Darkman (1990)

Darkman, released in 1990, was one of a number of comic book or comic book-inspired action movies made in the early to mid 90s. Other notable examples being Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow and The Phantom. All were expected to launch franchises but for various reasons this didn’t happen (although there were a couple of direct-to-video Darkman movies). Darkman was in fact commercially very successful.

Sam Raimi directed and co-wrote the script.

Genius scientist Dr Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is working on a new type of synthetic skin. His girlfriend Julie Hastings (Frances McDormand) is a lawyer but despite this she’s one of the good guys. She has tumbled upon a corruption scandal involving property developer Louis Strack (Colin Friels). She has an incriminating memo. A bunch of goons led by the sinister Robert Durant (Larry Drake) break into Peyton’s laboratory and then blow it up. Peyton is assumed to have perished but he survived, horribly disfigured. His new synthetic skin invention won’t help because it’s unstable. It disintegrates after a short period of time.

The skin however can be useful as a temporary measure and Peyton uses it it to get his revenge.

An enormous amount of mayhem ensues.

This movie was not based on an actual comic book. It was an original story by Sam Raimi. Comic books were a very obvious influence, along with 1930s pulp novels such as The Shadow, 1930/40s movie serials and the Universal gothic horror movies of the 30s. Darkman certainly achieves an extraordinary comic-book vibe. And since it’s an original story there were no pesky rights issues to worry about.

It was also clearly an attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman mega-hit. Darkman has some traces of the urban gothic feel of Batman but it has a flavour of its own. It has an aesthetic perfectly suited to a comic-book movie.

Liam Neeson is an actor I’ve never thought about one way or the other. He’s fine here and does the brooding tragic thing well.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with Frances McDormand’s performance but it’s too bland for a movie such as this which demands larger-than-life performances.

This movie is dominated by its villains. Colin Friels is deliciously oily and slimy. Larry Drake as Durant is properly menacing and sadistic.

What distinguishes Darkman from the other comic book style movies of the 90s is that Raimi was coming from a horror background so it has more overt horror moments, and the Darkman makeup effects are genuinely gruesome.

What makes it fun is that the horror is combined with so much goofiness and so many hyperactive action scenes.

You’re not meant to take his movie even a tiny bit seriously. There’s a lot of black comedy. It’s all very tongue-in-cheek.

Some of the action scenes are amazingly silly and totally unbelievable but it doesn’t matter. This is the world of comic books. The crazier the action scenes the better, as long as they’re done with energy. And this movie has immense amounts of energy. The suspended-from-a-helicopter scenes are ludicrously over-the-top and implausible but comic book heroes can do those sorts of things.

Raimi had a modest budget to work with. Some of the special effects are a bit iffy but Raimi figured that if they were done at sufficiently breakneck pace it wouldn’t matter, and he was right.

The production design, given the limited budget, is impressive. This is a cool dark fantasy world.

Don’t bother giving any thought to the plot. It’s a standard revenge plot and it’s full of holes but if you have plenty of beer and popcorn on hand you won’t care. There is an attempt to add a tragic aspect to the story and that works quite well.

Darkman is just pure hyperkinetic crazy fun. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Highly recommended.

Darkman looks pretty good on Blu-Ray.

The Shadow (1994)

The Shadow, released in 1994, was one of several 1990s attempts to kickstart superhero franchises. Other notable attempts were The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy and The Phantom. All these attempts failed which is a pity because they’re pretty good movies.

The Shadow began as a pulp magazine hero was was featured in several movies in the late 1930s.

The 1994 movie wisely adopts for a period setting although it looks more 1940s than 1930s.

The movie gives us a backstory. Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) is a very nasty American bandit operating somewhere in central Asia. He ends up as a prisoner in a monastery where he learns to deal with his inner demons. 

He returns to America to become a force for good as a masked crime-fighter.

He has one super-power. He can cloud men’s minds. This gives him virtual invisibility - others are hypnotised into not seeing him.

Now he’s up against Shiwan Khan (John Lone), a descendant of Genghis Khan who has some similar hypnotic powers. Shiwan aims at world conquest. He plans to get hold of an atomic bomb. Such things do not yet exist (we assume the setting is the United States just before the Second World War) but Shiwan knows of a couple of eccentric genius scientists who may be able to invent one.

Lamont Cranston has one possibly useful ally. Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) is the daughter of one of the crazy scientists but she appears to have telepathic powers. Or at least she has the ability to make telepathic contact with Lamont Cranston.

I have a few reservations about this movie but they’re more matters of personal taste than actual criticisms.

Alec Baldwin is seriously lacking in charisma and charm. But given that it was decided to make Lamont Cranston a very dark tortured character constantly battling the darkness within him his casting works reasonably well. He does the tragic brooding ominous thing very well and overall his casting works.

I’m not sure that Penelope Ann Miller has the necessary star power. Margo Lane is more than just the hero’s love interest. She becomes his active ally. This movie needs a really strong female lead, especially with such a taciturn leading man. Compared to Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Phantom or even Madonna in Dick Tracy she’s a little bland. I can’t help thinking of several other major female stars of the period who might have injected bit more life into the character. Nicole Kidman perhaps. Or Sharon Stone (who had demonstrated in King Solomon’s Mines that she could be a delightful adventure heroine). On the other hand Penelope Ann Miller is pretty, she’s likeable, she looks very good in period costumes and hairstyles and there’s nothing actually wrong about her performance.

At times the visuals are just slightly too reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Batman, but I must admit that The Shadow does the 1940s urban gothic thing very effectively.

Viewers unaware of The Shadow’s long pop culture history were likely to dismiss this movie as a mere Batman rip-off. In fact The Shadow as a character pre-dates Batman by a decade.

The biggest problem with these 90s attempts to launch new franchises was that these movies were horrendously expensive. It was not enough for them to do well at the box office. To justify a franchise they needed to be gigantic hits, which they weren’t.

Australian-born Russell Mulcahy was a solid choice to direct. One of this movie’s great strengths is that it doesn’t suffer from the problems that afflict so many movies of recent decades - bloat and poor pacing. It keeps powering along and there’s always something happening.

The Shadow is heavy on the urban gothic noir vibe but with moments influenced by old Hollywood musicals and even (as Penelope Ann Miller quite correctly points out in her interview) some nice screwball comedy touches. The dynamics of the Lamont Cranston-Margo Lane relationship are structured in a very screwball comedy way.

It’s very special effects-heavy but they are done extremely well. There’s some CGI (CIG was around but still in its infancy) but Mulcahy preferred practical effects and that’s mostly what we get. It really is a great-looking movie.

The Shadow delivers dazzling visuals, thrills and adventure. That’s more than enough to keep me happy. Highly recommended.

Dick Tracy (1990)

I have to start my review of Warren Beatty’s 1990 Dick Tracy movie with a disclaimer. I’ve seen several of the 1940s Dick Tracy B-movies and a couple of the 1930s serials but I have no familiarity at all with Chester Gould’s comic strip. I therefore can’t way how close this movie goes to capturing the spirit of the comic strip. It certainly tries very hard for a comic-strip feel but whether it’s consistent with that particular comic strip I can’t say.

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) is of course a square-jawed tough guy police detective in an imaginary American city. Tracy is a popular hero in the city.

There’s plenty of organised crime in the city and now Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) is trying to create a unified crime operation that will more or less run the whole town. His first step is to take over Lips Manlis’s night-club/gambling club. That means he also takes over Manlis’s girlfriend, sexy blonde canary Breathless Mahoney (Madonna).

Now it’s going to be all-out war between Dick Tracy and Big Boy. Much mayhem will ensue.

The mayhem is done with energy and style. There are quite a few explosions but in 1990 there was no way you were going to get away with an action movie without explosions. Millions of rounds of small arms ammunition are expended, resulting in very little actual bloodshed. Dick Tracy’s submachine gun seems to be fitted with a 10,000 round magazine. It all adds to the comic-book style fun.

Tracy has a girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly). Tess is pure and virtuous.

Needless to say at some stage Tess is going to get herself kidnapped by the bad guys.

Dick Tracy will also have to choose between the virtuous Good Girl and the sexy Bad Girl. Breathless Mahoney is the femme fatale and she’s definitely a bad girl but she might have genuinely fallen in love with Tracy.

There’s a complication. It’s not just a war between Dick Tracy and Big Boy. There’s a third party, a man with no face, and he seems intent on destroying both Tracy and Big Boy.

The plot feels like a comic-strip plot, which is a good thing. It does have a major romance sub-plot, a romantic triangle between Tracy, Tess and Breathless Mahoney, but in 1990 a romance sub-plot would have been commercially essential.

Glenne Headly has what is in some ways the toughest role. Not only is Tess Trueheart the pure virtuous Good Girl, she’s the least flamboyant character in the movie and of course she’s inevitably going to be totally overshadowed by Madonna in full-on Wicked Sex Kitten mode. Glenne Headly does at least manage to make Tess likeable.

Full marks for Charlie Korsmo for making Kid one of the less obnoxious and irritating child characters in movies. Junior (as he later becomes known) can be incredibly annoying in the 1930s serial but here he’s actually quite likeable.

This is the first time I have ever enjoyed an Al Pacino performance. Pacino goes wildly over-the-top (as he always does) but here it works.

I hate to say this but I really liked Madonna in this movie. She nails her part pretty well. She makes Breathless Mahoney ambiguous enough to be interesting (she might stick with the bad guys or throw in her lot with the good guys). And she convinces us that Breathless really is confused about her feelings for Dick Tracy.

I like Warren Beatty a lot here. Dick Tracy is not supposed to be a real person. He’s a square-jawed Comic Strip Hero. He’s not supposed to emote. That’s now Beatty plays him and it works.

The best thing about this movie is the visual style. Given that he’s the star, the producer and the director I’m guessing that Warren Beatty had a great deal of creative control and that the visual style is exactly what he wanted. If so then his instincts were correct. All the colours are impossibly bright and vivid. Everything looks totally and wildly and deliberately artificial. It looks like a comic-strip come to life, and the impressive makeup effects make the characters look like comic-strip characters come to life. That’s as it should be. Beatty makes zero concessions to realism, and that is again as it should be.

What I love most is that this movie looks nothing at all like Tim Burton’s Batman. It has its own visual style.

Stephen Sondheim’s songs work well. A soundtrack of modern pop songs would have dated the movie very quickly and would have felt wrong. Even though the songs are sung by Madonna they feel more like standards than current chart-toppers, and Madonna sings then well.

I enjoyed Dick Tracy very much indeed. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three of the very good RKO movies - Dick Tracy (1945), Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946) and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) and I’ve reviewed the hugely entertaining 1937 Dick Tracy serial.

The Bat Woman (1968)

The Bat Woman (La mujer murcielago) is a 1968 Mexican wresting woman action/spy romp.

Gloria (Maura Monti) is a rich beautiful socialite. She is also a very successful lady wrestler. And as well as that she is the Bat Woman, a masked crime-fighter. She manages to keep her real identity a secret. This is necessary since she has a lot of enemies in the underworld.

Someone has been kidnapping wrestlers. Male wrestlers. They are found dead after having had their pineal glands removed. The killer must be insane but he must also be a skilled surgeon. In fact we know right from the start that the man behind these murders is neurosurgeon Dr Eric Williams (Roberto Cañedo).

He definitely falls into the mad scientist category. He plans to create a race of fish-men. That’s why he needs those pineal glands.

The police are relieved that the Bat Woman has agreed to assist them in solving the case.

Dr Williams has created his first fish-man hybrid. The fish-man isn’t too bright but he follows orders.

Dr Williams has a rather cool-looking mad scientist laboratory on board his yacht, the Reptilicus. The Bat Woman has to find a way to get aboard this yacht, preferably without being captured by the bad guys.

Of course we know she will be captured by the bad guys. More than once. Capturing the Bat Woman is one thing. Holding on to her is another. She’s clever and resourceful and she doesn’t give up, and she has a few tricks up her sleeve (although were she hides her gadgets in a costume that is really just a bikini is another matter).

Dr Williams has other evilness planned. He needs a mate for his fish-man. He intends to create a fish-woman. As you might guess the Bat Woman figures in this dastardly plan.

Enjoying some movies has a lot to do with how you approach them. This is a movie that should definitely not be approached as a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s an excellent well-made movie. It should also not be approached as a “camp classic” - it is not camp. And certainly not camp in the way the Batman TV series was. It’s a lighthearted adventure ro,p but that doesn’t make it camp.

René Cardona directed an immense number of movies and all the ones I’ve seen have been fun. Alfredo Salazar wrote the screenplay. He scripted a lot of very enjoyable movies including luchadora (lady wrestler) and Aztec Mummy movies.

This is a movie made by seasoned professionals. These guys knew what they were doing. This movie is not in any way amateurish and it does not look cheap. It’s a lot more polished than most American low-budget movies of that era. It compares quite favourably with the Hammer movies of the same vintage.

Maura Monti is an Italian actress who had a brief but prolific career in Mexican cinema. This is not a role that requires great acting but in fact she’s perfectly competent in that department. What was needed was an actress who could be beautiful, sexy and glamorous. Miss Monti is well qualified in those areas. She also looks like a fit healthy active young woman and she looks quite convincing in her action scenes (and it’s obvious that she did most of these scenes herself). She also had to look great in her Bat Woman costume. It’s a rather cool costume and it’s quite revealing. Miss Monti, who is rather well developed in the bust department, fills it out very nicely. She’s also lively and likeable with charisma. She makes a fine action heroine.

The fish-man is a guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster but he’s a cool monster and I happen to love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

The most important thing of all in a movie of this type is pacing. You have to keep the action moving along. This movie certainly does that.

The Bat Woman is stylish good-natured fun. Highly recommended.

While the Bond movies may have been an influence this movie has stronger affinities with the comic book-inspired pop cinema of the 60s, movies like Modesty Blaise (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), Satanik (1968), Umberto Lenzi’s Kriminal (1966) and Deadlier Than the Male (1967). And maybe even Jess Franco’s The Devil Came from Akasava (1971), Kiss Me, Monster (1969) and Two Undercover Angels (1969).

Indicator’s Blu-Ray release looks terrific. It’s loaded with extras but honestly a barebones release at a more reasonable price would have been preferable.

The Phantom (1996)

The Phantom was released in 1996. It was an Australian-U.S. co-production.

The movies of the 90s pretty much passed me by at the time. To some extent that was true of the 80s as well. For me movie history began just before the First World War and ended at the close of the 1970s. Recently I’m been filling in these gaps in my movie-watching experience and I’ve been particularly surprised by just how many good (and fun) movies were made in the 90s.

I love comics but for me that means mostly European comics, with the only exceptions being Modesty Blaise and Vampirella. In general I have zero interest in American superhero comics and consequently zero interest in modern Hollywood superhero comic-book heroes. I do however have very dim memories of reading a few Phantom comics as a kid and the Ghost Who Walks does have some appeal to me as a character.

The 1996 Phantom movie failed to kick off a franchise. It’s possible that the timing was not quite right.

The backstory is disposed of very quickly right at the start with a voiceover narration. That means we can get on with the story. It is of course set in the jungle, possibly a jungle island. The Phantom’s home is the mythical island of Bengalla so I assume that’s the setting.

The Phantom, the mysterious Ghost Who Walks (played by Billy Zane), has made a serious error. He has allowed a magical skull to fall into the hands of the dreaded Seng Brotherhood. If these arch-fiends get their hands on all three skulls they will have access to unlimited destructive power. The Phantom has to retrieve that skull.

Meanwhile in America a crusading newspaper publisher, Dave Palmer, is set to to lift the lid on the nefarious activities of businessman-gangster Xander Drax (Treat Williams). Of course we figure right away that he is the sort of villain who might well have an interest in those magical skulls.

Palmer’s daughter Diana (Kristy Swanson) sets off on a Pan Am Clipper flying boat to further Palmer’s investigation. Diana is of course a Feisty Heroine and as such she is quite capable of punching out muscle-bound guys who outweigh her by a hundred pounds or more, because girlpower! Yes, sadly, there is a certain amount of tedious Girlpower kickass action heroine stuff in this movie.

Diana is kidnapped on the way by sexy lady pirates. Now this is more like it. I very much approve of sexy lady pirates. Their leader Sala (Catherine Zeta Jones) is not just a sexy bad girl, she has a cruel sadistic streak as well. At this point I’m really liking this movie.

There are several different groups of bad guys after those skulls. Which leads to plenty of action.

My biggest issue with this movie is with one of the character arcs which develops disappointingly and unconvincingly.

A minor problem is that the Phantom comic books were aimed at kids and the Phantom is a goody-goody hero who never kills people (or at least very rarely kills). This makes him a less interesting hero since he is never faced with awkward moral dilemmas. The movie also has very much the feel of being aimed at kids. But that’s OK. This is intended as a lighthearted fun movie.

Billy Zane is OK, but his Phantom is just a bit too sensitive 90s guy. The part needed a bit more gravitas and definitely needed more of a hint of the ruthless crusader.

Diana is slightly irritating but at least she’s cute.

Performance-wise the film’s saving grace is Catherine Zeta Jones as Sala - she oozes wickedness. I like that in a girl. And Treat Williams makes a pretty decent super-villain.

I like the way Diana and Sala instantly hate each other. Sala assumes that no man can resist her charms, but apparently the Phantom can. That naturally pisses her off. Sala and Diana both think the Phantom is rather hot so they’re not likely to become best friends.

Despite my minor reservations about a few aspects of the film there is a great deal to like here.

I love the visuals. This movie aims to look gorgeous and it succeeds. It’s bright and colourful and it captures the right comic-book feel. I do like the 1930s setting. The fact that considerable parts of the movie take place in New York is utilised effectively - this was a time when men dressed with style and women wore slinky glamorous dresses. And the contrasts between New York and the jungle work well.

The production and costume designs are excellent, the cinematography is top-notch. The effects work and the stunts are very well executed. This movie is very very stylish.

This movie was directed by Australian director Simon Wincer, also responsible for a couple of bona fide ozploitation classics - Snapshot and Harlequin. The pacing is brisk Wincer resists the temptation to make an overlong movie. There’s always something happening.

The fact that it failed to ignite the box office is one of those depressing difficult-to-explain things. Maybe it just didn’t take itself seriously enough. The emphasis is on fun. It’s an old-fashioned feelgood adventure movie and I have no problems with that.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray looks terrific.

Vampirella (1996)

Vampirella is a legendary comic-book character created around 1969 by science fiction super-fan Forest J. Ackerman. She’s a sexy vampire from outer space. The most surprising thing about Vampirella is that she has never been the subject of a movie franchise. Maybe because she’s too sexy and that scares big studios off. They prefer their superheroes to be bland and safe. We do however have this 1996 movie, directed by Roger Corman protege and ultra low budget movie legend Jim Wynorski (with Corman acting as executive producer). It has an IMDb rating of 3.3, which is promising (with genre movies generally speaking the the lower the IMDb rating the better the movie).

The movie is an origin story of sorts, and while it retains a few elements of the comics it adds a lot of other elements. Gary Gerani wrote the script.

As in the comic Vampirella is from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon are vampires but they don’t go around biting people. By a happy coincidence Drakulon has rivers of blood. Actual rivers, of actual blood. So these vampires are not killers. They’re not predators.

Well, mostly not predators. There are a few bad vampires who want to go back to the good old days when vampires really were killers. The leader of this faction is Vlad (Roger Daltrey).

Vlad’s followers carry out a bloodbath and the wise ruler of Drakulon is one of the victims. Vlad’s followers set off to find a planet where they can express their true vampire natures, by killing people.

All this happened centuries ago. Now we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are vampires but nobody knows about them. They are plotting away in secret. There’s also a paramilitary force of vampire hunters. The paramilitary outfit is codenamed Purge and it’s run by Adam Van Helsing, the last descendant of the Van Helsings.

Vlad and his followers have another more deadly threat to deal with. The daughter of the ruler of Drakulon who was killed by Vlad has arrived on Earth. She wants to destroy Vlad and his followers. She is Vampirella (Talisa Soto).

Vlad is now a rock star, a useful cover. People expect rock stars to be weird and decadent.

Vlad has some very big very sinister plans.

Adam Van Helsing trusts Vampirella but his colleague Walsh doesn’t. Van Helsing thinks that Vampirella could be the key to defeating Vlad.

Vampirella is clearly attracted to Van Helsing but he’s too uptight to do anything about.

I’ve only read some of the very early Vampirella comics but to me the movie doesn’t really capture the flavour of the comics. It’s a bit too much of a 90s action movie. But in commercial terms that may have been a sound move. There isn’t quite enough fun and sparkle, and (despite a few bare breasts) there’s not quite enough sexiness.

Vampirella’s costume is disappointingly tame compared to the comic-strip version. Talisa Soto was apparently concerned that the original much sexier costume designed for her would be a problem in the action scenes because certain parts of her anatomy would undoubtedly pop out during such scenes. She was probably right but the final costume is just very unexciting.

Talisa Soto is OK as Vampirella. She’s certainly beautiful. Her problem is that Roger Daltrey is in full-bore scenery-chewing mode and tends to dominate the movie. That’s not Daltrey’s fault - he gives exactly the right performance. The movie probably needed an actress with a bit more zing, and she needed to ramp up the sexiness in order to avoid being overshadowed. She also needed to be more amusing and more fun. Hammer had planned to do a Vampirella movie back in the 70s and they had Caroline Munro in mind. She would certainly have made a much better Vampirella.

The movie does have its strengths. The high-tech anti-vampire weapons are rather fun. The western ghost town near Las Vegas used as Vlad’s hideout is a great location.

This origin story here really has no connection at all with the origin story in the comic, and the version in the comic would have been preferable.

The bat transformations are so crude that it would have been better to dispense with them completely.

The paramilitary anti-vampire organisation was later shamelessly ripped-off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampirella isn’t as bad as it reputation would suggest. It’s moderately entertaining. The Vampirella in the movie isn’t really Vampirella. The movie is not sexy enough, it’s not enough fun, it doesn’t have enough energy, it doesn’t have the cheerful tongue-in-cheek vibe it needed. If you’re a hardcore Vampirella fan you’ll want to see it out of curiosity but it is a disappointment.

The German DVD which I own not only includes the original English-language version, it also includes Jim Wynorski’s commentary track (in English of course). Wynorski always does great commentary tracks.

Modesty Blaise (1966) revisited

When I first saw Joseph Losey’s 1966 Modesty Blaise movie fifteen years ago I had never read a Modesty Blaise novel and had never set eyes on a Modesty Blaise comic-strip. I was of course vaguely aware of her as a comic-strip character but I had no feelings whatsoever one way or the other about the character. Since then I have read several of the novels and quite a few of the comic-strip adventures and I am now a confirmed Modesty Blaise fan. Which means that my reactions to the movie might now be quite different.

The first thing to say is that the comic-strip character Modesty Blaise, as created by Peter O’Donnell in 1963, is most emphatically not a female James Bond. She bears no resemblance whatsoever to Bond. She is not British, she is not a professional spy, she is not in any way shape or form part of the British Establishment. She is a retired super-criminal. She feels no remorse for her very successful criminal career. She does not take orders from anybody. She does jobs for Scotland Yard and for the British intelligence services but she is strictly a freelancer.

She is in fact much closer to being a female Simon Templar. She belongs to the literary tradition of the lone wolf rogue hero. It’s also worth mentioning that the novels and comic-strips are fairly serious spy/crime adventures. They are not spoofs.

It should also be pointed out that Modesty is not English. She is a British subject by marriage but her ethnicity is a mystery, even to herself. She has blocked out all memories of her nightmarish childhood. Given what we learn about her background and give the way she looks in the comic strip we might hazard a guess that she is either Slavic or southern European. Casting an Italian actress in the role was in fact quite appropriate, and Monica Vitti’s accent is not inappropriate either. There are major problems with Miss Vitti’s casting, but her nationality is not one of them.

The plot is wildly incoherent. Losey threw away Peter O’Donnell’s screenplay. O’Donnell had the last laugh - he turned his screenplay into the first Modesty Blaise novel and had a huge success with it while Losey’s movie bombed. Having thrown away the original screenplay Losey then made constant alterations to the new version. It’s possible that Losey thought that having a script that made no sense would be inherently funny.

Such as it is, the plot involves 50 million pounds’ worth of diamonds which have to be delivered as a bribe from the British Government to an Arab oil sheikh. Someone is trying to steal the diamonds. The British intelligence services have achieved nothing save for getting their top agent killed and in desperation they turn to Modesty Blaise and her partner Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp).

The man trying to steal the diamonds is super-villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), with whom Modesty has tangled before. Gabriel makes various attempts to get the diamonds while British Intelligence suspects that Modesty might try to steal them herself. That’s it for the plot.

Of course in 1966 when the movie was made Bond Fever was at its height and there was obviously going to be enormous pressure to transform Modesty into a female James Bond and to make the movie as much like a Bond film as possible.

Director Joseph Losey had other ideas. What exactly his ideas were is difficult to say. He clearly had no understanding of the spy genre or the Bond films or the eurospy movies that had started to appear around this time. It’s also obvious that he had zero interest in making a movie that had any genuine connection at all with the Modesty Blaise comic-strip. It’s as if he decided to satirise the Bond films without actually having seen any of them, and to satirise the comic-strip without ever having read it. To spoof something successfully you need to understand it, and preferably you need to love it.

The movie turned out to be a trainwreck, but it’s a morbidly fascinating trainwreck. Losey was going for a surreal Pop Art confection and his total unsuitability for this directing job perversely makes it more surreal and psychedelic. You don’t know what’s going to happen next because Losey had no idea what was going to happen next either.

There are some wonderful Op Art visuals. The sets manage to look groovy and psychedelic. Modesty’s clothes, hairstyle and even hair colour change without any explanation in the middle of scenes. Losey presumably thought this was incredibly funny and clever. It isn’t. It’s just weird. But the weird elements injected into the movie for no reason at all add to the movie’s perverse fascination.

Monica Vitti lacks the athleticism and energy that the role required but maybe that’s why Losey wanted her - to make the movie an anti-Modesty Blaise movie rather than a Modesty Blaise movie. Terence Stamp is equally miscast as Willie Garvin.

There are compensations. Dirk Bogarde’s outrageously arch and camp performance is delicious. Harry Andrews is excellent as Tarrant, the British Intelligence chief. Clive Revill is very funny as Gabriel’s miserly Scottish accountant McWhirter. Rossella Falk is both amusing and slightly unsettling as Gabriel’s sadistic henchwoman (as possibly lover) Mrs. Fothergill.

The action scenes are not particularly exciting.

On the plus side this is a visually stunning and outrageous movie in a delirious Swinging 60s way. It’s worth seeing just for the visual delights.

Despite its flaws this movie is very much worth seeing. There’s no other movie quite like it. A movie from an era when studios would take risks on wildly unconventional totally crazy movies, and Modesty Blaise captures so much of the craziness of the 60s, a craziness that was so much more fun than the craziness of today. It’s not a Modesty Blaise movie and it’s a deeply flawed movie but it’s flaws are what makes it weirdly fascinating. With those thoughts in mind it’s recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, Last Day In Limbo and I, Lucifer. They’re very much worth reading. And I've reviewed the early Modesty Blaise comics (in the collection The Gabriel Set-Up) which are also excellent

Swamp Thing (1982)

Swamp Thing is Wes Craven’s 1982 adaptation of the popular DC comic.

I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in reviewing this movie since I have never set eyes on a Swamp Thing comic. In fact my knowledge of American comics is close to zero and I have never ever read a superhero comic. I therefore have absolutely no idea how close this movie is to the spirit of the comic.

Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) is a scientist who has just arrived at a research station deep in the swamplands somewhere or other. She also seems to be an agent for one of those sinister Washington intelligence agencies. 

Idealistic if slightly creepy genius scientist Dr Alec Holland (Ray Wise) is working on some hush-hush project involving plants. Washington is taking a keen interest in the project, and that’s always a worry.

Alec is working on a special formula with his sister, Dr Linda Holland (Nannette Brown). He thinks he can create plant-animal hybrids.

There’s a vague uneasy kind of attraction between Alice Cable and Alec Holland. She’s not entirely sure about him but she is fascinated.

There are bad guys with guns and they want Dr Holland’s secrets.

That formula is explosive, literally. And the explosion does something unexpected. It turns Alec Holland into a monstrous plant-animal hybrid. He becomes Swamp Thing.

The bad guys are in the pay of a megalomaniacal criminal mastermind, Arcane (Louis Jourdan). Arcane doesn’t just want the formula, he wants Swamp Thing captured as well. But how do you capture an invulnerable monster?

At this stage nobody knows that Swamp Thing is actually Alec Holland.

The bad guys are after Alice Cable as well. They think she has a vital notebook in her possession. Swamp Thing keeps saving her but it takes her a while to figure out that he’s a good monster rather than an evil monster, and it also takes her a while to realise that he is Dr Holland.

Of course a Beauty and the Beast style emotional bond develops between Alice and Swamp Thing.

There’s lots of action and narrow escapes as Arcane figures out that the only way to capture Swamp Thing is by using Alice as bait. And Alice and Swamp Thing have to prevent Arcane from using that formula.

Given that the comic originated in the 1970s it’s not surprising that there’s a certain amount of characteristic 70s paranoia in this movie.

Given that I’m unfamiliar with the comic I might be on shaky ground here but I suspect that many of the movie’s problems were inherent in the source material. Invulnerable monsters and heroes are not that interesting. An invulnerable hero with superpowers doesn’t have to figure out clever ways of escaping from chains or taking on a dozen armed bad guys. He just uses his invulnerability and unstoppability, which is a bit boring. His invulnerability also means that we never really feel that Swamp Thing and Alice are in real danger, so there’s a lack of suspense and dramatic tension.

There’s a bit too much reliance on what is really out-and-out magic (such as Swamp Thing’s healing powers) which means that several potentially poignant scenes lose any genuine impact. And Swamp Thing is just a bit too brave and noble.

Adrienne Barbeau is very good. She makes Alice a likeable heroine. She’s a Strong Female Character without being strident and without being perfect. She makes a few mistakes (she should have been a lot less trusting early on). By this stage of his career Louis Jourdan was playing villains quite often and it’s something he did very well. His smooth charm and sophistication made his villains extra scary. He made a very good Dracula in the BBC’s Count Dracula and he was a memorable Bond villain in Octopussy (one of my favourite Bond movies).

I love the swamp settings and Craven uses them very well. The effects are fairly good. Swamp Thing is of course a guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster, but I love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

Swamp Thing doesn’t quite come off but it’s reasonable entertainment. Recommended, with a few reservations. It looks nice on Blu-Ray and the disc includes an audio commentary by Wes Craven (who is quite realistic about the fact that the film was not a complete success).

Zeta One (1969)

Zeta One (released in the US as The Love Factor) is a 1969 science fiction/spy spoof/sex comedy from Tigon British Film Productions. This was around the time when there were finally signs that the draconian British film censorship might start loosening up a little. That was indeed about to happen but Zeta One came maybe a year too early and it was cut pieces by the puritanical British censors.

Happily the cuts have since been restored for both the US Jezebel Blu-Ray release and the British Blu-Ray release (as part of the Saucy 70s boxed set) by 88 Films.

We’re introduced to British spy James Word (Robin Hawdon). He doesn’t seem to be the most competent of spies. HIs false moustache keeps falling off. He has arrived home to find Ann Olsen (Yutte Stensgaard) in his flat. She is W’s secretary, W being the head of the intelligence service for which James works. Ann persuades James to tell her about his latest case. What James doesn’t know is that Ann is an Angvian agent.

James would prefer to do other things. Ann suggests a game of strip poker, with the winner having the right to choose what the two of them will do next. The strip poker game is just an excuse to have Yutte Stensgaard take her clothes off, but since this is Yutte Stensgaard (best known for Hammer’s infamous 1971 Lust for a Vampire) we’re talking about I don’t think any viewers are likely to complain.

It all started with suspicions that Major Bourdon (James Robertson Justice) and his assistant Swyne (Charles Hawtrey) might be up to something. They are indeed, but it’s not just plain ordinary espionage. It has to do with the women of Angvia. James isn’t sure where Angvia is. It might be in space, it might be on a distant planet, it might be on Earth but in another dimension. The women of Angvia don’t have any men.

Major Bourdon seems to have some plan to take over Angvia. His plans are not all that clear but what is clear is that he’s a diabolical criminal mastermind of some sort. James Word’s mission is to thwart Bourdon’s plans and also to find out what those Angvian women are planning.

What is known is that the Angvians are kidnapping young beautiful women from Earth. Their latest target is stripper Edwina 'Ted' Strain (Wendy Lingham).

Edwina ends up in the hands of Major Bourdon. The major is not averse to using torture to persuade young ladies to coöperate. He wants her help in order to infiltrate the Angvians.

There’s plenty of action as various Angvian women are captured and attempt to escape. It culminates with a surreal comic-book style battle scene between Bourdon’s men and the women warriors of Angvia. And then there’s a postscript. James Word now knows far too much about Angvia. He cannot be allowed to reveal this information to anyone. The Angvians have no intention of killing him. They have other plans for him.

The violence is all very much comic-book style stuff. Even the torture scenes have that feel and as a result they’re not the least bit horrifying, nor are they meant to be. This movie is a good-natured romp.

The BBFC apparently cut most of the nudity and that would have been quite a problem. If you cut all the nude scenes from this movie you’re going to end up with a very short movie that is not going to make a lick of sense.

Perhaps Tigon were being a bit ambitious for 1969. There is a great deal of nudity and there’s even some frontal nudity. Perhaps they should have realised that they just weren’t going to get away with that in 1969.

The main problem with this movie is that when director Michael Cort finished it it had a running time of just over 60 minutes, mainly because the script really only provides enough of a story for an hour-long movie. Tigon therefore hired Vernon Sewell to shoot additional footage, which results in a movie with definite pacing problems. Although it would have been unreleasable at 60 minutes that original shorter version was probably a better film. The original material shot by Michael Cort is much more interesting.

What’s interesting is that while it might seem like a kind of sex comedy this movie bears no resemblance whatsoever to 1970s British sex comedies such as the Adventures of movies and the Confessions movies. In fact it doesn’t really feel particularly British. It has much more of a European vibe. It seems more influenced by European comics for adults and European movies based on those comics. Imagine a cross between Barbarella and Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik but with a lot more nudity and you’re getting closer to describing the feel of this movie. It also has a bit of a John Willie fetish vibe. Some of the costumes would not have been out place in Just Jaeckin’s Gwendoline, based on Willie’s comic.

It’s silly and goofy but it’s also surreal and crazy. There are also moments which are clearly influenced by the psychedelic freak-out movies that were in vogue in the 60s. Visually it’s pleasingly oddball. Zeta One has some major flaws but the fact that it’s so totally unlike other British movies of its era, and that it has such an odd feel to it, make it worth watching. It’s possibly the most successful British attempt to achieve a comic-book feel. The plot incoherence adds to its charm. Highly recommended.

Gwendoline (1984), Blu-Ray review

Just Jaeckin’s Gwendoline is a kinky sexy adventure romp, inspired by the fetish comic strips of John Willie. The movie has a comic book feel. It was destined to be a cult movie from the start. Only a cult audience could appreciate such quirkiness.

Jaeckin had made Emmanuelle and The Story of O in the 70s, two of the best-known erotic movies of all time. When he directed Emmanuelle Jaeckin was already a very very successful photographer. He had never directed a movie and was chosen as director largely because he knew how to photograph women. His directing career was sporadic. He simply didn’t need to direct movies so he was able to confine himself to film projects that appealed to him.

Gwendoline, released in 1984, was a change of pace. It’s not an erotic movie as such. It is, as stated earlier, an adventure romp. It’s a sexy adventure romp.

Gwendoline (Tawny Kitaen) arrives in a seaport somewhere in Asia, packed inside a wooden crate. Neither she nor her faithful maid Beth have passports. They also don’t have any money. She is immediately kidnapped by gangsters. They want something from her but they don’t speak English so she has no idea what it is they want. Then Willard (Brent Huff) smashes through the window and takes care of the gangsters. He could rescue Gwendoline but rescuing females in not in his line. It doesn’t pay.

Willard is your typical American square-jawed hero that you’d find in comic books, pup magazines and movie serials. Except that he isn’t. He’s completely mercenary and completely selfish. The typical hero of that type should be not just ruggedly handsome and capable of out-fighting anyone he encounters, he should be pure of heart. There’s nothing pure about Willard. He’s a ruthless adventurer who loves as casually as he kills, with no thought for anyone but himself.

Gwendoline needs Willard’s help to complete her quest. Willard has no intention of doing so. But he’s never met two young ladies quite as determined as Gwendoline and Beth. They manage to con him into helping them. Willard is even more appalled when he discovers what Gwendoline’s quest is. Her father ventured into the land of the Yik-Yaks to find a rare butterfly. He collects butterflies. Very few people have entered the land of the Yik-Yaks. None have come out alive. The quest for that butterfly cost Gwendoline’s father his life. Now Gwendoline wants to find the butterfly. It’s the least she can do for poor old Dad’s memory. It’s an insane idea which seems certain to get them all killed but there’s no reasoning with Gwendoline and there’s no resisting her. And Beth is totally devoted to her mistress, and she can be just as scheming and persuasive.

After encountering countless perils our three adventurers reach the land of the Yik-Yak. It’s an amazon society ruled over by an evil insane queen. The only man there is an ageing scientist, hopelessly in thrall to the queen. He has discovered the secret of the mountain in which the Yik-Yak live. It involves a volcano and a lot of diamonds.

While John Willie’s Sweet Gwendoline comic strips were bondage/fetish oriented Jaeckin wanted to do a comedy adventure romance, but with enough kinkiness to keep things interesting.

The highlights of the movie are the sets and the costumes, and the wonderfully bizarre visual set-pieces. The chariots pulled by girls are a lovely touch.

The problem many people have with this movie is that it really is a lighthearted adventure comedy movie but it has a lot more nudity than the audience of that sort of movie is going to be prepared for. The number of bare breasts defies counting. On the other hand it’s nowhere near explicit enough to satisfy the audience for sex films. You just have to accept that it’s a unique hybrid, a kinky erotic adventure romp.

The casting works perfectly. Jaeckin needed a heroine who was beautiful and striking and sexy but Gwendoline also has to be sweet and innocent and amusing and a bit crazy (but in a nice way). Tawny Kitaen manages to do all that. Brent Huff does the cynical hardbitten adventurer thing to perfection. Zabou Breitman makes Beth more than just a side-kick, and she’s delightful. The three leads combine perfectly.

There’s plenty of kinkiness here but it’s all done in a fun way and in a fantastic way. This is not reality. There’s not a single mention of a real country or a real city and no indication of the time period in which the story is set. It takes place in a totally imaginary world, a kind of dream world, and everything about that world is pure fantasy, so scenes which might have been a little disturbing become witty and amusingly outré rather than disturbing. And it’s basically a good-natured movie.

Jaeckin is a director that critics at the time liked to sneer at. He was dismissed as little more than a pornographer. To a large extent this critical disdain resulted from the fact that Emmanuelle was the most commercially successful French movie of all time. A movie that aims for popular success and achieves it always enrages a certain kind of film critic. Gwendoline was a major hit as well, which made those critics dislike Jaeckin even more. In fact Jaeckin’s movies were successful because Jaeckin knew how to make visually lush movies that look incredibly expensive and work perfectly within the confines of what he was trying to achieve. And he could make ambitious movies and bring them in on time and on budget. His filmography is small but includes three movies (Emmanuelle, The Story of O, Gwendoline) that are the best movies of their type ever made.

Severin have really excelled themselves with the extras on their Blu-Ray release. There are two commentary tracks (one of them featuring Just Jaeckin), there are two interviews with the director, an interview with the producer, an interview with production designer Françoise De Leu and another with Claude Renard and François Schuiten who were responsible for the overall visual concept.

Gwendoline is in my view Jaeckin’s best movie. It’s a rollicking adventure yarn, a love story, an exercise in classy low-key erotica and an orgy of visual extravagance. The budget was enormous for an 80s French movie but paltry by Hollywood standards but visually it puts Hollywood movies of that era to shame. It’s total fun. Very highly recommended.