Crossplot (1969)

I’m always on the lookout for movies that have been overlooked, and few movies have been as comprehensively overlooked as Crossplot. Made in 1969, it’s a Swinging 60s spy thriller starring Roger Moore. Moore was already a big star on television but it would be a few years before he found even greater fame in the Bond movies (starting with Live and Let Die in 1973). If you’re expecting Crossplot to be a kind of dress rehearsal for the Bond movies you’re going to be disappointed. Crossplot is, or at least it attempts to be, more in the style of Hitchcock’s thrillers in which some poor schmuck somehow gets mixed up in an espionage plot (North by Northwest being the most famous example. Unfortunately the director of Crosssplot, Alvin Rakoff, is no Hitchcock and Crossplot is no North by Northwest.

Gary Fenn (Roger Moore) is an irresponsible womanising advertising executive. He’s just sold a campaign to a major client. The product is cosmetics so the centrepiece of the campaign is to be a very special model. She has to be very special, and also new and exciting. Gary has found just the right girl and the client is delighted. The only problem is, as he discovers afterwards, someone has switched the photo of the model he’d picked for a photo of another model. And this other model is someone he has never set eyes on and never heard of, and he has no idea ho to find her. But somehow he has to find her, since the client has seen her photo and wants her for the campaign.

It doesn’t take Gary too long to track her down. She is a Hungarian, Marla Kugash (Claudie Lange). So everything is sweet, except that somebody is now trying to kill her, and to kill Gary as well.

Marla knows something about an espionage plot of some kind, but she doesn’t know that she knows. She overheard a conversation, and what she overheard is the key, if only she knew what it was or what it meant.

Pretty soon Gary and Marla are being chased about all over the countryside, with the bad guys making some remarkably ineffectual attempts to kill them. 

The movie’s rather incoherent plot eventually leads them to the stately home of Tarquin (Alexis Kanner). Tarquin is a lord but he’s also an irritating hippie peacenik and the nefarious plot has something to do with his band of unwashed flower childen.

The basic idea has some potential but the execution is rather horrid. What could have been a very entertaining chase sequence involving a vintage car and a helicopter is marred by some very poor rear projection shots. In fact there are lots of very poor rear projection shots in this movie. The chase just doesn’t generate the excitement it should, and unfortunately the same can be said for all the action set-pieces. You don’t need a dazzlingly brilliant script for a movie like this but you do need a director with a flair for action scenes and that’s where this movie falls down badly.

The budget was clearly rather limited and that doesn’t help. The 60s was a decade that saw some great action adventure laced with humour and romance movies, movies like Charade and Arabesque, but those movies had lavish budgets that permitted clever and genuinely exciting action sequences. It’s entirely possible to do this sort of thing without big money, but in that case you do need an inspired director. Crossplot has neither the money nor the inspiration. 

On the plus side it has Roger Moore. He’s certainly the right actor for this sort of thing and he throws himself into it with commendable enthusiasm. He’s charming, as always, and he does his best. Claudie Lange was a European starlet who did quite a lot of work in the 60s and 70s without ever breaking through as a star. She’s adequate at best although she looks glamorous enough. Bernard Lee is given too little to do and the supporting players are generally unexciting.

The really big problem is the lack of a memorable villain for Roger Moore to cross swords with, and to trade one-liners with. This means that Moore has to carry the movie entirely on his own.

The details of the conspiracy really needed to be revealed earlier in order to set up the race-against-time angle which might have added a bit more tension. As it is the screenplay is too muddled and too confusing to engage the viewer’s attention.

MGM’s DVD is letterboxed and the transfer is adequate. There are no extras.

Crossplot might have worked well as an episode of The Saint. In fact producer Robert S. Baker and writers Leigh Vance and John Kruse had all worked on that series and that might be why the movie comes across as an unsuccessful attempt to transfer the magic of that series to the big screen. The excruciatingly cheap special effects might have looked quite OK in a television production.

Roger Moore went on to make some of the best and most original thrillers of the 1970s, including classics of the genre like Shout at the Devil, The Wild Geese, The Sea Wolves and ffolkes. Crossplot was his first attempt to translate his TV stardom into big screen stardom. It’s a misfire. Worth a rental if you’re a Roger Moore completist.

The Sea Wolves (1980)

The Sea Wolves is an old-fashioned war adventure movie in the very best meaning of the term old-fashioned. Andrew V. McLaglen was arguably the best director of such movies in the business at the time and he delivers all the excitement anyone could reasonably want.

The movie was based on the real-life raid on Goa by the Calcutta Light Horse in 1943, a mission that was not publicly revealed until 1978 due to the unfortunate circumstance that it involved a fairly major violation of Portuguese neutrality. The Calcutta Light Horse was a reserve cavalry regiment that had not seen active duty since the Boer War. In 1943 German U-boats were taking a heavy toll of Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean. They were acting on information broadcast from a transmitter on the German merchant ship Ehrenfels which had been interned at Goa (a tiny Portuguese enclave on the west coast of India). This in itself was a violation of Portuguese neutrality so the British felt justified in taking action but they could not afford to do so openly. A plan was hatched whereby the members of the Calcutta Light Horse, all retired soldiers, would sink the Ehrenfels.

In the film version the plan is hatched by Colonel Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Captain Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) of the British SOE, a top-secret intelligence organisation which carried out a variety of what would today be called covert operations. They come up with the plan after having failed to eliminate the German spies passing on the intelligence that was then broadcast to the U-boats by the Ehrenfels.

The Colonel of the Light Horse, Bill Grice (David Niven), is only too eager to get involved, having been turned down for active service due to his age. The other members of the Light Horse are just as old and broken-down, and just as keen. They steal an ancient Indian barge which they then have to sail right around India before reaching their objective. Meanwhile Captain Stewart has got himself involved with a beautiful German spy - there’s no point in having Roger Moore in the movie if he can’t get mixed up with glamorous female spies.

The movie takes quite a while to get to the main action but that’s no problem because there is plenty of minor action to keep things bubbling along happily until then. The movie naturally ends with the sort of spectacular action set-piece that McLaglen was so good at.

Along the way you can have fun spotting all the superb British character actors who fill the supporting roles with such élan. Kenneth Griffith, Trevor Howard, Patrick Macnee, Allan Cuthbertson, Donald Houston - the list is too long to give in full but they’re all clearly having a terrific time. Of course they all over-act, but over-acting never hurt an action adventure movie. Gregory Peck relishes his last opportunity to play an action hero and at the age of 64 shows he can still teach younger actors a few things about how to do these things right. Peck has no problem playing a British officer - his natural speaking voice was rather patrician anyway and he wisely makes no attempt to do anything more in the way of an accent. He shares top billing with Moore and Niven. In 1980 Peck was still a major star, having had a massive hit with The Omen just a few years earlier.

There are plenty of amusing moments but while the operation has a certain comic-opera quality McLaglen wisely does not approach this movie as outright comedy, which might have had the effect of making a far-fetched plot (admittedly based on outrageously unlikely true events) seem merely silly. These old crocks are brave men and the movie treats them with the respect they deserve.

This Anglo-American-Swiss co-production was filmed on location in Germany and India. The budget was obviously quite generous and the action sequences are very impressively mounted. Enormous amounts of small arms ammunition get expended and there are enough explosions to gladden the heart of the most jaded action fan.

Reginald Rose’s screenplay was based on James Leasor’s book on the actual raid. Some of the German survivors of the raid acted as historical advisers.

Warner Home Video’s Region 1 DVD is totally lacking in extras but it does present the movie in a superb 16x9 enhanced transfer, and at a very reasonable price. My only quibble, and it’s a very minor one, is that the DVD cover artwork seems to depict Niven and Moore in German uniform, which they don’t wear at any stage in the film,

The Sea Wolves delivers the goods. This is a consciously heroic movie about some very unlikely heroes. There’s no cynicism here, and its absence is entirely to be welcomed. Great fun and highly recommended.

Escape to Athena (1979)

Escape to Athena is an action adventure comedy. Some viewers might feel it leans too heavily in the direction of comedy but to compensate for this it has enough good ideas to carry off the action adventure elements.

Producers David Niven Jr and Jack Wiener assembled a notable cast for this production and they had plenty of money to play with. Director George P. Cosmatos came up with the original idea which was licked into shape by screenwriter Edward Anhalt.

The setting is a German prisoner-of-war camp on one of the Greek islands in 1944. This is a prisoner-of-war camp with a difference. Its purpose is to loot the island of its archaeological treasures. The loot is supposed to be sent to Berlin but the camp’s commandant, Major Otto Hecht (Roger Moore), makes sure that the choice items find their way to his sister in Switzerland. Before the war Hecht had been a crooked dealer in antiquities and he is fleecing his political masters in Berlin the same way he fleeced his pre-war customers.

Hecht is a thief but in other respects he’s a decent enough fellow. He has no interest in ideology and since he’s using the prisoners to dig up the archaeological treasures he treats them quite well. Hecht is patriotic enough as long as it doesn’t interfere with his plans to enrich himself. His lack of nazi fervour puts him at odds with the island’s SS commander, Major Volkmann (Anthony Valentine). Volkmann is efficient but brutal and he indulges his taste for cruelty rather freely.

Hecht has assembled the sorts of prisoners best suited for his purposes including archaeologist Professor Blake (David Niven).

The latest batch of prisoners comprises two American entertainers shot down on their way to a USO concert. Dottie del Mar (Stefanie Powers) happens to be a champion swimmer as well as a singer and dancer and her swimming abilities are likely to be useful to Hecht in obtaining sunken treasures. Charlie Dane (Elliott Gould) is a standup comic who is unlikely to be of any use but Hecht is oddly fond of him, partly because they share a passion for American jazz.

The Greek Resistance is active on the island. Their leader is a defrocked monk named Zeno (Telly Savalas). Zeno’s girlfriend Eleana (Claudia Cardinale) runs the local brothel which is in reality the centre of the Resistance’s intelligence-gathering on the island. With an allied invasion in the offing Zeno has orders to take control of the island in order to destroy its U-boat refuelling depot and certain other much more top-secret installations. The island is also a missile base and its V2 missiles pose a major threat to an allied invasion fleet. Which is complete nonsense militarily, but this is only a movie after all and the missile base does add a very cool touch.

To take over the island Zeno will need the assistance of the prisoners. He gains their co-operation by promising to allow them to loot the island’s cliff-top monastery of its Byzantine treasures. This aspect of the operation appeals particularly strongly to Charlie Dane, and also to the camp’s Italian cook Bruno Rotelli (Sonny Bono) and to Nat Judson (Richard Rowntree), an ex-circus performer whose acrobatic talents promise to be useful. The potential difficulty is that the plans of the Resistance will also require the assistance of Major Otto Hecht. Hecht dislikes the idea of treason but he’s amenable to persuasion.

There are some impressive action scenes and some very impressive sets including the monastery which was built specifically for the film. There are enough explosions and gun battles to keep action fans happy. There’s also an exciting motorcycle chase through the narrow streets of the nearby village. 

The aspect of the movie that is most problematical is the comedy which threatens to take over completely. Elliott Gould and Stefanie Powers often seem to be involved in an entirely separate movie from the one that Telly Savalas, Roger Moore, Anthony Valentine and David Niven are making. Whether this is a problem for you depends on how much tolerance you have for Powers and Gould’s very over-the-top comic mugging.

Casting Roger Moore as the commandant was certainly bold. He may have been somewhat miscast but Hecht is basically a sympathetic character and he carries it off reasonably well. Personally I’d have liked to see him given more to do, and I’d have liked to see Anthony Valentine given a lot more to do. Telly Savalas dominates the movie, as he usually tended to do. Savalas plays things fairly straight, albeit with a hint of tongue-in-cheek humour.

The movie was shot entirely on location on the island of Rhodes.

The Australian Blu-Ray release offers an excellent transfer and contemporary interviews with the cast and crew.

Escape to Athena could have been a fun adventure romp but the comedic elements are jarring and become irritating. It’s ultimately a misfire although it has its moments. Worth a rental.

Gold (1974)

Roger Moore enjoyed immense success in the 70s with the Bond movies but in that decade alongside those Bond movies he made many others that are perhaps even more interesting. Moore clearly realised he was going to be stuck playing heroes in thrillers but if this was the case then he might as well make good interesting thrillers. And he showed very good judgment in accepting roles in some very good thrillers indeed. One of these thrillers was Gold, which appeared in 1974.

Gold was based on a novel by Wilbur Smith, the author of some unusual and very entertaining thrillers.

Gold chronicles some very shady goings-on in a gold mine in South Africa. Rod Slater (Moore) is the underground manager at the Sonderditch gold mine. The chairman of the company is the crusty, cantakerous but shrewd Hurry Hirschfeld (Ray Milland). The day-to-day running of the company is in the hands of Manfred Steyney (Bradford Dillman), a decidedly oily character with two passions - he is a cleanliness-obsessed health freak and he is avaricious to the point of insanity. As we will soon learn he is involved in a complex conspiracy to manipulate the gold market in order to make a killing for a cabal of crooked financiers led by the smoothly sinister Farrell (John Gielgud).

The movie opens with a collapse in one of the mine shafts. Several people are killed, including the mine’s general manager. There is no satisfactory explanation for the accident, or for the general manager’s presence in the shaft.

A new general manager is now needed for the mine and Steyner is determined that Slater should get the job. Slater doesn’t know it but he’s being set up.

Slater is a man with a reputation for chasing women and for having been hot-headed in his youth but he knows gold mining and he is popular because he also has a reputation for treating the miners well and not taking chances with their lives.

Slater’s fondness for women soon lands him in a very tricky situation when he begins an affair with Steyner’s wife Terry (Susannah York), who happens to be the grand-daughter of Hurry Hirschfeld.

The miners have struck a formation of very hard rock and behind that formation there is water. Lots and lots of water. Enough water to flood the entire mine. A veritable underground sea. Needless to say the miners are being very cautious about all that water and any blasting anywhere near that rock formation is out of the question. Slater is therefore rather surprised to be handed a geologists’ report that indicates there is a major gold seam behind the rock and further indicates that it would be quite safe to go after that gold. Slater is only half-convinced but he’s persuaded to go ahead. He does however intend to take precautions, setting up explosive charges that will seal off that portion of the mine if they strike water rather than gold.

The syndicate led by Farrell has its own reasons for wanting that rock formation blasted and the safety of the miners is not a concern for them.

It’s a rather unusual setup for an action movie but it works. The main weakness of the screenplay (by Wilbur Smith and Stanley Price) is that it spends too much time on the romance between Slater and Terry and consequently the movie drags a bit in the middle. It does however build to a tense action-filled finale. Peter Hunt had already shown himself to be a fine action director with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (regarded by many aficionados as the best of all the Bond movies) and would go on to direct the excellent and underrated Shout at the Devil.

Roger Moore does well as Slater, the reformed (well semi-reformed at least) bad boy who finds himself faced with the task of trying to save the mine and the lives of a thousand miners. Susannah York is fine as the rebellious Terry and the chemistry between Moore and York helps when the pace starts to flag in the middle in the film. 

Ray Milland was nudging 70 when he made this movie and he looks every day of it. This doesn’t stop him from turning in a great performance as the ageing but feisty company chairman. Gold boasts an array of very nasty villains, all of them played splendidly. 

The location shooting in South Africa is spectacular and the mine sequences are particularly well-executed and look terrific.

This movie’s reputation has suffered as a result of some truly abysmal DVD releases. Odeon Entertainment have put matters right with a fine Blu-Ray release that finally gives us the opportunity to appreciate this fine unconventional action film. The main extra is a lengthy biographical documentary of Roger Moore, obviously made a few years back but giving a nice overview of his career.

Despite its minor pacing problems Gold is a great deal of fun. It’s pure old-fashioned entertainment with villainous villains and heroic heroes. Highly recommended.

The Wild Geese (1978)

The Wild Geese, released in 1978, is a full-blooded action adventure movie. The Wild Geese is also a movie about mercenaries in Africa. This subject matter made it highly controversial at the time although needless to say most of those who objected to the movie hadn’t bothered to see it. If they had they would have discovered that the movie’s message was the complete opposite of what they had assumed.

Mercenary leader Colonel Alan Faulkner (Richard Burton) is hired by wealthy industrialist and merchant banker Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger) to snatch a deposed African leader named Limbani (Winston Ntshona) from his prison cell. Matherson is trying to negotiate a copper concession with the man who deposed Limbani. The new president wants Limbani dead but Matherson’s plan is to double-cross him and get Limbani out of the country.

Faulkner knows the men he wants for the mission but getting some of them could be difficult. Lieutenant Shawn Fynn (Roger Moore) has a Mafia contract on his head, but Matherson assures him he can get the contract lifted. Captain Rafer Janders (Richard Harris) has given up the mercenary business to concentrate on raising his young son Emil. Janders is a different kind of mercenary from Faulkner. Faulkner has always been happy to work for anyone who will pay him, but Janders is an idealist who will only work for the good guys.

These difficulties are overcome and then the rest of the team is assembled. They will need a fourth officer and ex-South African security policeman Pieter Coetzee (Hardy Krüger) knows the bush as well as anyone and is an obvious choice. Faulkner will also need a sergeant-major to get the men into shape and R.S.M. Sandy Young (Jack Watson) is as tough as they come.

Four sergeants and a medic as well as forty other ranks will also be needed. Witty (Kenneth Griffith), an alcoholic homosexual but under his effeminate exterior he’s not only a good medic but a very tough soldier and he seems an ideal choice as the medic.

Rafer Janders will plan the mission. Planning is his speciality and Faulkner has complete confidence in him.

The mission goes like clockwork but then the mercenaries strike a small snag. An aircraft was supposed to extract them after they had completed their mission but it takes off without them and they realise they have been double-crossed. Now they will have to fight their way out, fifty men against a whole army.

Euan Lloyd was an independent producer but he had a knack for raising the money for big-budget movies like this. With a generous budget to work with director Andrew V. McLaglen delivers plenty of thrilling action scenes. Action was something that director McLaglen was particularly good at. Jack Hildyard was one of Britain’s best cinematographers while editor and second unit director John Glen would go on to helm several Bond movies. The movie looks as impressive as you’d expect with personnel like this involved. To ensure accuracy the most famous mercenary of them all, Colonel ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare, was brought in as technical and military advisor.

The cast is equally strong. If ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare was impressed by Richard Burton’s performance as the mercenary leader who am I to argue with him? Richard Harris is careful not to make his character, the mercenary with a conscience, irritating. Roger Moore plays a rather more ruthless character than usual and does it splendidly. The supporting cast is a veritable galaxy of great British character actors all of whom excel. The cast also includes quite a few real mercenaries like Ian Yule as Sergeant ‘Tosh’ Donaldson (who does a fine job).

Reginald Rose wrote the screenplay based on a novel by Daniel Carney. It’s a fine screenplay. Its one minor weakness is the political angle, with ex-President Limbani doing a bit too much speechifying (and Winston Ntshona’s excessively earnest performance doesn’t help). The political subtext feels a bit like it was tacked on to placate those who might have objected to a movie about mercenaries filmed in South Africa. Fortunately this proves to be only a temporary distraction from the movie’s main focus which is on the mercenaries themselves, their varying motivations, their military ethos and their response to the very nasty situation they find themselves in. This is (apart from the action scenes) the movie’s strength and the fine performances and the subtle characterisations carry it through.

By 1978 standards the violence in this movie was considered to be rather graphic. By today’s depraved standards it seems to strike the right balance, being graphic enough to be convincing without going overboard. As you might expect from a movie made in 1978 it has some rather politically incorrect moments as well, making it a refreshing change from the mealy-mouthed conformism of today.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release boasts a superb anamorphic transfer and a host of extras. These extras include a commentary track featuring producer Euan Lloyd, editor and second unit director John Glen and star Sir Roger Moore, a making-of featurette, a documentary on Euan Lloyd’s career and another on director Andrew V. McLaglen and an interview with ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare himself (Hoare has particularly fond memories of working with Richard Burton).

The Wild Geese is a boys’ own adventure in the best possible sense. Immensely entertaining and highly recommended.

ffolkes (1979)

Sir Roger Moore is always going to be remembered as The Saint and as James Bond but over the course of the 1970s he did a number of rather interesting movies in which he demonstrated unexpected versatility as an actor. One of these was ffolkes, also released as North Sea Hijack.

A group of terrorists hijack a North Sea oil drilling platform. They demand a ransom of £25 million or they will blow it up. The British government may have no alternative but to pay. If the platform is blown up the total costs to the nation’s economy will run into billions of pounds. There is only one man who may be able to help them. That man is Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore). To say that ffolkes is an eccentric would be an understatement of epic proportions, but he’s all they’ve got and they'd better hope he can do the job.

ffolkes and his team of divers specialise in this sort of thing. ffolkes had in fact already been contacted by Lloyds of London who were concerned about the security of North Sea oil rigs, they being the ones insuring these facilities. ffolkes had come to the conclusion that the only way to hijack a North Sea oil rig would be by first hijacking one of the supply ships. That is exactly the plan the real terrorists adopted. Fortunately ffolkes had already given thought to ways in which such a situation could be dealt with.

The terrorists are led by Lou Kramer (Anthony Perkins typecast yet again as a crazy). They hijacked the supply ship Esther. The oil company had been in a whimsical mood when these facilities were commissioned. The drilling platform is named Ruth while the main platform several miles away is named Jennifer. Having taken over Esther the terrorists have proceeded to the two platforms and have rigged limpet mines to both as well as rigging a bomb on board Esther. At a touch of a button Kramer can blow up either platform or the supply ship.

The Royal Navy is responsible for the protection of North Sea oil installations but this is a job that is beyond the capabilities even of their Royal Marine Commandos. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Francis Brindsen (James Mason) is not happy about the idea of civilians being employed to do the Navy’s job but he accepts that there is no alternative. ffolkes and his men are the only ones with the necessary specialised expertise.

ffolkes will have to find a way to get both himself and Admiral Brindsen on board the Esther. Having the admiral there is the only way to convince the terrorists that the British government really does intend to negotiate with them. In fact the government has not the slightest intention of negotiating but they have to make Kramer think that they will. ffolkes has a plan for such a situation but it will demand split-second timing and a certain amount of luck. Or at least an absence of bad luck.

Director Andrew V. McLaglen helmed a number of action adventure films during his career and he displays a very sure touch. Jack Davies wrote the screenplay based on his own novel, the film rights for which had already been sold before the novel was published.

Anthony Perkins never had any difficulty in playing psychotics and he’s at his twitchy best here. James Mason is good as always although his part is rather undemanding. Jack Watson as the Norwegian skipper of the supply ship and David Hedison as the man in charge of Jennifer are both solid.

Roger Moore is the star here and he gives a full-blooded and highly entertaining performance as the wildly eccentric ffolkes, whose passions are cats, needlepoint and whisky, and who intensely dislikes women. He manages to make ffolkes convincing despite his oddities.

This movie is about as far removed from the Bond movies as any thriller could be. Everything here is in the realm of the possible. This is a movie that tries very hard to be a thoroughly realistic thriller dealing with a situation that is entirely plausible, and it succeeds very well in that aim. It has to rely on the tried-and-tested techniques of suspense rather than on futuristic gadgets. Being a thriller that is the complete antithesis of the Bond movies must have been one of the attractions for Roger Moore, the other attraction being the chance to play such a larger-than-life eccentric.

The contrast between the wildly unstable Kramer, played by Anthony Perkins as a kind of human bomb that could detonate at any moment, and the ice-cold ffolkes works well.

The Region 4 DVD release offers a good anamorphic transfer with no extras.

ffolkes is a taut well-made action thriller that delivers the goods, with Roger Moore’s fine performance being a major bonus. Highly recommended.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

The Man Who Haunted Himself is a horror movie starring Roger Moore, and that in itself makes this an unusual movie. Purists might prefer this one to be described as a psychological thriller but I think it can pass muster as a genuine horror movie.

This much neglected 1970 British movie is also notable for having offered Roger Moore one of his most rewarding roles. The performance he delivers may well be the best of his career.

Roger Moore plays businessman Harold Pelham. By the standards of 1970 Pelham is a rather old-fashioned sort of chap. He dresses very conservatively, even down to the bowler hat. He is married and has two sons. Everything about him marks him as a creature of habit with fundamentally conservative instincts. When he crashes his luxury (but rather staid) Wolseley car he replaces it with another one exactly like it. That’s the sort of person he is.

For all his old-fashioned style he’s no fool. He is a partner in a successful marine engineering company. When a merger is proposed with a rival firm he is the only member of the board to recognise it for what it is, a takeover, and he’s the only one prepared to stand firm.

The car crash mentioned earlier opens the movie and it’s the key to what follows. Pelham is rushed to hospital but dies on the operating table. Luckily for him (or so it seems at the time) the doctors are able to get his heart started again and he subsequently makes a rapid recovery.

He is soon back at the office and everything seems normal, except for a few odd incidents that start to happen. It seems that he’s been doing things that he doesn’t remember afterwards. The thing is that he’s absolutely convinced that he hasn’t done these things. And some of these odd things he seems to have been doing are very much out of character. Harold Pelham is not the sort of man to chase young women or to frequent the gaming tables. But people distinctly remember his doing these very things.

Pelham’s marriage was having a few problems. He and his wife Eve (Hildegard Neil) have drifted apart just a little. Eve seems to be just a little bored with her husband’s very serious attitude towards life, and they are having a few sexual problems. They’re really no more serious than the problems every marriage encounters from time to time and in the normal course of events they’d no doubt work themselves out. But these odd things Harold Pelham seems to be doing naturally add to the tensions.

At times Pelham suspects that somebody is impersonating him. At other times he thinks perhaps there’s something wrong with him. He even consults a psychiatrist, Dr Harris (Freddie Jones). He’s starting to get quite concerned and it’s getting him down a bit. Then he finds himself accused of unethical business practices. He, Harold Pelham, of all people. He is the last man to indulge in any kind of underhanded dealing.

All this is bad enough, but worse is to follow. Those odd incidents that he has no memory of are getting more serious. He is fast approaching a crisis in both his professional and his private life. When the crisis does come it’s stranger than anything he had imagined, it’s worse than even his worst fears.

Anthony Armstrong’s story had first seen the light of day as an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series in the 1950s. Screenwriters Basil Dearden (who also directed), Michael Relph and an uncredited Bryan Forbes expanded the story to feature-film length, and fairly successfully. Basil Dearden had a distinguished career as a director and he had done both thrillers and horror before this so he was a good choice to bring this story to the big screen.

This is a role that requires Roger Moore to do some serious acting and he rises to the challenge superbly. Anyone inclined to dismiss Moore as a lightweight actor will find this performance to be a very pleasant surprise. This is a very different Roger Moore from his more familiar roles as Simon Templar and James Bond. He really is excellent. He gets good support from Hildegard Neil. The supporting cast includes a number of faces that will be very familiar to horror fans. Thorley Waters is Pelham’s bumptious acquaintance Frank Bellamy, while Freddie Jones is a delight as the rather dotty psychiatrist.

This is strictly low-key horror and it’s all the more effective for that. Until very late in the movie we can’t really be sure what is happening to Harold Pelham. The final revelation harks back to the car crash at the beginning of the film and it provides a tense and exciting finish.

The Region 4 DVD release offers a good anamorphic transfer but sadly no extras. The movie has also been released in Region 1 and Region 2 and on Blu-Ray. These versions apparently include an excellent commentary track featuring Roger Moore.

The Man Who Haunted Himself is a very unjustly neglected movie. It’s very well-crafted and well-acted and is highly recommended.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

For Your Eyes Only, released in 1981, was the fifth of the Roger Moore Bond movies and marked something of a change in direction.

There are two schools of thought on the correct approach to making a Bond movie. One school holds that it is desirable to keep as close as possible to the spirit of Ian Fleming’s novels. This requires a fairly realistic approach and it requires Bond to be a fairly hard-edged character.

The second school holds that Bond movies are pure escapist fun and the sillier and campier they are the better.

I’ve always preferred the second approach, although it has to be said that the first approach has something to be said for it.

The Roger Moore Bond films tended to stick to the second approach  which reached a climax with the gleefully outrageous Moonraker in 1979. When it came to the next movie in the series for some reason it seemed to have been decided to go for the first option. For Your Eyes Only is the most serious of the Roger Moore films. There are spectacular stunts but there aren’t the outrageous gadgets and most of the action sequences are reasonably plausible.

To my way of thinking it suffers a little from the lack of a larger-than-life villain. Bond is not up against a diabolical criminal mastermind. He’s up against criminals and KGB agents. I feel that a hero of Bond’s stature really needs to be measured against a villain on an epic scale.

A British spy ship is sunk, and to the embarrassment and consternation of Her Majesty’s government a piece of very vital equipment was not destroyed before the ship sank. If it falls into the hands of the Russians it will render Britain’s main line of defence, her Polaris missile submarines, powerless. An attempt by a British archaeologist to retrieve the device fails and the archaeologist is killed. His daughter, Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) survives and vows vengeance. Melina is half-Greek and vengeance is something she takes very seriously. She will be a useful ally for 007.

Rival bands of smugglers are also interested in finding the device and one of these smugglers intends to sell it to the KGB.

The plot allows for the sorts of underwater sequences that were always a highlight of Bond films. The duel between the two midget submarines is particularly impressive. There are also some exciting action sequences set in a Greek monastery high on a rocky summit. These scenes require some rather energetic for Bond. At 53 Roger Moore was getting a bit old for this sort of thing but he does better than you might expect.

Moore accepts the challenge of playing a more serious Bond and is surprisingly convincing. He restrains his more camp impulses and plays things very straight. That’s not the way I like to see Bond played but Moore is much more successful at this than anyone would have suspected.

Carole Bouquet is a slightly bland Bond girl. Fortunately Lynn-Holly Johnson is on hand to add some spice as Bibi Dahl. She was a former champion figure skater and she plays a young skater in training for the Winter Olympics. Bibi think the best place to train is in the bedroom and she thinks Bond would make an excellent training partner. She’s funny and sexy and likeable and adds some much-needed lightness to an otherwise rather gritty movie.

Topol and Julian Glover are solid enough as the rival Greek smuggling chiefs. Bernard Lee  had passed away in early 1981 so M doesn’t make an appearance this time, his place being taken (very capably) by Geoffrey Keen as the Minister of Defence. Q is still there however, as is Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.

Director John Glen was making his first Bond movie and he handles the job extremely well. The rather long running time never drags. The action sequences are very good. A car chase in a Bond movie has to be witty as well as exciting and the one in this movie, with Bond fleeing from the bad guys in a little 2CV Citroen, qualifies on both counts.

I you like your Bond movies to be realistic spy thrillers you should love For Your Eyes Only. If like me you prefer them to be more in the mould of outrageous campy fun then you might find that one a bit of a disappointment after the glorious excessiveness of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker but it’s still fine entertainment.

Shout at the Devil (1976)

Shout at the Devil is an old-fashioned action adventure movie. Even by the standards of 1976 it’s an old-fashioned representative of its genre. And that’s why it’s so wonderfully entertaining.

This is not a movie that wants to deconstruct the action movie. There is absolutely no irony to this film. It’s completely unashamed to be exactly what it is, a rollicking tale of adventure.

Flynn O’Flynn (Lee Marvin) is an American big game hunter in East Africa in 1913. He lives in Portuguese East Africa but he regularly crosses the border into German East Africa in search of ivory. He’s not exactly scrupulous about minor details like laws and borders, and his activities are often quite close to outright thieving. He’s also drunk most of the time, but he’s a happy drunk. He’s your typical loveable rogue, the kind of person the modern world has less and less time for, but in 1913 the world was a different place and such a man as Flynn O’Flynn could thrive in that world.

His latest venture is even less legal than usual and to carry it off he needs to ship his ill-gotten ivory downriver and to do this he needs an Englishman so he can maintain the fiction that his vessel is operating under the British flag. That’s where Sebastian Oldsmith (Roger Moore) comes in. Oldsmith is conned into participating but in fact he’s a bit of a rogue himself. Before falling in with O’Flynn he was on his way to Australia, his family having raised the passage money. They wanted him as far away as possible. Oldsmith and O’Flynn make perfect partners.

For Oldsmith there’s another attraction, O’Flynn’s beautiful daughter Rosa. He and Rosa are soon married and Sebastian is happily settling into a life of big game hunting and assorted illegal ventures. But O’Flynn and Oldsmith have a nemesis - Commandant Fleischer, the German military governor in the neighbouring portion of German East Africa. O’Flynn and Fleischer have clashed many times in the past and they hate each other with a venom that increases day by day.

On one of their jaunts into German territory O’Flynn and Oldsmith have their first encounter with the German battlecruiser Blücher when it rams and sinks their dhow.

The declaration of war in 1914 gives Fleischer the excuse he has always wanted to cross the frontier and settle accounts with the troublesome O’Flynn. The tragic results of this expedition will seal Fleischer’s fate as O’Flynn and Oldsmith vow to hunt him down and kill him. As it happens their quest for revenge dovetails quite nicely with the Royal Navy’s plans. They believe the Blücher is taking refuge in an East African river and they want it sunk but they have no warships in the vicinity powerful enough to take on a battlecruiser, so O’Flynn and Oldsmith are recruited to do the job by sabotage, a task they can combine with revenge since Fleischer is believed to be on board.

The first two-thirds of this movie is pure silly fun with a nice mix of action and humour. It then takes a rather darker turn as it moves towards its apocalyptic climax but the excitement doesn’t let up.

The miniatures work is very impressive, as you’d expect when the man responsible for it is Derek Meddings, who started out on Gerry Anderson’s 1960s puppet adventure series and moved on from there to the Roger Moore James Bond movies.

Lee Marvin and Roger Moore make a great team. They might be rogues but they’re still the good guys and we want them to win. Rene Kolldehoff is delightfully over-the-top as Fleischer. Fleischer is not exactly a subtle villain, but this is not a movie that is overly worried about subtlety.

This is one of the most politically incorrect movies you’re ever going to see, a movie that could not possibly get made today. So that’s another point in its favour.

Umbrella Entertainment’s Region 4 DVD release is an uncut widescreen release and while the picture quality isn’t sensational it’s quite reasonable. It appears that some of the other DVD releases of this movie have been savagely cut and are very poor quality so the Umbrella disc is probably the one to go for. I suspect that online reviewers who complain about this movie’s supposed incoherence have only seen the cut version because the full version certainly cannot be accused of such a fault. It might be far-fetched but it all makes perfect sense.

This is a movie to enjoy for what it is. On its own terms it succeeds admirably and it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy was Roger Moore’s sixth outing as James Bond. But this time he was clearly too old for the role, but it scarcely matters. He has enough self-confidence, and sheer bravado, to carry him through.

This time Bond is up against three different enemies, all with very different agendas.

Initially what we have is a mystery involving a Fabergé egg, presumed to have belonged to the Russian Imperial family and now being offered for auction at Sotheby’s. But a fake Fabergé egg, an exact replica of this one, has just turned up in the hands of a dead British secret agent. And an exiled Afghan prince, Kamal Khan, is for some reason prepared to pay much much more than the egg is actually worth. He obviously must have the egg, but why?

Bond is off to India, where Prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) now lives in considerable slendour. The trail will lead Bond to the mysterious and beautiful Octopussy (Maud Adams), a fabulously wealthy woman who has what is effectively her own island queendom, inhabited entirely by gorgeous women. As you might expect, Bond is not displeased at the idea of infiltrating Octopussy’s island realm.

Octopussy has varied business interests, some of them legal. They range from diamond smuggling to circuses. Her circus is perhaps more of a hobby, but it will prove to be important.

But Kamal Khan and Octopussy are just two of the three players in this game. The third is an insane Russian general who believes the Soviet Union still has a chance of turning the Cold War into a hot war and winning. He has a scheme to do just that, and that’s where Octopussy’s circus comes in.

If you think it sounds like the plot has a bit too much going on you’re probably right but in the end it works pretty well. As usual in a Bond film there are exotic locations and they’re used extremely well. The Indian sequences are splendid, with a wonderful rickshaw case and then the piece de resistance, with Kamal Khan and his cronies mounted on elephants hunting Bond through the jungle.

And of course circuses always work in movies, and so do trains, and this one has both. In fact it has more than enough to keep any reasonable viewer entertained.

Casting Louis Jourdan as an Agfhan prince might have seemed a bit of a stretch but while he doesn’t look very much like an Agfhan prince he’s still perfect for the role. Although best known as a suave romantic leading man Jourdan was in fact rather good at playing charming evil (he was an excellent Dracula in the 1977 BBC -TV adaptation). He has a lot of fun with his role as a Bond villain.

This was the second appearance by Maud Adams as a Bond girl. She’s suitably glamorous. By this time Desmond Llewelynn as Q had become an institution in the Bond films and despite being nearly 70 he gets a fairly active role this time around, even getting to pilot a hot air balloon.

This was the first Bond movie made after Bernard Lee’s death so we get a new actor as M, Robert Brown. Sadly he makes very little impression.

Octopussy is not my favourite of the Moore Bond films but it’s still a delightfully entertaining movie, and it’s still classic Bond.

Live and Let Die (1973)

The first attempt to find a replacement for Sean Connery in the role of James Bond met with mixed success although today On Her Majesty's Secret Service is regarded by many as the best of the Bond films. At the time it did moderately good business at the box office but failed to equal the success of its predecessors. When it came to making a second attempt with Live and Let Die in 1973 the producers were more or less betting on a sure thing. No-one seriously doubted Roger Moore’s ability to play the part.

Live and Let Die, based on the second of Ian Fleming's Bond novels,  put the series back on track at the box office. There are some slight changes to the established formula, presumably introduced with the intention of giving the first Moore outing a fresh feel, but it’s still very recognisably a classic Bond film.

The first noticeable change is the absence of the familiar Bond theme tune, replaced by a rock song courtesy of Paul McCartney and Wings. It’s an obvious attempt to appeal to a young audience but it’s a great song though and suits the mood of the film beautifully.

It’s also one of the few Bond movies in which Q does not appear. In fact there’s not much in the way of gadgets in this movie. The budget was somewhat lower than the previous few films so there are no gadget-filled cars.

The plot is fairly simple. A number of British agents have been killed and there appears to be a link between these killings and the president of the tiny Caribbean island nation of San Monique. Bond picks up the trail in Harlem and his initial encounters with drug baron Mr Big give the movie a bit of a blaxploitation feel. With blaxploitation movies being the flavour of the month at the time it’s a smart commercial movie. From there the action movies to New Orleans and then to San Monique as Bond uncovers a fiendish plot to flood the US with heroin.

The villain of the piece has a secret weapon, in the form of a beautiful white girl named Solitaire (Jane Seymour). She has the gift of predicting the future with extraordinary accuracy by the use of tarot cards. This gift only works as long as Solitaire remains a virgin. Of course once she meets Bond we know she’s not likely to remain a virgin for very much longer. With the loss of both her virginity and her gift she has little choice but to throw in her lot with 007.

Actually the bad guy has another secret weapon as well - he uses voodoo to maintain his control over his island drug empire.

Yaphet Kotto makes a fairly effective Bond villain. Jane Seymour looks gorgeous and she manages to look convincingly exotic as well. She’s a perfectly acceptable Bond girl.

There’s also some splendid comic relief courtesy of Clifton James as Sheriff J. W. Pepper.

The movie does have some minor weaknesses. A couple of the action sequences don’t quite pay off as well as they might have done (especially the crocodile farm scene).

The success of the movie hinged entirely on whether audiences would accept Moore as Bond. He didn’t really need to adapt to the role - he simply played Bond the way he played Simon Templar in The Saint TV series. He’d already demonstrated his ability to deliver witty dialogue with style and tongue-in-cheek humour and he has no problems at all playing Bond. This is a slightly less dark and cynical Bond compared to Connery’s interpretation of the role which helps to establish a slightly different flavour for the new-look Bond franchise.

With spectacular action sequences (the speedboat chase is particularly memorable), a sparkling script and exotic locations, with Guy Hamilton doing his usual more than competent job as director and with Roger Moore suave, smooth and highly amusing there’s really very little to complain of in this movie. When you add voodoo to that mix you have a definite winner.