Looking at Dr No ...

Those first three Bond films DR NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER were amusing again over the holidays as yet once again they are dusted off and shown on television, it seems we never tire of them. These first three though are endessly fascinating - I got rather tired of the Bonds with the next one and didn't bother with most of them, though THE SPY WHO LOVED ME was fitfully amusing at the time, and the Grace Jones one, but Bond was rather passe until Daniel Craig came along in 2006 .....

One always finds a new amusing quote to enjoy in these, as here in DR NO when Bond first meets Honey Ryder collecting shells on the beach: She says: "Are you looking for shells too?" and he casually replies "No, I am just looking" .... as we too gaze at the stupendous Ursula:

Showpeople - another batch of fab photos

I have loved WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT? since I was 19 in 1965, as per other reports here, but had not seen this group pose before ! 

Rock, Cary, Marlon, Greg Peck - what are they watching? Who is the odd one out? - Peck, no gay or bi- rumours about him!

LET'S MAKE LOVE again, with the Montands and the Millers - see previous post with Frankie Vaughan.

 Audrey and Capucine stepping out with Givenchy in 1972.

Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor - maybe the only time they ever photographed together or in the same room - at Sinatra's concert at The Sands in 1961. Below, is another shot, with Peter Lawford on stage.

One I had not seen before: Rock and Sophia in the early 60s. He filmed with Gina (twice) and Claudia, but never with Loren ...

Sophia - smoking! -  with Greg in 1962 when she presented him with his Oscar, and in 1993 when he presented her with her second one. 

And once again, that amusing shot of them with Joan Crawford and Maximilian Schell back in 62 .... as per other reports here.

And thst glamorous Royal Film Performance lineup in 1966, with Julie Christie, Leslie Caron, Warren, Catherine Deneuve, Christopher Lee and Ursula Andress .... 

And this FUNNY LADY Royal presentation ... Barbra, Caan, with a re-united James Stewart and Lee Remick ...

'70s British gangster movies

London is such an expensive (practically unaffordable), flash metropolis now that its a real delight to re-visit that seedy city of the 1970s - which I remember from my 20s then - with its cheap rooms and jobs where spivs and various grubby lowlifes ruled - from Burton's gangster in VILLAIN - made the same year 1971 as Caine's GET CARTER, to essential thrillers like THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY. Here we look at VILLAIN, THE SQUEEZE, SITTING TARGET, HENNESSY, PERFECT FRIDAY, and a Trash 70s classic THE LEGACY - giving employment to a lot of our favoutires and stuffed with all those British character actors earning a crust here.   These are all as good as our '70s Brit favourites like Steiger and Lee Remick in the IRA drama HENNESSY or that amiable John Wayne western set in 70s London: BRANNIGAN. The seedy early 70s London is also caught in ALL COPPERS ARE - a recent discovery - all at London/Trash labels - along with GOOBYE GEMINI and cult trash classic DORIAN GRAY. 

VILLAIN,1971. Vic Dakin, a sadistic gang leader and a mother-obsessed homosexual modeled on real-life gangster Ronnie Kray, is worried about potential stool pigeons that may bring down his criminal empire. Vic, who enjoys playing at rough trade with his sidekick Wolfe, plans a payroll robbery and directs the blackmailing of Members of Parliament with a taste for unorthodox sex. Scotland Yard Police Inspector Matthews, playing Javert to Vic's Jean Valjean, is moving in on him and the gang. Gang-member Edgar is hospitalized for an ulcer, and Inspector Matthews might be able to make him sing. Will Edgar spill the beans to the coppers before Vic can silence him?
Richard Burton seems to be having a lot of fun here, Cathleen Nesbitt again plays his doting old mother (as in 1969's terrible STAIRCASE) whom he takes on day trips to Brighton, and there is a great gallery of supporting faces. Burton's boytoy Ian McShane also gets it on with '60s dolly bird Fiona Lewis (topless again) - though unlike the same year's SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY there are no intimate scenes between the men, Vic usually punches Wolfe, maybe thats their foreplay (below) .... Nigel Davenport and Colin Welland (a PC Plod type) are the cops closing in, Donald Sinden is ideal as the corrupt Member of Parliament, Joss Ackland and T.P. McKenna flesh out Vic's associates, as do James Cossins, Tony Welby and Del Henney - the rapist from that year's STRAW DOGS).  

VILLAIN holds its own in the violence stakes, the payroll robbery is botched and things start to go wrong for our beleagured Villain. Its a prime contender for a great 70s crime drama.  Michael Tuchner directs from a script by comedy writers Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais who later gave us their own more comic Swinging London thriller OTLEY in 1968 with Tom Courtenay and Romy Schneider and another gallery of supporting players, including yes Fiona Lewis again.  

SITTING TARGET, 1972, by contrast is nasty and brutal with no redeeming features - Oliver Reed is in his element as he snarls and seethes through this brute force crime thriller, ably directed by Douglas Hickox (ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE, THEATRE OF BLOOD). Olly is uber-thug Harry Lomart who easily breaks out of prison with his sidekick Birdy (Ian McShane again)  and they go on the run, Olly though wants to track down and kill his faithless wife (Jill St John) who has told him she wants a divorce and is pregnant by another man. 

This is all grimly realistic with authentic South London locations - those tower blocks around Battersea and Victoria (as in ALL COPPERS ARE) though St John is hilariously miscast here as the Battersea housewife, with June Brown (Dot Cotton from EASTENDERS) as her next-door neighbour. This is a role that cries out for Carol White or Billie Whitelaw who would be ideal here dishing up greasy breakfasts with a cigarette dangling from their lips. The violence and the shootups continue in this cold, drab London until the climax and the wife's secret lover is revealed .... Edward Woodward, Frank Finlay, Freddie Jones are able support.

THE SQUEEZE from 1977, long unseen here, is however the real deal. I like this one a lot, and it will be due for a rewatch. Tough and brutal yes, but stylish too as a great cast go head to head, as directed by Michael Apted (TRIPLE ECHO, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER and still directing now). This is back to 70s London with a vengance, that city of cheap clothes and cheap cars, and grubby rooming houses. Stacey Keach is terrific as Jim Naboth, the shambolic shambling alcoholic ex-cop whom we first see drunk falling down the escalator of the underground - he is as memorable as he was in Huston's FAT CITY. His sidekick who looks after him is, oddly, comedian Freddie Starr, playing it straight here.

A vicious gang kidnaps a woman and her daughter (plus dog) to extort money from her rich husband. He and her down on his luck ex-husband who's an ex cop, decide to try to deal with the kidnappers themselves.
The kidnap scene is nicely handled in the park. The seedy underworld is nicely served up by Stephen Boyd as a frightening mobster - this was Boyd's last main role, he died that year aged 45 and again when playing nasty (as in BEN HUR or GENGHIS KHAN) he ramps it up to the max. 

The main hood is oily David Hemmings, in a good late role too. Edward Fox for once is lively and the kidnapped wife is Carol White, that ill-fated one of the new British girls of the 60s who went from being a child actress (CARRY ON TEACHER) to hits like CATHY COME HOME, UP THE JUNCTION, POOR COW, a foray to Hollywood and dying aged 48 in 1991. The most difficult scene here is where the bored kidnappers force her to strip for their amusement, to a Stylistics song and we see the character's desperation and humiliation, and perhaps the actress's too, it is all brutally unerotic. Keach too is stripped and humiliated by Boyd and his henchman and has to return home stark naked, not even left his grubby underwear. 

The sleaze seems piled up here as the drama unfolds and of course all goes wrong. THE SQUEEZE remains an eye-popping revenge thriller capturing 70s London perfectly (gritty locations, a cigarette smoke-fugged London Underground, dismal pubs and Soho 'massage parlours', and a pre-gentrified Battersea and Clapham - expensive areas now) with a dynamic cast, with several of our favourites here.

HENNESSEY, 1975. A fascinating view now. This thriller was barely seen back in the ‘70s and not at all here since, dealing as it does with the IRA and 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland. I imagine it was too close for comfort then, and the preposterous plot about blowing up the Houses of Parliament during The Queen’s State Opening ceremony, would hardly have been met with approval. This American-International title though keeps one engrossed, they certainly cast it well, from the opening riot in Belfast – scenes we were familiar with at the time, hardly “entertainment” though. 

The story – by actor Richard Johnson, playing a hard-boiled detective here – features Niall Hennessy, whom Rod Steiger plays in regular scenery-chomping mode, like where he sees his wife and daughter (young Patsy Kensit) killed accidentally in that riot as he falls on his knees in the street and howls like an animal. His revenge involves blowing up The Royal Family and the Houses of Parliament, as the IRA, led by diehard Eric Porter, begin to realise and have to follow him to London to stop him, as the consequences if he succeeds would be unimaginable. 

Enter Lee Remick in a thankless role as the Irish widow of a friend, who puts him up without realising what he is up to. Trevor Howard enjoys himself as the chief of Scotland Yard, and others involved include Peter Egan, Margery Mason. Don Sharp’s direction keeps it tight and engrossing as we watch Steiger preparing for his mission, as he impersonates a Member of Parliament. The State Opening is from an actual documentary cleverly intercut with the film, which almost convinces one it is the real thing. It is odd seeing a younger Royal Family here and real political figures like Ted Heath and Mrs Thatcher. It is all quite fascinating now and amusing too, apart from seeing Remick wasted in a thankless role - she and Steiger were a lot more fun in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY in 1968..

PERFECT FRIDAY in 1970 seems tame and genteel by comparison, one of (Sir) Peter Hall's cinema forays at the time. A bank robbery caper, it captures the flavour of the era - particularly as Ursula Andress and Stanley Baker get out of their clothes. He is the timid deputy under manager of the bank where Lady Britt Dorset and her aristocrat husband David Warner require loans to prop up their lifestyle. Our deputy bank manager though has a plot of it his own and needs the impoverished toffs to carry it out, so who is going to doublec-cross who? Baker, Warner and Andress are all highly watchable - in our out of clothes - and it is an amusing forgettable trifle but pales in comparison with those brutal thrillers that came along later in the Seventies .... amusing now too to see that pre-"computer says no" world of banking with real managers who know their clients! 

and now for a 70s Trash classic: THE LEGACY. This schlock horror film from 1978 has it all - Katharine Ross (sort of reprising her STEPFORD WIVES role) and her real-lifre husband Sam Elliott as the Americans in England and being forced to stay at a spooky country pile, stuffed with odd characters: Margaret Tyzack as that creepy nurse, The Who's Roger Daltry as a rock star, Charles Gray and John Standing, Lee Montague, Hildegarde Neil and more .... what power is keeping them there?
SPOILERS AHEAD: (It turns out they are the descendents of a 17th century witch who was burnt at the stake and who are gathered at an English country house in the hope of receiving part of the family legacy, but why is Katharine included? We wonder until she sees that portrait of the witch from centuries before and she realises she is the chosen one... Then all those nasty deaths - one consumed by flames, another chokes on a chicken bone, a mirror shatters and the fragments impale another, and theres that fatal tumble down the stairs ... to say any more would be too much ! 

Sam too takes a naked walk to the shower where the water suddenly gets too hot to handle and he has to break the glass to get out, more blood ... This kind of thing (from a Jimmy Sangster story) was lapped up by audiences back in the 70s, usually as part of double bills, dabbling with the supernatural, or in this case a version of Agatha Christie and who gets killed next? 
(Pop star Fabian too choked to death in that 1965 version of Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS, a camp favouirite of ours, so Roger should have known where his part was going ...). Ross's unique glamour and all that hair are agan well used here, if only the material had been better, still its quite entertaining of its type. Still, I dare say they had a lot of fun making it. Directed by Richard Marquand.

Forgotten '60s movies: The 10th Victim

Where has THE TENTH VICTIM been all my life? This 1965 sci-fi fantasy has it all: glamour, pop art, great 60s soundtrack, camp to the ultimate, with great roles for Marcello, Ursula and Elsa Martinelli. Its directed by Elio Petri (who also helmed that 1969 trash classic A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, with Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero - as per my previous posts on that, Trash label, and INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION). This one is a Carlo Ponti production, scripted by Antonioni regular Tonino Guerra, among others, and its a delirious treat from start to finish - if only for watching Ursula (in that great year for her, with SHE, WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT?) in that delicious pink pantsuit or the silver bacofoil bikini with that bra that shoots bullets ... or Elsa in that pop art confection in black and white stripes. They must have had a field day making this and creating those futuristic sets and costumes. Mastroianni looks even cooler than usual with that blond hair and sunglasses ...

THE 1OTH VICTIM (La Decima Vittima):

It is the 21st Century and society's lust for violence is satisfied by The Big Hunt, an international game of legalised murder. But when the sport's top two assassins are pitted against each other, they find love is the most dangerous game of all  As the world watches, the hunt is on. Who will become the tenth victim?

THE 10TH VICTIM is the international cult classic whose wild action and sexy style has influenced a generation of movies, from THE RUNNING MAN to the AUSTIN POWERS series. It is an outrageous satire which critic Pauline Kael called "an inventive, witty sci-fi extravaganza". 

This is marvellously witty, with some stunning moments as people are hunted and eliminated, and should be up there with other 60s fantasy films like MODESTY BLAISE or DANGER DIABOLIK or the '70s' LOGAN'S RUN. Ursula is the American who is set to hunt and kill Marcello, in various great locations in New York (the World Trade Centre construction site!) and Rome - loved the helicopter ride over The Colosseum, caught perfectly by Gianni Di Venanzo's stunning photography, and the Piero Piccioni jazz score still dazzles. The Big Hunt rules as outlined during the exciting opening chase are fascinating, as we find out what hunters and hunted can and cannot do. Its like an early version of those reality shows of today and how far they will go. Will Marcello and Ursula fall in love or will they enact out the rules of the game .... 

This IMDb review (by sinistre 1111) captures it perfectly:
To judge this film by "today's standards" misses the point--what are we comparing it to? Armageddon? Scream 3? This was the European 60s vision of the 'future'-- and why didn't it turn out that way? An odd, cheeky little plot mixing romance, light sci-fi and gunplay is underscored by dazzling visuals in a similar style to The Prisoner series, or Alphaville (if it were in color). Piero Piccioni's score is pure 'Jazz 2001', and is available as an import reissue. Mastroianni is charming and Ursula Andress is at her sexiest, in an array of groovy ensembles. It all depends on what you're after, but personally I wish the WORLD LOOKED like this movie and that men's and women's fashion reflected this film's 'in the future, people will dress like this' style. Anchor Bay's DVD is a great addition to the collection of any 60s/European film fan. 

Pussycat ! - a summer re-run.

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? from 1965, is a key '60s movie for me,which I just found myself defending over at IMDB, where someone considered it one of the worst movies ever made. As I said: I can quite well accept its one of the worst films ever made but thats part of the attraction, if you were 19 in 1965 (as I was) and saw it at the cinema with your friends and we all laughed ourselves silly and liked the cast, it remains a cherished memory, and the height of mid-60s chic. glamour  and zaniness. 

My pals Stan and Michael and I adored it back in the '60s and returned to it several times in that pre-video world. Stan and I used to quote lines from it to each other ("Miss Lefebvre [Capucine's real name...] your face is like the pale autumn moon" "What did you say?" etc; of course Sellers and Cap were also hilarious in the original PINK PANTHER). O'Toole, Sellers and Woody + the delirious quartet of Romy, Capucine, Paula and Ursula AND Fellini's Edra Gale ! (Ursula dropping in by parachute and saying "Whats that thing?" when she sees Edra in the Viking get-up, and as she says to Peter O'Toole "Come back to bed immediately...". Whats not to like ? - even my French favourite chanteuse Francoise Hardy pops up at the end after that madness at the country hotel and they all going off on go-karts! 

Left: lovely shot of Romy & Peter - he certainly worked with them all: the 2 Hepburns, Loren, the PUSSYCAT gals ...

I just can't believe its 47 years ago ... I had the funky Burt Bacharach soundtrack album as well...and I just love the look of it, as helmed by Clive Donner. For me it and MODESTY BLAISE are the mid-60s stylish comic peaks. 

Even now the memory of Woody chasing Romy around, O'Toole and Capucine trapped in the elevator, Cap pretending to be the cleaner when Romy walks in, the language class repeating everything O'Toole and Romy say, Paula's suicide attempts, those fantastic costumes they wear .... and then they all running around the hotel etc.

Summer fun: She

Thats Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed to you. It was great fun to revisit this Hammer film from 1965 which I remember vividly seeing at my local fleapit (The Coliseum, Harlesden) then when I was 19 and new in London.

The late respected film critic  Raymond Durgnat reviewing the film in "Films & Filming" correctly described its star Ursula Andress as being one of cinema's great exotics. How right he was. Her otherworld looks and voice are ideal here as the ageless queen of that tribe lost in deepest Africa, as she waits century after century for her lover to be returned to her. His reincarnation arrives in the manly form of Leo - John Richardson (Barbra Streisand also drooled over him in the Regency flashbacks in ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, 1970). Leo is travelling with Professor Holly (reliable Peter Cushing) and their comic servant Bernard Cribbins when his likeliness to the long departed Killkrates (also Richardson) is spotted and our travellers are soon waylaid. The lovely Ustane (Rosenda Monteros) tries to help them as she loves Leo too - but She will brook no rivals. The natives who eventually revolt against her cruelty are led by the also reliable Andre Morell (who has a great moment when his daughter is returned to him in a jar of ashes), and of course Christopher Lee is the high priest who thinks he has a chance with She .... 

H. Rider Haggard's classic story is well served by this Hammer adaptation, quite plush by their standards (see Horror label), and of course we get the famous scene when She draws Leo into the icy eternal blue flame. This is enjoyable kitch hokum, ideal for a summer re-view, or to discover for the first time. It is a key Hammer too along with their early best Dracula, Mummy and Frankenstein films. We like SHE a lot. Ursula was on a roll then, after being pals with James Dean in the '50s, whether emerging from the sea in DR NO, or parachuting into the frenzy of WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT, with her immortal line to Peter O'Toole: "Come back to bed immediately". 
We will also have to re-watch Joan Fontaine and Kay Walsh in Hammer's 1966 THE WITCHES - its a scream.