Firing Line (1988)

Firing Line is a very cheap 1988 jungle war action movie. I’ve recently become interested in exploring Shannon Tweed’s filmography and her movies are not easy to find so when I saw this one on DVD I grabbed it. But this is definitely not a typical Shannon Tweed movie.

The setting is an unnamed Central American republic. An American Mark Hardin (Reb Brown) has been captured by government soldiers. We have no real idea who Mark Hardin is except for a brief hint that he may have been a mercenary. We know no idea why the government had him arrested and we never find out.

e don’t know anything about the government except that we seem to be expected to see them as the bad guys. There’s a tough hardbitten American guy working with the government. He might be an American military advisor ie he might be C.I.A. or he might be a mercenary. We’re never told.

He has some kind of connection with a cute blonde American girl, Sandra Spencer (Shannon Tweed). We don’t know who she is or where she came from or why she’s in Central America or how she came to know Mark Hardin. We never find out. The government is after her as well, but we never find out why.

Mark and Sandra join a rebel group in the jungle-covered hills. We never find out what cause the rebels are fighting for. We never find out why Mark Hardin joins them but we assume he was a mercenary working for the government and he had a falling out with them.

The rebels are attacked by government troops. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Mark helps the rebels to bust Montiero out of gaol. We never find out why Montiero was arrested or why it’s important to rescue him. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Then the rebels attack a military post. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Later the rebels try to capture the radio station, but the attack doesn’t seem to achieve anything apart from offering the opportunity for lots of shooting and explosions.

At one stage Mark and Sandra wander off into the woods for a bit of recreation. We get an unbelievably brief unbelievably tame totally passionless love scene.

Then there’s more action centred on a bridge, and more shooting and explosions.

I won’t tell you whether the good guys or the bad guys eventually win and to be honest you may not care very much.

There are two credited screenwriters but there’s nothing in this movie to suggest that it ever had what you might call an actual script. Or even an actual director. We don’t learn anything about the motivations of any of the characters. We don’t know why any of the events happen.

The acting is terrible. I’ve now seen four of Shannon Tweed’s movies and I think she’s quite a good actress (yes, really) but this is the weakest performance I’ve seen from her. It’s not her fault. Her part is horribly underwritten. Since Mark Hardin’s part is horribly underwritten as well it’s difficult for these two to get any chemistry going. Apart from their brief roll in the hay and a brief swimming scene we don’t have enough of an idea how they feel about each other. We don’t see any scenes of tenderness or playfulness between them. If we knew they were madly in love we’d be a bit more invested in the story.

This is a movie that desperately needed some nudity and sex not only to break the monotony but to convince us that there’s some real fire and passion between Mark and Sandra. And casting Shannon Tweed and not giving her any opportunity to be seductive and sexy is eccentric to say the least.

Another problem is that you have a cute blonde babe here but she’s never put into any real danger so Mark doesn’t get to do anything brave and heroic to rescue her. He also never seems in any real danger so we don’t get to see Sandra desperately worrying about her man’s safety.

The action scenes are lively and relentless although not terribly inspired. It’s like the same basic action scene endlessly repeated.

This really is a total zero of a movie.

But don’t let this put you off Shannon Tweed. Given a decent role she could be very effective and deliver some genuinely interesting performances. Check her out in Illicit Dreams and especially her delightfully twisted performance in the excellent A Woman Scorned.

The Dogs of War (1980)

The Dogs of War, released in 1980, is based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 novel of the same name. It’s one of the classic mercenary movies.

James Shannon (Christopher Walken) is a mercenary leader who has just managed to extricate himself and his men from a rather nasty situation. Now he’s been offered another job. A mining consortium wants to invest a very large amount of money in a (fictional) West African country called Zangaro. They’re worried that the regime of President Kimba might not be too stable. Shannon’s job is to conduct a reconnaissance to find out exactly what the situation on the ground is in Zangaro. They’re worried about the possibility of making a deal with Kimba only to see him overthrown.

He doesn’t take long to realise that the situation on the ground is very very bad. Kimba’s regime is corrupt and brutal. Kimba is both vicious and crazy.

Shannon’s cover story is that he’s a naturalist photographing birds for a nature magazine. It doesn’t fool anyone. He finds himself in a very unpleasant spot. Very unpleasant indeed. He is deported from Zangaro, still alive but only just.

Shanon reports back to his employers that Kimba’s regime is appalling and that Kimba is mad but very firmly in charge. There is no likelihood whatsoever of any kind of internal coup. Shannon’s employers are not happy. They don’t want to deal with a madman. They ask Shannon if it would be possible for a small mercenary force to overthrow Kimba. Shannon replies, “Sure, why not?”

Shannon doesn’t want the job at first but when his personal life doesn’t pan out as he’d hoped he changes his mind. He agrees to overthrow Kimba.

He has 41 days to organise an assault on the military garrison in the capital of Zangaro.

Much of the film’s running time is occupied by a slow buildup to the main action, as Shannon assembles his force, makes his plans and obtains the weapons he’ll need. This slow buildup might not please all viewers but it’s faithful to the source material. The approach that Forsyth invariably took was to do meticulous research and then to describe in intricate detail the planning and preparation for the protagonists’ operation. The film version of Forsyth' first bestseller  The Day of the Jackal took that approach as well, very successfully. This film adaptation of The Dogs of War uses the same technique and it works just as well.

Of course everything hinges on whether the action scenes are worth the wait. And they are. They’re excellent.

If you’re making a movie about mercenaries and you want it to be a bit more than just a celebration of violent action you can either provide some focus on the motivations of the charters or you can focus on the cynical double-crosses and sleazy political machinations of the people financing the operation. This movie does a bit of both. We get the message that nothing ever really goes right for James Shannon except when he’s in the jungle with a machine-gun in his hands. He’s a decent enough guy but he doesn’t really have a handle on life. So he keeps taking jobs as a mercenary because that’s something he does understand. And we do get some neat double-crosses and counter double-crosses.

Having Jack Cardiff as the cinematographer helps a lot. This movie looks great. It’s not just the action scenes in Africa that look good - the New York street scenes and the scenes in London look just as good. Director John Irvin keeps everything under control.

The actors are all solid but it’s Christopher Walken’s typically eccentric performance that stands out.

This is a slightly up-market mercenary movie that offers a bit more than just mayhem. It’s not quite as good as Dark of the Sun (the best mercenary movie ever made) and maybe it doesn’t offer as much non-stop action as The Wild Geese but it still ranks in the top five among movies in this genre.

The version I saw was the original theatrical version shown in the US. Some DVD and Blu-Ray releases also include the longer international version.

The Dogs of War is highly recommended.

Jet Pilot (1957)

Jet Pilot was one of the pet projects of Howard Hughes and like most of his personal projects it has a rather poor reputation. It’s actually a good deal of fun.

Shooting began as early as 1949 but the movie was not completed until 1953 and was not released until 1957, mostly because Hughes (as he so often did) wanted to keep tinkering with it.

Colonel Jim Shannon (John Wayne) is a US Air Force fighter pilot. There’s considerable excitement at the air base when US radar tracks a Soviet fighter jet leaving Soviet airspace and heading their way. Colonel Shannon is determined that the Russian aircraft should not be shot down but forced to land. That proves to be easy as the Russian pilot obviously has every intention of landing.

The pilot has presumably defected but there’s another surprise in store for the Americans when he opens the cockpit and climbs out. The pilot is a beautiful young woman, Lieutenant Anna Marladovna (Janet Leigh).

She wants political asylum. She explains that she defected because her life was in danger  but she insists she is no traitor. She has no intention of revealing any Soviet military secrets.

Colonel Shannon is assigned to keep an eye on her. She seemed to take a bit of a shine to him and it’s hoped that if he romances her he may be able to persuade her to be a bit more co-operative. In fact the romance does blossom but with unintended consequences.

Jet Pilot was an excuse for Hughes to indulge his passion for aviation and it is to a large extent a string of aerial sequences tied together with a rather thin plot. Josef von Sternberg was hired to direct but inevitably clashed with Hughes. Some accounts indicate that parts of the were directed by the film’s screenwriter Jules Furthman and possibly by several other hands while some of the aerial scenes were certainly directed by Howard Hughes himself. Despite this von Sternberg did manage to put his stamp on the movie and there are a number of scenes that quite clearly could not have been directed by anyone else.

The plot has some obvious superficial similarities to Lubitsch’s classic comedy Ninotchka but it would be inaccurate to describe it as Ninotchka with aeroplanes. Ninotchka starts out as an ultra-serious, humourless, ice-cold doctrinaire communist who slowly thaws. Anna Marladovna in Jet Pilot on the other hand, even if she does spout communist slogans, is right from the start warm, playful and very feminine and has a sly sense of humour. Having her a warmhearted likeable character to begin with might sound like a less interesting idea than Ninotchka but there are a few plot twists that keep things interesting and unpredictable.

Reviews of Howard Hughes’ movies almost always label them hysterically anti-communist. That’s really only true of Jet Pilot to a limited extent. The Americans are trying just as hard to double-cross the Soviets as the Soviets are trying to double-cross them and both sides employ cynical emotional manipulation. And if the movie has a message it’s that if a communist and a capitalist fall in love then love will conquer all. I really couldn’t see any hysteria in this movie.

One thing that might be seen as stretching credibility a little is the US Air Force’s willingness to allow this Soviet defector to fly their very latest fighter jet, the F-86 Sabre. In fact she seems to be allowed to fly it whenever she wishes.

John Wayne gives a free-and-easy performance as Jim Shannon. It’s not a role that was ever going to tax his acting abilities and he disliked the film but he’s likeable and effective. Janet Leigh is remarkably good, giving a playful and witty performance. She’s also quite extraordinarily sexy. She positively smoulders. There’s also a surprising amount of rather risque dialogue between Leigh and Wayne, some of which must have raised eyebrows at the time.

The plot has some gaping holes in it and the motivations of the two lead characters become very confused and tangled and the story verges on incoherence at times. It tries to be a romance, a light comedy, an aviation adventure film and a spy thriller. The mixture does become a little muddled.

What this movie is really all about is the flying. The plot being thin and creaky the whole movie must stand or fall on the quality of the aerial sequences. Fortunately they are truly superb. If there’s one thing Howard Hughes certainly understood it was how to make flying sequences look impressive and in this area his perfectionism most definitely paid off. It doesn’t hurt when you have the legendary Chuck Yeager doing some of your stunt flying. Hardcore aviation geeks will be delighted to spot Northrop F-89 Scorpions, a Convair B-36 bomber and a Bell X-1 experimental rocket aircraft (the aircraft in which Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier). Even better, Hughes was anxious to avoid the use of stock footage so most if not all of the aerial stuff was shot specifically for the movie (with a great deal of co-operation from the US Air Force).

Despite its considerable plot weaknesses Jet Pilot manages surprisingly enough to be very entertaining. The two leads are compulsively watchable, the flying sequences are great and the improbabilities and inconsistencies of the plot actually add a great deal of slightly silly fun. It all ends up being thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

The Night of the Generals (1967)

Movies that try to mix genres and do several things at once often succeed on one level and fail on another. The Night of the Generals is an ambitious film that tries to do lots of things, and it fails on every level.

The story begins in Warsaw in December 1942. A polish prostitute is murdered. Apart from being a prostitute she also happened to be an agent for German Military Intelligence. A man was seen leaving the apartment house in which the murder took place. The witness however did not see the man’s face. All he saw was the uniform, and it was the uniform of a German general.

Intelligence officer Major Grau (Omar Sharif) undertakes the investigation of the murder. There were a lot of German generals in Warsaw at the time but only three who had no alibi - General von Seidlitz-Gabler (Charles Gray), General Kahlenberge (Donald Pleasence) and General Tanz (Peter O’Toole). With a war going on in which millions of people were dying the murder of a prostitute might seem to be a trivial matter but that’s not how Major Grau sees it. Murder is still murder. And to Major Grau it makes no difference if the murder was committed by a general. As he remarks to his aide, “If it is a German general…we shall have to hang him.”

Not surprisingly Grau’s investigation makes little progress. Generals are in a position to frustrate attempts by junior officers to investigate them. In this case getting Grau out of the way is extremely simple. He finds himself promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and transferred to Paris.

A year and a half later another murder is committed, in Paris. The victim is a prostitute and the killing bears a remarkable similarity to that Warsaw murder. As it happens all three generals who were the suspects in the Warsaw slaying just happened to be in Paris at the time. And of course Major Grau is still in Paris. Grau is the sort of detective who just never gives up and he re-opens the investigation, and this time he has the assistance of Inspector Morand (Philippe Noiret) of the Paris police. 

The second murder takes place on July 19th 1944, the day before the most famous of the many attempts by the German Army to assassinate Hitler. Both General von Seidlitz-Gabler and General Kahlenberge are involved in the plot.

General von Seidlitz-Gabler’s daughter Ulrike (Joanna Pettet) has been having an affair with Corporal Hartmann (Tom Courtenay), a member of the general’s staff. Corporal Hartmann is assigned as General Tanz’s driver. Tanz is not involved in the plot to kill Hitler and von Seidlitz-Gabler and Kahlenberge are anxious to have him out of the way on the day of the assassination attempt so Tanz is ordered to take a couple of day’s leave, which he spends seeing the sights of Paris.

Major Grau believes he may be getting close to solving his case but July 20th 1944 turns out to be a bad day on which to try to arrest a general, with everything in a state of confusion after the abortive assassination attempt.

These wartime events are intercut (in a rather ham-fisted fashion) with events that occur twenty years later in Hamburg, when yet another prostitute is murdered.

The sad thing about this movie is that the central idea is a very good one and could have made an excellent story. Unfortunately the various sub-plots are only connected together in a tenuous and clumsy manner and the sub-plots slow things down very badly. At 148 minutes this is a very long film. Much too long, especially when it’s padded out to that length by completely irrelevant sub-plots. 

The movie was based on a novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst and a story by James Hadley Chase. The screenplay, by Joseph Kessel and Paul Dehn, is poorly structured and unfocused. The main plot is a mystery plot and it had the potential to be a very interesting one but it’s ruined by its incredibly clumsy obviousness. The identity of the killer is revealed too soon but this hardly matters because I doubt that there would be a single viewer of this movie who would not have correctly guessed the identity of the killer within the first 20 minutes. 

Major Grau might be an admirably determined fellow but we don’t see him doing any actual investigating. He simply keeps turning up trying to interview the generals without succeeding in doing so. There is absolutely no attempt made to develop the mystery plot. 

The plot against Hitler sub-plot isn’t terribly exciting since everyone already knows that it failed. The romance sub-plot between Corporal Hartmann and Ulrike is uninteresting and irrelevant.

The film’s biggest flaw however is that we learn virtually nothing about the three generals. We know that von Seidlitz-Gabler is an ambitious political general and that he likes women. We know that General Kahlenberge is a pretty decent fellow. We know that General Tanz is a fanatic and a psychotic and is utterly ruthless in carrying out orders regardless of civilian casualties. The trouble is that we know nothing about their private lives or their motivations. We are told nothing that might suggest why one of these men might be a murderer.

The performances are all over the place. Omar Sharif is surprisingly good as Major Grau. Casting an Egyptian actor as a German officer was an odd choice but Sharif just about gets away with it. Unfortunately he does not get enough screen time. Charles Gray is extremely good. It’s strange seeing Donald Pleasence playing a kindly sort of chap but he does a reasonable job and he’s very effective in portraying a man slowly becoming more and more disillusioned and yet still trying to conform to his moral principles. 

Major Grau, General von Seidlitz-Gabler and General Kahlenberge are all potentially fascinating characters but their personalities are not explored in any depth and the actors are not given the opportunity to make them fully rounded characters.

The supporting characters, of whom there are far too many, are mere ciphers. Tom Courtenay and Joanna Pettet make no impact at all. Philippe Noiret plays Inspector Morand as a tedious stereotypical French Resistance hero. It’s a clumsy attempt to show us the contrast between the brave noble French and the dastardly Germans.

Peter O’Toole’s bizarre and absurd performance would have been enough on its own to sink this movie, if it hadn’t already been sunk by the incoherent script. This may be O’Toole’s worst ever performance, which is saying quite a lot. 

This movie is obviously trying to tell us something profound about the nature of evil and about the evil of the Nazis, although exactly what it’s trying to tell us I’m not sure. It also tries to show us that Germans weren’t all evil but it does so by presenting us with stereotyped Good Germans (who all hate the war and hate Hitler) and stereotyped Bad Germans (who all love the war and love Hitler).

This is a train wreck of a movie but while train wrecks can often be morbidly fascinating this one does not even have that going for it. 

Columbia’s Region 2 DVD offers a very good anamorphic transfer with no extras.

A potentially excellent idea, entirely wasted. A chaotic mess of a film. Connoisseurs of spectacularly bad acting might want to see it for O’Toole’s outlandishly awful performance. A movie to avoid.

Hannibal (1959)

Hannibal was one of the last movies in the strange but fascinating career of Edgar G. Ulmer, a director who achieved very little success during his lifetime but who since his death has accumulated a considerable and very loyal cult following.

By the late 50s it seemed that Ulmer was permanently trapped in ultra-cheap B-movie territory so Hannibal comes as something of a surprise - it’s a fairly lavish costume epic with no less than 12,000 extras in the battle scenes! It’s an Italian production shot in Italy and Yugoslavia but part-financed and released by Warner Brothers. It’s by far the most large-scale movie Ulmer ever made. It must have been quite an experience for Ulmer having a budget of around $5 million to play with! That’s possibly more than all his other films put together.

The movie opens with the great Carthaginian general Hannibal’s epic crossing of the Alps in 218 BC with his army, complete with the  famous elephants. It also establishes the idea of Hannibal being a rather complex character - he doesn’t hate Rome but he is determined, in his own words, never to bend the knee to the Romans. It also establishes the idea that Hannibal’s invasion is to some extent a defensive response to Roman aggression. Hannibal is to be the hero so obviously he has to be made fairly sympathetic.

The Alps having been successfully crossed the movie then veers in two separate directions, focusing on Hannibal’s extraordinary victories over the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae but also focusing on a rather melodramatic romantic sub-plot involving Hannibal’s love for the niece of the Roman senator Fabius Maximus. This sub-plot does serve some purpose, reinforcing the notion of Hannibal as a sometimes quixotic romantic hero, although it drags a little. The crossing of the Alps is the highlight of the picture, with Ulmer managing (with a mix of location and sound stage shooting) to convey the extraordinary difficulties and dangers involved. 

The battle scenes may infuriate history buffs - the Roman and Carthaginian armies were in reality disciplined armies that fought in regular formations rather than straggling mobs of barbarians involved in a massive pub brawl. On the other hand these battle scenes do have a certain vitality and Ulmer does make an effort to show us that Cannae was a battle won by superior generalship and tactics rather than mere courage. Ulmer apparently used no less than six cameras to shot these scenes, with the Cannae sequences being shot on the Yugoslav Army’s artillery proving range.

The human elements introduced into the story are hampered by some rather poor acting from most of the supporting cast. Gabriele Ferzetti isn’t too bad as Fabius, making a real effort to portray him as a man of iron determination, cool judgment and remorseless will. Rita Gam as Hannibal’s Roman love interest Sylvia seems rather unsure of herself.

There’s no problem however with Victor Mature as Hannibal. He’s obviously having a wonderful time. He plays the part with a twinkle in his eye (I say eye rather than eyes because for most of the movie he sports a rather piratical eye-patch on one eye). Mature’s approach actually works very well, helping to humanise the character. Mature was a very underrated actor and even when overacting he is able to convey the impression that Hannibal is man of unexpected depths, capable of unpredictable moments of generosity and compassion.

In accordance with standard Italian practice the dialogue was undoubtedly dubbed in during post-production. Fortunately we get to hear Mature’s real voice, a major bonus since he delivers even potentially embarrassing lines with zest and panache.

More interesting than the film itself is one of the extras - an audio interview with Ulmer conducted by Peter Bogdanovich. Ulmer’s stories of his early career are fascinating but he also talks about making Hannibal. Ulmer wanted to make the movie a human drama rather than a mere spectacle and eventually came up with an idea of how to do this. His idea would also explain the mystery that has puzzled historians for two thousand years - when Hannibal had Rome at his mercy after the Battle of Cannae why didn’t he complete his victory by marching on the virtually undefended city and conquer it? Ulmer’s imaginative solution was to portray Hannibal as a man who knows that he represents a dying civilisation while Rome represents the future. When he finds himself in a position to destroy Rome he can’t bring himself to do it because it would mean destroying the future. Whether this idea had any basis in historical fact is more than dubious but in filmic terms it was a great idea and would have given the picture a tragic dimension as well as giving Hannibal real psychological complexity. Tragically the studio vetoed the whole idea, much to Ulmer’s disgust, and those scenes were never shot.

VIC have done a very decent job with their DVD release. The movie was shot in Cinemascope and colour and the transfer is anamorphic. The print used is in fairly good condition. It’s just a little dark in places but on the whole it’s quite vibrant and there’s no noticeable print damage.

Had Ulmer been allowed to make the picture his way Hannibal could have been one of the great epics. As it stands it’s still an interesting and slightly unusual costume film. Ulmer adds a few nice touches and Victor Mature’s performance is enough on its own to make this worth watching. Recommended. 

The Last Grenade (1970)

The mercenary action movie was a very small sub-genre that perhaps surprisingly produced two great movies, Dark of the Sun (1968) and The Wild Geese (1978). Sadly The Last Grenade doesn’t even come close to the quality of those films although it did have definite potential.

Major Harry Grigsby (Stanley Baker) and Kip Thompson (Alex Cord) are mercenaries in Africa. Thompson betrays Grigsby and kills most of his men in the process. This betrayal provides the movie’s best moments in the form of the superb action set-piece that opens the movie, with a truly stupendous number of explosions.

Grigsby wants revenge and he gets the chance when the British government hires him to hunt Thompson down and kill him. Thompson has been causing them major problems in Hong Kong. The British want him dead but they don’t want to be seen to be involved. General Charles Whiteley (Richard Attenborough) will give Grigsby as much assistance as possible, on an unofficial basis of course.

Grigsby teams up with his old comrades Sergeant Gordon Mackenzie (Andrew Keir), Andy Royal (Julian Glover) and Terry MItchell (John Thaw). His plans for revenge don’t exactly go smoothly. In fact they go very badly and Grigsby ends up in hospital in Hong Kong.

Grigsby is a very sick man. He has tuberculosis and he knows time is running out for him. While recuperating he and General Whiteley’s wife Katherine (Honor Blackman) fall in love and begin an affair. It’s at this point that the movie loses its way badly. The romantic sub-plot does serve an important purpose in advancing the plot but unfortunately it does so in a very obvious and predictable manner, and the romantic scenes are clumsy, unconvincing and tedious.

Oddly enough, rather than humanising the hero the romance ends up making him both less sympathetic and less convincing - Grigsby doesn’t really seem the type to steal another man’s wife in such an underhanded and sleazy manner. On the other hand while I would hazard a guess that we’re supposed to see Katherine Whiteley as a free spirit trapped in a dull marriage to me she comes across as being exactly the sort of woman who would betray her husband.

The romance also brings the main plot to a standstill, and it never regains its momentum.

On the plus side there’s the strong cast. Stanley Baker has the charisma to carry off the rôle of Grigsby in fine style. Andrew Keir, John Thaw and Julian Glover provide fine support although the latter two are unfortunately rather under-used. Richard Attenborough manages to bring both the necessary pomposity and the necessary dignity to his performance as General Whiteley. Honor Blackman does her best and it’s hardly her fault that her character serves little purpose.

The weak link is Alex Cord’s ham-fisted performance as Kip Thompson. He’s an odd character for such a film - a crazed drug-addled hippie mercenary. Cord’s performance is hopelessly muddled and unconvincing.

The contrast between Grigsby, the old school professional soldier who (despite being a mercenary) has old-fashioned notions of honour and loyalty, and the calculatingly cynical but deranged Thompson could have been interesting. Unfortunately Thompson never becomes more than a cartoon villain.

Director Gordon Flemyng spent most of his career in television. While he shows considerable skill in handling the action sequences the movie suffers from very poor pacing and whenever the focus shifts away from the action it becomes dull and lifeless.

The biggest problem is that while the action scenes are good there aren’t enough of them. In particular the ending falls very flat - we assume it’s all leading up to a spectacular climax but it just doesn’t happen.

Scorpio Releasing have issued some rather interesting 1960s and 1970s cult films on DVD and they’ve done a pretty fair job with The Last Grenade. Picture quality is mostly very good. There are no extras.

In spite of a few good moments The Last Grenade is on the whole a disappointment - it goes off not with a bang but a whimper. Maybe worth a look if you’re a very dedicated Stanley Baker fan.

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.

Force 10 from Navarone (1978)

Force 10 from Navarone is a sequel to The Guns of Navarone, and that’s its biggest problem. The Guns of Navarone was one of the best action adventure movies ever made and this sets up unrealistically high expectations for the sequel. The Guns of Navarone (released in 1961) was also an old school World War 2 action adventure movie, from the era before the Bond movies changed all the rules. Force 10 from Navarone is very much a post-Bond movie (in fact it was directed by Guy Hamilton who was responsible for no less than four Bond movies), so it’s a different style of action adventure movie. Force 10 from Navarone is more tongue-in-cheek but it’s also more overtly far-fetched in its execution.

It also suffers from being a sequel made 17 years after the original. Only two characters from the original film appear in the sequel but due to the time lapse both characters had to be recast. The roles of Gregory Peck and David Niven are taken over by Robert Shaw and Edward Fox. A sequel that doesn’t have a single actor from the original film can hardly be regarded as a true sequel, even if the Alistair MacLean novel on which it is based really was a sequel to The Guns of Navarone. Shaw and Fox, very wisely, make no attempt to maintain any continuity with the characters played by Peck and Niven.

Force 10 from Navarone was an Anglo-American co-production and was released in 1978. Perhaps not surprisingly it failed to ignite the box office.

Having said all this, it’s actually by no means a bad movie. It’s just not the movie that the tie-in with the 1961 movie would have led audiences to expect. 

Some time after the events described in The Guns of Navarone two members of the team  that had carried out the earlier mission are re-united for another secret operation behind enemy lines. Major Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Sergeant Miller (Edward Fox) have orders to assassinate a traitor operating with Partisan forces in Yugoslavia. They will be air-dropped in Yugoslavia in an RAF Lancaster along with another team, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Barnsby (Harrison Ford). Barnsby’s team, code-named Force 10, have been tasked with destroying a vital bridge.

Right from the start everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The secret take-off of the Lancaster is interrupted by the inconvenient arrival of a contingent of Military Police. Before the drop-zone is reached the Lancaster is shot down. Only two survivors remain from Force 10. Mallory and Miller also survived and it seems the only logical thing to do is for them to join the remnants of Force 10, although Barnsby is not exactly delighted by the prospect. Barnsby is a serious young officer who likes to do things by the rule book. Mallory and Miller have never read the rule book.

They are supposed to join up with a Partisan force but end up being captured by Chetniks (anti-communist guerillas who co-operated with the Axis forces against the communist Partisans). After a series of misadventures our heroes do find the Partisans but there are more double-crosses in store for them. To top it all off they discover that the bridge they are supposed to destroy can’t possibly be destroyed without a vast quantity of explosives that they don’t possess, and even if they had the necessary explosives the job couldn’t be done in the time available. It’s all bitterly disappointing, until Sergeant Miller points out that while they can’t blow up the bridge they could destroy it by indirect means. 

As mentioned earlier director Guy Hamilton was a veteran of four Bond movies. His approach in Force 10 from Navarone is very similar to his approach in his Bond films. That’s no bad thing, given that his Bond movies include Goldfinger, generally regarded as the best of the series. 

The special effects are very good indeed, especially in the climactic scenes. The movie was shot in various locations, including Yugoslavia. Military geeks will be amused that the German tanks in this movie are actually Russian T34/85s, which in 1978 would still have been standard equipment in Yugoslavia’s army. The Germans did use captured equipment in secondary theatres of the war such as the Balkans so it’s not as unrealistic as it might seem. The action sequences are well executed and there are plenty of them.

Harrison Ford does a competent job as Barnsby. Barnsby is brave but rather too tightly buttoned, making a nice contrast to the more flamboyant Mallory (played by the much more flamboyant Robert Shaw). Edward Fox is amusing as the rather eccentric Sergeant Miller, a man who is happiest when he has something he can blow up. With his suitcase full of fiendish explosive gadgets he is a character who would be perfectly at home in a Bond movie. Richard Kiel as the larger-than-life (literally in this case) Chetnik leader, Barbara Bach as the beautiful double agent Maritza and Franco Nero as the ambiguous Captain Lescovar are all fairly solid.

The Region 4 DVD offers a 16x9 enhanced transfer that looks pretty impressive.

By the time this movie was made the classic World War 2 action adventure movie was coming to the end of its run. Force 10 from Navarone cannot compare with the best movies in the genre, and certainly is nowhere near as good as earlier Alistair MacLean adaptations such as The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable second-rank representative of the genre. 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.

The Eagle Has Landed (1976)

The 1960s and 1970s represented a golden age of wartime action adventure movies. The Eagle Has Landed, a British production, was unique in having a World War 2 setting with Germans as heroes.

In real life German paratroopers carried out a daring and successful operation to rescue Mussolini after he had been deposed. The premise of the movie, based on a novel by Jack Higgins, is that this operation gives Hitler the bright idea of ordering an even more daring mission - to kidnap Winston Churchill. Admiral Canaris (Anthony Quayle), the head of the Abwehr (the German military intelligence service), is instructed to carry out a feasibility study. Canaris thinks it’s the most stupid idea he’s ever heard but orders are orders, and in any case he’s confident that Hitler will forget all about his brainwave in a week or so.

Colonel Radl (Robert Duvall) is given the job of preparing the feasibility study. And then it seems that fate has taken a hand. The Germans just happen to have an agent in a tiny seaside town named Studley Constable in Norfolk, and the town just happens to be a few miles from the country house at which Churchill is going to be staying in the very near future. And the town just happens to be ideally situated on a quiet stretch of coastline. The clincher is that Radl just happens to have come across the perfect man to carry out such a mission. Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) is a brilliant and recklessly bold paratroop commander who speaks faultless English without a trace of an accent. The Germans would need to have a man on the ground first and here again fate has put the ideal candidate at Radl’s disposal in the person of Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), an IRA terrorist currently lecturing at a German university. Much to Radl’s amazement he finds himself coming to the conclusion that the operation has a real chance of success.

There is one minor problem. Colonel Steiner is currently under sentence of death for trying to free a Jewish girl from under the noses of the SS. But when SS chief Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence) presents Colonel Radl with a written authorisation from Hitler allowing him a free hand in carrying out the operation that minor obstacle is removed.

Colonel Steiner and his men agree to carry out the mission on one condition (a condition that will have fateful consequences) - they will wear Free Polish uniforms but they will wear their German uniforms underneath. They are prepared to die, but they are not prepared to accept the shame of being shot as spies.

Liam Devlin successfully makes contact with the German agent in the Norfolk village, but things quickly start to get complicated for him. The last thing he had expected was to fall in love in the middle of the operation but that’s what happens when he meets Molly (Jenny Agutter). 

Steiner and his men parachute in and everything is going smoothly. Then fate (yes, fate again) steps in. One of his men rescues a young village girl from drowning but in the process of doing so his German uniform is revealed. Nonetheless Steiner presses on.

Fate is also about to take a hand in the career of Colonel Pitts (Larry Hagman). Pitts is in command of a US Ranger detachment stationed near Studley Constable. He’s about to be shipped back home and will thus lose his one chance of seeing combat. When he learns of the presence of Steiner’s men in the village he sees his chance. Rather than contact the War Office he decides that he will be the hero of the hour and gain all the glory of foiling the German plan. Sadly Colonel Pitts’ military skills fall ludicrously short of his ambitions. Pitts’ rash decision does provide the opportunity for the movie to launch into some full-scale action sequences. The war has come to Studley Constable, with a vengeance. And Churchill is about to arrive. It seems that all that stands between Steiner and success is one bumbling American officer.

The movie goes to elaborate lengths to establish that Colonel Steiner is a good German, a man who hates the Nazis and who is determined to do his duty, but to do it with courage and honour. The movie goes to equally elaborate lengths to establish that Steiner’s men are good Germans, Germans who will risk their lives to save drowning children. This does serve a very important purpose. The movie cannot work unless the audience can be persuaded to be at least half-hoping the Germans will succeed. Even Radl has to be a fairly sympathetic character. Michael Caine and Robert Duvall manage to make their characters effectively sympathetic without being too irritatingly virtuous. They are honourable men, but they are also ruthlessly efficient. The performances of Caine and Duvall are crucial and they are both superb. Caine, surprisingly, makes a convincing German officer and he has the advantage that Steiner is supposed to speak English without a trace of an accent, so the actor fortunately is not tempted to have a try at a Teutonic accent.

Anthony Quayle had played countless British officers and he plays Admiral Canaris exactly the same way. Donald Pleasence is delightfully and chillingly menacing as Himmler. Larry Hagman is deliriously over-the-top as the hapless Colonel Pitts. His performance is a treat although he does seem to be acting in a different movie from the other actors! When he makes his appearance the tone of the whole movie changes subtly, with a slight suggestion of black comedy. This could have ruined the film but fortunately the premise is itself so outrageous that it gets away with it. Fate can turn life into tragedy but it can just as readily turn it into farce, and the line between tragedy and farce is in any case often rather blurred.

The movie faces a bigger challenge in making Liam Devlin sympathetic. Donald Sutherland pulls out all the stops to make Devlin a loveable rogue and he does a good job of it but we can’t help remembering that he is a member of a terrorist organisation, and he doesn’t have the advantage of being able to claim that he is a soldier doing his duty for his country. Devlin is certainly charming but his charm comes across as having just a little of a  sinister touch.

This was a lavish production and some care was taken to give it the right authentic touches, even to the extent of having an actual German Fieseler Storch aircraft (or a remarkably good replica aircraft) and a genuine-looking captured British Motor Torpedo Boat. The action scenes are executed with considerable skill.

John Sturges already had an impressive record as a director of action movies and his handling of this one is confident and assured. 

The Region B Blu-Ray lacks extras but the transfer is faultless.

The Eagle Has Landed is a fine example of the excellent action adventure movies of its era. Great entertainment, highly recommended.

Von Ryan’s Express (1965)

I’m on a bit of a 1960s action adventure movie kick at the moment. Which brings me to Von Ryan’s Express, a World War 2 action flick about a mass escape of prisoners of war.

Colonel Ryan (Frank Sinatra) is an American flyer whose aircraft gets shot down over Italy in August 1943. He ends up in an Italian POW camp, and in the middle of a battle of wills between the camp commandant, Major Battaglia (Adolfo Celi), and the senior Allied officer among the prisoners, Major Fincham (Trevor Howard). The vast majority of the POWs are British with only a handful of Americans but Ryan is now the ranking officer among the prisoners.

Fincham is obsessed with the idea of organising escapes, even though it means exposing his men to extraordinary risks and to retaliatory action from Battaglia. Fincham has been stockpiling food and medical supplies for use in escape attempts even though his men are half starved and in urgent need of those medicines. Fincham and Ryan do not see eye to eye on this issue, and that’s putting it mildly. Ryan puts an end to what he regards as futile escape attempts - after all Italy is crumbling and it can only be a matter of weeks before the prisoners are freed by the advancing Allied armies. Ryan’s action is deeply resented by Fincham and by most of his men who take to referring to Ryan as Von Ryan.

Shortly afterwards Italy surrenders. The camp now has no guards. The prisoners are free. Well, sort of free. In fact they’re several hundred miles behind the enemy lines and the German Army is pouring into Italy to try to halt the invading Allies. They can leave the camp, but where do they go from there?

In the event they end up not going very far at all before being rounded up by the Germans and put on a train that will take them to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. Being a prisoner of the Italians was really not so very bad, but the prospect of being a prisoner of the Germans is considerably less inviting.

Ryan however has no intention of spending the rest of the war in Germany. He might have been opposed to escape attempts from the Italian camp but he is very much in favour of escaping from the prison train. This is obviously going to be very difficult indeed. Any hope of success depends upon the willingness of Ryan and Fincham, who have been at daggers drawn, to work together. 

Hijacking a train full of armed German guards in the middle of German-controlled Italy seems like a suicidally bad idea but the very outrageousness of the idea works in its favour. Needless to say the train hijack sets up a string of action set-pieces all of which are extremely well executed.

Mark Robson had a somewhat bizarre career as a director. He did some excellent work for Val Lewton at RKO in the 40s, with The Seventh Victim being one of the best American movies of that decade. His later career was mixed to say the least. It included at least three legendary spectacularly bad movies, Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls and Earthquake. What makes Robson interesting is that these three very bad movies are outrageously entertaining. They are also absurdly over-the-top. They’re trash, but they’re enormous fun. Von Ryan’s Express isn’t exactly trash but it certainly has a ludicrously over-the-top quality to it, and that sort of thing was right up Mark Robson’s alley. So it’s no real surprise that Robson does a great job with this movie.

The movie benefits considerably from the superb work of veteran cinematographer William H. Daniels. Daniels was one of the greats in his field. Sinatra liked his work so much he insisted on having him as cinematographer on most of his movies, which probably explains his presence here. 

The working relationship of Ryan and Fincham is central to the movie. Despite their often very strong disagreements they are both brave and resourceful men. Even when they had disagreed both had believed they were doing the right thing. Eventually they find they can work together, and a mutual respect slowly grows between the two men. Trevor Howard is ideal for this sort of role, playing a rather stiff-necked character who finds it very difficult to admit he can ever be wrong, but a man nonetheless with enough strength of character to overcome these personality flaws.

Frank Sinatra was notoriously lax in his attitude towards acting, generally refusing even to consider the possibility of doing retakes. He just wanted to get the job finished and collect his pay cheque and very few directors were strong enough to persuade him to take a more professional approach. Despite this it has to be said that he had a great deal of acting talent and could, if a role actually interested him, deliver the goods rather impressively. His laid-back approach works to his advantage here, with Ryan’s rather quixotic attitude towards the war contrasting nicely with Fincham’s overdeveloped sense of duty. Ryan is a deceptively complex character, a man with strong principles that he hides under a veneer of devil-may-care nonchalance. Sinatra’s low-key performance ends up being very effective.

Howard and Sinatra get good support from Sergio Fantoni as an Italian officer, Captain Oriani, who throws in his lot with the Allied prisoners. Oriani’s attitude towards the war is as quixotic as Ryan’s and not surprisingly they get along well.

To make a good action movie you need more than just a lot of explosions. You need to make the action scenes inventive, and Von Ryan’s Express scores highly in this area. The bombing of the railway yards with the train speeding through and the climactic scenes on the railway bridges are particularly impressive. 

Von Ryan’s Express is a classic action adventure movie and is a must-see for fans of the genre. Highly recommended.