortunately, Mickey doesn’t take this to heart and his desire to sleep in a bed instead of a station wagon will lead this pair down a dangerous path. Lucky for us the film isn’t all doom and gloom and we get some rather nice moments of camaraderie as well as some laugh out loud moments, such as Ben catching Mickey masturbating to a hot zombie being a particular highlight, and with a mere $6,000 dollar budget Gardner is able to create a surprising realistic zombie apocalypse.

 

Discount zombie hordes for all your end of the world needs.

The world of The Battery could easily exist within that of AMC’s The Walking Dead, with The Orchard being another human outpost run by the likes of The Governor or Negan, but this also makes The Battery seem almost like a pilot for a spin-off series as it the film's ending leaves us with more questions than answers. Overall, I found this zombie outing to be a nice breath of fresh air, it’s low budget production giving the proceedings a certain charm, and the performances by our two leads were both engaging as well as endearing. The film’s open ending may upset some viewers but I’d rather be left wanting more than have the movie wear out its welcome. If you are a fan of the zombie genre Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery is well worth tracking down.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) – Review

The key to a successful spoof is in the complete understanding of the genre being lampooned, Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein being perfect examples of this concept, but the greatest achievement in this area is none other than Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which the Python gang set their sites on the self-importance and pomposity of the Arthurian legend. For decades Hollywood had been giving audiences lavish spectacles of knights in armour fighting over beautifully clad damsels, extolling the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, so in 1975 it was a perfect time for five Brits and an American to take a piss out of the whole thing.

Having found success on television with Monty Python’s Flying Circus the Pythoners decided to take a stab at the big screen with a movie called And Now for Something Completely Different, which was basically a collection of their best sketches, and then the idea of a knight miming he was riding a horse while a trusted servant would knock together coconuts, to mimic a horse's clomping sound, slowly grew into a feature film. As was the case in Monty Python's Flying Circus the members of this comedy troupe assumed numerous roles – with Michael Palin playing 12 characters while animator and co-director Terry Gilliam popped up in several bizarre incarnations – but the chief roles were that of King Arthur (Graham Chapman), Lancelot (John Cleese), Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones), Sir Galahad (Michael Palin) and Sir Robin the Brave (Eric Idle) as they romped across Britain – though filmed in Scotland – in their quest for the Holy Grail.

Science Note: Do not take any of this film's information on swallows, European or otherwise, to be scientifically accurate, though their stance on moose is pretty spot on.

Though Monty Python and the Holy Grail was a departure from the random sketch aspect found on their television show, with the Holy Grail having a core central theme and not being just a collection of favourite bits, but the movie still relied heavily on that familiar sketch format. The film’s basic story was that of the Search for the Holy Grail but that was really only the framework to which the Pythoners could then attach various medieval-themed sketches. Arthur and company would confront some stereotypical rude French knights who, when asked if they wish to join the quest for the Holy Grail, claim “We’ve already got one” and Arthur's skirmish with the Black Knight “No man shall pass” as well as Sir Bedivere trying to save Connie Booth from being burned alive as a witch. Then there was Sir Robin avoiding a fight with a Three-Headed Knight by bravely running away, while Sir Galahad the Chaste was being lured into Castle Anthrax by a bevy of nubile and amorous young ladies. Arthur and Bedivere receive an uncomfortable challenge from the Knights Who Say Ni! “Bring us a shrubbery” and Lancelot’s has an over-enthusiastic rescue of someone he thought to be a lady being forced to marry against her will. We also get some nice bits of animation by Terry Gilliam that adds an extra bit of fantasy to the world on display here.

Stray Thoughts:

• I would dearly have loved to have seen the Python version of the Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot love triangle, with perhaps Terry Jones as Guinevere.
• Graham Chapman’s stolid and dignified performance as King Arthur is what grounds the comedy.
• The brutal and bloody sword fighting in this movie is more accurate than the dozen or so Hollywood films about the Middle Ages that preceded it.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail wonderfully depicts the time period as being an unpleasant and much-filled world.
• Though we do get John Cleese as “Tim the Enchanter” there is no Merlin in this Arthurian tale.

 

“They call me…Tim.”

If the film is said to have a weakness it would be in the ending as Monty Python and the Holy Grail doesn’t really have one, at least not a fully satisfactory one. The film was originally scripted to have King Arthur and his knights discovering the Holy Grail in Harrod's Department Store “They have everything here” but this idea was abandoned when the focus of the film shifted from consisting of 50% Middle Ages and 50% Modern Times to be entirely about its medieval setting. We still get a “Famous Historian” being killed by a passing Lancelot, whose wife immediately notifies the local constabulary, but that was just to set up for the entire cast being arrested by the police at the end of the film as if they were nothing but a bunch of crazed Ren fair enthusiasts.

 

Possibly under arrest for going over budget?

That all said Monty Python and the Holy Grail is still one of the funniest films ever made and though its bizarre sensibilities may not be to everyone’s taste it’s hard to deny this movie being a comedy classic, and if you don't laugh throughout this movie you may want to see a doctor as it's possible you are missing a sense of humour.

If one is looking for a laugh-filled journey through the world of Arthurian folklore there are certainly worse tour guides than the men of Monty Python, and I would stack this film up against many of the other so-called “prestige pictures” that take on the same subject matter, and if not the greatest comedy of all time it’s certainly one of the most quotable.