Mysterious Island (1961) – Review

When it came to adapting fantastical pieces of literature into cinematic achievements the team of producer Charles Schneer and legendary visual effects man Ray Harryhausen had proven to be very successful and with their previous two collaborations, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, having done rather well in the fantasy category they decided that for their third time working together they would tackle one of the works by science fiction legend Jules Verne, in what could be best described as a “loosely based” adaptation of his novel Mysterious Island.

Much as it does in the book the movie takes place during the Civil War and opens with a group of Union soldiers escaping a military prison in Virginia, the escapees include Captain Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig), Herbert Brown (Michael Callan) and Corporal Neb Nugent (Dan Jackson), as well as a Union war correspondent named Gideon Spillet (Gary Merrill), who provides the film much of its colour commentary, and their plan hinges on their ability to fight off the Confederate guards and steal an observation balloon that they spotted moored just outside the prison gates. Sure, it’s a bit of a “Hail Mary” as plans go but it does work and soon the group is floating across America, along with a Confederate guard named Pencroft (Percy Herbert), who they don’t toss overboard simply because he can apparently operate the balloon. Now, when it comes to prison escapes timing is everything, unfortunately, for our band of heroes they timed their escape during the worst storm in recorded history and they are soon blown clear across the country and into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are spared death by drowning when the balloon carries them near the shore of an unknown island.

 

Looking at this island I’d be more worried about dinosaurs and giant gorillas.

It’s at this point in the novel where the plot becomes much more of a straight survival adventure story with nary a fantastic element to be found, the castaways spend most of their time making their new home habitable and they even domestic an orangutan, but it’s a mysterious benefactor that leaves our group puzzled, one who will occasionally step in to save one of protagonists lives or leave behind materials like guns and tools that would help them to survive. Now, in the case of the movie, there is a mysterious benefactor as well, one who comes to our heroes aid from time to time, but the other notable inhabitants of this island are the large variety of giant creatures – more’s the pity they don’t befriend an orangutan in the movie – and it’s these monstrous encounters that let us know that this island is located in Ray Harryhausen territory.

 

Note: Early drafts of the script had the island inhabited by dinosaurs but when director Cy Endfield became attached it was changed to embiggened animals.

Giant crabs and the like were not the only addition Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen brought to this adaptation because anyone familiar with the works of Jules Verne can attest to the lack of the female of the species and this "lacking" element is something Hollywood is always “fixing” when they bring Verne's stories to the big screen. With this movie it comes in the form of two English ladies, Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her niece Elena (Beth Rogan), who were apparently shipwrecked by the same storm our heroes were caught in, and not only do these lovely ladies add a bit of “Damsel in Distress” action the young Elena provides your standard love interest. Clearly, being marooned on a mysterious island populated by giant creatures isn’t enough to keep an audience interested.

 

“Mr. Schneer, would it possible to get one of those women into a primitive mini-skirt?”

As in both book and movie, it is later revealed that their mysterious benefactor is none other than the notorious Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom), who had survived the events of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but wherein the book Nemo is portrayed as an old man living out his days aboard his submarine the Nautilus but in the movie we find Nemo living aboard his disabled submarine where we learn that he has been performing genetic experiments to enlarge the world's food resources, which is what resulted in the giant animals roaming the island, and when he informs them that the island is due to suffer a massive volcanic eruption he puts forth his plan to refloat the pirate ship – which he sank when it attacked our heroes – unfortunately, time is not on their side.

 

Note: Though Harryhausen has denied it, the design of his Nautilus was clearly influenced by the one featured in the 1954 Disney film as they both have that "half crocodile/half-shark" look that Harper Goff used in his design for Disney’s Nautilus.

Stray Observations:

• The opening credits state “Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo” which is a bit of a spoiler for those not familiar with the book.
• The Confederate officer is allowed to live so that he can pilot the balloon but the only control a balloonist has is when to release the tether, and that’s only to go up or down, so I’m not sure how needed this “pilot” really was.
• The balloon travels roughly seven thousand miles which is impossible for a hot air balloon that clearly has no way to keep the air in the balloon hot.
• Our castaways crossing a perilous log was a definite nod to the 1933 classic King Kong where a group of sailors had the misfortune of using such a bridge.
• When Herbert and Elena enter the giant beehive they only encounter one singular bee while exiting, which begs the question "Were all the worker bees on a coffee break?"
• Nemo sinks the pirate vessel but none of the pirates make it to shore, in the book six pirates survived but were killed by Nemo and his electric gun, this is not the case in the movie so are we to believe that not one of the pirates could swim?
• While trekking underwater our heroes pass by what looks to be the ruins of Atlantis, such ruins appeared in the 1960 adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, but it should be noted that Atlantis was never featured in either of the books by Jules Verne.
• While trying to raise the sunken pirate ship they are attacked by a giant cephalopod because what kind of sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea would it be without a tentacled terror.

 

Maybe this is what killed all the pirates.

This film was one of the most successful offerings from Schneer and Harryhausen and much of that is most assuredly due to the fantastic stop-motion creations of Harryhausen and while it might not have the full production values of the Disney feature that preceded it none can deny it lacked fun and adventure at every turn. Actor Herbert Lom wonderfully fills the shoes of Captain Nemo and his stoic performance of this rather complex character I’d say was on par with James Mason’s turn as the doomed commander, as for the rest of the cast, the likes of Michael Craig and company all provide classic caricatures of stalwart heroes and beautiful ladies and they do their best to look more interesting than Ray Harryhausen’s creations – which is a pretty much impossible job – and when the end credits roll one cannot deny that you have experienced a fun fantasy-filled adventure brought to us by the combination of one of literature's greatest writers and one of cinema’s greatest effects wizard.

 

Jules Verne and Ray Harryhausen both brought us some wonderful adventures.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – Review

After George Lazenby abruptly left the series, following his one and only outing as agent 007 in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli tried to find a new Bond replacement but United Artists had decided that Sean Connery was needed back to save the franchise and with a then-record $1.25 million salary offered for his return Connery was back as Bond, James Bond.

This seventh Bond entry is another mostly in-name-only adaptation of Ian Fleming’s book, in the novel Bond was tasked with uncovering and infiltrating a smuggling ring and while undercover as a house burglar turned smuggler Peter Franks he meets up with an attractive gang member named Tiffany Case, a woman who had developed a strong antipathy towards men after being gang-raped as a teenager. Needless to say, this doesn’t stop Bond from falling in love with her or her with Bond and the two manage to topple the smuggling operation. In the book, there is no part for Blofeld or SPECTRE and their inclusion here is an attempt to keep the “Supervillain” motif alive in the franchise as we clearly can’t have Bond involved in anything as low stakes as diamond smuggling, so the screenwriters had to bring in Blofeld and space-based laser weapons.

 

“Don’t bother me with details, this script needs more lasers!”

While taking the smuggling element from the novel, as well as a couple of characters, the movie version of Diamonds Are Forever finds James Bond (Sean Connery) on the hunt for Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray), who we see kill during the pre-credit sequence, but as it’s hard to keep a good villain down the movie introduces the plot device of Blofeld having several look-a-likes for Bond to kill. With Blofeld presumed dead ‘M’ (Bernard Lee) tasks Bond to head to Amsterdam to uncover a smuggling ring that could be stockpiling diamonds to depress the prices. Sure, hurting the economy is bad but not all that exciting so the movie really amps things up with the diamonds being used in the construction of a laser satellite, because of course we have to have a laser satellite, and while impersonating a smuggler by the name of Peter Franks (Joe Robinson) he encounters Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) who is to help smuggle the diamonds into the United States.

 

“Don't make me search for those diamonds the hard way, Miss Case.”

Throughout the film anyone who comes in contact with the diamonds are brutally murdered by a pair of homosexual assassins named Mister Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mister Kidd (Putter Smith), whose sexuality is in this film has nothing to do with the plot but a holdover from the novel and isn’t the best representation of the gay community, but what’s almost more distressing is how bad they are at their job. We see them quickly kill off numerous targets but when it comes to Bond they decided on elaborate methods to dispose of him rather than simply putting a bullet into his head, which puts them in the category of worst Bond henchmen. Now, I know it’s a Bond flick and the “Talking killer” cliché is king in this franchise but things reach new levels here as not only do these professional killers fail to end Bond but Blofeld himself has Bond at his mercy twice and fails to simply pull the trigger.

 

“I could kill you right now but then I’d be up all night filling out SPECTRE paperwork.”

Stray Observations:

• In this film Blofeld is being portrayed by Charles Gray who had already appeared in You Only Live Twice as Bond’s MI6 contact Henderson, were Donald Pleasence or Telly Savalas not available?
• When Bond plants his own I.D. on the body of smuggler Peter Grant we get Tiffany Case exclaiming “You just killed James Bond?” This begs the question, just how well known is James Bond if even someone like a random smuggler would recognize the name?
• Poor Plenty O’Toole is the rare Bond girl who dies at the hands of the villains but who doesn’t actually get to sleep with Bond first, is that progress?
• While sneaking around the Willard Whyte’s Tectronics facility Bond uses a Scottish accent, which is a cute little bit considering actor Sean Connery is actually Scottish.
• Bond has been subjected to many death traps over the years but Wint and Kidd stuffing him in a section of a yet to be buried pipeline has to be one of the dumbest yet. For this plan to work it would rely on none of the construction workers seeing the obviously unconscious man lying inside the pipe or Bond waking up before it was buried. Even with those two somewhat implausible things happening Bond is still able to escape this “Death Trap” with relative ease.
• Tiffany recognizes Blofeld passing through the casino while in drag, which is odd considering she’s never met him before in or out of women’s clothing.
• Blofeld’s base of operations for the space laser is an offshore oil rig, which is the location our heroes have learned, yet instead of launching an immediate airstrike they have Bond show up at the facility in the hope that he can quietly switch out the control tapes. What’s sad here is that he actually fails to switch tapes and the facility is then destroyed by American attack helicopters, making Bond’s entire involvement in the film’s conclusion completely irrelevant.

 

Why was this not plan “A” is a mystery.

Overall, Diamonds Are Forever is a rather lacklustre outing for the franchise and not helped by the fact that Sean Connery was displaying a Dad-Bod at the time and was probably in the worst shape of his career, then the film also fails to provide much in the way of great Bond action – this is mostly due to how much of the budget went to Connery’s salary – and though the moon buggy chase from Willard Whyte’s facility was fun it wasn’t anything special. But to me, the most damning element was in the casting of Charles Gray as Blofeld when they could have easily used Telly Savalas as that would have made Bond’s desire to hunt him down more personal as this was the man who killed Bond’s wife at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, as is, we get Charles Gray giving us a campy Bond villain, one who was about as threatening as Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the Batman television show.

 

“Take this audition tape and burn it.”

The film does, at least, have a rousing John Barry score and I found Jill St. John to be one of the better Bond girls as she shows a bit more spunk and fire than most – though the film does undercut this by turning her into a ditz during the climax – and the plot about nuclear blackmail and space lasers is not only ridiculous but scientifically inaccurate as,  apparently, no one told the screenwriters that you can’t make a laser out of diamonds, and Connery was clearly in this for the paycheck which he did give to charity, so that’s nice, but altogether this resulted in a less than engaging Bond adventure. Diamonds Are Forever isn’t the worst of the Bond films it’s just guilty of a little too much camp and not enough sensibility in the screenwriting department.

 

“I’ll see you all in eleven years for Never Say Never Again.”

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) – Review

One thing should be made perfectly clear; Brendan Fraser is no James Mason, there, I said it and will stand by that undeniable fact to the end of time. The classic Jules Verne adventure tale of man’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was first adapted to the big screen back in 1959, with James Mason in the starring role and the likes of Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl providing back-up, but five decades later Hollywood’s latest crack at the classic would take a more comedic turn with star Brendan Fraser in the leading role in the hopes of re-igniting the magic that made the 1999 remake of The Mummy turn out so well.

The interesting thing about 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is that it is not an adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, in fact, it's the author and his book that inspire the characters of this movie on their journey of discovery. In this particular adventure tale, we follow Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) a Bostonian volcanologist whose older brother Max (Jean Michel Paré) went missing years ago and is now presumed dead and since then Trevor has been keeping his memory and geological theories alive while running his brother’s research facility at the local university. This becomes difficult when he is informed by Professor Alan Kitzens (Seth Meyers) that the funding for his brother’s lab is being pulled.

 

Did I mention this movie was filmed in startling 3D?

Like most movie scientists Trevor is of the absentminded variety and thus he had forgotten that his sister-in-law would be dropping off his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson), though after meeting the kid I'd try and forget about him as well, but along with Josh she drops off a box of items that belonged to Max and in that box is a copy of the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and inside the book he finds notes written by his late brother that leads him to believe that the answers to Max’s theories lie somewhere in Iceland. Needless to say, Sean is able to convince his uncle to bring him along on this journey of discovery, it was his dad’s mission after all, and they eventually team up with local guide Hannah Ásgeirsson (Anita Briem) whose father was a "Vernian" like Sean’s dad was, as in people who believed that the works of Jules Verne were more science fact than science fiction, and she agrees to be their guide for a hefty hourly rate.

 

“Just promise me that if you find the Book of the Dead you won’t read it.”

What follows is a series of adventures that borrow elements from the book as well as throwing in a few new surprises of its own – a mine car escapade being especially surprising yet somewhat familiar – and our heroes will fall endless miles towards the center of the Earth where they will encounter glowing birds, trilobites, prehistoric piranha, a school of Plesiosaur, man-eating plants and a monstrous relative of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. There is a lot of fun to be had in this fast-paced adventure tale and I will admit that director Eric Brevig and his special effects teams did a wonderful job creating this fantasy world beneath the Earth's surface, and I do mean fantasy world because whatever science Jules Verne peppered in his novel with was pretty much abandoned for this particular cinematic venture. When Brendan Fraser exclaims “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the center of the Earth” you kind of have to let your seven-year-old self take over.

 

Science Note: In neither this movie nor the 1959 version, nor the source Jules Verne novel, does anyone get anywhere near the literal "center" of the Earth. If this was the true center of the Earth our heroes would have been crushed to death by the enormous pressure of the Earth's center.

Stray Observations:

• When Trevor’s sister-in-law drops off her son she also gives Trevor a box of stuff that once belonged to his brother Max, but why wouldn’t she have given this stuff to her son? You’d think a kid would like to have a few keepsakes of his late father.
• Hannah must have a magical backpack as it somehow is able to hold enough rope for three people to rappel down two hundred feet. Not to mention that 200 feet of rope weighs in and around 80lbs, so times that by three and she’d need to be Captain America to carry that much weight around with her.
• Our heroes take a ride through an abandoned mine that was clearly designed by the same people who built the mine tracks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They even have mine cars that can leap large breaks in the track and then magically land back onto the rails safely.
• Josh encounters a Giganotosaurus, a dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, but exactly how does it survive in this subterranean world? A dinosaur of this size would need to eat roughly 300 lbs of meat each day and this arid landscape doesn’t seem too populated with prey of any sort.
• Trevor discovers that the temperature at the “center of the Earth” will eventually reach 200 degrees Fahrenheit, which means, not even dinosaurs could survive living down here.

 

As impossible as this all is at least the filmmakers didn’t simply stick fins on an iguana.

Implausibility’s aside the success of Journey to the Center of the Earth hinged on the likability of our leads and with Brendan Fraser, at the fore, you’re in pretty good hands-on that score and both Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem were fine in their respective roles but this was clearly Fraser’s movie, it’s his goofy and charismatic charm that helps the viewer swallow much of the outlandish events that occur during the film’s ninety-minute runtime. Fraser may not be in the same league as James Mason but when it comes to roller-coaster B-movie fun there’s none better. What does harm this otherwise fun family adventure/comedy is the decision to make this a 3D extravaganza as not only does this badly date the film but the “comin'-at-ya” gimmicks are so forced and tacked on that they are more distracting than they are entertaining.  Though to be fair, the flying piranha were kind of cool.

 

You will believe prehistoric piranha can fly.

Overall, this is a fun adventure film that never takes itself too seriously and aside from the few forced 3D moments, which look even weirder when watching in regular 2D, the movie is a visual feast and the modern special effects utilized to bring this exciting undertaking to life are quite breathtaking at times. Now, unlike in the James Mason version, our heroes do not discover the ruins of Atlantis but the movie does end with our cast discussing that the sunken continent could be their next journey, alas, that was not to be the case and instead we got Duane “The Rock” Johnson taking us on a journey to the Mysterious Island.

 

Brendan Fraser does not appear due to “scheduling conflicts” yeah, I’m sure that was it.

Howling: New Moon Rising (1995) – Review

That this seventh outing of the Howling franchise uses “New Moon Rising” as its subtitle is a bit disingenuous as there is more old than new in this particular outing and what new we get ranges from awful to embarrassingly bad. This film is also known as Howling VII: The Mystery Woman, which was a somewhat more honest title, if still quite a bit inaccurate, as what follows is more a home movie gone astray than it is a mystery.

 

Howling VII: Mystery of "Where did the Money Go?"

The film opens with a worn-down detective (John Ramsden) investigating a dead body found in the desert and he is aided in his investigations by Father John (John Huff), a priest that the Vatican sends out to uncover supernatural shenanigans, but this “plotline” shares screen time with that of Australian drifter Ted Smith (Clive Turner) who has arrived in Pioneer Town for his own investigation, which could be because all of the inhabitants are wanted criminals, but to be fair, all these people are really guilty of is incredibly bad acting. With this movie writer/director/producer and star Clive Turner attempts to tie together this film into a half-assed continuity with his previous entries. We get Father John telling the Detective about the events of Howling V: The Rebirth, which allows this film to recycle footage from that entry and reveals that the werewolf known as Mary Lou escaped Budapest and is now in America. Then later in the film Marie Adams (Romy Windsor) shows up to tell Father John about the events of Howling IV: The Original Nightmare. It’s clear that at this point in the franchise Clive Turner had no money to even produce the most rudimentary werewolf film and thus he relied on footage from his previous movies. The bulk of Howling: New Moon Rising’s 90-minute running time consists of a group of hillbillies hanging out at a bar, where they dance and tell corny jokes, which one has to admit is not really what a viewer of a Howling movie expects to see. Then to add insult to injury what werewolf action we do get is shot through a red filter and is basically unintelligible.

 

Howling VII brought to you in “Blood Vision!”

Stray Observations:

• If you thought the only thing missing from The Howling franchise was hillbillies then this entry certainly fixed that.
• When dialogue consisting of lines like “This urinal sure is small” is considered the height of witty banter by Clive Turner, you know you’re in trouble.
• Do you like line dancing? I certainly hope you do because by watching this film it’s clear that writer/director/actor Clive Turner really likes line dancing.
• I’d say the only thing Clive Turner likes more than line dancing is country music singer George Jones who is mentioned more often than are werewolves in this film.
• We learn that it takes three years for a werewolf to reach maturity and on that anniversary during a full moon because once again we’re ignoring the original film, it will gain the power to make others of its kind. Sure, why not add even more idiotic mythology to the franchise that at this point, anyone still watching is beyond caring.
• Although not credited, Clive Turner claims he also served as the accountant and secretary for the film.

 

“I also worked Craft Services, swept up each night and took out the trash.”

The cast consists of a group of non-actors who couldn’t deliver a convincing line of dialogue if a gun was put to their collective heads, lucky for them there isn’t a line of convincing dialogue to be found in this movie. The mystery itself is a cobbled-together mess with footage of actress Elizabeth Shé, who played Mary Lou in Howling V: The Rebirth, ending up on the editing room floor and thus we get a crap explanation of “werewolf possession” which allowed Clive Turner to choose a random character in the movie to be revealed as the werewolf. And what of this film’s titular werewolf, well to say it looks like it came from a high school production of Teen Wolf would be giving the filmmakers too much credit.

 

A total of five seconds of new werewolf action and this is the best they could do?

I’m not sure what Clive Turner’s intent was with Howling: New Moon Rising, other than the desire to hang out in one of his favourite towns and get all of his hillbillies friends to act in it, because the end result was a convoluted mess that could actually lower the IQ of anyone subjected to this thing. It should also be pointed out that this isn’t one of those “So bad it’s good” movies as not only is it poorly executed, horribly acted, and completely lacking in scares but it is also monumentally boring, something I can’t forgive in a film about werewolves. If this was Clive Turner’s idea of a vanity project he needs to see a psychiatrist as he must have some serious self-esteem issues.

 

The new moon that gave us this should have stayed behind the clouds.

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) – Review

When stop-motion effects artist Ray Harryhausen is attached to a film where the basic premise is “Cowboys vs Dinosaurs” one has to ask “What more could you possibly want?” The result of such a concept was the 1969 movie The Valley of Gwangi, a film based on a concept that Harryhausen’s mentor Willis O'Brien, the man behind the effects in the original King Kong, had conceived some time ago about a battle between a group of ranchers and a prehistoric beast, sadly, he passed away before this idea could come to fruition but years later Ray Harryhausen would re-team with long time collaborated and producer Charles H. Schneer to bring this idea to life.

Ray Harryhausen’s The Valley of Gwangi takes place in Turn of the 20th Century Mexico where a failing Wild West show, owned and operated by a cowgirl named T.J. Breckenridge (Gila Golan), gets the chance to make it big when they acquire a prehistoric Eohippus, an extinct genus of the horse family. This tiny creature came from the Forbidden Valley of Gwangi and an old blind gypsy named Tia Zorina (Freda Jackson) claims that the horse is cursed and if not returned to the valley death and misfortune will surely follow. Unfortunately for us, the first bit of misfortune is the arrival of Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus), a heroic former stuntman and former lover of T.J. Breckenridge, and he’s come to acquire her famed diving horse Omar for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show but the possible fortune that could come from the Eohippus puts that idea on hold, not to mention the chance of rekindling a little romance with T.J.

 

“Honey, why don’t we adopt it?”

Any plans to do with tiny horses or romance are put on the backburner when British paleontologist named Horace Bromley (Laurence Naismith) mucks things up by trying to trick the gypsies into leading him to the Valley of Gwangi, where he’d hope to make more scientific discoveries, but tiny horses are far from the only residents of said valley, and before you can say “Lost World” they are fending off a variety of dinosaurs such as a winged Pteranodon, a persistent Styracosaurus and a very hungry Allosaurus. Needless to say, this is the highlight of the movie and it wonderfully showcases Ray Harryhausen’s talent as not only a master of special effects but a brilliant creator of living breathing creatures, who act and behave as one would expect such beast to do, unfortunately, we had to wait about an hour of this 90-minute movie to get to the good stuff – the animated Eohippus is cool but it’s no Allosaurus – and that this first hour contains a fairly unlikeable group of characters that wait is especially painful. It should also be noted that with The Valley of Gwangi it’s clear that Harryhausen was not afraid to borrow from himself because the scene of the cowboys trying to rope the Allosaurus is very reminiscent of the cowboys trying to rope the giant gorilla in Mighty Joe Young.

 

Note: The dinosaur roping sequence alone took more than two and a half months to complete and is a brilliant combination of live-action and stop-motion work.

Stray Observations:

• Like many of the Toho kaiju movies The Valley of Gwangi has a Kenny in its cast, this time in the form of an annoying little Mexican boy named Lope.
• I can let slide the idea of a Pteranodon carrying off Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. but one of these creatures being able to pick up a mule, as seen in this film, strains one's credulity.
• While trapped in the Forbidden Valley our cast of characters take refuge in a cave but it’s a cave with an entrance big enough for an entire chorus line of Allosaurus to march through.
• That crappy little desert valley would not have enough vegetation to support one Styracosaurus let alone the amount of food that would be required to keep the species alive, which also means there wouldn’t be enough meat to keep the Allosaurus and its brethren alive.
• I loved that the Allosaurus seemed impervious to gunfire until later when we learn that one of the idiot cowboys brought guns loaded up with blanks from the Wild West show's act.
• The Allosaurus fighting an elephant is another element lifted from a previous Ray Harryhausen feature, the Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth also has a climactic fight with an elephant.

 

Did Ray Harryhausen have something against elephants?

The human characters in monster movies are often less interesting than the title creatures and The Valley of Gwangi is a perfect example of this because the supposed “hero” of the picture is played by James Franciscus, who I’ve always considered the poor man’s Charlton Heston, and his Tuck Kirby character has an emotional range that goes from smug and shallow all the way to self-righteous and pompous. It’s a failure of screenwriting if we are actually cheering for the hero to be eaten by the monster but that was certainly the case for me when I first sat down to watch this film. Of course, one doesn’t sit down to watch a Ray Harryhausen film in the hopes of being enlightened on the Human Condition, we want cool monsters and great stop-motion sequences, and in that category, The Valley of Gwangi is a solid enough entry, it’s just a shame that when someone asked “What could you want more than cowboys vs dinosaurs?” apparently, no one could come up with anything and thus we have nothing but a thin plot and unlikable character to flesh out the running time.

 

Note: Ray Harryhausen once again draws from previous films as the Allosaurus dying amongst a fiery conflagration is similar to what happened at the end of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) – Review

If the ending of the sexual revolution and free love wasn’t bad enough the end of the 60s also saw Sean Connery lose his love of James Bond, with Connery retiring from his signature role it left Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman scrambling to find a replacement and with Roger Moore unavailable due to his starring in the television series The Saint the producers decided to go with a relatively unknown model named George Lazenby, a man with no prior acting credits but after seeing him in a commercial for Fry's Chocolate Cream they decided he was their man. Now, I’m no movie mogul but that does seem like a strange choice to me, and a bit of risk, and when you consider what was at stake for the franchise it was a risk that didn’t quite pan out.

In a nice change in direction, the movie adaptation of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret was rather more accurate to the source material than of the previous Bond films, and would be considered as part two of the “Blofeld Trilogy” and followed the events found in Thunderball, but where the book was all about Bond’s ongoing search for Ernst Stavro Blofeld the movie opens with James Bond (George Lazenby) seemingly more interested in getting laid by Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) than he is in tracking down Blofeld.

 

As this is Diana Rigg we’re talking about, I can’t really blame him.

As mentioned, the plot of the movie follows Ian Flemings book quite faithfully, with Bond encountering Tracy while she is about to commit suicide and then meeting up with her father Marc-Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti), the head of a European crime syndicate, who believes Bond is just the right man to tame his daughter, “What she needs is a man... to dominate her! To make love to her enough to make her love him! A man like you!” With that kind of endorsement who could possibly resist? Well, Bond is all about “Queen and Country” and not too keen about setting aside his bachelor life but he eventually agrees to continue romancing Tracy if Draco will reveal the whereabouts of Blofeld (Telly Savalas), the head of SPECTRE.

 

“No, I don’t want to leave a forwarding address.”

And exactly what type of nefarious scheme is Blofeld up to this time? Well, it turns out that having your volcano lair blown up makes you re-evaluate your life goals and so now Blofeld is trying to claim the title 'Count Balthazar de Bleuchamp' as well as orchestrating an elaborate blackmail scheme involving twelve female patients, brought to his clinical allergy-research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps under false pretenses, and are actually being brainwashed to distribute bacteriological warfare agents throughout the world and thus become Blofeld's "Angels of Death.” What's interesting here is that Blofeld isn't doing this to extort millions of dollars from various world governments, he simply wants amnesty for all past crimes and to be declared a count.  I'm assuming this has something to do with SPECTRE not having much in the way of retirement benefits.  Bond is able to infiltrate Blofeld’s mountaintop fortress by impersonating genealogist Sir Hilary Bray, who was to verify Blofeld’s claim to count hood, which, for some reason, entails him sleeping with as many of these young women as possible, that Bond had already fallen madly in love with Tracey doesn’t even seem to factor in.

 

Clearly, it’s not cheating if you are doing it for Queen and Country.

The key problem with On Her Majesty’s Secret is the strange continuity gaff caused by placing this film after You Only Live Twice instead of before it, what with the book "You Only Live Twice" being the conclusions of Fleming's “Blofeld Trilogy” so in placing On Her Majesty’s Secret after You Only Live Twice you have this strange issue of Blofeld not recognizing James Bond when the clearly had a face to face meeting in his volcano lair in the previous movie, and I’m sorry, but wearing a kilt and smoking a pipe is not much of a disguise. It’s almost as if there was some kind of “spy etiquette” where the villain and the hero have to pretend not to know each other.

 

“James Bond, you say? No, I can’t say I’ve heard of the chap.”

Of course, what makes On Her Majesty’s Secret a great Bond film is the relationship between James and Tracy and it was in this book that we see a more emotional side to the character that was not present in the previous stories, and not only is Diana Rigg one of the most gorgeous of the Bond girls but she is a great screen partner as well, with her driving a stock car like a professional racer, skiing like an Olympian and who can take out henchmen with some nice hand-to-hand combat moves. No other Bond girl comes even close to her and that she is the one woman to actually win the heart of James Bond and land him makes her truly unique, which leads to one of the most devastating moments in the franchise, the death of Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo. After a lovely wedding ceremony, Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) commit a drive-by shooting of the newlywed’s car, which results in Tracy’s tragic death, and this gives the series one of its biggest gut-punches with its heartwrenching last moments with the doomed lovers.

 

“It's all right. It's quite all right, really. She's having a rest. We'll be going on soon. There's no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world.”

Stray Observations:

• Lazenby quipping “This never happened to the other fellow” is a rare fourth-wall-breaking moment for a Bond film but a nice tip of the hat to the Sean Connery era.
• When Bond is cleaning out his desk we see various “souvenirs” from the previous movie, which clearly indicates this is supposed to be the same James Bond and that the name is not just a persona granted to whoever the current 007 is.
• We learn that the Bond family motto is “The World is Not Enough” which would later become the title of the nineteenth Bond film.
• One of the girls writes her room number in lipstick on Bond’s thigh, hoping for a midnight tryst, but how does she expect a genealogist to be able to open locked doors?
• Henchwoman Irma Bunt comes across a like a knock-off of Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love.
• Blofeld has Bond locked up inside the gondola wheelhouse, which has a small exterior access port, which leaves one wondering “Has Blofeld forgotten how resourceful Bond can be?”
• Blofeld’s mountaintop chalet is nice but it’s no volcano lair.

 

Though, I must say, this place definitely has its perks.

Not only is On Her Majesty’s Secret one of the more faithful adaptations of Fleming’s stories but it is also one of the best Bond films to date. The film is just chock-full of amazing action sequences – the ski chase with Bond reduced to one ski is particularly impressive – and the stock car chase sequence and the bobsled climatic duel all went towards making a tense and thrilling Bond adventure, and with John Barry providing one of his best scores and Diana Rigg’s performance as the doomed Tracy, bringing much-needed emotional weight to the franchise, you’ve got the ingredients needed for an entry that rivals all other Bonds.  Sadly, George Lazenby’s inflated ego, horrible onset behaviour and bad advice from his agent – who told Lazenby that the Bond films were beneath him and that the franchise was dead –  resulted in Lazenby walking away from the role after only one film. This is most likely a big reason for many fans dismissing this film which is a shame as it has everything one could want out of a Bond film.  Is it perfect? No, but  On Her Majesty’s Secret will always remain one of my personal favourite Bond films and I often wonder how well it would have been regarded if Sean Connery had stayed around for this one.

 

I'm betting Connery could have, at least, pulled off the kilt a little better.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) – Review

Hammer Films may mostly be known for their horror pictures, with the likes of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing battling it out across the screen for years and years, but they did branch out from horror from time to time and one key example of this would be their "Cave Girl" series, which featured scantily-clad women running from creatures that had been extinct for millions of years – science was never that important for these kinds of movies – and with the success of One Million Years B.C. the people at Hammer were eager to see if this genre had legs.

In 1967 the studio released their second of “Cave Girl” movies titled Prehistoric Women yet that one had no dinosaurs and featured a modern-day Big Game Hunter who just so happened to have stumbled across a lost Amazon civilization, one where blondes had been enslaved by brunettes – I kid you not, that was the premise – but that film was a critical and box office disappointment so the good people at Hammer Films decided to go back to the formula that worked and thus in 1970 they released their third installment in this "Cave Girl" franchise titled When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, a film with a similar prejudice against blondes as the movie opens with the Cliff Tribe about to sacrifice three blonde women to their Sun God.

 

Clearly, back in the day, blondes did not have more fun.

One of the women, Sanna (Victoria Vetri), is able to escape when a freak wind storm interrupts the ceremony and she is blown off the cliffside into the sea below, lucky for her, a raft consisting of a group of men from the Sea Tribe just so happened to be in the neighbourhood and she is pulled from an almost watery grave by the film's male protagonist, Tara (Robin Hawdon). When this merry little group make it back to the home of the Sea Tribe Sanna’s blonde hair makes quite the impression with the tribe’s leader (Patrick Allen ), a typical brutish caveman, but less so with the beautiful brunette Ayak (Imogen Hassall), who is clearly interested in Tara as a potential mate and is not too keen on some fresh blonde floozy showing up on the beach to steal her man. This friction results in your standard catfight between Sanna and Ayak but as the two girls fight it out in the surf Sanna’s former tribe arrives to reclaim their escaped sacrifice. Needless to say, Sanna doesn’t hang around to discuss allegiances or who should or should not be sacrificed to the Sun God, so she flees into the interior. Lucky for us this will mean more encounters with cool dinosaurs and other random creatures because the cavemen in this world are a real bore and anything that doesn’t involve them is a definite plus.

 

Be prepared to cheer on the dinosaurs in this film.

When this film was originally released critics at the time received a press book that explained how “a fiery ball breaks away from the sun, giving birth to the moon” which is more information than modern viewers will ever get when sitting down to watch When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, now, the film does open with narration to explain some of the story's background, pointing out that this is “A time of beginnings, of darkness, of light, of the sun, the earth, the sea, of man! The beginnings of man living with man, by the sea, in the mountains. The beginning of love, hate, and fear. Man's fear of the unknown. Man's fear lest the sun should leave him, leave him alone in everlasting darkness. A time when the color of a woman's hair condemned her to sacrifice to the sun. A time when there was as yet no moon.” Yeah, that expository dump was pretty damned informative and from that, we were supposed to extrapolate that a piece of the sun breaking away to form the moon is the cause of this movie’s upheaval. I’ll grant it that this movie is a sequel to One Million Years BC, and thus not to be considered a documentary, but the moon is 4.43 billion years old and yet they expect us to swallow that man also witnessed the formation of the moon?

 

At what point does your brain break watching these kinds of movies?

This ludicrous story isn’t helped by all the dialogue being spoken in “Basic Caveman” which people back in 1970 had access to a dictionary that was posted on display outside their local theatre if you wanted to translate what you were going it hear, but no such dictionary is provided with the Bluray and thus it makes following the story two parts tedious to one part annoying. If people shouting "Akhoba!" for ninety minutes is your bag then this may be just the film for you, otherwise, you may find yourself hitting the fast-forward button to skip past all the silly human shenanigans to get to that cool dinosaur action. And when it comes to dinosaur action the film does not disappoint, even though legendary stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen wasn’t available to return for this outing we do get some nice work from effects man Jim Danforth, who would later work on the Ringo Star comedy Cavemen and would later assist Harryhausen on Clash of the Titans. It’s clear to anyone that the stars of this movie were the dinosaurs and not the human players; as attractive as Playboy Playmate Victoria Vetri was she didn’t have the screen presence of Raquel Welch and all the bearded men in the cast blended together so badly that I could barely tell one from another, but as mentioned, it’s Jim Danforth’s prehistoric creations that are the stars here and are the only real reason to sit through this otherwise wearisome adventure tale.

 

What actor could hope to compete with a dinosaur as adorable as this?

Stray Observations:

• It makes sense that the Sea Tribe would have a fish-based economy but hunting Plesiosaur doesn’t seem to be the safest occupation in the world. I’d try kelp farming before trying to tackle one of those creatures.
• While hiding in a tree a boa constrictor winds its way past Sanna, leaving her completely unharmed, to then kill one of the Cliff Tribe, which has to be one of the best nods to the story of Adam and Eve that I’ve ever witnessed.
• Our “heroes” encounter a Chasmosaurus, a relative of the Triceratops, living in a desert cave but what a giant herbivore is doing living in the desert is beyond me. Was he subletting from Fred Flintstone?
• Despite the film including wonderful stop-motion animated dinosaurs the filmmakers, for some reason, still included monitor lizards with fins glued on them to pass off as prehistoric beasts. Worse is that the film also borrowed footage from the 1960 adaptation of The Lost World as well.  Note to future filmmakers, if you are going to borrow effects footage from other films it's best to pick them from good ones.
• We get your typical caveman rapist in this movie, but hey, turns out that the cave girl in question was really into it. Sigh.
• I know dinosaurs weren’t supposed to be the brightest creatures to ever walk the Earth, but in this film, a Megalosaurus mistakes Sanna for one of its young simply because it found her sleeping in one of its broken eggs.

 

“She’s the runt of my litter but I love her dearly.”

The subplot of Sanna being “adopted” by a dinosaur is the highlight of the film and if it had been the actual focus of this movie, and not the Cliff Tribe and Sea Tribe’s endless hunting for her so that she could be sacrificed to the Sun God, we may have had a really charming movie, as it stands, the whole affair is a disjointed mess with nary a character to identify with or really care about – Sanna is a vacuous blonde who comes across dimmer than the dinosaurs – and when the film reaches its “exciting and earthshattering conclusion" most viewers will be beyond caring. As a film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth remains nothing more than a minor footnote in the genre because other than a few cool dinosaur moments it’s a rather forgettable affair.

 

Note: If remembered at all, it will most likely be for inspiring the banner in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

Howling VI: Freaks (1991) – Review

What would a Howling movie be like if it combined elements from Tod Browning’s Freaks, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed and a dash of the 1970s Incredible Hulk television show for good measure? For those interested, this supposition was answered in the 1991 direct-to-video movie Howling IV: Freaks where in this sixth entry in the franchise we have a drifter who suffers from lycanthropy and is drawn into a whole new world of horror.

The film opens with a young woman carrying a teddy bear while being pursued through dark woods by some kind of creature, who or whatever the thing was it kills her and leaves nothing behind but her stuffed bear. We then cut to our film's would-be protagonist, Ian Richards (Brendan Hughes), as he walks along a desert road holding a satchel and carrying that very same teddy bear. Is Ian responsible for the death of that young woman? Well, the film won’t bother to reference this ever again, other than to have Ian win his upcoming love interest a teddy bear at the local carnival, but it does add a little mystery to the proceedings and at this point in the franchise we should take anything that even resembles a mystery. Ian's drifting lands him in the town of Canton Bluff, where he befriends the local church owner, a hapless minister named Dewey (Jered Barclay), and he gets a job helping the minister repair his church. While working for Dewey, Ian befriends the man's daughter Elizabeth (Michele Matheson) and though the girl has clear romantic intentions towards Ian his lycanthropy forces him to push her away. Unfortunately, unrequited love is the least of Ian’s problems as a carnival run by R.B. Harker (Bruce Payne) arrives in town to take things in an even darker direction.

 

Something Ray Bradbury this way comes.

As the plot unfolds it turns out that Ian has been tracking Harker’s World of Wonders because not only does this carnival have an assortment of undesirable characters but Harker is, apparently, the leader of some sort of cult, one that is responsible for the slaughter of Ian’s family and, of course, the charismatic Harker is also the cause of Ian’s lycanthropy. Now, I must say this is an interesting direction for the Howling franchise to take and the idea of a werewolf on a personal quest to stop evil is an excellent premise to explore, sadly, the movie’s budget was incapable of pulling off such a story properly, one that involves a good werewolf battling against an even more hideous band of freaks, but when Harker is revealed to be a Nosferatu we do get an awesome showdown of werewolf versus vampire action.

 

“I am Dracula, I mean Harker, and I bid you welcome.”

Stray Observations:

• A buy the idea of a man who can change into a wolf a lot more than I do a carnival stopping in a dried-up small town where the carnies outnumber the residents.
• Harker promises a new recruit that “As long as you are with me no one will ever again call you freak” which is a strange promise to make considering that he’ll be part of the freak show.
• R.B. Harker’s freak show must be part Tardis as its interior looks to be bigger than the entire carnival.
• The boom mic makes more appearances in this movie than the werewolf does.
• Ian oversleeps on the night of a full moon, which is just irresponsible lycanthropy in my opinion.
• Mary Lou, the werewolf from Howling V: Rebirth who shows up as a visitor to the carnival, so I guess that’s some kind of continuity, right?
• What self-respecting werewolf changes during the full moon but then transforms back to human while it’s still dark?
• Our hero looks more like Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy than he does a werewolf, so maybe joining a carnival wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

 

“Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

I’ll give it that Howling IV: Freaks is one of the better entries in the franchise, which to be fair is not saying much, but where this film may fail in the storytelling it more than makes up for in giving us Bruce Payne in a simply delightful performance as the villainous Harker as he brilliantly balances charm and menace with such adeptness that he outshines all those around him, which considering this film actually has a pretty decent supporting cast is pretty impressive. The film not only supports the likes of Bruce Payne but we also get Poseidon Adventure star Carol Lynley as the doomed bank manager, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Deep Roy as a three-armed freak and Antonio Fargas, who older viewers will remember as the street informant Huggy Bear on Starsky & Hutch, as a geek who bites the head off of a live chicken.

 

“Look here, Hutch, you gon' have to lay up off this juice. You done had too much to drink.”

When you are talking about the sixth installment to a horror franchise one can’t expect too much in the way of quality and thus Howling IV: Freaks was a bit of a surprise to me, by all means, this is not a “good” movie, but it is quite entertaining and the only niggling thing that bothered me was the film's particular brand of lycanthropy. In the original Howling, it was made quite clear that people afflicted with this type of lycanthropy could change from man to beast at will but in this movie, Ian’s change is not only triggered by the full moon but also by an incantation that the vampiric Harker happens to have on hand. Now, this latter element I could let slide, it being magic and all, but him changing by the light of the moon is just wrong and made worse by him changing back while it’s still nighttime. Make up your mind people, pick a lane for Christ's sake! That all said, Howling IV: Freaks is an entertaining entry in what was a rather flagging franchise, with Bruce Payne’s performance being the real reason to check this one out, I just wish they’d put more werewolf action in these werewolf movies.

 

If a vampire steals the show you can’t really call yourself a proper werewolf movie.