In honour of his passing:
1. The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming
2. Wait Until Dark
3. Catch 22
4. Glengarry Glen Ross
5.Freebie and the Bean
6. Little Murders
7. Edward Scissorhands
8. Gross Pointe Blank
9. Escape from Sobibor
10. Havana (he's very good, seriously)
Danish cinema goes for the international market but instead of horror or action they do a thriller (cheap I guess) and instead of real stars there's Roy Dotrice, Judy Geeson and Zena Walker. Who are all really good I've got to say - so is the cast. And the direction and writing.
This was a surprise. I was expecting a middle aged perv movie and it's a bit of that - Dotrice gets to do it with Geeson - but at least she's manipulating and blackmailing him. Looks quite good even though the Danish locations aren't exploited. I think they were hiding them.
Once Sam Bronston went bust Phil Yordan found new blood out of the Scotia Group who invested in a bunch of films. A spaghetti Western shot in Spain it starts out with a confronting massacre led by Robert Shaw and Martin Landau then jumps forward in time to where Shaw is a priest (who sleeps with women) in the town run by a gun toting Telly Savalas. Stella Stevens turns up looking for revenge which is intriguing but the film wanders after that. We flashback to Shaw's life, and then Savalas is shot and the film loses momentum, and Michael Craig pops up as a convincing bandito and it gets confusing when it should be a simple revenge tale.
Nice cinematography and some decent action and excellent cast.
Apt title. Took me a while to get into it. But I did. Not for everyone. Has integrity. I'm still wary of disabled acting. Like Family Life it has a pretty girl in the lead. Do Ken Loach and Mike Leigh get along? Wonderful gesture by Alan Finney.
The period when Cannon went for the big brass ring. They kept making their bread and butter films - Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, plus Michael Dudikoff etc - but attacked on two other fronts: classier IP (Runaway Train, Superman 4, Masters of the Universe) and art house stuff. It came crashing down for them but also provided their biggest triumphs - Runaway Train, 52 Pick Up. If Cannon had kept their head down maybe they would've lasted, but if they could've done that they wouldn't have been Cannon. A fun read.
Tigon tried to class themselves up around this time - didn't work, though points for trying. Mark Lester is ideally cast as the young chap who likes the horse, and there's a decent cast. Some of these admittedly give off typical Tigon vibes - the evil squire, the voluptuous village girl.
I haven't read the book. I assume it's faithful - I've heard it is. James Hill was the director - animal guy from Born Free.
The horse goes missing in a lot of this. It's not bad though. Location filming in Ireland and Spain helps.
The pace is lethargic and the script clunky but Chips Rafferty is charismatic in a specfically designed role, Janette Elphick is very pretty and quite good (her voice dubbed by June Salter), Guy Doleman an excellent villain, Henry Murdock is effective support, most of it is shot on location which looks pretty good. The Albert Namatjira cameo is a little odd but fascinating.
Max Osbiston is too old as the love interest - was there no one better looking available? I think Charles Tingwell was meant to play this part.
A 45 minute film, written as a TV play, rejected by the ABC, shot for German TV, then filmed it won an Awgie and was picked up in Sydney by an American commercials guy who filmed it in colour, sold it around the world and eventually Australian television.
A great idea -Jack Thompson and Owen Weingott are two men in a nuclear missile silo (not sure what country - Jack has an odd accent at times). There's a big explosion, they're cut off from base, Weingott wants to launch and Thompson doesn't.
Truth be told this is probably better suited to 30 minutes - there's some padding, waffly dialogue - but it's an terrific situation and builds to a decent climax (Weingott shooting Thompson, then discovering it was an earthquake). Part of me was hoping Weingott would have launched the missile but anyway. Written by Greg Martin who I'm not sure did anything else, at least not produced.
Long missing concert film was found in New Zealand, cleaned up and given a nice sheen. It's fun. No Fabian, who was cut out, but in a way that helps the nationalistic aspect - it builds up to the appearance of J O'K, who was inserted into the movie from a later concert. Johnny O'Keefe steals the show, as he should. He's got It. So too as Col Joye but not as much as JOK.
Only one singer plays to the camera. Other bands are more run of the mill like The Graduates. Johnny Devlin does a great Elvis impersonation.
Overlay scream sounds which contrast with the audience sitting down. Some great audience cutaways - girls screaming, kids just sitting there, some old codger nodding off.
The audience of boomers I saw it with talked excitedly through the film and sang along with some of the songs. Cute.
There aren't many documentaries about British filmmakers and Michael Klinger wasn't that famous but he made Get Carter, one of the most beloved British gangster flicks.
This has some decent talking heads - Mike Hodges, Michael Caine. One gets the sense though some things have been left out.
Klinger's non-Carter credits aren't that amazing - the Confessions films, some Wilbur Smith adaptations. He did do some work with Tony Tenser. Mind you it was a tough time to be a producer. Not many people beat Klinger's output - David Puttnam of course, also Don Boyd, John Dark, John Brabourne,
Not a good movie - it's far too much a filmed stage play, complete with long exposition dumps, and the plot is based on an irritating premise, that parents can't bring themselves to ask if their son's partner is a boy or girl. However it is remarkably progressive because the partner is a guy, and a very nice person, who tries hard to be nice, and clearly has a loving relationship with the son.
And the ending feels very true - the kids just let the mother think the boy is a girl. I know it's not everyone's taste but dramatically it works. It's the whole dragged out bit of being unable to ask that doesn't work. The script needed another complication - to actually meet the parents (who are talked to over the phone), or to have a girl turn up, or have Patricia Routledge turn up.
Decent actors. Remarkable it was made.
Look, yes, it's bad, but not one of the worst films ever made. It does have a vision - bright and colourful. Young kids will like it. Clooney wobbles his head still a lot at this stage but he's fine. Chris O'Donnell whines a lot but he doesn't have much to play.
Film has bad emotional core. Who cares about Robin sulking around Batman? Or the villains? Elle MacPherson is the beard. Alicia Silverstone is wasted as Batgirl. Film should have been about her. Bane is wasted.
They borrow structure of Batman Forever with Uma Thurman as mad scientis and Arnie as the established villain. Good showmanship to have Arnie as villain.
Like a serious Woody Allen film i.e. beautifully shot Bergman-like tale of miserable, smart, highly verbal New York Jews, with money, smarts and friendly, and ennui.
Financed by lew Grade who did it to get Shirley MacLaine to sign to a TV series. Frank Gilroy, who wrote and directed, said when Grade saw it for the first time he praised the production values - "all those cars" - for its low budgt. I'm sure he didnt know what else to say.
It's smart and made with care. Feels a coehsive work.
Not an easy watch. Amateurs. Professionals.. Girl is a rebel. Not too bad. The film shows the system making her mad. I'm not sure that's what happens. Maybe it is. Ken Loach said he didn't want to demonise the parents. He did. Pretty girl star who is very good and had a wild life. Loach handles it well. Nat Cohen finance this. Fascinating.
Napoleon on St Helena is an interesting coda to a fascinating life though you've got to jazz it up for drama because he did just hang around - proposed escape plans didn't happen. This has Napoleon root two women, Billie Whitelaw (an ex mistress) and also Georgia Hale (the real life Betsy which is a bit of a slander and pervy). It also adds John Gielgud as a diplomat offering Napoleon a chance to return. I think this was made up.
The TV original starred Trevor Howard who would've been better as Napoleon than Kenneth Haigh who just lacks X factor. Haigh is fine but the show needed a star. Was the TV version this pervy? Presumably they wanted someone more sexy.
It feels like a television play - some chats in rooms. They do have some outside scenes and an escape sequence and swim on the ebach but that's about it. Some nice shots of redcoats on clifftips - but Fielder Cook at heart was a televisio director.
I kind of didn't know the point of it. But John Gielgud livens things up in the third actor, Ralph Richardson is fun, and Whitelaw, Hale and the others are good. Moses Gunn plays a black general which has some basis in fact.
In honour of his birthday
1. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) - the perfect cad. I still think about this film.
2. Octopussy (1983) - never regarded as a top level Bond villain but I thought he was good.
3. Gigi (1958) - so dodgy. Yet a good performance.
4. The Paradine Case (1948) - Hitchcock wanted Robert Newton but I thought Jourdan was fine.
5. Dangerous Exile (1958) a very fanatical hero for a swashbuckler
6. Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) - The American public didn't like heroic Jourdan but liked him in roles like this.
7. The Best of Everything (1959) - career girl stuff, he works well as one of an ensemble.
8. Julie (1956) - a great abusive spouse
9. Fear No Evil (1969) - I've got a memory of this being good. Vague. But it's there.
10. Man in the Iron Mask (1977) - effective as D'artagnan.
The British public didn't always rush to big screen versions of sitcoms. They did to this one - it wasn't a huge smash but solid - in part I think because it was made after John Alderton and the original kids had left the show so it was a chance to see the gang again.
The kids look so old. I never saw an ep but remember the ads all the time - the fussy assisant headmaster, and the wacky teacher. John Alderton has looks, a likeable manner and excellent comic timing - I'm surprised Rank didn't roll the dice and try him in a Doctor film.
Alderton hits the kids a few times (a tap but still). Different times.
Jill Kerman is the pretty love interest. She was in the series as Alderton's girlfriend but here the film has them met for hte first time so it's got a story holding it together. Also having the kids go on camp adds some visuals. They get out and about. Writers of On the Buses thought that film worked because you could get visual.
Gets points for novely. Richard Harris stars and directs after driving awya the original director. A man and a boy story. Wolf Mankowitz wrote these - A Kid for Two Farthings. Shot in Israel. Apparently this was going to be shot in Italy. He was going to play a British player.
Here he's meant to be Israeli, I think. It's shot in Israel. Some nice scenes of the sea. Desert stuff less pleasing.
The kid is a whiner. I think we're meant to be touched by their relationship. But he nags the guy to play football. Sooks when Harris doesn't get the goal. It's hard, man.
Harris has a romance plot with Romy Schneider. She's a sculptor. There's all this scuplting. They yell at each other. Acting!
Harris looks terrible. He does pass for a sixties era athlete - to a degree.
It's a weird film. Feels messy. The kid and Harris, Romy and Harris.
Powerful, confronting, strong, hard to watch. There's no one to cling on to. John Hurt's braggart, dim, boozy wife beater. Richard Attenborough's terrifying killer. The dopey cops, Smug lawyers.
Attenborough is incredible. Performance so well defined. Small man. Fantasist. Reassuringly bald. Like a bank manager, Kindly. Alluding to superior information all the time. Hurt is superb. Everyone is good. Judy Geeson lovely.
Devastating scenes like the hanging. They kill a kid.
Boston Strangler was easy to go down. A tough movie. Very good.
Love the grammatically correct title. It was originally called The Gingerbread Man a more direct allusion to its Hansel and Gretel origin, with Mark Lester and Chloe Franks as two youngies who are captured by Shelley Winters.
Despite some names having worked on it - Jimmy Sangster, Robert Blees, Gavin Lambert - the film doesn't have quite enough story for a feature. It needed a murder or another significant character or something. Like for Ralph Richardon's part of to be bigger - or someone else's. (Judy Cornwell is wasted.) It definitely needed Winters to kill someone so she's more of a threat.
Curtis Harrington handles it well. Though I did wish for some full on baroque Tim Burton handling.
Winters gives it her all. The kids are good. Hemdale, who represented Mark Lester, produced this.
US version called it Who Slew Auntie Roo? for the Americans.
I'd never seen a Carry On. Very clever, slickly made, strong cast of music hall veterans who practically wink at camera. A series of subplots around a matchmaking agency - one man tries a series of dud dates and winds up with a good girl who is racy, a super nerd hits it off with a model, Sid James tries to cheat on his de facto who hooks up with a camp dude.
Everyone is so relaxed and confident and comfortable and the Talbot Rothwell script is full of genuinely clever lines.
AIP go for some Romeo and Juliet cash in what was meant to be the first in a series of classy literary pieces but they backed off. Terrific locations, and splendid work from Timothy Dalton, pretty good work from his co star, Ian Ogilvy ideal as Edgar, Hilary Dwyer a slight let down, and lots and lots of close ups for the girl who plays the maid.
Robert Fuest has some poor blocking. Erratic film. Sometimes astonishingly right, especially when Dalton is on fire. Other times not so crash hot. Typically classy Brit support including Harry Andrews.
How did this get made, let alone released in a cinema (although it took a while being shot in 1969). I guess it was cheap. There's no names - though star Clifford Evans was in The Power Game. Evans is an old man - I think pushing sixty - yet the film is about him hooking up with Felicity Gibson who was like 25 or something and looks younger. I thought for a moment that Jennifer Hilary was Evans' younger wife but no she's his daughter
Why didn't they get Kenneth More to be in this? Or some other star? I'm sure they could've got him for nothing.
Gibson has a scene where she takes her clothes off and gets into bed nude to go to sleep. Hilary is also naked getting out of the shower. I mean, appreciate it, but not motivated, no point, I felt sorry for the actress.
Had no sense of attraction between Gibson and Evans. And when Gibson goes off with a hunky farmer her own age it's like "about time".
Directed by John Mackenzie and written by his wife. Peter Egan is the young buck who is sort of keen on Hilary
I'd never seen the TV show but this was a lot of fun. Starts out like gangbusters with Frankie Howerd having a fun time talking to the audience and funny jokes like the names, a risque nature. This has bums and boobs and everyone is keen on an orgy. There's an interesting array of characters - slave Howerd, noblewoman Julie Edge (gorgeous but dubbed and no comic timing), dopey noble Michael Hordern, horny wife, horny daughter (good old Madeleine Smith whose vacant expression is employed to strong comic effect.
There's a plot full of potential - an assassination plot against Nero - but the script can't develop this. It does have gladiator combat, baths, orgies, parties... It looks quite good for a cheapie film. The action runs out of puff but the star is in his element. It's fun.
Led to two sequels.
Susan George really had her moment in the early 70s. She was everywhere. Not just Straw Dogs but all sorts of movies.
She had a terrific pouty look - insolent, sexy - that was perfect for the time. She turned directors a bit pervy. She plays a different woman in peril heroine here - sexually promiscuous, sulky, shruggy, a go go dancer.
The first two thirds of this were really gripping. Pete Walker can direct. Low budget is well hidden by taking the unit to Portugal and shooting lots of scenes outside on the terrace. Peter Cook's one time wife Judy is the other gal, Leo Genn is in it as George's dad. Chris Sandford's part could've been played by someone better looking (sorry Chris). Barry Evans is sweet as the guy who hooks up with George after Sandford.
Polanski teams with two other dirty old prevs, Ken Tynan and Hugh Hefner, to tackle Shakespeare. The public didn't go for it. You can see why. Lacks stars - Jon Finch and Fresesca Annais aren't bad, they're fine, but to get people to go to Shakespeare I think they needed to be amazing.
The press lost their minds over the nude scene. I mean, lost it. It's very short and in context and works - livens up the piece. Less controversy and more confronting are the murder of Lady Macduff and her son - this is Manson-esque, people screaming and cackling off screen, murderers come in, the kid is young and has just had a bath (he's in a towel), scene of domesticity, they stab the kid, other people being raped by hippie surrogates, as the house burns. It's shocking. Tremendously effective. As is the murder of Duncan, Banquo.
The rest is less compelling. Am I that in love with violence? I'd like to think not. It's getting in the head of the leads. Finch isn't helped by the soliloquies being done in terms of voice over. It distances the audience. I think that decision and the casting of the leads is what hurt it. (Imagine Anthony Hopkins and Glenda Jackson. Apparently Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld who turned it down but she turns down everything. He's conception of Lady Macbeth of a nyphmette in hindsight is, uh...
The sets are amazing. The direction, blocking, costumes. The feel of is incredible. Maybe too long.
Undercast in minor roles (eg Macduff) though I liked Martin Shaw as Banquo.
Terrible. Another TV play blown up into a film and crushing under its weight. The echoes of Brief Encounter (meet on a train, short time frame) make you appreciate what a good film that was. Leonard Whiting plays a walking red flag who stalks Jean Simmons, Chases her, refuses to go away when she tells him, chases after her when she runs away, acts boorishly, follows her to ehr mothers, eventually gets her into bed, then smacks her when she says her husband is better in bed.
Who was meant to watch this? To relate to it? Is it significant? Whiting is a good looking lad but he's so boorish and such a wanker.
Tom Mankiewicz wrote a touching vignette of sad, lonely Jean Simmons making a pass at him in real life. Maybe she resonated.
There's not even a "future famous person" in a bit part.
Excellent book. Looks at the short stories, novels, different drafts of scripts. Compares how he improved apparently easy jobs eg West Side Story, Sound of Music. Retrieves Lehman's contribution to Virginia Woolf from the cult of Mike Nichols and to West Side Story from the cult of Arthur Laurents and Steven Sondheim.
Affectionate towards Lehman to a degree but also exasperated. Hypochondriac, night owl, distant father, workaholic, loving husband but not around, tolerant of wife's long affair, devoted carer towards end, became a dad in his eighties, super talented, decent supervisory producer but bad hands on one, terrible director. Skill as novelist left him in 70s apparently, though could still write good essays. Probably retired at right time, I can imagine him getting kicked off Mission Impossible. Fitted in well at classy studios like MGM and Paramount and Fox. Mate of David Brown's. Should have written another original. Should have teamed more with Robert Wise, they collaborated so well together.
Really good work.
Stanley Long made a lot of sexy movies. This one is more a Woodstock type tale with some sex thrown in. It really wants to be a youth musical - some kids decide to throw a pop festival on a rich idiot's estate. That's a Cliff Richard style plot. A great idea for a youth film. Songs flow naturally. You do need money for extras at the festival - the film falls over.
Suzanne Mercer the writer was married to a member of Juicy Lucy who are in the film.
One of the girls walks nude in the morning - that makes the owner of the property stay. That's a good idea for a film but never paid off - there's no relationship between the girl (or any girl) and the guy. It really should be about him falling under their spell. He doesn't he just leaves.
The guys girlfriend roots one of the guys. Again, promising. Excuse for nudity. We never see her again.
The gang make a porno with some girls. Not developed.
The guys visit a sex book shop and act as louts. No pay off.
Feels like these scenes inserted. A film torn between different stools.
I acutally didn't mind it though. Painless. Weird. Just over 60 minutes.
Hard to read. This is no slight on Kearns who has done a good job, solid research and writing, etc - it's just making it about Tierney. A solid lunk who lucked out in avoiding war service during World War Two, went into movies and got lucky again with the lead in Dillinger, he was all set up for a long life as a tough guy actor, who never lack work. And that kind of figured out for him.
But he was a drunk and a mean drunk, constantly falling off the wagon and getting in fights and winding up in court. Again and again he gets on the booze and fights. He's a frustrating figure to spend a book with. I kept going "you should be in prison". He got so many second chances.
From an acting point of view I get it - he conveyed menace, good voice. But he should've served more time in prison. He was a menace. Couldn't stay on wagon. Would attack cops and beat up small people in bars. People (judges, producers) kept forgiving him. And he never seemed to lack women.
Book more enjoyable in the 80s and 90s when he calmed down a little. He still had plenty of money too (well, enough) - constant work, no divorces, no kids.
Kearns might have discussed the film and his acting a little more to vary things.
Some blind-sploitation from the team that made Ten Rillington Place, a woman in peril thriller made for one sequence really - blind Mia Farrow going back to a house not realising she's walking around the corposes of her family.
That's a brilliant sequence but, like Brian Clemens' other scripts, struggles to pad out to feature length. Creepy build up and corpse walking around is terrific - then he struggles. Mia goes for a horse ride with her ex (lump front forward type who was the real estate agent on George and Mildred), tension dissipates, then goes back to the house, discovers bodies, escapes.
Mia is passive - she runs, falls, and ges rescued a few times - even unforgivably at the end. I kept expecting to be plunged into darkenss so the tables were turned but it never happens.
Some "significance" added at the front with the killer ('s boots) walking arond being inundated by violent images.
Briskly diected by Richard Fleischer.
Cheesy British horror film. Gets up to a terrific start with a woman being sculputred and murdered - I don't know why they didn't have a few more scenes along these lines, with creepy furnaces glowing red and screams.
Too much of it is ugly shots, murder mysteries and erratic acting. The hammy stuff is fun - Ronald Lacey. mike Raven looks good but doesn't have it - the voice lets him down. Some pretty women. Doesn't build. Some of the women are attractive.
Just a bit slip shod. Good film inside struggling to get out.
Odd first film, from David Puttnam and Alan Parker. A gentle slice of life about 12 year olds, mostly about Mark Lester and Jack Wild's friendship, and Lester in love with Tracy Hyde. The first demonstration of Parker's skills with kids - although he was a writer here not a director. Waris Hussein directs well. Made with skill and empathy.
Financed in part by Hemdale who had Lester and Wild under contract.
It's very slight and Michael Jackson would've loved it but it's well acted, generous spirit and nice tunes from the Bee Gees.
Weirdly close to the Margot Robbie version - maybe that's not so weird, they've just gone for the same greatest hits, with Mary arriving in England, Liz sending her lover to marry Mary, Darnley having it off with Rizzo. This even has a feminist slant too with the men all trying to pinch power off Mary and Liz, and John Knox ranting away.
Basic problem of this remains - how not to make Mary sound silly. She seems like an idot. The men characters take over.
Timothy Dalton steals the show in the best part - the bisexual playboy Darnley. Ian Holm is Rizzio. Patrick mcGoohan is Mary's brother. Trevor Howard basically playing Donald Crisp. Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave seem to be going through the motions.
Everyone speaks in that historical recap dialogue way.
The Brits turned out a lot of thrillers in 1971 - low budget I guess. Roald Dahl wrote the script as a gift for his wife Patricia Neal. It's a variation on the lonely women and handsome young psychopath story - Night Must Fall is part of that but also Suspicion.
Pamela Brown is old mum, Patricia Neal her "spinster" daughter, Nicholas Clay the hunky psycho. Bernard Herrmann wrote a terrific score that isn't well used. The direction lacks atmosphere. The love story between Neal and Clay isn't done well.
Clay is an impotent psycho - the same time as Frenzy.
I respect this. So much talent. I don't mind ballet films. But lacks story. There's five stories. The dancing is sweet. It's charming. I didn't get into this. Felt like it was watching a stage production Sorry. Am sure if I saw it under different circumstances I would like it.
Got a lot of time for Sam Neill - he's been around so long, had a fabulous career. In the 80s he always seemed on the verge of being a big star - Omen 3, etc - but never quite happened. I think he was more a very handsome character actor, often overshadowed by big stars but holding his own eg My Brilliant Career (Judy Davis), Jurassic Park (dinosaurs), The Piano (Holly Hunter). He just sort of chugs along.
The book is touchingly written after Neill has been diagnosed with cancer and he's living alone in his flat in Surry Hills. He's very discrete about the end of his relationships (Lisa Harrow was one) and affectionate about his kids. More open about his friendships especially Bryan Brown but also Kiwi mafia members like Tim Finn. Discusses life in Ireland and NZ - Dunedin not selling out to watch the Beatles, boarding school, uni, documentary film unit, low rent theatre, leaping to stardom quite quickly via Sleeping Dogs then My Brilliant Career then a British career (with a few TV detours on the way, one of which, Reilly Ace of Spies really established him there).
An amiable enjoyable chap who found a way to consistently work with great directors, on a whole variety of material. A lot of Aussie directors made their best films with Neill: Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Fred Schepisci, Phil Noyce, John Duigan. There's also John McTiernan, John Carpenter, Martin Campbell, etc.
I would have liked more gossip but that's me. Enjoyed it.
I feel a little guilty for finding those videos he did during COVID really annoying.
It's not a dumb movie, it's an elevated epic, tries to be smart, looks terrific, is well acted.
But Nicholas and Alexandra were idiots - suited for being amiable powerless monarchs not actual rulers, like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. They could have brought democracy to Russia or at least saved their monarchy and avoided civil war, kept the country out of World War One. But they blundered on. So the film is a drag.
They're not active or compelling they're just dumb and useless. No exotic sex or action.
Tom Baker livens things up a little as Rasputin - Peter O'Toole, Sam Spiegel's choice, would've been better. All the solid British actors get wearying after a while - everyone's good but they're so dull. It feels like a BBC mini series. I kept wishing for some miscast American pop star to keep things lively.
There's no personal connection. James Goldman made the royals come alive in Lion in Winter but that was an interesting family. This has some family stuff but they are weighed under by all the characters. I couldn't tell the difference between the four sisters. Alexi has some character but he's a horrible brat - when he tells off his dad towards the end it's like "shut up kid you got us into this mess".
Dr Zhivago had a relatable core - Omar Sharif torn between Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin.Lawrence of Arabia was about Lawrence and his relationships with Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn. Ben Hur was Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd/Jack Hawkins/Haya Harareet.
What's the core here? Kind of Nicholas and Alexandra and their family... but it keeps crossing to politicians like the Bolshevieks who are simply more interesting. You could've found ways to make the family interesting - differentiate them, give conflict - but they don't.
I liked John McEnery as Kerensky the leader in between Nicholas and Lenin. In part because he was blonde and looked different from the others. I googled the character - he married a Brisbane girl and spent some time here! Brian Cox is terrific as Trotsky. Ditto Michael Bryant as Lenin. But these characters are interesting. They really should've been the focus. Or else really dug into life in the Imperial court. They tried to have it both ways and ended up not nailing anything.
The finale where the family is killed is well done. They build up the suspense with the family waiting in the room - it's a terrific scene, drags out the emotion and gives a sense of what this film needed to be: dig into the little things, ram home the moments.
It feels like it should have done for ten hours.
Could have done with an edit especially on the bits about Gypsy - some of it is interesting but it just goes on and on, and it was a revival. But the interesting stuff is really interesting and there are entertaining recaps too of I Can Do It For You Wholesale, West Side Story, Anyone Can Whistle, Nick and Nora, La Cage. Everyone is keen to sack people all the time in theatre. My favourite story is sacking Robert Stack from La Cage - that's very funny.
Merrick wanted to replace Elliot Gould on Wholesale with Michael Callan.
Not many films but anyway
1) Some Like It Hot - easy choice
2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell
3) How to Marry a Millionaire - glorious fun
4) Bus Stop - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great
5) All About Eve - one scene but a great one
6) The Misfits - flawed, but marvelous
7) Niagara - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie
8) There's No Business Like Show Business - those song and dance numbers!
9) The Seven Year Itch - icon
10) Don't Bother to Knock - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there
The Fantale team responsible for the lesbian vampire films at Hammer were hired by British Lion to do a cheap thriller - it's basically two sets, one an isolated house where Susan George babysits a young kid and is tormented by an escaped loony (Ian Bannen), the other a restaurant where parents of said kid (Honor Blackman, George Cole) have dinner with a doctor (John Gregson). When you see Dennis Waterman turn up as George's boyfriend you realise the cast is very good.
George is in her full pouty lipped glory from this era, a likeable presence, forced to constantly unbutton her top (or someone does it for her), allowed to scream a little too often, but she carries the film. Bannen is great in a scenery chewing part, tormenting, pleading, creating some sympathy. Blackman looks on presumably wondering what happened to her leading lady career, and too good looking really for George Cole. Gregson feels wasted.
There's good moments here. The start especially with George alone in the house apart from the kid (played by the director's son - director allows lots of scenes with Bannon holding a knife to the kid's throat, as in a LOT), being scared, wind outside.
But there's not enough story for a film. Waterman turns up. Hangs out. Leaves is killed. Bannen turns up. Then... it hops up and down on the spot with him tormenting George until the others turn up. Now you can do this in Dead Calm because Nicole has to seduce Billy Zane to keep him on edge... and tries to poison him, etc. That's what should've been done here, especially as Bannen thinks George is Blackman. She should have tried to seduce him or at least cajole him, get the kid to safety, etc. But that was beyond Tudor Gates, I think.
Either that or the film needed more twists. Like for George Cole to be evil or John Gregson. Cole just hangs about looking for something to do. Neither of them even die.
It's a shame because Peter Collinson brings imagination to the piece. The film looks good.
