Intriguing - Oliver Reed puts ad in paper for woman to live on island with him for a year. They have sex before even going out there and the relationship is explored.
It's patchy, erratic, always watchable. Amanda Donahue isn't as naked on screen as often as I'd been led to believe. She's excellent. Great to see Reed in a decent role for a change.
The island is located near Australia and there are some Aussie characters in it.
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.
Lovingly done. Some great interviews. I wish it had been more thorough. Lots of credit listings and plot synopses, like a pre internet book. I wish he'd done some more research on production of films. This touches on early Cannon films - the Ninjas, breakdancing, Bronsons, Norrises, some of the classy stuff (eg Love Streams).
A frustrating experience. The set up and idea is solid: student Elizabeth Shue goes to work as an assistant for enigmatic professor Terence Stamp who is doing research on chimps. As she stays she starts to worry that one of the chimps, Link, could have murder on his mind.
Jerry Goldsmith is credited for the jaunty, chirpy score which doesn't feel right. There's beautiful Scottish locations but too much of it seems shot inside a studio and that lacks atmosphere. I really wanted the atmos cranked up like with Rebecca - crashing waves, isolation, hostility. That isn't done.
Elizabeth Shue is very beautiful, likeable and chirpy - and I think her semi nude scene is justified (is that a body double in long shot?) because it does add to suspense with the creepy chimp looking at her - but maybe she's too chirpy. A more ostensibly mousy, scared actor could have brought more tension - I don't know like, say, Jennifer Jason Leigh or someone. She never seems too scared. I also think she should have been romantically interested in Stamp, leant into the Jane Eyre tropes more... Shue didn't need a boyfriend, the guys who visit at the end just could've been fellow students.
It does pick up in the last third when the chimp goes on the rampage. But it never quite conquers its case of the sillies.
Richard Franklin had a difficult time of it during the shoot. He had troubles with his crew, clashed with his producer, fidgeted with the script, fell inappropriately in "crush" with with leading lady. Maybe that's why this didn't click. It certainly was not widely seen.
Charles B. Griffith does a comedy-horror (I guess) based on Stevenson's famous story, updated to the present day. Oliver Reed in heavy make up plays a doctor who is nice but ugly and gets turned into a handsome cad.
It's a silly, "wacky" comedy that TBH could have done with more exploitation elements (violence, sex, nudity). Maybe it would've played better shot in the 50s with Dick Miller in the lead (Miller is in this, incidentally).
Oliver Reed completely commits, it's got to be said - as Heckyl he's covered in make up and puts on a weird accent and as Hype does his Oliver Reed thing.
Sunny Johnson is quite good as the blonde dream girl - she died of a brain tumour not long after filming. Griffith's old Roger Corman colleague Mel Welles pops in as a doctor.
This was an early American film for Cannon, who wanted a Love at First Bite. Didn't quite work out that way. I've got to say, it's not a dumb film, though - it is silly, very silly, but not dumb.
Sam Shepherd plays aren't really for me but this might've worked really well on stage, with the actors right there, going for it. As adapted for film it's just a long slog - there's not much story and it's 100 minutes, taking 10 minutes for Shepherd (who plays the male lead) knocking on Kim Basinger's door.
The actors try. Robert Altman puts some scenes outside in a car park and in an empty diner to open it up but it's still slow moving and dull. So dull. Randy Quaid is in it, and Harry Dean Stanton. The actors are fine. The motel burns at the end. Great. Whoopee. Sorry this film put me in a bad move. Good on Cannon for trying to be arty but what about something more cinematic?
They tried for this one. It's not well known but they tried. The support cast is very good - Lesley Ann Downe, Michael Parks, Robert Joy. The characters are given stuff to do - Joy's punk-like killer, the henchman always eating food, Parks and his shades.
Script wise they do a good job of inducing fresh outrage instead of relying on it automatically. Bronson's new girl is the ex of a crime lord - she gets killed, and the crime lord takes custody of her kid, which gives it live stakes.
Some imagination in the action scenes - Bronson uses a soccer ball, a henchman dresses up in drag. There's a fashion world backdrop.
It's not a classic, Bronson was old, and it lacks delirious excess but there's some fine actors and they did try.
One of Bronson's starring vehicles is an attempt to do something a little different - though not too different. Here he's a journalist, and doesn't shoot that many, though he fires a gun at one stage and beats up someone at the end.
Ironically the story would have been more effective if played more typical. It's based on a novel The Avenging Angel, a Mormon thing (there was a Tom Berenger movie with that title) and is about a feud between two Mormon brothers in Colorado and an investigation into the death of a whole family. It would have been easy to give Bronson a personal connection to that family and had his quest be a personal one - I think the movie would have been better. I understand the novel was about a cop but Bronson plays a reporter so presumably that was a requested change.
The film is fine. Solid story. A lot of old pros around - Paul Jarrico did the script, J. Lee Thompson directed, Jeff Corey and John Ireland play feuding Mormans, Trish Van Dere is the girl. A few younger faces would have helped.
I genuinely didn't guess the baddie, the Colorado locations are a treat, the Mormons gives it novelty, but really it feels like the episode of a TV series. If they wanted to make it a movie, they should have had Bronson has a former Mormon, with a personal connection (like he was raised by them or something) and it was his estranged sister who was shot. Being a reporter makes it feel like this is just another episode in his life.
Michael Winner's remake of the classic is very faithful - he follows the structure - and packs the movie full of great actors and production value. But it doesn't work - at least not as well. It might have been better going off on his own path making it truly trashy. There are some boobs but they seem added - if he went soft core the whole way the film would seem to have more point.
Everything feels off. In the original it was clear Lockwood was motivated by her mother's death... Dunaway says those lines here but Winner shoots her reaction in long shot, so it doesn't have impact.
The ages of the cast is all off. Dunaway seems to old - she was 42, but Lockwood at 31 or whatever made sense. Denholm Elliot is too old at 60 to play someone truly loved by Glynis Barber who was in her late twenties. Alan Bates doesn't feel dashing enough at 50.
On one hand I liked the Barber and Oliver Tobias were f*ck buddies but then it didn't make sense for the character - if Barber was like that how did she lose Elliot to Dunaway... because in the original Lockwood seduced him. But if Barber is sexually active...? Barber and Dunaway need to be different. And why would Barber want Elliot instead of Tobias? And why would Tobias want Dunaway instead of Barber? You never feel that Barber genuinely likes Elliot or that Dunaway likes Tobias.
It's frustrating. The whip duel at least livens things up. The Barber-Tobias sex scene is not very sexy - we all have different ideas of what that is, but I don't know too many people who see it that way. It is hilarious the way they cut in her body double.
A very useful exercise to show how a remake that's very close can still fail. It should have just gone full AIP/New World/Big Bad Mama style.
The best bit is John Gielgud and Dunaway - they match well.
Historic in a way - the last feature from J. Lee Thompson and the last feature lead from Charles Bronson. This was his contribution to Hollywood's late 1980s in Japan - and it does provide a point of difference.
There's memorable bits - Peggy Lipton is his wife, Nicole Eggert is his daughter, Bronson forces a baddy to eat a watch, Bronson and a fellow cop hold another baddy over a ledge to get him to talk and accidentally drop him.
The villains are Latino and black, with Japanese sort of half and half. Bronson goes on a racist rant but the film doesn't seem to endorse it. A Japanese character (James Pax, quite a large role) thinks it's okay to grope women on public transport because he sees it done in Japan so he tries it on Eggert, and she goes him - which is nice character stuff (Eggert is very good actually - fresh faced, strong actor).
The movie never seems to quite get its groove. Really it should be about tough cop Bronson whose daughter is sold into sex slavery a la George C Scott in Hardcore and Bronson blows away everyone. That feels like where it wants to go.
But instead Bronson divides up protagonist duties with James Pax and the Pax storyline is bitsy.
Everyone was on their last legs here - Cannon, Bronson, J. Lee Thompson. Thompson took over from Michael Winner - the movie is less offensive, less memorable, more sensible. The bulk of the villains are still dark skinned, and there are moments of flourish like Bronson killing John Ryan with a rocket launcher.
He starts this one off with a girlfriend (Kay Lenz) whose daughter (Dana Barron) dies from a drug overdose, causing Chuck to go on a rampage. I like the Yojimbo element with him playing the two gangs off against each other.
The film feels routine - Bronson blowing people away and so on, which probably plays better in a packed cinema full of drunks than on the small screen. Bronson is quite active but his heart doesn't seem really in it.
The movie forgets Lenz for a bit then brings her along to be held for random, and she's killed - which surprised me - thereby justifying the rocket launcher. Ryan hams is up with flaring nostrils. Lenz gives a nice restrained performance.
Horrible movie. Part cop film part slasher. We see lots of POV of the slasher killer, often naked, chasing and stabbing screaming naked women. This is horrible. It probably made the movie profitable.
In the middle section though it turns into this other movie , and a decent one - Charles Bronson rigs evidence to frame a killer, causing a crime of conscience for partner Andy Stevens who is dating Bronson's daughter, Lisa Eilbacher. This is strong drama helped by good actors.
Then the end becomes about a naked man stabbing screaming scantily clad women at the end. I did enjoy Bronson shooting him.
This movie is a mess. A clearly rewritten lowest-common-denominator movie with an actual decent story inside struggling to get out.
I have vivid memories of seeing this in the cinema which haven't left - the yelling and papers on fire at the prison, the boxing match, Eric Roberts incessant yet strangely comforting nattering, Jon Voight speaking through clenched teeth and a bloodied hand, the sense of freezing cold, the train operator who has his head shoved in the toilet.
It remains a powerful, arresting film - they didn't make many movies like this back then and they don't now. Rebecca de Morney is nearly unrecogniseable but adds warmth and human feeling as a third person on the train.
There's not actually that much action i.e. jumping around on a train. You can see how they keep the budget down - lots of scenes inside the caboose and inside the train HQ. The film maybe could have done with another sequence and maybe another baddy for them to overcome. John Ryan's arrival on the train feels a little anti climactic - Voight easily bests him.
Magnificent ending. Good editing. Great prison scenes - Eddie Bunker works on the script and also appears. It feels so real.
Still would've loved to have seen the Kurosawa version.
