St Ives (1976)

J. Lee Thompson’s 1976 crime thriller St Ives is notable for featuring a fairly amiable Charles Bronson.

Bronson plays Raymond St Ives, a very successful crime reporter turned not-so-successful novelist. With an ex-wife bleeding him dry and a gambling habit to support St Ives jumps at the chance to earn $10,000. Wealthy eccentric Abner Procane (John Houseman) wants to buy back some journals that were stolen from him and he wants St Ives to act as the go-between. It seems like easy money but the exchange doesn’t go smoothly. And then people start getting killed and they keep getting killed.

Abner Procane is not quite what he seems to be and obviously those journals contain something very valuable. Something worth killing for.

The other members of Procane’s household are definitely a curious lot. Firstly there’s his live-in psychiatrist Dr Constable (Maximilian Schell). Like most psychiatrists he seems a good deal odder than his patient. And then there’s the beautiful Janet Whistler (Jacqueline Bisset). At first we assume she’s Procane’s mistress but she isn’t.

The number of corpses that seem to keep appearing wherever St Ives goes causes him a few problems with the police but they are never able to pin anything on him.

There’s a lot of money changing hands, some but not all of it directly related to those journals. There’s another much bigger crime behind all this than a simple burglary and St Ives seems likely to get caught right in the middle of it.

While there’s a bit of a film noir vibe to St Ives it’s really more of a caper movie. And despite the body count it’s a fairly lighthearted movie. This being the 1970s even what should have been a lighthearted caper movie has to have a lot of corpses.

Raymond St Ives is a tough guy but he’s a long way from the dark and brooding Bronson character of movies like Death Wish. He’s tough but only when he absolutely has to be and on the whole he’s a pretty easy-going kind of guy who regards the world with a certain degree of amusement. Bronson proves himself to be quite adept in the role, playing it with a bit of a twinkle in his eye. He was always more versatile than he was given credit for.

Jacqueline Bisset looks lovely but doesn’t quite have the acting chops to pull off a femme fatale role. She does her best and she’s OK but one can’t help thinking that a more accomplished actress could have done a lot more with this role.

John Houseman is splendid as the fundamentally gentle and romantic if not especially honest Procane. Maximilian Schell gives a gloriously overripe performance as the creepy psychiatrist. It’s always great to see Elisha Cook Jr in any movie even if his character does  spend much of the film sleeping. Look out for Jeff Goldblum in a tiny role as a hoodlum - exactly the same role he played in another Bronson flick, Death Wish, a couple of years earlier.

Thompson was an experienced and very competent director and does a fine job here.

The movie reaches its climax in a drive-in movie theatre. It’s great setting and it’s surprising that drive-ins weren’t featured more often in thrillers.

St Ives was paired with another Charles Bronson thriller, Telefon, in a double-header DVD release (with the two movies on one double-sided disc). Telefon is an excellent movie so it’s a pretty good value-for-money release.

St Ives is by no means a great movie but it’s solid entertainment and Bronson is as watchable and magnetic as ever. Buy the two-movie set for Telefon and give St Ives a watch as well.

The Mechanic (1972)

The Mechanic is one of the most interesting of the movies Charles Bronson did for English director Michael Winner in the 70s. Winner is much reviled and often misunderstood as a director and while The Mechanic is a fine action thriller there’s a lot more going on here.

Arthur Bishop (Bronson) is a hitman. He is a very efficient hitman because he takes infinite pains. His hits are almost works of art. The movie opens with a spell-binding extended sequence in which Bishop stalks and kills one of his targets. Apart from being both tense and fascinating it also tells us a good deal about Arthur Bishop. He is a man of extraordinary patience who plans his work with an attention to detail that is almost pathological.

His work has made him a very rich man. On the surface he is cool and controlled and he enjoys the good things of life - fine wines, good food and art. We soon realise however that he is not a happy man. He suffers from paralysing anxiety attacks. He is lonely and despite his wealth his life is empty.

Then he meets Steve McKenna (Jan-Michael Vincent), the son of gangster Harry McKenna (Keenan Wynn). Harry is now deceased. In fact it was Arthur Bishop who killed him. Bishop liked Harry but a job is a job. Steve reacts to his father’s death with indifference. Shortly afterwards Steve’s girlfriend announces that she is going to kill herself. She slahes her wrists. Steve calmly watches as she starts slowly bleeding to death. He knows she won’t go through with it, that she’ll back down at the last minute. Or maybe she won’t. Steve doesn’t care either way.

Bishop realises that Steve has that quality of detachment that he has always strived for, a detachment that makes a man an ideal assassin. He begins to train as his apprentice.

Given that Steve clearly has the potential to be every bit as efficient a killer as Bishop you might wonder whether it’s such a good idea to train a guy who might well end up being your own replacement. Especially given that there’s no pension plan for hitmen. Bishop is undoubtedly aware of this possibility. He’s no fool. He knows that Steve is as ruthless and pitiless as he is. This is in my view the key to the whole movie. By training Steve Bishop is deliberately courting death, or perhaps defying death. Or perhaps he simply wants to find out what will happen, just as Steve watched his girlfriend’s suicide attempt with dispassionate interest. 

The essential clue can be found in Bishop’s house, in one of his paintings. It’s one of those late medieval dance of death paintings (by Bosch). And that’s what Arthur Bishop is doing - he is dancing with death because his life has no meaning and it’s the only way he can feel something. Maybe he isn’t actually hoping to die. Maybe he thinks he can find some meaning this way. Or maybe he really is hoping to die. Death may be the only thing Arthur Bishop is capable of loving.

As for Steve, he believes he has the detachment to survive this kind of lifestyle. But then Arthur Bishop thought he had that quality as well. Steve may well be taking his first step toward joining the dance of death.

Meanwhile these two men are both very much aware of the game they are playing. It is a game that must end in death, but which of them will die?

To make this idea work requires some pretty good acting. Charles Bronson delivers the goods. Bronson was one of the great action movie stars but he was always a more subtle and complex actor than he was given credit for. He had the ability to convey a great deal about the characters he played while seeming to be doing very little. I rate this is one of his best performances.

Jan-Michael Vincent is also very good, and rather chilling.

There will of course be those who will insist on seeing a homoerotic subtext in the relationship between the two hitmen. This is I think a complete misunderstanding of the film. It’s made very clear that it’s the father-son dynamic that is important here - the relationships between Bishop and his father, between Steve and his father, and the father-son relationship between Bishop and Steve. These relationships are characterised by a complete lack of emotion, this lack of emotion inevitably creating a sense of emptiness and disconnectedness. These peculiar father-son relationships are also all intimately connected with death. Everything in this movie comes back to death.

The one weak point in the film is the motorcycle chase scene which doesn’t quite work. The tone is wrong - it’s a Bond movie-style action scene but this is not a Bond movie. On the other hand the other major action set-pieces are excellent.

Despite including plenty of action scenes this not really an action movie. Winner throws in the action scenes because in 1972 they were a commercial necessity. The movie is really more of a psychological suspense thriller and Winner handles the suspense superbly while Bronson handles the psychological aspects with equal success.

The MGM Region 1 DVD provides a good anamorphic transfer without any extras. There have been a couple of recent Blu-Ray releases but I haven’t seen them so I can’t offer any opinion on them.

The Mechanic is a chance to see Bronson at the top of his game. A fine and rather complex thriller. Highly recommended. 

Telefon (1977)

Telefon, released in 1977, is a slightly unusual Cold War spy flick. A rogue agent is triggering a series of attacks against US military installations. There’s only one man who can stop this rogue agent and thus prevent World War III and that’s Major Grigori Borzov of the KGB. The odds are against him but the KGB are determined that somehow war must be avoided. That’s right, this is an American Cold War spy film in which the Soviets are the good guys. The CIA doesn’t really know what’s going on but they’re also determined to stop these attacks. They’re also the good guys. This is very much a Détente spy film, with both the KGB and the CIA working towards the same goal, although completely independently and with the CIA having no idea that the KGB is on their side.

To make this even more fun Major Borzov is played by legendary tough guy Charles Bronson.

The situation comes about because of a top-secret Soviet plan code-named Telefon dating back to the days when Cold War tensions were at their height. Fifty-two Soviet agents were sent to the US under deep cover, sleepers to be activated only in a dire emergency. These sleeper agents were subjected to drug-assisted hypnosis - they’re under such deep cover that they don’t even know they’re agents until they’re activated.

The plan has long since been forgotten, the paperwork buried away in the KBG archives. Tensions have now eased dramatically, Détente is working successfully, nuclear war now seems a remote possibility and the last thing the KGB wants is anything that might threaten the peace. There’s just one problem. One man has not forgotten that the Telefon plan exists. And he intends to put it into operation.

The man is Nicolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasence). He’s not only a hardline Stalinist opposed to Détente, he’s also quite quite mad. He has the list of those fifty-two sleepers with the means of activating them and he’s set off for the US to do just that, having left Moscow mere hours before the KGB could arrest him. KGB General Strelsky (Patrick Magee) assigns Major Grigori Borzov to follow Dalchimsky to the US and to liquidate him.

Borzov’s mission is of course ultra top secret since the whole idea is to liquidate Dalchimsky before the Americans figure out what’s happening - it would be very embarrassing for the Soviets to have to admit that Telefon ever existed. It would be even more embarrassing for the KGB since they never bothered to inform the current Soviet premier of its existence. They failed to inform him not because of any sinister motives but simply because they’d forgotten about the plan themselves.

Borzov will have only one person to help him in his mission, a top Soviet spy in the US code-named Barbara (played by Lee Remick). Borzov intends to tell her no more than the absolute minimum she needs to know to assist him. What he doesn’t know is that Barbara  knows things that he doesn’t know.

Bronson is in his usual fine form, tight-lipped but charismatic. It’s the sort of thing he did so well, playing an ice-cold character but with an unexpected warmth just occasionally breaking through when he flashes his characteristic smile with a twinkle in his eyes. Lee Remick’s performance is bright and breezy, almost as if she’s playing in a romantic comedy. That approach could have backfired but in fact it works, not only providing a nice contrast to Bronson but also adding an oddly chilling touch - Barbara is a happy-go-lucky soul always making lighthearted jokes but she’s also a cold-blooded killer when necessary.

Donald Pleasence plays an evil madman so it goes without saying that he does so superbly. Patrick Magee gets one of his best roles as the cheerful but ruthless KGB General Strelsky. Alan Badel plays Strelsky’s right-hand man, Colonel Malchenko, and plays him as a softly spoken good natured guy who really wishes this whole unpleasant business would go away. Tyne Daly is amusing as CIA intelligence analyst and computer whizz-kid Dorothy Putterman.

Don Siegel directed this movie and he gives us an effective mix of action scenes combined with slow-burning suspense. Action fans will be pleased by the generous ration of explosions.

This is a spy thriller that also falls into the category of 1970s paranoia movies, but it’s a paranoia movie with a difference. It’s not the US government who are the bad guys. It’s not the Soviets. It’s not evil right-wingers. The paranoia originates from the kind of bureaucratic screw-up that happens everywhere, but the general Cold War atmosphere of secrecy inflames the paranoia. It’s a nice twist that even the mania for secrecy engendered by the Cold War isn’t really sinister in this case - it’s just the common instinct of every government agency to be as secretive as they can get away with.

There’s also considerable reason for Major Borzov to be paranoid - he’s operating on a top secret mission in a foreign country and there’s nobody he can trust. He can’t even trust his colleague Barbara. He’s effectively alone.

Of course a spy movie must have double-crosses and this film has plenty of those although they don’t always play out as you might expect. The ending is a bit of a surprise but it worked for me.

Telefon was released by Warner Home Video on DVD in Region 1 paired with another Bronson flick, St Ives, on a single double-sided disc. The transfer is anamorphic but it’s somewhat disappointing - the picture is very very soft in some scenes. On the other hand it’s a ridiculously cheap DVD release and it does offer two Charles Bronson movies that are otherwise unavailable so it’s still worth buying at the price.

Telefon is unusual enough to be a must-see for spy fans and Charles Bronson fans will be equally enthused. Overall it’s a fairly stylish and rather entertaining spy thriller enlivened by some wonderful acting. It has enough going for it to be highly recommended.

Breakheart Pass (1975)

Breakheart Pass is an interesting attempt to do something different in the western genre. It’s a murder mystery/thriller in a western setting and it works rather well. It’s also a train thriller and there’s nothing I like better than a mystery thriller set on a train. In this case it’s a very cool 19th century Wild West steam train so it’s even better.

At the time the movie was released (1975) Alistair MacLean was still the hottest thriller writer around. In this instance he wrote the screenplay himself from his own novel. Most of MacLean’s books ended up being filmed and remarkably enough almost all the film adaptations are worth seeing.

In 1975 Charles Bronson was also a very big star so this is quite a big budget movie, and the money was well spent.

The plot is the sort of thing MacLean dearly loved - take a group of people, put them in an isolated place and put a murderer amongst them. Preferably in a place with lots of snow and ice. MacLean loved these kinds of settings and he knew how to derive the full benefit from them. The protagonists are not only faced with danger from within but must also struggle to survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment where nature will kill you just as readily as the murderer will. It’s the kind of setting used to great effect in MacLean novels like Night Without End and MacLean movie adaptations like Where Eagles Dare, Bear Island and Ice Station Zebra.

Breakheart Pass really is a train adventure movie. Virtually the entire movie takes place on the train. The train is a US Army on route to remote Fort Humboldt with urgent medical supplies. The fort is being ravaged by a diphtheria epidemic. On board the train is Governor Richard Fairchild (Richard Crenna), his girlfriend Marica (Jill Ireland), Dr Molyneux (David Huddleston), a clergyman and a detachment of soldiers under Major Claremont (Ed Lauter). When the train stops at a frontier outpost to take on water it acquires two more passengers. US Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) has just taken escaped murderer John Deakin (Charles Bronson) into custody and intends to take him to Fort Humboldt.

It doesn’t take long before the passengers make the unpleasant discovery that there is a murderer aboard the train. You might think Deakin would be the prime suspect but in fact he’s one of the few people on the train who cannot possibly be the killer - he has an alibi for the first murder. Deakin also becomes rather important when Dr Molyneux is removed from the scene - Deakin is a doctor himself and he’s now their only doctor and thus the only hope for the beleaguered garrison of Fort Humboldt.

There will be further murders. There’s not much anybody can do about it. They can’t turn back - they’re on an emergency medical mission. They can’t make contact with the outside world since the telegraph lines are mysteriously down. There are no towns at all out here. They just have to keep going until they reach the fort. And this is an Alistair MacLean  world of snow and ice - anybody who leaves the train could not survive.

It’s a fine premise for a mystery thriller and it’s expertly executed by director Tom Gries with some excellent action set-pieces. A major bonus is Lucien Ballard’s glorious cinematography. The train itself looks wonderful and the scenery is spectacular. Nothing looks better than a Wild West steam train crossing a gorge spanned by a trestle bridge and as luck would have it there seem to be an amazing number of such gorges on the route to Fort Humboldt.

Bronson is in splendid form as the enigmatic Deakin. Bronson has the required tough guy charisma in spades and he has the subtlety to pull off this role - he never overplays but it’s always obvious that there is a lot more to this character than meets the eye. He gets solid support from the rest of the cast but this is Bronson’s film and he dominates it from start to finish.

Don’t bother looking too hard for messages or social comment or hidden meanings in this movie - Alistair MacLean’s success was based on his ability to deliver finely crafted pure entertainment and that’s what this movie provides. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The old MGM DVD (the one I watched) provides a pretty satisfactory anamorphic transfer. There’s now a Blu-Ray release and keen western fans (and Bronson fans) will probably want to go for that.

Breakheart Pass is a hugely enjoyable mix of action, adventure, suspense and mystery. It has Charles Bronson in fine form. It looks magnificent. What’s not to like? Highly recommended.