In many ways, 2014 was the year of Hercules. Or, at the very least, it could have been the year of Hercules. Neither one of the two Hercules film released this year exactly managed to set the American box office on fire. Of the two, The Legend of Hercules was memorable largely for being forgettable while the Dwayne Johnson-starring Herculeswas far better than any film directed by Brett Ratner has any right to be.
Neither one of them, however, can really hold a candle to the 1961 film, Hercules In The Haunted World. In this Italian film, Hercules (Reg Park) discovers that his lover Princess Deianira has gone insane so he goes to Hades in order to get the Stone of Forgetfulness, so he can use it to cure her. The story’s really not that important. What is important is that this visually stunning film was the first color film to be directed by Mario Bava and that the film’s villain is played by Christopher Lee.
Having already watched 3 campus protests from 1970, I decided that maybe I should watch something a little bit less heavy-handed for my next college film. But I knew that, in order to find a college film that would have nothing serious on its mind, I would have to find a film that was made after the 70s.
That’s what led to me getting out my Too Cool For School DVD boxset and watching Jocks, a “comedy” from 1987. As you can probably guess from the sarcastic use of quotation marks, I probably would have been better off staying in the 70s.
Christopher Lee (!) plays the President White, the strict president of L.A. College. President White is upset because the athletic department has failed to win a championship in over ten years so he gives Coach Bettlebom (played by veteran character actor R. G. Armstrong) an ultimatum: win a championship or lose his job. Bettlebom argues that the rest of the athletic department would be able to win if it wasn’t for the financial obligation of supporting the school’s tennis team. Bettlebom then tells tennis Coach Williams (played by Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree) that he’s canceling the tennis program and all of the tennis players are going to lose their scholarships. Williams responds by making a bet. If the tennis team wins the national championship, the tennis program will continue. And if they don’t, the team will cease to exist, Williams will be out of a job, and the members of the tennis team will all be forced to drop out of college and have their lives totally ruined…
Wait a minute.
That makes absolutely no sense.
What the Hell is Coach Williams thinking!?
That’s the sort of thinking that leads students to protest and occupy buildings and basically act like they’re extras in Getting Straight, Zabriskie Point, and R.P.M.
But anyway, let’s just move on and not worry about things like logic and narrative sense. It’s time to meet the tennis team!
There’s Tex (Adam Mills), who doesn’t have a Texas accent. Tex doesn’t really do much but he’s certainly in a lot of scenes.
There’s Andy (Stoney Jackson), the flamboyant black guy who freaks out his opponents by pretending to be gay, because this film was made in the 20th Century.
There’s Chito (Trinidad Silva), who speaks Spanish and dramatically crosses himself before playing each set.
There’s Ripper (Donald Gibb), who has a thick beard, growls a lot, and appears to be in his 40s.
There’s Jeff (Perry Lang), the nice guy. In a film full of unlikable characters, Jeff seems to be, at the very least, a decent guy. Plus, he has a fairly funny drunk scene and, when you’re watching a film like Jocks, you come to appreciate fairly funny.
And then there’s The Kid (Scott Strader), who apparently doesn’t have a name. Seriously, even President White calls him “The Kid.” As you might guess about someone with a permanent nickname, The Kid is a master tennis player.
Anyway, the team goes to the championships in Las Vegas where they engage in the usual drunken hijinks and basically act like a bunch of jerks. They also play some rather boring tennis games. The Kid falls for a tennis groupie played by future Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay. Eventually, it all comes down to whether or not the team can beat Dallas Tech and, as a proud Texas girl, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was saying, “Go Dallas!” the entire time.
So, is Jocks worth watching?
If you’re a Christopher Lee fan, maybe. But, honestly, I think Sir Christopher would forgive you if you skipped this one.
For today’s entry in the 44 Days of Paranoia, we take a look at one of my favorites of the old school British horror films, 1970’s Scream and Scream Again.
Taking place in the near future, Scream and Scream Again follows three seemingly unconnected stories.
In the first — and, to me, the most disturbing — story, an unnamed London man collapses while out jogging. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a hospital. He is tended to by a nurse who refuses to speak to him. Whenever he falls asleep, his limbs are surgically removed one-by-one. While we never learn much about the man, his scenes are perhaps the most difficult to watch. Everything from the starkness of the hospital to the nurse’s lack of concern and empathy for her patient contributes towards making these some of the most genuinely nightmarish scenes that I’ve ever seen.
While the unnamed jogger is being slowly taken apart, the London police are far more interested in solving the “Vampire Killer” case. Keith (Michael Gothard) is a serial killer who picks up young women in nightclubs and then drinks their blood. When, after an exciting chase, the police finally do catch him, they attempt to handcuff Keith to a car bumper. Keith responds by ripping off his own hand and running into the night. The investigation into Keith eventually leads to an eminent scientist named Dr. Browning (Vincent Price). However, Fremont (Christopher Lee), the head of the British secret service, orders the police to drop the case because Browning is apparently doing very important work for the government.
Meanwhile, in an unnamed country in Eastern Europe, secret police officer Konratz (Marshall Jones) ruthlessly climbs his way to the top of the service by murdering his superiors (including Peter Cushing). When a British spy is captured in his country, Konratz contacts Fremont and offers to exchange the spy for all the information that Scotland Yard has gathered about the Vampire Killer case…
Perhaps the best way to describe Scream and Scream Again would be “joyfully chaotic.” The film’s three separate storylines do all come together during the final ten minutes and the film’s climax does make a lot more sense than it really has any right to but, up until that moment, a lot of the pleasure from Scream and Scream Again comes from seeing just how many different plots and subplots director Gordon Hessler can juggle in one film without losing the audience. Fortunately, Scream and Scream Again is a wonderfully entertaining horror/sci-fi/conspiracy hybrid, one that remains compulsively watchable despite the fact that it often doesn’t make much sense.
Of course, one of the main reasons to see Scream and Scream Again is because it features three icons of horror cinema. Unfortunately, Cushing isn’t on-screen long enough to make much of an impression while Lee basically just has an extended cameo. Vincent Price doesn’t show up until fairly late into the film but once he does, he wastes no time in making an impression. Even by the standard of Vincent Price, his performance in this film is a bit over-the-top.
But you know what?
It’s exactly the performance that this film needs. The film itself is so joyfully chaotic and disjointed that Price fits right in. The triumph of Scream and Scream Again is that it creates (and makes us believe in) a world where it only makes sense that the final solution would lie with Vincent Price.
Finally, Scream and Scream Again serves as a wonderful time capsule for those of us who may be fascinated by the swinging 60s and 70s but, as a result of being born a few decades too late, will never get a chance to experience them firsthand. For us, Scream and Scream Again will always be worth it for the scenes of Keith getting his mod on at a London discotheque.
Scream and Scream Again is a film that everyone should see at least once in their life. Just don’t go jogging afterwards…
Today’s horror movie on the Shattered Lens is a 1977 Canadian film called Starship Invasions. While at first glance, Starship Invasions may appear to be more of a science fiction film than a horror film, things do get pretty horrific once Christopher Lee starts shooting his suicide ray.
Here’s what you need to know about Starship Invasions:
1) Judging from the look of the film, it must have cost hundreds of dollars to make.
2) All of the aliens communicate through telepathy so, while you get to hear Christopher Lee’s voice, you never actually see his lips move. I presume this was done because the filmmakers wanted to save money by shooting the majority of the film without sound.
3) In the UK, the film was released under the title Project Genocide, which just doesn’t have the same oddly generic charm as Starship Invasions.
4) Christopher Lee reportedly considers this to be one of his worst films.
5) However, the film is kind of fun in a bad, 1970s sort of way.
Add to that, how can you have a horror month without featuring at least one Christopher Lee film?
Of all the monsters who have appeared in horror cinema, Count Dracula is perhaps the most iconic. Reportedly, Dracula first appeared on film in 1920, in a silent Russian film that is now considered to be lost. In 1921, he would appear in a Hungarian film called Dracula’s Death and in 1922, he would be renamed Count Orlok for the German masterpiece Nosferatu. Indeed, by the time Bela Lugosi gave his famous performance in Tod Browning’s Dracula, the count had been appearing in films for at least 11 years. In nearly 100 years of filmmaking, a countless number of actors have brought Dracula to life.
We could spend hours debating who was the best Dracula and certainly, there are some worthy contenders. Bela Lugosi brought a continental sophistication to the role, while John Carradine was properly intimidating and theatrical. Udo Kier, Gary Oldman, Thomas Kretschmann, Leslie Neilsen, Zandor Vorkov, and Frank Langella have all played the prince of darkness, to varying degrees of success.
Yet for me, as worthy as any of those actors may be, there is only one true Dracula and he was played by Christopher Lee.
Lee famously played Dracula in seven movies for Hammer Films and, though he has often complained about the quality of these films (especially the later ones, which tended to mix Dracula with hippies), they were largely responsible for making Christopher Lee into the iconic figure that he remains today. It’s also largely due to Lee’s performance that horror fans like me continue to discover and appreciate the films of Hammer today.
As played by Christopher Lee, Dracula was pure evil. Lee’s Dracula had no use for self-pity and one can only imagine what his reaction would have been if he had ever run into the self-torturing vampires of Twilight. Lee’s Dracula had no use for doubt or regret. Instead, he was a determined animal who was driven by a singular lust for blood.
And yet, at the same time, Lee brought an intelligence to the role that was often lacking in previous performances. Lee’s Dracula may have been an animal but he was a cunning animal. Whereas it’s easy for me to imagine escaping from the clutches of Bela Lugosi, I know that if Lee’s Dracula wanted me then he would have me. There’s no escape from Lee’s Dracula. He’s too quick, determined, and intelligent.
His animal nature made Lee’s Dracula frightening but it was his cunning and determination that made him dangerous and, ultimately, even sexy. (While I’ve read that audiences in 1931 swooned over Bela Lugosi, whatever sex appeal he may have had is lost on modern viewers like me.) It has often been argued that Bram Stoker meant for Dracula to be a symbol of all the desires that were repressed by Victorian society. That’s certainly true when it comes to Christopher Lee’s carnal and viscous portrayal of the character.
Of the seven Dracula films that Christopher Lee made for Hammer Films, the first remains the best. Released in 1958 and known as Dracula in the UK and the Horror of Dracula in the US, it revitalized the horror genre and helped to make stars of both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Especially when compared to some of the sequels that Hammer subsequently produced, it remains one of the best Dracula films ever made.
The film is a very loose adaptation of Stoker’s original novel. Jonathan Harker comes to Dracula’s castle in Romania. Though posing as a librarian, Harker has actually come to the castle to drive a stake through the heart of both Dracula and his vampire bride. However, no sooner has Harker staked the bride than he’s overpowered and bitten by Dracula. Significantly, all of this occurs within the first 10 minutes of the film. As opposed to certain other Dracula films, Horror of Dracula gets straight to the point. And why shouldn’t it? After all, anyone watching the film already knows that Dracula’s a vampire so why waste time trying to convince us otherwise? We don’t watch Dracula for the familiar story as much as we watch to discover how different filmmakers will choose to tell that story.
When Harker’s colleague, Prof. Van Helsing (played with the perfect amount of intensity by Peter Cushing) shows up at the castle, he discovers that Harker is now a vampire and that Dracula is nowhere to be found.
Dracula, needless to say, is out for revenge. He stalks Harker’s fiancee Lucy, as well as Lucy’s brother Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough) and his wife Mina (Melissa Stribling). Much as in Stoker’s original novel, Lucy is eventually turned into a vampire and it’s up to Van Helsing and Arthur to stop both her and her new master.
(Of course, in Stoker’s original novel, Harker is not turned into a vampire and instead marries Mina while the aristocratic Arthur is one of Lucy’s three suitors. However, I have to say that I always thought the literary Harker was a bit on the dull side and that Arthur was always my favorite character so I’m happy that he gets to be the hero here.)
If I had to pick one film to epitomize everything that I love about the Hammer brand of horror, it would be Horror of Dracula. As directed by Terrence Fisher, the film moves at an exciting, non-stop pace while the traditionally lush cinematography is almost bombastically colorful. Cushing and Lee, who were the best of friends off screen, make for formidable opponents, with Cushing embodying good just as effective as Lee embodied evil. Though it’s been over 50 years since Horror of Dracula was originally released, the film remains effective and, not coincidentally, a lot of fun.
Quite simply put, this is a film that, for so many reasons, remains a true pleasure to watch.
One final note — I often find myself lamenting that I was born several decades too late and I realize just how true that is whenever I watch a film like Horror of Dracula. Seriously, I would have loved to have been a Hammer girl, showing off my cleavage and getting hypnotized by Christopher Lee.
Hi there! The name’s Bowman. Lisa Marie Bowman. Yes, I’ve made that joke a few times over the past two weeks but so what? Let me have my fun! And speaking of fun, we’ve been reviewing the entire James Bond franchise here at the Shattered Lens. Today, we’re going to take a look at 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun, the 9th “official” James Bond film and the second Bond film to feature Roger Moore in the lead role.
The Man With The Golden Gun is Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), the world’s most feared assassin. Living on his own private island, Scaramanga is waited on hand-and-foot by a murderous dwarf named Nick Nack (Herve Villechaize) and his mistress Andrea Anders (played by Maud Adams, who, like me, is a member of the red-headed 2%). Every few days or so, Nick Nack arranges for a different gangster or spy to come to the island and fight a duel with Scaramanga. Much to Nick Nack’s disappointment, Scaramanga always manages to win each duel. However, Scaramanga remains a frustrated assassin because he’s never had the chance to take on (and kill) his hero, James Bond.
Just how obsessed is Scaramanga with Bond? Scaramanga has his own private funhouse set up on the island and the star exhibit at that funhouse is a wax figure of Bond that Scaramanga enjoys firing golden bullets at.
Meanwhile, in London, MI6 receives one of those golden bullets with “007” etched into the surface. M (Bernard Lee), not wishing to see his best agent killed, immediately relieves Bond from his current mission. Bond, along with a painfully dizzy British agent named Mary Goodnight (played by Britt Ekland), responds by setting off to track down Scaramanga on his own.
Bond eventually tracks Scaramanga down to Bangkok where Scaramanga is busy scheming to steal something called a Solex agitator which, depending on who is using it, can either be the key to solving the energy crisis or it can be a deadly, solar-powered weapon. Bond also discovers that the bullet wasn’t sent by Scaramanga but was instead sent by Andrea who wants Scaramanga dead.
Not surprisingly, this all leads to what you would expect — an elaborate car chase, a Bond girl in a bikini, and a final duel between Bond and Scaramanga.
When The Man With The Golden Gun was first released way back in 1974, the film received some of the worst reviews in the Bond franchise’s history. A typical review came from Time Magazine’s Jay Cocks who complained that Moore “lacks all Connery’s strengths and has several deep deficiencies”, whilst Lee was “an unusually unimpressive villain.” In a complaint that would be made about the majority of the post-Connery, pre-Craig Bond films, Cocks also criticized the film’s plot for being too dependent on both Bond and Scaramanga using implausible gadgets.
While most of the Bond films were treated dismissively by critics when they were first released, the majority of them have also come to be seen in a more positive light as the years have passed. The Man With The Golden Gun, however, is an exception to that rule. Nearly four decades after first being released, The Man With The Golden Gun still has a reputation for being a disappointment. While Christopher Lee has rightly come to be recognized as one of the best Bond villains, the film itself is still regularly dismissed as one of the worst of the Bond films.
The Man With The Golden Gun‘s flaws are pretty obvious.
As played by Britt Ekland, Mary Goodnight is perhaps one of the most useless Bond girls ever and pretty much confirms every accusation of sexism that’s ever been made against the Bond films. It’s hard not to wish that the role of Goodnight had been played by Maud Adams who, as Andrea Anders, proves to be one of the best of the Bond femme fatales.
Redneck Sheriff J. W. Pepper (Clifton James) was an acquired taste when he first showed up in Live and Let Die and those who were annoyed by his character the first time will probably not be happy when he implausibly pops up in this film, vacationing in Bangkok and somehow getting involved in yet another car chase.
Finally, while Roger Moore’s performance as James Bond has always been rather underrated, it’s hard to deny that he looks a bit ill-at-ease in this film. As opposed to Live and Let Die (which was clearly written to match Moore’s interpretation of the role), The Man With The Golden Gun feels like it was written for Sean Connery’s more ruthless interpretation of the role. There’s a rather ugly scene where Bond roughly slaps Andrea to get her to tell him about Scaramanga. It’s the type of thing that you could imagine Connery doing without a second thought but Moore seems uncomfortable with it. His Bond simply doesn’t have the sadistic streak that hid underneath the surface of Connery’s interpretation.
That said, The Man With The Golden Gun is something of a guilty pleasure of mine. The Man With The Golden Gun is one of the Bond films that I always make a point to catch whenever it shows up on television and I certainly had a better time rewatching it than I did when I rewatched You Only Live Twice. The film moves along quickly enough, the car chases are a lot of fun, and Scaramanga’s funhouse is one of the best of the Bond sets.
For all of its flaws, The Man With The Golden Gun is saved by its trio of villains. Maud Adams, Herve Villechaize, and especially Christopher Lee give three of the most memorably eccentric performances in the history of the Bond franchise. They’re so much fun to watch that, if spending time with them also means spending time with Mary Goodnight and Sheriff Pepper, it’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make.
The strength of Christopher Lee’s performance as Scaramanga cannot be understated. There’s something oddly touching in the contrast between Scaramanga the steely assassin with the golden gun and Scaramanga, the insecure killer who is apparently always comparing his accomplishments to the accomplishments of James Bond. Lee’s Scaramanga is such a compelling character that you almost regret that he can’t, in some way, be allowed to achieve some sort of victory at the end of the film.
But, of course, if that happened then it would no longer be a James Bond film.
As always, regardless of what the critics may have wished, James Bond would return. Ironically, Moore would follow-up a what many considered to be the worst James Bond adventure with a film that many consider to be one of the best. We’ll be taking a look at The Spy Who Loved Me tomorrow.
Until then, let’s enjoy one of the most underrated theme songs in the history of the Bond franchise.
It just a littleunder 3 months before Peter Jackson takes us back to Middle-Earth with the first of three films that will make up The Hobbittrilogy.
There’s not much else to say other than this latest trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeyjust continues to whet the appetite for all things Middle-Earth. It’s much more action-packed with some nice new scenes instead of just rehashing what was in the original teaser trailer from year ago.
Enough words. Just watch the trailer below and decide for yourself whether another trip to Middle-Earth (before all the War of the Ring brouhaha of the first trilogy) is worth your monies.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeypremieres worldwide on December 14, 2012.
First off, a qualification : if you’re a lifelong (or thereabouts) fan of Dan Curtis’ classic Dark Shadows TV series, I can understand why you would hate Tim Burton’s new film of the same name. It’s many things, but old-school Dark Shadows isn’t one of them. Feel free, with my full blessing (whatever that’s worth), to absolutely despise this flick right down to a molecular level if you fit into this category of viewer. But if you don’t —
— then seriously, where is all this vitriol coming from? I’m not saying it’s a tremendous or important movie by any means, but it’s brainless, entertaining, heavy-on-the-camp fun that’s pretty solidly constructed Burton-by-the-numbers.
And maybe that’s the problem. Tim Burton’s work has, indeed, become almost relentlessly formulaic by this point : de-fang horror/gothic/50s-era sci-fi concepts to make them palatable to mainstream family audiences, concentrate heavily on the visuals, strenuously avoid even the hint of any political subtext, add in a dash of blatantly-obvious-but-ultimately-respectful-to-its-source self-satire, have your admittedly talented cast skew their performances toward the knowingly pantomime, and voila! You’ve got yourself morbidity for the masses.
Apparently this is now some sort of crime. Granted, Dark Shadows is no Ed Wood or Big Fish, but it doesn’t wallow in Burtonian excess the way that the more successful (as far as the box office goes) Charlie And The Chocolate Factory or the mega-successful Alice In Wonderland did. But judging by the reaction out there on Twitter and other “social media” sites, you’d think this was somehow the nadir or Burton’s career (how quickly we seem to forget Mars Attacks!) — in fact, it seems to be generating as much overly-malignant hatred as The Avengers is generating overly-effusive praise. But hell, at least this movie is recognizably the work of a singular creative vision (albeit not one operating at its peak) rather than pure CGI assembly-line product that could have been directed by any of dozens of different self-styled “action auteurs” (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if The Avengers had been helmed by Jon Favreau, it would essentially be no different) who are ultimately as interchangeable as the material they produce.
The cast is the usual mix of Burton way-more-than-regulars (Johnny Depp in the title role of Barnabas Collins, Helena Bonham Carter as family doctor/lush Julia Hoffman, Christopher Lee in a terrific cameo — as opposed to his pointless quick turn in The Wicker Tree — as an “old man of the sea”-type), talented, well-cast veterans (Michelle Pfeiffer as tired family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Jackie Earle Haley as the hapless Willie Loomis) and up-and-coming talents (Eva Green as Barnabas’ principal object of love/hate, Angelique Bouchard, Bella Heathcote as his principal object of love only, Victoria Winters, Jonny Lee Miller as weak-willed family weasel Roger Collins, Chloe Grace Moretz doing her teen-with-a-‘tude thing as Carolyn Soddard), and while none are giving what could in any way be called inspired turns, all are solid and dependable.
As is the story, an uncomplicated affair about Barnabas emerging from the grave, vamped to the hilt, in the early 70s to help his fallen-on-hard-times clan rebuild their fishing and canning empire in the face of rival competition that’s equally supernatural in origin, with a little bit of reincarnation-themed romance thrown in for good measure. It’s hardly demanding stuff, of course, but it’s perfectly suited to function as precisely what it is — a distracted afternoon’s or evening’s summer lightweight entertainment. Joss Whedon does this with a team of super-heroes and we call him a genius. Tim Burton does it with harmless comic vampires and we say he’s jumped the shark. Go figure.
All of which goes to show nothing so much as the herd mentality so prevalent amongst today’s film-buff “community.” In truth, both Dark Shadows and The Avengers are cut from remarkably similar cloth — throwaway big-budget diversionary fare that demands nothing of its audience and gives you pretty much exactly what you figure to be in for when you buy your ticket. One is being praised for it because, hey, other people immediately started talking about how good it is, and one is reviled because, hey, other people immediately started talking about how stupid it was. But you know what? At least Dark Shadows has no pretense of being anything other than precisely what it is, and no army of zombies (or vampires) doing its studios’ dirty work for it and publicizing it like mad for free.
I freely admit that might be a big reason why I actually enjoyed this a little more than Marvel’s billion-dollar-bonanza, and I also freely admit that actions taking place off-screen should , by all rights, play absolutely no part in how I react to what’s taking place on-screen. But it’s not a perfect world. And Dark Shadows is far from a perfect film. But I ended up liking it it a lot more than I was honestly expecting to — and if you go into it with an open mind, who knows? Maybe you will, too.
