Nigel Patrick on Uncle George

 Films and Filming

 

Movie review - "Odongo" (1956) **

 A Warwick adventure set in Africa, like Safari, but this is not typical of their normal output. For one it's got two American stars, not one, and has no British lead. For another it's not action/adventure it's a dull romance between big game hunter MacDonald Carey and doctor Rhonda Fleming. Fleming is at least gorgeous, too hot for Carey. There's some tired conflict between them over killing vs keeping animals alive. Carey's character is unpleasant, Fleming swims in a lagoon, plus a cute kid called Odongo.

The leads have no chemistry. It's not interesting. They throw in a black villain to capture Odongo and throw him off a cliff. There's an annoying white family with a kid who befriends Odongo - it reminded me of the Desmond Tester-Sabu relationship in The Drum. But the kid isn't Sabu.

John Gilling directed.

British Box Office 1960

The big hits of the year - Doctor in Love (they don't need Dirk Bogarde!), Sink the Bismark (Kenneth More draws them in) and Carry On Constable.

All three films very "British". Two of them "franchises".

Other British money makers:

* Battle of the Sexes

* Brides of Dracula

* Conspiracy of Hearts

* Dentist in the Chair (what is that film?)

* Expresso Bongo

* Follow a Star

* A French Mistress

*Kidnapped

*The League of Gentlemen

*Light Up the Sky

*Make Mine Mink

*The Millionairess

*Our Man in Havana

*Please Turn Over

*Sands of the Desert

*The Savage Innocents

*School for Scoundrels

*Sons and Lovers

* A Touch of Larceny

*the Trials of Oscar Wilde

*Two Way Stretch

*Village of the Damned

*Watch Your Stern

So what can be learned?

The British public still liked a good war movie (Bismark, Conspiracy of Hearts) and loved a star vehicle for Peter Sellers (Battle of Sexes, Millionairess, Two Way Stretch), Terry Thomas (School for Scoundrels, Make Mine Mink), Norman Wisdom (Follow a Star) and the Carry On gang (Watch Your Stern). Alec Guiness still worked in a comedy (Havana). They liked random comedies with stars from other mediums (Dentist in the Chair with Bob Monkhouse,  Please Turn Over with Ted Ray, Sands of the Desert with Charlie Drake, Boutling comedies (A French Mistress), heist comedies  (League of Gentlemen), war comedies (Light Up the Sky). Expresso Bongo was a musical. Kidnapped a classic novel adaptation.

Horror was a new earner (Brides of Dracula, Village of the Damned). Some heavy drama got through eg Sons and Lovers, Trials of Oscar Wilde.

But 26 British films...  over half were comedies.
 

Overview of Ken Hughes

Ken Hughes was one of those directors I used to dismiss on the basis of a traumatic childhood experience. One day in high school, a history teacher locked us inside the assembly hall and forced us to watch the 1970 epic Cromwell, a sluggardly dull trudge through the English Civil War. Hughes’ name was plastered all over it, as writer and director, and it scarred me from visiting his filmography for many years.

It was unfair, I know, but these things happen. Later on I heard he made one masterpiece, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), which I did see - and was brilliant. So I had a second look at Cromwell, was bored again, and ran away once more.

What prompted a more serious dive into the Hughes oeuvre was my interest in Diana Dors. (https://www.filmink.com.au/a-tale-of-two-blondes-diana-dors-and-belinda-lee/) Hughes directed Ms Dors in The Long Haul (1957), a great little unpretentious B-movie about truckers co-starring Victor Mature. I was surprised to see the name of the auteur of Cromwell on it, and decided to revisit his filmography, only properly this time.  I was surprised to find a filmmaker whose output was consistently interesting and entertaining, and deserved more critical attention than it has received.

Hughes was born in Liverpool in 1922. He began working at the BBC as a technician when he was only sixteen, then during the war moved into making documentaries, short features, and training films for the Ministry of Defence. After the war he directed documentaries for the BBC.

The British film industry had a thriving “B” picture scene in the 1950s, helped by quota protections which incentified thrifty producers to make short features that played the lower half of double bills. A new organisation that specialised in this field was Anglo-Amalgamated, run by the team of Stuart Levy and Nat Cohen. Cohen is one of those moguls who should be better known - a shrewd gambler who would later control EMI Films and help finance debut features from directors as varied as John Schlesinger, Ken Loach, John Boorman and Alan Parker... and Ken Hughes. Anglo-Amalgamated wanted to make a crime drama called Wide Boy (1952), based on a radio and TV play by Australian Rex Rienits about a low-class chiseller who gets in over his head when he attempts blackmail. Hughes was given the job of directing and did it excellently - it’s stripped back, atmospheric entertainment, without an ounce of fat on it. Check out this opening sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8ESUCgmjE

Anglo-Amalgamated put Hughes to work writing and directing 30 minute films for release in cinema, such as The Missing Man (1953), The Candlelight Murder (1953), The Drayton Case (1953), The Dark Stairway (1954), The Blazing Caravan (1954), The Murder Anonymous (1955), Passenger to Tokyo (1954), The Strange Case of Blondie (1954), Night Plane to Amsterdam (1955). These essentially feel like self-contained episodes of an anthology TV series; I’ve only seen a few but they hold up well - Australia’s own Vincent Ball pops up in some, like The Drayton Case here
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2goxdb

Hughes’ second feature was Black 13 (1954) which he wrote and directed for low budget producer Roger Proudlock. The star was Peter Reynolds, a highly entertaining actor who specialised in cads, and who later emigrated to Australia where he died in a fire.

Hughes then wrote and directed The House Across the Lake (1954) based on Hughes’ own novel. This was made for Hammer Films, before that studio specialised in horror, and featured many aspects of British B movies from the 1950s: a short running time, film noir-ish plot, and imported B-list American stars, in this case Alex Nicol and Hilary Brook. It’s quite a fun movie, reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice; one is inclined to wonder if Nicol’s character, a writer under the pump and distracted by lust, was a Hughes self-portrait.

Here’s a trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmhJJn0LIPA

Anglo-Amalgamated hired Hughes to make The Brain Machine (1955) with Elizabeth Allen and Maxwell Reed, a decent little thriller that feels like it wants to be sci fi but isn’t. Like most of his early features, it’s an easy watch if you’re in the right mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o2kJ8Vdmdc

Hughes wrote and directed two more features for Anglo, both with B-list stars from Hollywood, both worth watching: The Little Red Monkey (1955) with Richard Conte, based on a TV serial, and Confession (1955) with Sydney son-of-Charlie Chaplin. He also helped write The Flying Eye (1955) for the Children’s Film Foundation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb9BBVS4hOw

Hughes’ thrift and versatility impressed Tony Owen, aka Mr Donna Reed, who had set up a filmmaking operation in England, Todon. Todon had a lot of success making genre pieces aimed at the international market; indeed, Owen’s impact on the British scene is under-rated because he rarely took screen credit - it was easier to get British subsidies with a local producer’s name on it. Owen hired Hughes to write Portrait of Alison (1955), a lively Laura (1944)-style murder mystery starring Howard Hughes favourite Terry Moore and Canadian-living-in Britain Robert Beatty; Guy Green did the actual directing.  Also for Owen, Hughes wrote and directed Timeslip (1955), a slightly sci-fi tale based on a TV serial, starring two Americans, Gene Nelson and another Howard Hughes fave, Faith Domergue. Both were distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUKLDiI_zak

The first really stand-out movie of Hughes’ career was Joe MacBeth (1955) a modernised re-telling of Macbeth set among American gangsters of the 1930s, shot in England. It was produced by American Mike Frankovich from a script by another American, Philip Yordan (with a little help from Shakespeare). “It was one of the few scripts I picked up in my life that didn't require a great deal of work,” said Hughes. The movie is gloriously fun. Everyone is in strong form: Paul Douglas, Ruth Roman, Sid James, Bonar Colleano (an American who worked extensively in British films prior to his death in a car crash). It was distributed by Columbia; Frankovich became head of that company’s British operations, and they would finance Hughes’ next few films.

First of these was Wicked as They Come (1956), which Hughes wrote and directed for producers Frankovich and Setton. It starred Arlene Dahl as a woman who claws her way from poverty to the top; it’s revealed at the end she was motivated by having been sexually assault when younger (there was a feminist-ish strand through some of Hughes’ work: for instance in The Brain Machine a person refers to Elizabeth Allen’s character as “ma’am” and she asks to be called “doctor”.) Dahl later sued Columbia over the movie claiming its poster art was misleadingly sexy.  The film would have been better off following the lead of the poster art rather than the script: at heart this should have been a campy Joan Crawford vehicle but it’s far too reticent and dull. I watched this after Joe MacBeth put me on a high over Hughes’ abilities - Wicked as They Come sent me back down to earth. I’m sure the film has its fans. Dahl lost her case, incidentally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7E9WNUWJLU

Hughes worked on two more Max Setton films for Columbia. He wrote the excellent script for Town on Trial (1957), directed by John Guillermin, where detective John Mills investigates the murder of a sexy piece of tail in a small town (men driven by lust was a recurring theme of Hughes movies). He also wrote and directed The Long Haul (1957) which I mentioned at the top of this piece, a movie that has been overshadowed in the cinema of British truck driving stories by Hell Drivers (1957) but which is enormously entertaining, with Diana Dors and Victor Mature giving excellent performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1-1SZN3yVg

Maxwell Setton left Columbia to help establish Bryanston Films with Michael Balcon, leaving Hughes needing a new patron. For British TV he wrote episodes of Solo for Canary (1958) and had a huge personal success with a one-man TV play he wrote and directed, Sammy (1958); this was a 40-minute story about a low-level Soho operator (played Anthony Newley) who can’t pay his gambling debts. Reviews were excellent and Hughes’ script was adapted countless times in other countries for TV, notably in the US as Eddie (1959) starring Mickey Rooney.

Hughes’ work had impressed producers Irwin Allen and Albert Broccoli, owners of Warwick Films,  which, like Todon, was an operation aimed at making international-orientated genre pieces in England “for a price”. Hughes worked on the script for Warwick’s High Flight (1957) a Top Gun-esque tale, complete with cocky pilots and homoeroticism starring Ray Milland, that was directed by John Gilling.

Warwick liked it enough to hire Hughes to direct two films for the company. Oddly, these were different to the bulk of their usual output, being non-action films, and not featuring a Hollywood star. Instead, both featured Anthony Newley: Jazz Boat (1960) (based on another story by Rex Rienits) and In the Nick (1960).  Jazz Boat starts out as a crime drama then weirdly turns into a musical (complete with dance numbers) then back into a crime drama again. In the Nick is a comedy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV0basjmZns

Neither film is particularly remembered today but Warwick also financed Hughes’ one undeniable classic. This was The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) with Australia’s own Peter Finch in the title role. It’s a stunningly good account of the legendary playwright, with beautiful art direction from Ken Adams and a superb line-up of actors doing sterling work. Finch was rarely better; the entire subject is treated with taste and discretion.

The film was highly acclaimed by critics but not popular at the box office, in part because of the appearance at the same time as a rival project on the same topic, Oscar Wilde (1960) starring Robert Morley. The movie’s financial failure contributed to the dissolution of Warwick; Broccoli and Allen split up, Broccoli went on to make the James Bond films, while Allen spent the rest of his career trying to catch up to his former partner (and came close, incidentally, with a series of hit movies based on the Matt Helm stories).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQWf3VyLu9Y&list=PL0gml3Zg1wRlNV2NvOUtIq2sS01wBoh9y&index=39&t=0s

Hughes had wanted to follow Oscar Wilde with a biopic about Oliver Cromwell but was unable to raise the finance. Instead he wrote and directed The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963),  a feature-length adaptation of his TV play Sammy, with Anthony Newley reprising his small screen performance. The film was a co-production between Bryanston Films and Seven Arts, an American company headed by Ray Stark which had set up operations in England. The film contains much to admire, including superb photography and acting (Aussies Ken Wayne and Kenneth Warren have support roles), and a glimpse of Soho of the time. It is repetitive (Sammy tries to get money, almost gets it, doesn’t) and how much you like it will very much depend on your opinion of Anthony Newley. The movie has become something of a cult item in recent years but was a commercial failure on release and contributed to the collapse of Bryanston Films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJ7LrgcKpk

Hughes moved back to television, directing episodes of the TV series Espionage (1964) and writing episodes of An Enemy of the State (1965). He returned to features when Henry Hathaway walked off the set of Of Human Bondage (1964) which the latter was directing in Ireland with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak. The film was made by Seven Arts and Ray Stark offered Hughes the job of taking over; Hughes also rewrote Bryan Forbes’ script, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The resulting film is interesting, and contains one of Harvey’s best performances, but isn’t that good. Novak’s performance doesn’t help and, more seriously, Hughes doesn’t get - or didn’t have time to capture - the essential DNA of the story. It is interesting to compare it with other versions of the novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmthl1hAdFA

Seven Arts still liked Hughes and helped finance a comedy he wanted to write and direct, Drop Dead Darling (1965), starring Tony Curtis as a Bluebeard type who kills women he marries. It’s a frantic farce that does cartwheels for a laugh with beautiful locations and contains some excellent support performances, including Zsa Zsa Gabor. Curtis claimed in his memoirs he did the film because he liked Hughes’ “excellent script” but felt the final movie did not add up to the sum of his parts.  He was spot on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um5J9x-R89c

The movie was presumably why producer Charles Feldman hired Hughes to direct a section of the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) - reportedly the Berlin stuff with Joanna Pettet. Other directors credited included John Huston, Val Guest, Robert Parrish and Joseph McGrath. I’m not sure comedy was Hughes’ strength.

I think this is Hughes’ stuff here, but don’t quote me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_8o4BbDqkg

Hughes’ next movie also had a Bond connection, or rather, several: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), was based on a novel by Ian Fleming, produced by Albert Broccoli, written by Roald Dahl (who had scripted You Only Live Twice), designed by Ken Adam, and featured a number of Bond actors (Desmond Llewellyn, Gert Frobe). Hughes directed and rewrote Roald Dahl’s script. It’s a gorgeous looking movie with divine sets, a fabulous cast and cheerful songs; it’s also, like so many late 60s musicals, far too long and would have been better at a tight 90 minutes.

Chitty Chitty cost so much it actually lost a lot of money on first release - it helped convince Broccoli not to make anything other than Bond movies - but it was popular and has become a family viewing perennial.

“The film made a lot of money, but that doesn’t really make me feel any better about it,” said Hughes later. “On the other hand, I’ve made pictures that got awards at Berlin and places, and didn’t make any money, and that doesn’t make me feel any better either”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTTzcXSLjhI

The film was well regarded enough to enable Hughes to raise finance for his dream project, an epic biopic of Oliver Cromwell called Cromwell (1970). It was produced by Albert Broccoli’s old partner, Irwin Allen.

I’ve been mean about this film and will be again, but it does have some good things about it: Alec Guinness is superb as Charles I, and the production design is amazing. But it’s dull. So dull. Every time Richard Harris walks on screen he looks as though he’s about to give a speech and he does. Admittedly I don’t enjoy English Civil War tales unless they involve witch burnings or focus around Charles II in exile. But if you are a history teacher who couldn’t be bothered talking to class for two hours, Cromwell could solve your issues that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7QHFm2AeMo

Up until making this film, Hughes was riding high. He earned £44,177 in 1968 and £47,960 in 1969, the year he sold his company, Ken Hughes Productions, to Constellation Investments for  £300,000. It was one of those tricky financial arrangements filmmakers sometimes enter into to help with their tax situation; Hughes was to regret it.

Cromwell was popular at the British box office failed to recoup its huge cost. Around this time the American majors pulled out of filmmaking in Britain, and Hughes, after steady work for almost two decades, found himself floundering a little, earning no money in 1970.

In hindsight, he probably should have fled to Hollywood, like so many of his contemporaries (John Gilling, Michael Winner) or gone into horror, sex comedies or big screen adaptations of TV shows (the most profitable genres in 70s British cinema). Instead he stayed in London where he wrote for television (Menace, Colditz, Fall of Eagles, Dial M for Murder, Oil Strike North). He eventually got two feature gigs as writer-director: The Internecine Project (1974), a thriller for British Lion starring James Coburn and Lee Grant, and Alfie Darling (1975), a sequel to the comedy-drama Alfie (1966), financed by his old patron Nat Cohen (now head of EMI). Internecine has a decent central idea - James Coburn is up for a job so decides to kill off four people who know about his shady past - but feels in badly need of some extra twists/complications. And Alfie Darling suffers very, very, very badly in comparison to the original, which turned Michael Caine into a star (you may feel differently if you like Alan Price, who steps into Caine’s shoes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vhl7orjm20

Both films flopped. In 1975 Hughes declared bankruptcy, claiming his personal inability to curb expenses, two divorces, taxes and the collapse of the film industry.

Hughes decided to move to the US. He got the gig making one of the most bizarre movies of all time, something even weirder than Casino Royale: Sextette (1978), starring Mae West. Irving Rapper had originally meant to direct before Hughes stepped in just before shooting began. The resulting film is absurd but almost compulsive in its randomness, whether it’s Timothy Dalton singing “Love will Keep Us Together” to Mae West, or George Hamilton playing a gangster, or Ringo Starr putting on a weird European accent to play a director, or Tony Curtis as a Russian, or Dom De Luise as a manager flunky, or West talking to George Raft in an elevator, or Keith Moon and Van McCoy and Alice Cooper AND Walter Pidgeon or... Oh, anyway, see it if you want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as6Iv5R1G0M

Hughes’ last film as director was a slasher flick, Night School (1981), the movie debut of Rachel Ward. It’s quite a stylish piece of entertainment, made with professionalism and skill rather than ludicrous excess, which means it isn’t as fun as others in this genre. Ward has X factor from the get-go and takes part in a Psycho (1960) shower scene homage; it has a feminist moments and there’s also not one but two sexually predatory academics.  For me, it was Hughes’ most enjoyable film since Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fuMpdXBVZA

And then the credits stopped. I don’t know what happened. Night School was well done. The producer of that film speaks well of Hughes in interviews. He was heading towards sixty years of age so there was ageism, but he could write as well as direct and was used to low budgets... Maybe there were other issues (if anyone knows, please feel free to tell me). He died of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease in 2001.

So how good a filmmaker was Ken Hughes? For me - and this is purely, utterly subjective - he was very “ups and downs” kind of guy with a solid over-all average: the maker of a genuine classic (Trials of Oscar Wilde), a handful of terrific movies (Long Haul, Joe MacBeth, Wide Boy) and some films that have splendid things in them (Small World of Sammy Lee, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and yes Casino Royale). He also made movies that were dull (Cromwell), dire (Alfie Darling), disappointing (Timeslip) and in one case beyond belief (Sextette). He clearly worked best when attached to a feisty little production company with strong Hollywood links (Anglo Amalgamated, Tony Owen, Warwick, Seven Arts).

I also wonder if maybe Ken Hughes rated his own writing too highly. He clearly had abilities as a writer - some of his scripts were fabulous. But it is hard to keep a high level of quality if you write and direct all the time and Hughes was also prone to rewrite, even on screenplays by skilled colleagues (Roald Dahl on Chitty Chitty, Bryan Forbes on Of Human Bondage). In hindsight maybe Hughes would have been better off working more with a trusted collaborator than being a one man band. I completely admit It’s hard to make these sort of judgements without reading/comparing original drafts and the rewrites, but it’s just a sense I get.

Still he should be better known. I wonder why he isn’t. Check out Joe MacBeth if you haven’t.

Movie review - "Killers of Kilimanjaro" (1959) **

The first proper version of the Maneaters of Tsavo was The Ghost in the Darkness but this was one of three unofficial versions made in the 1950s. It's one of Warwick Films' last efforts - their final action movie if I'm not mistaken, done as per their usual formula: American star and director, British crew, Commonwealth setting (in this case Africa).

It's late period Warwick so Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey are on hand. Newley is a sort of comic relief company man who helps Robert Taylor build a train line and shoot at things. Taylor doesn't spend much time doing engineering. He mostly treks.

Anne Aubrey underwhelms as she tends to do in these films. It's not a very good movie. A lot of trudging. The lions and the train seem to get forgotten.

Location filming helps. Taylor and Newley are professional, even though neither feels comfortablly cast. I just didn't care about this one. Plenty of bang bang it just seemed pointless.

Movie review - "Idol on Parade" (1959) ***

An unexpected surprise - Warwick Films made its money off the back of a definite formula (action movies, British talent, American star, location shooting) but varied it for this one (low budget, musical comedy, British star)... and it's an enjoyable little comedy. Colour would have helped but Anthony Newley is extremely winning as the Elvis Presley like singer who is drafted in the army.

After watching Jazz Boat I didn't think Newley was a star but after this I've changed my mind - he seems sweet and likeable and can sing. I wish the romance subplot with Anne Aubrey had been stronger but  he has some enjoyable by play with his fellow soldiers including an oddly cast William Bendix as a sergeant (Bendix played a lot of sergeants but it's weird to see him in the British army - and he was getting too old by now).

The situations and jokes are stock but it's done with pace, polish and good nature.

Movie review - "Jazz Boat" (1960) **

 One of the films that helped kill Warwick Films. For some reason they left their formula of American stars in British action movies and made this low budget ish crime movie come musical. It was based on a story by Aussie Rex Rienits. I assume it was changed.

At heart this feels like a stock crime drama - Anthony Newley is an electrician who brags about being a thief; he falls into real thieves led by James Booth. It's black and white and looks gloomy.

Then around 20 minutes in it turns into a musical - Booth's gang sing and dance and look stupid. Then it goes back to being. crime drama.

Newley clearly had talent and was a fun support actor but seems to lack the drive of a star. He seems apologetic, holding back.

It's not well directed or well made. Needs to be in colour. Needs more of a romance. Newley spends all this time with a BFF, a Sidney Talfer look a like.   The cast also includes Lionel Jeffries as a comic cop and Australia's own Leo McKern as his boss.

Book review - "Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable HIstory of the James Bond Films" by Matthew Field and Ajay Chowhudry

Exhaustive, near definitive account of the making of the famous series, written with passion and enthusiasm but also scholarship. I admit I knew a lot of the first half, but I'm a die hard fan - I know less about the Dalton period onwards, and this illuminated that.

The most striking comment for me was something by Michael Wilson, who said that other producers may have done a better job but plenty of others also would have done a much worse job - and that for me is part of the secret why the series has lasted so long. It's been run by a family business who never made too many mistakes - they always pulled things back on track.

The series has stumbled several times - George Lazenby (who I love but also recognise could have hurt the series), the fights between Broccoli and Saltzman, the constant executive turn over, the bankruptcy of Saltzman, creative misfires, the changing world). But they always manage to pull it back... they find a Roger Moore, or a Pierce Brosnan in the 90s, or after Man with the Golden Gun pull out The Spy Who Loved Me, after Die Another Day do Casino Royale.  When Pierce demands $25 million they change bonds. They don't go with James Brolin or James Gavin. They remain true to Bond.

Screenwriters come and go. They and hired then replaced then brought back again. They don't pick the latest hot director but someone who will fit. They keep costs down. They try to keep up to date but don't slavishly follow trends. They promoted from within.

Some films prove to have been particularly tricky - Die Another Day, Never Say Never Again. Dalton was fired at the behest of the US studio, not of his own accord. Brosnan asked for too much money and was fired.

Exhausting, exhaustive, but very good.

Movie review - "A Prize of Gold" (1955) **

Warwick Films got off to a solid start with three respectable action films with Alan Ladd - presumably they wanted him for their fourth effort, but it fell through and they wound up with another American, Richard Widmark. It was the only film he'd make for that company.

It repeats the Warwick formula - action, colour, technically British but aimed at international market, a "global" story, American star opposite a British one (Nigel Patrick, not well remembered today but a name at the time - one of the top ten British stars in 1952), a love interest (Mai Zetterling).

It's set in Germany where soldier Widmark decides to rob some gold bullion. Thing is, he's doing it to help some cute orphans and their sexy guardian, Mai Zetterling - which means this film doesn't have balls. He should've just stole because he wanted the money.

Widmark was an ordinary action hero - certainly never as good as when he was a villain. He's okay. Nigel Patrick isn't a bad villain - the one guy who really wants to do the robbery.

George Cole and Donald Wolfit offered inspired support. Zetterling's role isn't much - she's this madonna/whore figure, looking after orphans, sleeping with her boss to help feed them, falling for Widmark (the meet cute romance scenes feel clunky in here, like they were shoved in via a rewrite to beef up Zetterling's role - I could be completely wrong about that). Widmark falls for Zetterling  - it's not clear if she genuinely likes him.

There is location filming in Germany but that's mainly overcast cities and urban places. It's realistic, just not that pretty.  Fairly ordinary heist film.

Movie review - "Tank Force" (1958) *** (aka "No Time to Die") (warning: spoilers)

I get the feeling the gang at Warwick Films had this rewritten after watching Bridge on the River Kwai because it has several similar elements - English soldiers in a POW camp during World War Two (only here in North Africa), a stiff upper lip English officer (Leo Genn) clashing with an American soldier (Victor Mature), talk about the Geneva convention and escape committees. There's also a dash of Rogue Male too with the reveal that Mature had a Jewish wife who wound up at Belsen, and who tried to kill Goebbels so the Nazis are after him.

I've got to say though I quite liked this film - it's a solid war adventure tale that moves at a decent pace. Writer-director Terence Young served in the desert during the war and clearly responds to the material - there's swirling desert sands, well choreographed action. The script was co written with Richard Maibaum, so it makes sense, has decent characters and structure.

The acting is decent: the five escaping POWs are Mature, Genn, Anthony Newley (far less annoying here than he usually was in Warwick films), Bonar Colleono (in one of his best films, as "the Pole", clearly suffering PTSD and keen to kill Germans) and South African Sean Kelly who plays an Aussie.

The presence of Aussie characters in this is fun - Kelly has a smaller role compared to the others but is a brave decent bloke and when he dies they play 'Waltzing Matilda' on the soundtrack. There's also references to other Aussie soldiers in the camp.

There are also some Italian girls - Luciana Paluzzi, who later worked for Terence Young in Thunderball, as a beautiful girl who (shock) dies. Actually the death toll is high for this film, which makes it effective. There's a very very sympathetic German officer (Nazis come off better than the Italians - did Warwick's films do better in that market?), George Colouris as an unsympathetic German, an Englishman in brown face as a sheikh (but at least the film acknowledges there were Arabs in the desert during the North African campaign).

My expectations of this film were low but I really liked it.

Documentary review - "The Last of the Gentleman Producers" (2004) ***

Entertaining look at the career of Euan Lloyd, best known for his late 70s and early 80s guys on a mission action films, notably The Wild Geese. He worked in publicity, befriended Alan Ladd during his Warwick days, got a job with Warwick via Ladd's influence, became an associate producer, then producer.

Lloyd's output was fairly unremarkable - Shalako, Catlow, Paper Tiger - but he hit a sort of golden run with those aging hero action films. I wish Who Dares Wins had been better. Obviously a cultured nice chap who thrived in the 70s; the mystery why his career faded from the mid 80s isn't really explained. Lloyd does a good interview; people like Roger Moore and Joan Armatrading (of all people) chip in their ten cents worth.

Movie review - "The Cockleshell Heroes" (1955) ** (re-watching)

Operation Frankton is one of the great British raid stories of World War Two - some commandoes canoed up a French harbour and put mines on several ships; they succeeded in sinking a lot of shipping but most of them were captured and executed. It's such a fantastic story that any half-decent treatment of the story was bound to be successful; this is maybe a quarter decent.

It's good some good things going for it: CinemaScope photography, Trevor Howard in the cast, location shooting in Portugal which helps the last act. But it's an odd fish. The uncharismatic Jose Ferrer, during his brief reign as a box office star in the 1950s (he'd won the Oscar and been in a few hits), is bland in the lead as the guiding force behind the mission. Ferrer's got a great speaking voice but the role could have really done with an old fashioned movie star.

More problematic is his direction which feels sloppy. In his defence the movie may have been cut about - the final raid in particular feels all over the shop continuity wise, with Brits canoeing, then getting spotted and escaping, but no security being brought in at port, then some are captured, but others keep going. 

There's also massive slabs of comic relief in the first two thirds of the movie - wacky training antics, involving Royal Marines running around in their underwear plus drinking sequences, and Anthony Newley (who would become a staple for Warwick Films, who made this). Plus we get forced conflict between Howard and Ferrer, with Howard barking at Ferrer that he doesn't like the plan (something Howard would constantly do in war films in the 50s and 60s). And there's too much music playing on the soundtrack.

But like I said it's a tremendous story and I was moved at the end, with Howard and his colleagues being lined up against a wall and shot as the explosions go off. And I never met a guys on a mission film I didn't like.

Book review - "The Films of Victor Mature" (2013) by James McKay

Victor Mature would be one of the least highly regarded stars of Hollywood's golden era - far too many musicals and costume pictures, with that haughty air of self satisfaction and muscular physique. But a closer look at his output reveals a surprising range: swashbucklers, westerns, musicals, Biblical epics, film noir, comedies, war flicks; he worked with filmmakers as capable as Hal Roach, Henry Hathaway, John Ford, Frank Borzage, Albert Broccoli, Neil Simon, and Cecil B de Mille, and featured in several classics, some camp (One Million Years BC) but others legitimate (Kiss of Death, My Darling Clementine) and a large number of "hidden gems".

Mature was also very endearing, extremely self deprecating about his abilities, funny and wry, with a good head on his shoulders: he enjoyed making money and hooking up with women, and was very skilled at both, although all those marriages dented his earnings; he managed to retire on his own terms a wealthy man and enjoyed a long retirement.

He actually deserves a full biography but until that comes along this isn't a bad substitute. McKay is a big Mature fan, and his work is very uncritical, but he at least has done some research and I enjoyed his passion. There is a solid biographical entry at the beginning and the fact that this is a film by film analysis mean some lesser known Mature works like Stella and Gambling House get some attention.

Movie review -Bond#1 - "Dr No" (1962) ****1/2

Someone once described Casablanca as the happiest of happy accidents but a good argument could be made for Dr No as well: the well-established James Bond series of novels had been sniffed around by producers for years, turned into one TV show, but never made until the early 60s... when censorship had relaxed enough to allow enough sex and violence to do justice to the stories; it was British at a time when the Empire was in decline, which made it reassuring yet non-threatening; the producers were North Americans with experience in the British film industry, so they knew how to export "Britishness" to the world; the key creatives had worked together for several years making action flicks for Warwick Productions; the cold war was morphing; the sexual revolution was taking hold; colour location photography became the norm.

Consider the incredible group of people here: Terence Young, whose sophistication added so much to the role of Bond and whose brisk handling has probably been underrated (due in part to his lack of decent non-Bond credits); Richard Maibaum the screenwriter who worked on the series until the late 1980s, who had a wonderful wry sense of humour; Ken Adam's set designing genius (this is meant to be a low budget movie - it did cost over a million dollars - but it looks like a blockbuster with these incredible wide rooms); Broccoli and Saltzman who brought it all together; Peter Hunt's dynamic editing; Maurice Binder's groundbreaking titles; that music score.

Also the cast. First and foremost there is Connery's Bond - his combination of sexuality, polish, intelligence, sadism and animal violence has ever been matched. Does anyone seriously think the series would have been as successful with Richard Johnson, Patrick McGoohan or David Niven? Who else could be introduced in a casino, seduce a woman straight away (Eunice Grayson), smoke so elegantly, karate chop villainous henchmen send to kill him, seduce a woman who has arranged to kill him then arrange for her to be arrested, befriend local fisherman and CIA man, outsmart and outfight Dr No... it's an incredible star performance.

In support is the magnificent Ursula Andress (Honey Rider randomly coming out of the surf in a bikini with a knife while singing is everything we love about Bonds), so sexy and matter of fact deadly (a rape victim who killed her attacker), if a bit of a native girl fantasy, following Bond around like a puppy dog. Joseph Wiseman is a very effective villain, ice calm and dodgy hands (I wonder what Noel Coward would have been like?). Jack Lord is the first in a long, long line of "whatever" Felix Leiters but Anthony Dawson is a terrific traitor and John Kitzmiller a lively Quarrel, a faithful black servant (interestingly sadistic in his treatment of that photographer at the nightclub and more conventionally scared of dragons). Throw in Bernard Miles and Lois Maxwell who would become so iconic.

Let's look at the film as a film and not a piece of history: Jamaica seems a ugly in places (lots of dirt roads); the women are good looking (not just Andress but also the support); the colour is gorgeous; the story is relatively simple but effective with memorable set pieces - the opening murder by the three blind mice, the tarantula attack, visiting Crab Key. It is a bit racist, with its white man's burden, tropic outpost setting, Fu Manchu villains, superstitious black friends, half-caste femme fetales, etc; the finale isn't as good as the build up (things exploding really, no decent henchman to kill).

But it's gripping and very entertaining; people sometimes say it was Goldfinger that set the template, but really Dr No had it all from the beginning.

Movie review - "Pickup Alley" (1957) **

Warwick Productions always aimed their films at the American market but were usually recognisably British. This one feels as though it was made in Hollywood - it's set partly in America, almost all the characters are Americans, the treatment feels American, with it's jazzy score and film noir photography.

The plot has interpol detective Victor Mature tracking down drug dealer/murderer Trevor Howard (!) and in hindsight can be seen to foreshadow the James Bond movies: you've got a handsome middle aged chain-smoking agent travelling to various exotic hotspots (Athens, Lisbon, London) chasing after a super villain and getting involved with the villain's girl (Anita Ekberg, who looks like she's in a Bond film). It's not in colour, which is a drag, although there is some location footage.

There's a real lack of sex - Mature and Ekberg don't really have much chemistry - and not a lot of action, mostly a lot of people hanging around in black and white photography looking sweaty. It's more a cop movie than an action tale - there are an awful lot of cops, interrogation scenes and a climactic shoot out at the docks - although it moves along well enough. 

Mature isn't that much - I kept forgetting he was avenging his sister and the "I'm going to defy my superiors to get my man" feels tired, but it is fascinating to watch Trevor Howard playing an action man baddy, shooting people and clambering over rooftops.

Movie review - "Fire Down Below" (1957) **

A more expensive work from Warwick Films, with three big Hollywood names instead of the normal one plus a British star. There's no Pom even though the story is set in the Caribbean - Jack Lemmon and Bob Mitchum are two sailors who give a ride to sultry Rita Hayworth; Lemmon falls her her, only she's got the hots for Bob. Yep, it's another retread of Gilda with Rita as a mystery woman with a Past who sings and dances and is loved by two men who really love each other. But it doesn't have Gilda's atmosphere, eroticism and tang.

There are some Warwick regulars in small roles: Anthony Newley (thankfully only a small part), Bonar Colleano, Bernard Lee. Indeed in the second half Lemmon gets stuck below decks in an accident and Colleano and Lee become the heroes to get him out - Hayworth and Mitchum disappear from the movie for something like half an hour. Then they come back to help Lemmon get out of being stuck, by provoking him I think. Well, Mitchum does, Hayworth just hangs around.

Lemmon tries but is really miscast - he's never a sexual threat for Mitchum. Hayworth also tries, wears a swimsuit, dances well, does her schtick - but she was getting too old to play a Destroyer Of Men (you believed Gilda could sweep all before her but not Rita here). 

 

It's also a sexist film - everything is the fault of Hayworth, the noble black character hates her. Yet she goes off with Mitchum at the end - even though everyone is sad poor Lemmon's had his heart broken. Why? The girl was plainly trouble, Lemmon is an idiot for falling for her - it's not as though she led him on. Why does the finale concentrate on Lemmon and getting his leg amputated and not smuggling?

It's a really dumb story. There are pleasant views of the Caribbean in colour and some enjoyable tunes and carnival sequences.

Movie review - "High Flight" (1957) **1/2

Service drama from Warwick Films which is remarkable for its similarities to the later Top Gun - like that it's set in a training school for pilots (only here they are British), and the lead character (Kenneth Haigh) is a devil-may-care type who won't be a team player and pulls stunts using planes, whose father died mysteriously on an operation with the instructor (Ray Milland) with whom our hero buts heads but also respects for his ability (and reminds him of when he was young). There's a comic fellow pilot (annoying Anthony Newley) and some comic escapades and japes at the school with a homoerotic aspect (here it's men in drag rather than volleyball), a training segment which almost goes wrong, a pilot who freaks out, a climax that involves a hostile engagement in peace time (in this case over East Germany), a crusty sergeant (Bernard Miles) and crusty superior (John Le Mesurier).

There's no real romantic subplot, which is bewildering. The comedy is idiotic and the plot surely felt cliched even back then but it's quite entertaining, with decent aerial footage and some of the air stuff feels realistic. The climax is good, with a solid crash - it just lacks an emotional punch.

Movie review - "The Trials of Oscar Wilde" (1960) ****

The movie whose financial failure helped kill Warwick Productions, but it's easily the best thing they ever did - the same goes for writer-director Ken Hughes and many of the cast and crew, except for maybe Peter Finch, although it ranks up there. It's marvellously handled, told with tact and sensitivity - nothing is laid on with a trowel, but it's clear that Wilde is having an affair with Bosie, it torments his wife and enrages Bosie's father; it's also clear Robbie Ross is gay too although at one stage he says "these allegations against you aren't true are they?"

Finch was a notorious womanising boozer and he doesn't come across as "soft" as say Stephen Fry but he's got the sensitivity, ego, sympathy, and intelligence - as well as the infatuation for Bosie (John Fraser, very well cast as a beautiful spoilt brat), his dogged determination to stand up for something he believes is right even though it's idiotic. (Then again, Liberace sued for defamation and won.)

The support cast is superb. James Mason is terrifying as the imposing Carson (the legendary QC who also inspired the hero in The Winslow Boy and led the Ulster Union movement); Lionel Jeffries, who normally played comic characters, is scary as the mad Queensbury. Ken Adams' art direction is a delight - theatre foyers, plush living rooms, Queensbury's cold and huge mansion, the courtrooms.

Main gripe: the second half of the film goes on too long. We get all three trials and repetitive scenes of Queensbury tormenting Wilde and Wilde feeling low. It doesn't help I guess that Wilde is so passive. The tragedy of the last act is well conveyed with poor old Oscar getting out of prison and heading off to Paris. An excellent film, a shining example of the subject matter you can tackle within a G rating.

Movie review – “The Bandit of Zhobe” (1959) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Warwick Productions enjoyed a hit with Zarak so they decided to reheat many of the same ingredients for a similar tale. Once again, Victor Mature is a bandit leader on the North West Frontier in colonial India who battles against the British – only he’s really a goodie, he’s just been blamed for an attack on a British outpost which he didn’t do. The real person responsible – an evil Indian prince (Walter Gotel, familiar as the head of the KGB from many a Bond film) – then creates more mischief by ordering a raid to kill Mature’s wife, child and people, triggering off a frontier war. And once again, Mature has a British rival whom he comes to respect, and dies heroically at the end killing the real baddie.

The British love to admire their opponents - worthy adversaries pop up all the time in British Empire movies. They also love to bring up the thuggee cult, the suppression of which was a great way to justify occupying India, so Gotel is turned into a thuggee as well, just for good measure to remind people how evil he is (even though it’s never really used as a story point).

Having said that, this is an entertaining adventure tale, with a strong performance from Mature, who does tormented and brooding very well (it’s a shame he never played more villains). John Gilling’s direction is very vigorous – he does particular well at action scenes of which there are many. And the production values are very high.

It’s less successful in other areas. The script isn’t the strongest (Gilling rewrote a Richard Maibaum draft), mainly consisting of characters rushing from one action sequence to another. Mature and the British just seem to realise they’ve been played without doing much investigatory work. 

It’s also undercast apart from Mature. Warwick always used to have a British co-star to support their American lead, but here the British co-star is split between two: Antony Newley (second billed – he was under contract to Warwick) plays a sergeant who gets involved in the action and Norman Woodland is the officer in charge. 

Newley’s role could have been removed from the movie entirely; he just sort of joins in willy-nilly (he does help Mature escape from prison but that could also have been accomplished by the Anne Aubrey character). He does a bit of comedy schtick which is mostly irritating - although there’s a funny bit where he tries to requisition some dynamite prior to the final battle and the supply clerk won’t give it to him without the right form – this felt very true! Woodland is a fine actor and gives a good performance, but the part would have been better with someone who had more star power.

Anne Aubrey plays Woodland’s daughter, whose boyfriend is killed by Mature’s enemy early in the piece (a big shock, actually). She seems to develop a crush on Mature but this is disappointingly not developed – a bit of miscegenation would have done the film wonders. (She never romances Newley either.) Aubrey’s performance is pretty terrible – she’s not in the league of earlier Warwick starlets like Janet Leigh or even Anita Ekberg - so she's a flaw. But as I said it has rousing action and moves along at a fair clip.

Movie review – “Safari (1956) **

The Mau Mau uprising inspired three films during the mid 50s, of which this is the worst. The others – Simba and Something of Value – at least made some attempt to put their stories within a political context. In this one the Mau Mau are basically just like a troublesome tribe of Indians, charging with cries at white people in fixed positions who mow them down; there’s even a climactic sequence where the cavalry come to the rescue.

 

At first I was willing to give this film a go. It was shot in technicolour and partly on location in Africa; Victor Mature plays the lead, and while it’s easy to mock Mature, he’s believable as a hunter, does good torment acting and has comfortable by-play with Janet Leigh (come to think of it, Mature almost always worked well with his female co-stars). But the story soon becomes far too convoluted: Mature’s son and housekeeper are killed by a Mau Mau attack, including his houseboy (Earle Cameron). Why did they bother attacking the house? Why have a mass attack? Why not kill them in their sleep? I mean it’s a good sequence, with this kid and spinster lady blasting away with their guns before being hacked down, it just doesn’t have logic.

 

So Mature has his hunting licence taken away from him by the local authorities, fearing he’ll want to get revenge. Then he gets an offer to lead a hunting safari which he takes because it’ll enable him to go into Mau Mau country. He then spends the rest of his time going after a lion, romancing Janet Leigh (the girl on the safari), saving Leigh, shooting at Mau Mau. It’s really all over the place.

 

Leigh is very sexy. She plays a former chorus girl who is mistress to Roland Culver, a ruthless English noble who is more interested in shooting a lion than anything else (these Warwick Productions usually favoured the American lead over the British.) John Justin has an interesting character as Culver’s emasculated, bitter Man Friday, but not enough is used of this - you keep expecting it to flower into a proper subplot but none comes. Instead we just get Mau Mau turning up at convenient times, conveniently involving the guy who killed Mature's son. It's a really poor script, despite being credited to Anthony Veillier. The black Kenyans with speaking roles are either treacherous, murderous thugs or happy smiling fools. 

 

The action sequences aren't even that good, and the real life footage of elephants being shot are liable to offend rather than inspire. A real disappointment.