Licence To Kill (1989)

Licence To Kill was the second and final of the James Bond movies to star Timothy Dalton as 007. The first thing that has to be said about this film is that it is not by any stretch of the imagination a Bond movie.

It is for the most part a routine action cop movie. Even worse, it beings to that most tedious of movie genres, the rogue cop movie. It’s another movie about the dedicated cop who breaks all the rules to avenge his partner. While Bond at the beginning is still ostensibly working for the British Secret Service he is to all intents and purposes just a cop. His old CIA buddy Felix Leiter has been turned into a cop as well. There are no spies, no international intrigue, no diabolical criminal masterminds, the world is not threatened by shodowy organisations bent on world domination. There are just cops chasing drug dealers.

Felix Leiter’s wedding is interrupted by the pursuit of drug lord Sanchez (Robert Davi). The pursuit is successful but Sanchez bribes his way out of lawful custody and takes his revenge on Leiter. The remainder of the movie sees Bond quitting the Secret Service to avenge his buddy.

There are so many things wrong with this movie it’s difficult to know where to start.

The producers apparently decided the Bond franchise needed to be updated by turning him into just another movie cop, and by removing every trace of the wit, the style and the fun that had made the Bond series so immensely successfully. They got their just reward for this lame-brained idea when Licence To Kill predictably bombed at the box office.

The producers also decided the movie needed to be dumber and more violent than previous Bond moves. The result is an unpleasant movie with lots of gratuitous gore.

The other major problem is Timothy Dalton. It’s not that he can’t act, but whoever he was playing in this movie it certainly wasn’t James Bond. The theory has been put forward that this was an attempt to create a film Bond based much more closely on the character created by Ian Fleming in his novels. While that’s not necessarily an entirely bad idea if that was the intention here the attempt failed dismally. There’s not a trace of the darkness, the complexity, the mix of arrogance and self-doubt or the sexual perversity of Fleming’s creation. Dalton’s Bond is merely dull. He’s just a tough guy cop.

The kindest thing I can say about Dalton’s performance is that he’s not as bad as Daniel Craig.

Robert Davi as Sanchez gives us the first truly boring Bond villain. He’s just another movie drug baron.

There are two Bond girls in this one, neither of them memorable.

To compound the problems even further the plot drags unbearably. A Bond movie that not only has hardly a trace of humour and no sense of fun but that is also frequently boring is not my idea of a good time.

There are plenty of action sequences and lots of explosions, but while they’re impressive enough in their own way they’re mostly not terribly original. There’s a fatal absence of the visual wit you expect in a Bond movie.

It’s a movie that sums up the way the movie industry was changing at the time. It’s competently made, slick, soulless and dull. It’s not quite the worst Bond movie I’ve seen, but it comes very close. The 2006 Casino Royale is slightly worse, but only slightly.

Duffy (1968)

Duffy is one of those odd little late 1960s movies that tries to capture the spirit of its era, in all its tasteless excess and pop-psychology silliness. Duffy is more entertaining than most because it combines these elements with a highly entertaining heist story.

James Mason is shipping mogul J. C. Calvert. He has two sons, equally bereft of talent or of any desire to earn a living. Antony Calvert (John Alderton) is forced into what he sees as outrageous wage slavery in his father’s business empire. He contributes nothing of value to the company but it amuses J. C to force his feckless on to turn up to the office every day. The other son, Stefane (James Fox), is luckier. His mother’s will provided him with sufficient access to the family money to allow him to live a life of fashionable indolence. And to keep him well supplied with extraordinarily tacky 60s fashions.

Antony spends most of his time trying to come up with schemes (invariably unsuccessful) to rob his father’s business. When he overhears the old boy making plans to send a million pounds in hard currency across the Mediterranean by sea he believes he’s finally lucked out. He persuades Stefane and Stefane’s beautiful ditzy girlfriend Segolene (Susannah York) to join him in stealing the money. To do this they need someone with hands-on experience of nautical matters. Stefane’s old friend Duffy (James Coburn) seems like the obvious choice.

Duffy is an ex-navy man who is now a kind of flower child drop-out. He lives in a groovy pad cluttered with bizarre artworks, and appears to spend most of his time chasing women.

They come up with the kind of over-complicated outrageously over-the-top plan that makes 1960s caper movies so much fun. Their scheme requires so much equipment that one can’t help thinking it would probably have cost them most of their expected million pound profit. But Antony and Stefane don’t really care about the money. Antony just wants to get back at their father, and Stefane sees the adventure as a kind of performance art happening - the sort of thing that would amuse a bored spoilt rich kid.

While their planning progresses Segolene indulges herself in a game of musical beds. Stefane doesn’t mind if she shares Duffy’s bed because he’s into peace, love and sharing.

The heist itself is great fun, and of course there are various plot twists after the heist where we find that things were not quite what they seemed. There are double-crosses in abundance.

There’s plenty of amusing 60s dialogue, which becomes even more amusing when it’s delivered by James Coburn. There are more fashion disasters than you’ve ever seen in one place. It’s not every day you get to see James Coburn in a yellow kaftan. For which we can be truly thankful.

It’s a silly lightweight movie that delivers solid entertainment and has plenty of Swinging 60s kitschy charm. There’s also some picturesque Mediterranean location shooting.

This is the first of the Columbia made-on-demand DVD-R releases that I’ve risked buying. I’d heard worrying reports that these discs won’t play in DVD recorders or in computer DVD drives. In fact this one played without any problems at all in both the internal and external DVD burners of my iMac, as did the one Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD-R that I’ve purchased so far. So perhaps the problems associated with this format have been exaggerated. The picture quality is excellent and the movie is presented in its correct aspect ratio (which also applies to the Warner Archive DVD-R release that I bought recently) so tentatively I’d have to say that these DVD-Rs are a lot more impressive than I’d expected.

Crypt of the Vampire (1964)

A Christopher Lee vampire movie that I hadn’t seen is interesting enough, but this is one I hadn’t even heard of until recently.

Crypt of the Vampire (La cripta e l'incubo) starts as it means to go on, throwing every gothic cliché in the book at us. Mysterious castles, thunderstorms, ancient manuscripts, brooding heroes and glamorous and possibly vampiric women.

This Italian-Spanish co-production is one of the earlier movies to be based on Sheridan le Fanu’s vampire classic Carmilla and to explore the lesbian vampire angle. The first was probably Roger Vadim's excellent 1960 Blood and Roses. There were to be many many more in the 70s. Being a 1964 movie the lesbianism is implied rather than explicit, but you can’t film Carmilla without at least a suggestion of lesbianism.

This movie sticks closely to le Fanu’s story than most. Which means it doesn’t stick very closely to it, but le Fanu’s plot is at least recognisably there.

A brooding nobleman (Christopher Lee) whose name just happens to be Karnstein hires a young scholar to investigate one of his female forebears. He has become obsessed with the idea that his daughter is a reincarnation of this notorious ancestress who had been executed for witchcraft, vampirism and general wickedness. Baron Karnstein hopes the scholar can find a painting or a drawing of this ancestress, to establish whether his daughter really is the same woman come back to life.

While this is going on a noblewoman and her daughter are involved in a minor accident with their coach. The noblewoman suggests that the daughter, who has been upset by the accident, should stay at castle Karnstein for a while to recuperate. The younger son soon becomes very friendly indeed with the daughter of the household.

Of course there are mysterious murders in the neighbouring countryside, with the victims drained of blood, and Baron Karnstein’s suspicions are growing steadily.

While director Camillo Mastrocinque lays on the gothic atmosphere pretty thick, he does it fairly effectively as well. There are some genuinely quite creepy scenes, especially the ones involving a hand of glory with candles affixed to the fingers. There are some almost Rollinesque scenes of the two young women wandering through the castle grounds, some subtle suggestions of surreal or at least dream imagery. There are also suggestions of witchcraft combined with vampirism that were obviously influenced by Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. Mastrocinque doesn’t quite have Bava’s visual flair but he certainly gives it his best shot and the results are reasonably impressive.

Christopher Lee is good but he isn’t really the centre of attention. Fortunately Adriana Ambesi and Ursula Davis turn in fine performances as the two young women linked by what might well be all manner of unnatural attractions and obsessions.

If you enjoy the Italian gothic horrors of the 60s, when atmosphere and style were still a lot more important than gore, then there’s much to enjoy in this film. Camillo Mastrocinque went on to helm the excellent 1966 Barbara Steele horror vehicle An Angel for Satan so his gothic credentials are not unimpressive.

Retromedia’s DVD presentation lacks extras but it does boast a decent widescreen transfer. I’d recommend both the movie itself and the DVD release.

The People That Time Forgot (1977)

In 1975 Amicus had a sizeable hit with The Land That Time Forgot, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Two years later a sequel appeared, The People That Time Forgot. In theory it’s based on the second book of Burroughs’ Caspak trilogy but in fact it eliminates most of the really interesting stuff from the book, the stuff that made this trilogy one of the weirdest of all lost world stories. The movie turns the story into a straight adventure tale, but fortunately it’s a very entertaining adventure tale indeed.

This one boasts not one but two square-jawed action heroes - Doug McClure and Patrick Wayne (son of some guy named John Wayne). Patrick Wayne is American war hero Major Ben McBride who sets to find his old buddy Bowen Tyler who disappeared mysteriously in 1915. Tyler left a message in a bottle, a message that was found and that told a bizarre story of a lost continent peopled with vanished creatures from every prehistoric epoch, from dinosaurs to cavemen.

McBride has managed to get backing from the British Navy and financing from a major newspaper to launch his expedition to find this strange world. He has recruited an old air force buddy and an eminent archaeologist for the venture, and (much to his disgust) he has been forced to take along a feisty girl reporter /photographer. She’s Lady Charlotte Cunningham, known to her friends as Charly.

They have an ice-breaker and they have a very cool aircraft - a five-seat amphibian. They need this to get over the mountain barrier that surrounds the lost world. Unfortunately their sturdy seaplane is no match for a flock of pterodactyls, even though it’s armed with a Lewis machine-gun. Shooting the pterodactyls just makes them angry! They crash-land and then set off on foot. They soon encounter a beautiful cave-girl who captivates them with her plucky courage (not to mention an extraordinarily impressive quantity of cleavage).

Their problem is they have just three weeks to find Tyler before the pack ice closes in and their ship must make its departure. And to find him they will have to battle assorted dinosaurs, hostile cave-men and the dreaded volcano god.

I’ve read dismissive comments about this movie, comments that claimed that the budget was just too small for the scale of the ideas. I don’t agree. On the contrary I think that considering the limited budget the movie looks pretty impressive. The model shots are mostly effective, the dinosaurs look reasonably good, the early 20th century atmosphere is very well done. The battle scenes are well staged. Director Kevin O’Connor keeps the action moving along at a good clip.

Patrick Wayne wasn’t in the same league as an actor as his old man but he’s perfect for this sort of role - he’s dashing and he’s likable. Doug McClure is reduced to a supporting role in this second movie but still gets to do some heroic stuff. Sarah Douglas is terrific as Charly and the banter between her and Wayne never becomes tiresome or vicious. They clash at first but they’re both basically sympathetic characters. Cult movie favourite Thorley Walters (familiar from countless Hammer films) makes a splendid jovial archaeologist. All the supporting performances in fact are quite solid.

It’s a colourful exciting adventure movie that doesn’t pretend to be anything else and it doesn’t need to be anything else. It’s thoroughly enjoyable.

MGM’s DVD release under the Midnite Movies banner range is typical of this range of DVDs - completely bereft of extras apart from a trailer but it’s a beautiful transfer and they’ve issued it in a two-movie pack along with The Land That Time Forgot which makes it sensational value and if you shop around you can pick it up for as little as five bucks.

The Man from Planet X (1951)

No-one could match Edgar G. Ulmer when it came to making interesting and provocative little movies for virtually no money. His 1951 science fiction feature The Man from Planet X is a case in point.

A planet, known as Planet X, has been observed heading toward the Earth. It’s not going to collide with us but it will pass very close indeed. An astronomer has set up a makeshift observatory in an ancient “broch” or tower on an island off the coast of Scotland. When a spaceship is discovered to have landed in the island it’s clear enough this must have some connection to the mysterious Planet X.

The spacecraft is found by an American newspaper reporter who had been tipped off that something unusual was happening on this remote island. He and the astronomer’s daughter (being a movie scientist he naturally has a beautiful daughter) encounter an alien being. He doesn’t appear to be hostile and he accompanied them to the broch. All efforts at communication are in vain but the alien remains friendly until the astronomer’s sinister colleague Dr Mears steps in. Motivated by a desire to force the alien to reveal technological secrets that will make him rich Dr Mears threatens the alien.

Now they have a hostile alien on their hands and even worse a hostile alien with mind-control powers who can turn the villagers into unwilling slaves or soldiers.

The basic plot seems like a very straightforward alien invasion story, but things are by no means as clear-cut as they first appear. In his classic film noir Detour Ulmer used an unreliable narrator to create one of the most ambiguous crime movies ever made. In The Man from Planet X all of the most essential information about the plans of the alien comes from an equally unreliable source. Like the central character in Detour Dr Mears is self-serving and cowardly and we have strong reasons to doubt his truthfulness. He also has strong motives for lying about the alien’s intentions. So is the alien really the spearhead of an invasion force? If there are more alien on the way can we be certain they are hostile?

Quite apart from the lack of a common language there’s the question as to whether the intentions of the aliens would even by comprehensible to humans.

The movie was made on sets left over from an earlier movie about Joan of Arc. As wa generally the case for Ulmer he was faced with the problem of having no money and an unbelievably tight shooting schedule (a mere six days). How do you make a science fiction movie under those conditions? Ulmer’s solution is to use painted backgrounds and cheap models and lots of fog effects to disguise the absence of any location shooting and the deficiencies of the sets and props. In the hands of most film-makers the results would be irredeemably cheesy but Ulmer had an uncanny ability to make such solutions work.

The use of the old tower and the moors (even though they’re all painted) gives a very gothic feel to the movie which is quite effective, making the ambiguities of the plot seem more mysterious. Ulmer apparently was responsible for much of the production design and even painted some of the backgrounds

The makeup effects for the alien are also dirt cheap but oddly effective.

The acting is reasonable enough by B-movie standards although the village constable gets a bit grating after a while.

The Region 1 DVD from MGM’s Midnite Movies range looks good. As usual with these release the extras are limited to a trailer.

Edgar G. Ulmer’s films might be as cheap as the cheapest Z-grade movies but they more than make up for this with a degree of visual ingenuity and moral ambiguity that puts them well above the level of the average ultra-low budget movie. Definitely worth seeing.

The Oblong Box (1969)

The Oblong Box stars Vincent Price and features Christopher Lee in a supporting role. You might well think that’s reason enough to see this film. If so, you won’t be disappointed.

Like every second horror movie of the 1960s this 1969 British movie claims to be based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. It is fact a product of American International Pictures and represents an attempt to continue the Roger Corman Poe series with different directors. The later Corman Poe films had been made in Britain.

We start with a prologue in the heart of Africa, with Sir Julian Markham (Vincent Price) witnessing a horrific scene of torture at a native ritual. We then find ourselves back in England, where Sir Julian is about to be married. His happiness is clouded by the necessity to care for his brother, Sir Edward. Some terrible event befell Sir Edward in Africa, and he has been left hideously scarred and dangerously insane.

Sir Edward has plans to escape and to take his revenge on the world, with the assistance of a motley crew of desperadoes and an African witch doctor. Sir Edward will appear to be dead and his confederates will later rescue him. But of course, this being a horror movie, the best-laid schemes invariably go wrong.

Also caught up in these events is a prominent surgeon, Dr Neuhartt (Christopher Lee). The good doctor has a need for corpses for both teaching purposes and for his private researches. In the 19th century there was of course no legal way to obtain such cadavers and so even respectable surgeons might well find themselves having to deal with some very unsavoury characters, characters who use rather unpleasant methods. Grave-robbing being just one of the options that such persons would avail themselves of.

Dr Neuhartt is caught up unwittingly in the affairs of the unfortunate Markham family.

Gordon Hessler does a very competent job. His gothic horror flicks for AIP are underrated (Cry of the Banshee is even more under-appreciated than this one). He realised it was necessary to move with the times and to make the horror slightly more overt than it had been in the Corman films but he still retains most of the flavour.

Vincent Price is perfectly cast and does an admirable job. Price was capable of giving serious and subtle performances in horror movies or of camping it up outrageously depending on which approach the movie in question demanded. In this case he keeps the hamminess to a minimum. Christopher Lee doesn’t get a lot to do but he brings that distinctive gravitas to his performance.

Of course a 60s horror movie has to have wenches, and the wenching duties here are shared by Uta Levka and Sally Geeson (the slightly less talented sister of one of the great 70s scream queens, Judy Geeson). Both are more than adequate for their roles.

This is a movie that doesn’t seem to be all that highly thought of, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable slice of 60s gothic horror with a fine cast, excellent production values, brisk pacing and a high degree of technical competence. Plus it has voodoo, always a bonus. It might not quite measure up the Corman Poe films, but Corman’s Poe films are among the best gothic horror movies ever made. The Oblong Box has no real reason to feel ashamed of comparisons to such films.

The Region 4 DVD is perfectly acceptable and the picture quality is very good, so no complaints there.

Race with the Devil (1975)

If highway mayhem plus satanic cults sounds like your idea of the ideal exploitation movie combination then Race with the Devil was a movie made for you.

Roger (Peter Fonda) and Frank (Warren Oates) are motorcycle-racing buddies who run a bike shop. The business is doing well and Frank decides they should take a vacation together. He buys a gigantic motor home. There’ll be room for Roger and Frank and their wives and for their bikes on the back. Frank’s idea of a dream vacation is to get right away from people, so they set off in the dead of winter. With the motor home they’ll be self-sufficient.

Roger and Frank are overgrown teenagers in some ways but they’re basically regular decent guys. The trip goes well until one fateful night they encounter the one hazard that all vacationers fear - they run into a satanic cult conducting a human sacrifice. Even worse, the cultists realise they’ve been spotted. Now our hapless holiday-makers are on the run from enraged satan-worshippers.

What they haven’t realised is that their route to Aspen Colorado takes them right through the heart of devil-worshipper country. For hundreds of miles there are nothing but ordinary-looking country folk who are in fact minions of the Evil One.

When their wives are threatened Roger and Frank get fairly annoyed, but when the satanists trash their motorcycles they get really mad. That’s going too far. Now it’s time to buy weapons and get serious.

It’s one of those horror movies where most of the plot twists are expected, but that’s part of the fun of this sort of movie. Our unlucky campers don’t notice when they drive into the nearest town that all the townsfolk are clearly servants of the devil but we in the audience know right away.

What matters is that the lengthy chase is done with energy and a certain amount of flair, and with automotive destruction on the grand scale. This movie makes no pretense of aiming for subtlety but it does deliver excitement. It’s really more an action movie than a horror movie. It’s like Mad Max but with devil-worshippers instead of gangs.

Peter Fonda is a pretty limited actor but this is just about within his range and his performance is adequate. Warren Oates of course is fun. Loretta Swit (better-known for the M*A*S*H TV series) and Lara Parker don’t get to do much as the wives but they’re quite adequate as well. It’s not exactly an actor’s picture.

Director Jack Starrett keeps things fast and simple and the result is a highly enjoyable drive-in movie.

The Region 2 DVD lacks the extras that come with the Region 1 release but on the other hand it’s absurdly cheap, it’s widescreen and it looks good.