Yesterday morning, after I woke up at 3 in the morning and simply could not get back to sleep, I ended up watching a 1985 film from Australia on Cinemax. The name of that film? Fortress.
Why Was I Watching It?
The main reason I ended up watching it was because I woke up way too early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Once I accepted the fact that 1) I wasn’t going to get back to sleep and 2) I was going to be a very tired girl by the time I got off work, it just made sense to watch a movie. While there were over a 100 films playing on TV around three in the morning, I ended up watching Fortress because it was the only one I had never heard of. Add to that, the cable guide both identified the film as a horror film and told me that the film was released the same year I was born. Seriously, how couldn’t I watch?
What’s It About?
Fortress tells the story of what happens when a teacher (played by Rachel Ward) and her class are kidnapped by a bunch of a mask-wearing thugs. When Ward and her students manage to escape from their captors, they find themselves being pursued through the Australian outback. Finally, both the teacher and her students start to fight back and, in the best tradition of a 70s grindhouse film, eventually reveal themselves to be just as a savage as their enemies.
What Worked?
I have to admit that I was actually surprised that I had never heard of Fortress before because it’s a surprisingly well-made film. Ward gives an excellent performance in the lead role and the actors playing her students are all natural and very believable. Best of all, the film’s villains are completely believable and sincerely frightening. The gimmick of having them all wear masks actually works surprisingly well. Their leader wears a Father Christmas mask and the contrast between his harsh manner and his jolly mask makes for some chilling moments.
I have to admit that, at first, I was wondering why this film was classified as being a horror film. After all, there were no supernatural monsters and, even if the bad guys were wearing masks, they were still obviously human. But, as the film progressed, I realized that the film was a true horror film. It was scary because it was real. It was scary because, unlike so many other horror films, it dealt with the type of situation that could happen to anyone unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Also, there was a scene where Rachel Ward was attempting to swim to safety and her character nearly drowned. As regular readers of the site may know, I have a very intense fear of drowning and, needless to say, the sight of Ward underwater and frantically struggling to reach the surface made me go, “Agck!”
What Didn’t Work
It all worked. Some of that, undoubtedly, had to do with the fact that I was watching the film at 3 in the morning.
“OH MY GOD! JUST LIKE ME!” Moments
I would like to hope that, if I ever found myself in a similar situation, I would be as strong and courageous as the teacher was in this film. That’s probably wishful thinking on my part but I like to think that I would at least try to make the effort.
That said, I mostly identified with the poor girl who, while hiding from the kidnappers, bursts into tears and explains to Ward, “Sorry, miss, it’s the curse.” Seriously, that would be just my luck.
In the days leading up to the American release of Skyfall, the Shattered Lens has been taking a look at the previous films in the James Bond franchise. Today, we take a look at the 5th official James Bond film, 1967’s You Only Live Twice.
Released two years after the critically derided but financially succesful Thunderball, You Only Live Twice was a step in a new direction for the Bond series. As Sinclair McKay explains in his brilliant book on the Bond films, The Man With The Golden Touch, both the world and the movies changed a lot between 1965 and 1967 and You Only Live Twice reflected that change. Director Lewis Gilbert and screenwriter Roald Dahl were newcomers to the Bond series and the film they created would serve as a prototype for the flamboyant, big budget espionage fantasies that would come to epitomize many of the later entries in the franchise.
You Only Live Twice begins with one the Bond franchise’s more elaborate precredit sequences. During these first few minutes, the film rather boldly announces that You Only Live Twice is going to be a bit of a departure from the previous Bond films. The film begins not with Bond but with two anonymous American astronauts orbiting the Earth in a small capsule. The two astronauts are blandly chatting with mission control on Earth when, suddenly, another spacecraft approaches and literally swallows the American capsule whole. One of the astronauts is hurled into space as a result and, as his body spins away, it’s obvious that Bond’s not going to be dealing with something bigger than just another guy looking to hold up Fort Knox.
The Americans blame the Russians while the Russians claim that they’re being framed by Americans and the entire world appears to be on the verge of war. But as always happens in the Bond films, the British are there to keep everyone from overreacting. A British diplomat is seen calming down the belligerent super powers and assuring them that MI6’s “best man” is already on the case.
(One of the undeniably charming things about the Connery and Roger Moore Bond films is the way that the United Kingdom is portrayed as being the world’s unofficial third superpower.)
Cut to Hong Kong, where James Bond is lying in bed and asking his latest conquest, “Why do Chinese girls taste different?” And, at this point, I think it’s fair to say that Bond is really lucky that he looks like a young Sean Connery. Suddenly, gunmen storm the bedroom and open fire, apparently killing 007.
Oh no! I guess the world is doomed, right? We’re left to consider this sad reality as we watch the opening credits and listen to Nancy Sinatra sing the film’s excellent theme song.
Well, of course, James Bond isn’t really dead. He faked his death so that he can safely go to Tokyo and investigate who was behind the attack on the space craft. You Only Live Twice was filmed almost entirely on location in Japan and a good deal of the film’s first half is devoted to scenes of Bond simply observing Japanese culture. It’s a bit like Lost In Translation with an espionage subplot.
After fighting a few random henchmen, Bond meets Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba), the head of the Japanese secret service. Tanaka seems to spend the majority of his time getting massages from the dozen or so young women who wait on him hand-and-foot. “In Japan,” he tells Bond, “men come first, women come second.” “I might just retire here,” Bond replies. Uhmmm…okay. Thank you, 1967.
In order to continue the ruse that Bond’s dead, Tanaka arranges for Bond to take on an assumed identity. After being trained on all aspects of Japanese culture and on how to fight like a ninja, Bond is heavily disguised to look like a Japanese fisherman. Tanaka arranges for Bond to fake marry a local girl named Kissy (Mie Hama). Kissy is probably one of the least interesting Bond girls in the history of the franchise. Beyond walking around in a bikini while wearing high heels, Kissy just doesn’t have much of a personality.
Bond and Tanaka’s investigation lead them to a shady industrialist named Osato and his secretary Helga Brandt (Karin Dor). Helga is about as close as You Only Live Twice comes to featuring a strong female character. Not only is she an assassin who has no problem with killing a man who she’s just had sex with but she’s also a redhead, just like me!
Anyway, it’s not until very late in the film that we finally meet Helga’s boss. If for no other reason, You Only Live Twice will always be remembered for featuring one of the great Bond villains. After being seen in the previous Bond films as just a hand stroking a white cat, Ernest Stavros Blofeld makes his first on-screen appearance here and fortunately, he’s played by Donald Pleasence.
Looking at Pleasence’s performance today, the natural tendency is to compare his Blofeld to the iconic character that he inspired, Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil. However, one reason that Dr. Evil became such a popular character is because Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld is one of the great film bad guys. As delivered by Pleasence in his casually off-center way, every line of Blofeld’s dialogue drips with the promise of perversion and hints of the neurosis that fuels his every action. Blofeld spends most of the movie hiding out in a secret base that’s hidden inside a hollow volcano. He strokes that ever-present white cat and uses a pool of piranhas to punish failure. It is a credit to Pleasence’s performance that you never, for a second, doubt that Blofeld could very well be living in a hollow volcano.
I have to admit that You Only Live Twice is not my favorite James Bond film, though there are plenty of things that I do like about it. Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, and Desmond Llewelyn all make welcome appearances and there is a genuinely exciting scene where Bond flies around in a toy helicopter. Working on his first and only Bond film, Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Young captured some beautiful images of Japan and Blofeld’s volcano lair is one of the franchise’s best locations.
That said, You Only Live Twice often moves a bit too slowly for its own good and, with the exception of Blofeld and occasionally Helga Brandt, none of the film’s supporting characters are all that interesting. Charles Gray, who later took over the role of Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, has a nice cameo as a decadent retired intelligence agent but he’s killed off before he can make too much of an impression. Perhaps worst of all, Connery spends most of this film looking like he’d rather be doing anything other than play James Bond for the fifth time. By his own account, Connery eventually grew bored with the role and that’s certainly obvious in You Only Live Twice.
Connery’s boredom can perhaps explain why, during the shooting of You Only Live Twice, it was announced that he would not be returning to play the role in the 6th Bond film. The Bond franchise would continue with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but it appeared that Connery would no longer be a part of it.
As you probably already know, we here at the Shattered Lens have been counting down the days until the American release of Skyfall by reviewing every single film in the James Bond franchise. Today, we take a look at the first non-EON Bond film, the epic, psychedelic 1967 spoof Casino Royale.
Where to begin?
When Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953, veteran Hollywood producer Charles K. Feldman bought the film rights. However, Feldman didn’t buy the rights to Fleming’s subsequent novels and was forced to sit by and watch as Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had unexpected success with Dr. No and the subsequent EON-produced Bond films. Much as Kevin McClory did with Thunderball, Feldman first attempted to co-produce a serious adaptation of Casino Royale with Broccoli and Saltzman. However, when Feldman, Broccoli, and Saltzman couldn’t come to an agreement on how each side would be compensated in the proposed production deal, Feldman decided to make Casino Royale on his own. He also decided that, instead of trying to compete with EON by making a “straight” James Bond film, his version of Casino Royale would be a satirical extravaganza.
Feldman’s vision of James Bond is apparent from Casino Royale’s opening credits. While the credits are definitely based on the iconic openings of the EON Bond films, they’re also designed to play up the fact that Casino Royale — in the grand tradition of the Hollywood studios at their most excessive — is meant to be a big budget, all-star extravaganza.
Casino Royale actually starts out with a pretty clever premise. It seems that the name “James Bond,” is simply a code name that has been assigned to several British spies over the years. As M (played by John Huston, who also directed the first third of the film), explains it, the name “James Bond” strikes such fear in the hearts of Britain’s enemies that the name must be kept alive.
(Speaking for myself, this is an idea that I kinda wish that the official James Bond series would adopt. If nothing else, it would certainly explain how Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig could possibly be the same person.)
The original James Bond (played by David Niven) has long since retired to his stately country estate, where he spends his time playing the piano and complaining about how the agents who have inherited his name are sullying his reputation with excessive womanizing and violence. It turns out the Sir James Bond is a man renowned for his “celibate image.” At the start of the film, Bond is asked to come out of retirement by not only M but the heads of the CIA, KGB, and French secret service as well. SMERSH, an organization of female assassins that’s led by the mysterious Dr. Noah, has been eliminating agents worldwide and only the original (and very chaste) Bond can defeat them. Bond, however, refuses and M responds by ordering a mortar attack on Bond’s estate. The estate is blown up but so is M and Bond soon finds himself returning to London as the new head of MI6.
Interestingly enough, David Niven was one of the actors who was considered for the role of James Bond in Dr. No. Reportedly, Ian Fleming was quite enthusiastic for Niven to take the role but, by the time that Dr. No went into production, Niven was considered to be too old. There’s a nice bit of irony here in seeing David Niven playing a retired James Bond who spends a good deal of the film complaining about the men who have subsequently assumed his name.
Once Niven takes over MI6, he orders that, in order to confuse SMERSH, all British agents (including female agents) will be known as James Bond. The rest of the film is divided into episodes that feature these new James Bonds battling SMERSH and the mysterious Dr. Noah.
Among these agents, there’s the handsome Coop (played by Terrence Cooper) who has been trained to resist all sexual temptations.
There’s Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet), the daughter of Sir James Bond and Mata Hari.
There’s Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) who is sent to seduce and recruit the expert gambler Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) so that Tremble can beat SMERSH agent Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) at the Casino Royale.
Best of all, there’s Sir James Bond’s nephew, Jimmy Bond. Jimmy Bond is played by Woody Allen and … well, let’s just take a look at Jimmy’s first scene in the film:
Casino Royale had a notoriously troubled production history and most of those troubles seemed to center on Peter Sellers. While the film was designed to be a broad, slapstick comedy, Sellers reportedly insisted on trying to play his role straight and even rewrote his lines to make his scenes more dramatic. Welles eventually grew so disgusted with Sellers that he refused to be in the same room with him. This caused quite a bit of difficulty since Sellers was in almost every scene that featured Welles. Eventually, Sellers walked off the film and the film had to be hastily (and awkwardly) rewritten to account for his sudden absence.
When one watches Casino Royale today, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Sellers was essentially correct. While most of Casino Royale often feels disjointed and incoherent, the scenes featuring Sellers, Andress, and Welles are some of the strongest in the film. Sellers’ dramatic approach doesn’t negate the film’s comedy. If anything, it makes the comedy even stronger because Sellers actually seems to be invested in the reality his character, regardless of how ludicrous a situation that character may find himself in.
When I watched Casino Royale, I was struck by the stark contrast between the parts of the film that worked and the parts that didn’t. This is a movie that truly swings from one extreme to another. Either the film’s satire is working brilliantly (mostly in the scenes featuring Woody Allen and Peter Sellers) or it’s falling completely flat (like in an extended sequence that features Deborah Kerr as a SMERSH assassin).
I found myself laughing more at the little scenes than the big set pieces. For instance, I loved it when David Niven embraces Miss Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet) just to be then told that she’s actually the daughter of the original Miss Moneypenny. I don’t know much about the actor Terrence Cooper (though, according to Wikipedia, he was also a contender to take the role of James Bond in the official series) but I enjoyed the brief sequence where Moneypenny “tests” him to see if he can take on the Bond identity. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really have enough of these small, clever moments.
Ultimately, I found that Casino Royale works best when viewed as a time capsule. Casino Royale was made at a time when the established major Hollywood studios (and veteran producers like Charles K. Feldman) were struggling to remain relevant. Foreign films (including, it must be said, the James Bond films) were challenging the common assumptions of what could and what couldn’t be shown on-screen and the studio system reacted by trying to make films that would appeal to younger audiences while also reassuring older audiences that the movies hadn’t really changed that much. The end result were films like Casino Royale that featured the occasional psychedelic sequence along with cameos from old (and safe) Hollywood stars like George Raft, William Holden, and Charles Boyer. Casino Royale is the type of self-indulgent film that could only have been made in 1967 and, as such, it’s a valuable time capsule for all of us cinematic historians.
I also have to admit that, as excessive as Casino Royale may be, I happen to love excess. Casino Royale might be overlong and occasionally incoherent but the costumes are simply to die for. The film is a visual feast, if nothing else.
Casino Royale was released to scathing reviews and terrible box office but, in the years since, it has become something of a cult favorite. Our own Trash Film Guru has identified Casino Royale as his favorite Bond film. Myself, I found the film to be extremely flawed and yet oddly fascinating to watch. Casino Royale is a total mess and that is both its greatest flaw and greatest strength.
Tomorrow, we’ll return to the official James Bond series by taking a look at You Only Live Twice.
Paranormal Activity 4 is the first proper sequel to Paranormal Activity. Whereas the second Paranormal Activity film showed events that were happening at the same time as the first film and the third film took place several years before the first one, Paranormal Activity 4 actually takes place several years after the conclusion of the first and second films. It also makes an attempt to further expand the franchise’s mythology but, ultimately, this film just proves that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
In Paranormal Activity 4, Kathryn Newton plays Alex, a teenager who is suspicious of both her odd neighbor Katie (played by a returning Katie Featherston) and Katie’s creepy son, Robbie (Brady Allen). When Katie is mysteriously taken ill, Alex’s family agrees to take in Robbie while Katie recovers. As soon as Robbie movies in, all of the usual Paranormal Activity stuff starts happenings. Doors are mysteriously slammed, a chandelier falls from the ceiling to the floor and nearly crushes Alex, and Robbie befriends Alex’s adopted little brother, Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp). Alex rightly suspects that Robbie is somehow involved with everything that’s happening but she can’t get her constantly bickering parents to listen to her. So, she does the next best thing and she gets her geeky (but cute) boyfriend (played by the very likable Matt Shively) to set up every computer in the house with a webcam. Soon, even more strange things are happening and the cameras are there to record all of it…
I saw Paranormal Activity 4 at a midnight screening with my best friend Evelyn and that’s probably the best way to see it, late at night when you’re less concerned about logic and surrounded by a bunch of people who are determined to make the film an interactive experience. The worst thing you can do, while watching a Paranormal Activity film, is to start thinking about why nobody ever leaves the house or whether or not someone would actually keep filming while being chased by demonic spirits. Instead, you just have to sit back and enjoy the silly experience for what it is.
When compared to the other films in the series, Paranormal Activity 4 is better than the first two entries but nowhere close to being as good as the third installment. Kathryn Newton and Matt Shively are likable in the lead roles and there’s an adorable orange house cat who shows up at various points during the film. (The cat may actually be the smartest character in the entire film because, whenever anything weird starts happening, she does the smart thing and leaves the room.) Plus, the house in Paranormal Activity 4 is a really nice house. Seriously, if not for the evil spirits and all that, I would love to live there.
Another year means another Paranormal Activity (or, as Evelyn put it when we saw this film, “Again with this?”). Since these films all tend to have the same strengths and flaws and since they all tend to tell the same story, they can be difficult to review. You can either enjoy these films for what they are or you can just throw your hands up in the air in frustration. If you enjoyed the first three Paranormal Activities, you’ll enjoy the fourth. If you spent the previous Paranormal Activity films wondering why everyone was so busy setting up video equipment (as opposed to just leaving the house), then Paranormal Activity 4 is not for you.
Hi there! The name’s Bowman, Lisa Marie Bowman. And tonight, I’m continuing the Shattered Lens’ look at the James Bond film franchise by reviewing 1963’s From Russia With Love.
The 2nd film in the Bond film series, From Russia With Love is considered by many to be one of the best entries in the franchise. I happen to agree with them. There’s a lot of talk right now that Skyfall could be the first James Bond film to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture. Personally, I think From Russia With Love (and not Tom Jones) should have been named the best picture of 1963, (Seriously, has anyone actually tried to watch Tom Jones recently?)
From Russia With Love opens with a tuxedo-clad James Bond sneaking around outside the type of opulent estate that every Bond villain seems to own. Suddenly, Bond is attacked by a hulking assassin named Red Grant (played by a pre-Jaws Robert Shaw) and, as the audience watches shocked, Bond is apparently killed. It’s only after Bond’s dead and on the ground that we learn the truth. The man in the tuxedo wasn’t James Bond at all — instead, he was just some random henchman in a James Bond mask! It turns out that Grant works for the villainous organization SPECTRE and this is all part of his training routine. Now, you would be justified in wondering why SPECTRE would go through the trouble to make a next-to-perfect James Bond mask for a simple training routine but. ultimately, it doesn’t matter. It’s a great sequence, that manages to be both fun and suspenseful at the same time. It’s also a great set-up for the rest of the film.
SPECTRE and its mysterious leader (and this is the first time in which we get to see that iconic image of a hand stroking a white cat while a disembodied voice says evil things) want Bond dead. The job of arranging Bond’s assassination is given to Kronsteen (played by Vladek Sheybal, who has a truly fascinating skeletal face). When he’s not off being evil, Kronsteen is a chess grandmaster and, not surprisingly, he views his assignment as if it’s just one big chess game. In order to kill Bond, he knows that he’s going to need a pawn.
That’s where Tatiana Romanova (played by Daniela Bianchi) comes in. Tatiana is a cipher clerk at the Russian Embassy in Istanbul. She is approached and given an assignment by Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), a Russian intelligence agent who, unknown to Tatiana, is also working for SPECTRE. Tatiana contacts MI6 and tells them that she’s willing to defect but only to James Bond. Tatiana explains that she came across Bond’s picture in a Soviet Intelligence file and the insinuation is that she fell in love (or, at the very least, lust) with that picture.
(Interestingly enough, this parallels the fact that audiences had previously seen Sean Connery in Dr. No and, like Tatiana, spent the year between the two films fantasizing about James Bond themselves. In that way, Tatiana is the perfect audience surrogate.)
James Bond is sent to Istanbul by M (Bernard Lee) but before he goes, he meets with the head of Q branch. Desmond Llewelyn makes his first appearance in the Bond franchise here. In a historic moment of film history, he gives Bond his first booby-trapped briefcase.
When Bond arrives in Istanbul, he meets with station head Kerim Bey (played by Pedro Armanderiz, who tragically committed suicide before From Russia With Love was released). With the help of Kerim Bey and Tatiana (who Bond first meets with she turns up, naked, in his bed), Bond steals the Lektor decoder device from the Russian consulate. Though Bond doesn’t realize this, he’s aided in this task by none other than Red Grant. Grant has been following Bond and perversely, he’s been protecting Bond from KGB assassins so that he might have the chance to kill Bond himself.
Bringing the Lektor device with them, Bond, Tatiana, and Kerim Bey board the Orient Express. It’s on the train that they meet Nash, a British agent who says that he’s been sent by MI6 to help make sure that Bond and Tatiana safely make it back to England. Of course, what the audience knows, is that the somewhat smug Nash is none other then … Red Grant!
I love From Russia With Love. Everything that makes the James Bond series so special — romance, memorable villains, spectacular locations, exciting action, and a rather sardonic sense of humor — is present in From Russia With Love. Playing Bond for the second time, Connery is more confident with the role here than he was in Dr. No and, as opposed to some of his later appearances in the series, Connery appears to be enjoying bringing this iconic character to life. There’s none of the boredom that marred some of Connery’s later performances. Instead, Connery is exciting to watch and it helps that he and Bianchi have a very real chemistry in this film. As opposed to some Bond girls, Tatiana is a believable, multi-layered character and you actually care what happens to her. The relationship between Tatiana and Bond feels real and, therefore, the film has a surprising emotional resonance to it.
As opposed to Dr. No, with its somewhat bland title character, the villains in From Russia With Love are a fascinating quartet of rogues. Lotte Lenya brings an unexpected amount of depth to the role of Rosa and her final battle with Bond is one of the best in the history of the franchise. Even more exciting than Bond’s fight with Rosa is his final fight with Red Grant. As played by Robert Shaw, Grant comes across as if he’s the literal personification of Bond’s dark side. Both men are killers and both are rather smug about it but the difference is that Bond is capable of caring about Tatiana whereas Grant has surrendered whatever emotions he may have once had. Shaw’s performance so dominates the film that, when I rewatched the film, I was surprised to discover that Grant is only in a handful of scenes.
If Dr. No was an enjoyable B-movie, then From Russia With Love was a cinematic masterpiece that transcended the limitations of genre. If Dr. No established the basic conventions of James Bond, From Russia With Love showed that those conventions could be used to make a great film.
Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at the third film in the Bond franchise, Goldfinger.
Last night, I watched Halloween II. No, I’m not referring to the rather disturbing Rob Zombie movie that came out in 2009. Instead, this Halloween II was the original sequel to the original Halloween. This version was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. It was released in 1981 and I saw it in 2012, via Cinemax.
Why Was I Watching It?
Because it’s October, of course! It’s horror month and Halloween is one of the great horror movies. Would Halloween II turn out to be another great horror movie? Well, to be honest, I figured it probably wouldn’t but I decided to watch it anyway.
What Was It About?
Halloween II picks up exactly from where the first Halloween ended. The sole surviving babysitter, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), is being rushed to the hospital by two paramedics, one nice (Lance Guest) and one kinda crude and pervy (Leo Rossi). Two guesses which one of our two paramedics eventually ends up dead. Meanwhile, Michael Myers has apparently survived being shot six times and falling out of a second story window and he’s still wandering around Haddonfield, Indiana. Best of all, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is still running around all over the place, telling anyone who will listen that it wasn’t his idea to allow Michael to be released. (In one of the film’s best running jokes, everyone responds to Loomis’ protestations by saying stuff like, “Damn you for letting him out!” “Uhmm, I didn’t…” Dr. Loomis mutters at one point.) It quickly becomes apparent that Michael’s rampage wasn’t quite as random as it seemed in the first film. He’s after Laurie and, once he breaks into the local hospital, it seems like he might very well get her. Why? Because, for the most part, it appears that every single citizen of Haddonfield is a total and complete moron.
What Worked?
Halloween II is actually one the better of the slasher sequels of the early 80s. While it can’t compare to the first Halloween, it’s still a fairly suspenseful little film and Michael Myers is just as frightening as ever. However, what truly makes this film memorable, is Donald Pleasence’s unhinged performance as Dr. Loomis. Whereas in the first film, Pleasence played Loomis as just being somewhat testy and annoyed, his performance here suggests that, in the minute or so between shooting Michael and then looking out the window at the end of the first film, Loomis has managed to totally lose his mind. Pleasence gives one of the most mannered, over the top performances in film history in Halloween II and it works perfectly. Whenever the film starts to drag, Pleasence shows up and injects a nice bit of crazy into the proceedings. My favorite moment comes when Loomis suddenly yells at a policeman, “What is it you guys you usually do? FIRE A WARNING SHOT!?”
Lance Guest, who plays the nice paramedic, was really quite likable. I know there’s some debate as to the ultimate fate of his character but I chose to believe that he survived.
The Halloween theme music is still probably one of the most effective horror soundtracks to have not been composed by Goblin or Riz Ortolani. When it came on the TV last night, our cat Doc actually got scared and ran out of the room.
What Didn’t Work?
It’s not the first Halloween.
While the film nominally stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Laurie spends most of the film catatonic and she never really gets to do much other than run from Michael. Say what you will about how Laurie kept dropping her weapons at the end of the first Halloween, she still at least fought back. In Halloween II, Laurie is reduced to being a stereotypical victim.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
I have to admit that I kinda related to the three nurses who were on call at the hospital. I related to Karen (Pamela Susan Shoop) because, like her, I have, in the past, shown a weakness for bad boys who insist on making out in a hot tub even while there’s a merciless serial killer wandering about. I related to Jill (Tawny Moyer) because, like her, I tend to look at my nails whenever I get bored at work. Most of all, I related to Janet (Ana Alicia), because she couldn’t figure out how to use a walkie talkie. (And, seriously, what type of name is walkie-talkie anyway? It sounds like a cutesy robot.)
So, as opposed to most other slasher films, I was able to find instant empathy with not one but three characters! Unfortunately, all three of those nurses were dead by the end of the film so, seriously … agck!
Hi there! As you may already know, in the days leading up to the release of Skyfall, we’re going to be looking at the previous films in the James Bond franchise. Today, we take a quick look at the first of the “official” James Bond films — 1962’s Dr. No.
Dr. No is a film of many firsts. It was the first film to be adapted from one of Ian Fleming’s original novels. (Though it was not the first adaptation, that honor going to the 1954 made-for-tv version of Casino Royale). It was, of course, the first Bond film to be produced by the legendary team of Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli. It featured the first true Bond girl, with Ursula Andress playing Honey Rider and spending the entire film in an iconic white bikini. Dr. No featured the first appearance of both M and Miss Moneypenny (played, respectively, by Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell). That iconic theme music made its first appearance in Dr. No as well. However, most importantly, Dr. No featured the first appearance by Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Even more than Andress’ white bikini, Connery is the reason why Dr. No proved to be the rather unlikely launching pad for one of the most succesful film franchises in cinematic history.
Dr. No, in fact, is a film that contains so many historic firsts that, often, it seems like reviewers tend to neglect the film itself and, instead, chose to concentrate on the film’s legacy. And indeed, 50 years after it was first released, it’s difficult to watch Dr. No without viewing everything about it in relation to what the James Bond franchise would eventually become. Instead of evaluating the film on its own individual merits, the tendency is to watch Dr. No and to spend a lot of time thinking things like: That’s the first time the world ever heard Sean Connery say, “Bond, James Bond.” We tend to forget that, when Connery and director Terrence Young actually made Dr. No, they had no way of knowing that 22 sequels would follow. They didn’t know that they were making film history.
Dr. No begins with a shooting in Jamaica. John Strangeways, the British Intelligence station chief, is ambushed and gunned down by three assassins. Shortly afterward, in a surprisingly brutal scene, his secretary is also assassinated. In response, James Bond is summoned to the offices of MI6. When he receives the summons, Bond is busy gambling and seducing Sylvia Trench (Eunice Grayson). Sylvia, incidentally, was originally meant to be a character who would pop up in all of the subsequent Bond films. Basically, she would have functioned as Bond’s girlfriend, the loyal woman who waited at home while Bond went to exotic countries and slept with every other woman in the world. Perhaps wisely, this idea was abandoned after just two movies but still, Bond’s initial meeting with Sylvia (and the audience) is such an iconic moment that words simply won’t do it justice. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:
This scene has to rank as one of the best intro scenes in film history. In just a few brief minutes, this scene tells us everything that we need to know about both James Bond and, even more importantly, Sean Connery’s interpretation of the character. In this scene, Connery’s Bond is the epitome of narcissistic charm, giving just a hint of the determined cruelty lurking right underneath the surface. It’s especially interesting to compare Connery’s Bond here to Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the character. Whereas Craig’s Bond often seems to be on the verge of having a nervous breakdown, Connery is established in his first scene as being a cool and calm professional. Craig may be the ideal Bond for our troubled reality but Connery will always be the Bond of our dreams and fantasies.
Bond is sent to Jamaica, where he teams up with CIA agent Felix Leiter (played by Jack Lord). Again, it’s interesting to compare this version of Felix Leiter with Jeffrey Wright’s more-recent interpretation of Felix. Whereas Jack Lord’s Felix Leiter is a cool, calm professional (a bit like an asexual version of Connery’s Bond, to be honest), Jeffrey Wright’s Felix often seems to be mired in self-loathing. Both interpretations are perfectly legitimate (and Felix is usually such a superfluous character that just about any interpretation will do). Instead, they’re interesting largely because of the way that each one of them epitomizes the decade in which each film was made.
With the help of Leiter, Bond quickly figures out that Strangeways’ death is linked to the mysterious, Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), who has his own private island near Jamaica. The natives claim that a dragon guards the island but Bond, never one to let something like that stop him (especially when it’s always his allies — like the unfortunate Quarrel — who get killed in these films, as opposed to him) sneaks onto the island. It’s here that he first spies Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) walking along the beach. Again, Honey’s introduction is such an iconic scene that, rather than try to describe it, it’s better just to show it:
For all the talk of how the Bond girls were often sexist stereotypes, I would have loved to have been an old school Bond girl. Seriously, they got to be all sexy, they got to make love to James Bond, and occasionally, they got to help save the world. Seriously, what fun!
I’ve spent so much time talking about James Bond and Honey Rider that I haven’t left much room for Dr. No. But that’s okay because, to be honest, Dr. No is not really that interesting of a villain. As opposed to future Bond villains, Dr. No is something of a bland character. Joseph Wiseman plays him with a lot of menace and he has a few over the top moments but it doesn’t matter because there’s really nothing to distinguish Dr. No from any other megalomaniac that’s ever shown up in a low budget spy movie. He’s a perfectly acceptable villain but he’s not an extremely memorable one. (Perhaps if Christopher Lee had accepted the role when it was offered to him, Dr. No would have been a bit more of an effective character.) Rest assured that Dr. No does have an impressive secret headquarters and, that once he does capture Bond and Honey, he takes his time to explain all of his evil plans as opposed to doing something sensible like killing them.
So, how does Dr. No hold up 50 years after first being released?
Surprisingly well.
Despite having a weak villain, Dr. No is still a lot of fun. As opposed to future Bond films, Dr. No was a low-budget affair and, at it’s best, it comes across as an appealing B-movie. Ultimately, the film is best known for introducing audiences to Sean Connery in the role of James Bond and perhaps that is for the best because Connery truly is the best thing in Dr. No. Five decades later, you can still see why the world was so intrigued with both the actor and the character.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at one of my personal favorite films of all time — From Russia With Love!
Both Arleigh and I have devoted a lot of time on the site to talking about our mutual admiration for the films of Italian horror director Lucio Fulci. While Fulci will always have as many detractors as defenders, the fact of the matter is that Fulci has been a major and often unacknowledged influence on the direction of horror cinema. To cite just one prominent example, the disturbing and graphic body horror of The Walking Dead has less to do with Romero and everything to do with Fulci.
Fulci remains a controversial figure and that’s not surprising. For every Fulci lover, there’s a detractor. For every good horror film that he made between 1979 and 1982, there’s a terrible one that he made in the years leading up to his mysterious death. But what everyone seems to agree on is that his 1979 epic Zombi 2 is one of the best (and most important) of the post-Romero Zombie films. Zombi 2 may have been produced to take advantage of the popularity of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead but Fulci created a film that transcended its origins.
(Personally, I prefer Fulci’s film to Romero’s but that’s a discussion for another day.)
Zombi 2 is a film that’s provided us with a few scenes that we love here at the Shattered Lens. Whether it’s the scene where a zombie wrestles with a shark or the very first Fulci’s signature eyeball impaling, Zombi 2 is a film that is full of memorable scenes. Tonight, I want to highlight another moment from Zombi 2 — the conquistador scene.
As this scene begins, the film’s star are already fleeing from an army of zombies when they discover that it’s not just the recently deceased that they have to fear. This is a scene that manages to be shameless, silly, and disturbingly effective at the same time. In other words, it’s pure Fulci.
Traditionally, I like to start my film reviews with a trailer but, with this trailer, I do feel the need to include a quick warning. The film being advertised, 1980’s Zombie Holocaust, was released at the height of the Italian exploitation boom and combined two notably gory genres of horror — the cannibal film and the zombie film. The trailer below is pretty explicit (even by the standards of the free speech zone known as the Shattered Lens) and is definitely not safe for work.
Like many of the classic Italian grindhouse films, Zombie Holocaustopens in New York City. A hospital attendant is caught devouring a cadaver in a morgue. After he attempts to escape by throwing himself out of a window, it’s discovered that 1) he’s a native of the Asian Molucca islands and 2) he’s only one of several natives to have both recently immigrated to New York City and gotten a job at a morgue. Dead bodies across NYC are being eaten and anthropologist Lori (played by Aelxandra Delli Colli, who is best known for being the only sympathetic character in Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper) is determined to discover why.
In order to investigate, Lori and Dr. Peter Chandler (played by Ian McCullough, who was also in Fulci’s classic Zombi 2) lead an expedition to the island. Almost as soon as the expedition arrives, they find themselves being pursued by not only cannibals but zombies as well! Even worse, it turns out that there’s a mad scientist on the island. Dr. Obrero (Donald O’Brien, an Irish actor who appeared in a few hundred Italian films of every possible genre) is convinced that he can unlock the secrets of life by experimenting on dead bodies and doing brain transplants.
(To be honest, I’ve seen this film a few times and I’m still not quite sure what exactly Dr. Obrero was trying to accomplish but I guess it doesn’t matter. He’s a mad scientist with his own private laboratory so I guess he can pretty much do whatever he wants.)
I love Italian zombie films but, for the most part, I try to avoid the cannibal films. I saw both Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Apocalypse because they both featured Giovanni Lombardo Radice and I saw Cannibal Holocaust because, seriously, that’s one of those films that any student of cinematic horror has to see at least one time. But otherwise, I tend to avoid the cannibal films because, to me, they’re just not that much fun to watch. (And the fact that most of them contain scenes of actual animal cruelty doesn’t help…)
However, Zombie Holocaust is one of the rare cannibal films that I can watch and enjoy because it’s just so ludicrous and over-the-top. It also helps that the film’s gore is so obviously fake that it becomes almost a postmodern statement on Italian cannibal films. And, finally, this film has got zombies in it and who doesn’t love zombies?
Of the countless zombie films that came out of Italy during the early 80s, Zombie Holocaust is one of the odder entries in the genre. While most Italian exploitation films were shameless when it came to imitating other movies, Zombie Holocaust attempts to outdo them all by cramming the conventions of three different genres into one mess of a movie. As such, the movie starts out as a standard cannibal film just to suddenly become an almost shot-by-shot remake of Zombi 2 before then finally wrapping things up by having Donald O’Brien pop up, acting like Peter Cushing in a Hammer Frankenstein film. There’s nothing graceful or subtle about this film’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to its story and, while the end result isn’t exactly pretty, it’s still watchable in much the same way that a televised police chase is watchable.
Director Marino Girolami was a veteran filmmakers who was ending a long career with his work on Zombie Holocaust and you have to admire the fact that, as opposed to many other filmmakers who have found themselves in a similar situation, he made an honest and unapologetic exploitation film, a shameless rip-off of about a thousand other films. Instead of being embarrassed by the film’s silliness, he instead embraced it and his cast did the same.
Playing the lead role, Scottish actor Ian McCullough plays his character with an attitude that, at times, almost comes across as a parody of stiff upper lip English imperialism. You may have to be a fan of grindhouse cinema to truly appreciate it but, whenever I’ve sat through this film, I always found myself smiling every time that McCullough discovered that another member of his expedition has been killed and responded with a frustrated, “And none of this would have happened if you had simply done as I had told you to do.” By the end of the film, I was expecting McCullough to approach the last remaining native and tell him, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
However, the film is truly stolen by Donald O’Brien, who plays the mad scientist with an almost alarming sense of authenticity. For the most part, nothing that O’Brien says during the film makes the least bit of sense but he delivers the lines with such conviction that it really doesn’t matter. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, O’Brien delivers the line, “Patient’s screams annoying me…performed removal of vocal chords.” It takes a special type of actor to make a line like that work and O’Brien was that actor.
Indeed, watching a film like this, it’s hard not to admire the fact that both the filmmakers and the cast managed to stay sane regardless of how ludicrous the film eventually became. That’s perhaps the best way to describe Zombie Holocaust. It’s ludicrous but it’s still a lot of fun.
(Speaking of ludicrous and fun, when Zombie Holocaust was released here in the States, it was renamed Dr. Butcher, M.D. and it was apparently advertised by a sound truck known as the Butchermobile. To me, that sounds like a lot of fun and it again reminds me that I was born a few decades too late.)
It seems appropriate that, during the time of year that is devoted to horror, Fox Searchlight should release a trailer for an upcoming film that claims to tell the “true” story about the making of Psycho, one of the scariest and most influential horror movies ever made.
I have to admit that I’ve had my doubts about Hitchock ever since the project was first announced and, watching this trailer, I still have my doubts. While Helen Mirren looks to be as strong as always and Scarlett Johansson is an inspired choice to play Janet Leigh, I still have my doubts about Anthony Hopkins playing the role of Alfred Hitchcock.
From the evidence presented in this trailer, Hopkins’s interpretation of Hitchcock appears to be …. interesting, if nothing else.
Fox Searchlight, however, seems to have a lot of faith in Hitchcock as they’ve moved up the premiere date so that the film can premiere in November, at the start of Oscar season.
