THE SPY KILLER

 

The SANGSTER DIRECTS HAMMER box set from Severin has encouraged me to seek out some of Jimmy Sangster's American television work. THE SPY KILLER is a 1969 TV movie, first broadcast on the ABC Network. Jimmy Sangster produced the movie, and he wrote the script, which was based on his novel. 

One thing that stands out about THE SPY KILLER is that it is a Hammer film in almost everything but name only. The movie was filmed in England, and one of the locations was good old Black Park. It was directed by Roy Ward Baker, a name well-known to English Gothic fans. The behind-the-camera credits list has several names very familiar to Hammer fanatics, such as Arthur Grant, Scott MacGregor, Bert Batt, Neil Binney, and Phillip Martell. One of Hammer's best performers, Barbara Shelley, even shows up (though very briefly). 

Other than the Hammer connections, there isn't all that much to THE SPY KILLER. Robert Horton (WAGON TRAIN, THE GREEN SLIME) plays an American private eye based in London named John Smith (hard to believe Sangster couldn't have come up with a better moniker for the guy). Smith used to work for British Intelligence, but he got fed up with the life of a spy and quit. Smith is thrust back into the espionage game when he comes upon a notebook containing material wanted by the British and the Chinese. 

THE SPY KILLER is more John Le Carre than Ian Fleming, although I'd doubt Le Carre would appreciate the association. The movie runs about 75 minutes (it was made for a 90-minute TV slot), but it feels longer. It is a very talky story, and it very much resembles the early 1950s B movies made by Hammer, right down to the underwhelming American leading man. 

The London locations do make THE SPY KILLER stick out from the usual American TV fare of the period, but there isn't much done with them. (A later sequence does make good use of an abandoned RAF airfield.) The story is one in which nearly every character is lying or setting up others, and Robert Horton isn't much of an appealing lead--his John Smith is sardonic and sarcastic (and he doesn't seem to be much of an agent either). 

Sebastian Cabot plays the "M" equivalent (who is more devious than the supposed bad guys), and Jill St. John is Smith's girlfriend, the obligatory attractive young woman. As mentioned before, Barbara Shelley is in this as well, but unfortunately she contributes nothing more than a glorified cameo. 

Barbara Shelley in THE SPY KILLER

Jimmy Sangster also produced and wrote another TV movie focusing on John Smith, called FOREIGN EXCHANGE. This also featured most of the cast & crew of THE SPY KILLER. (I intend to view that as well.) I assume that Sangster was hoping ABC might pick up the activities of John Smith as a regular series, but it's easy to see why they didn't. John Smith (at least in the first TV movie) isn't all that charismatic a person, and Sangster's low-key dialogue-heavy portrayal of the spy world doesn't make for exciting TV viewing. THE SPY KILLER can be accessed on YouTube, and its most notable aspect is that it is a Hammer non-horror that officially isn't. 

JOHNNY GUITAR

 

Believe it or not, I had never seen JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) until I recently purchased the special edition DVD of it (at a major discount of course) recently. This is one of the biggest cult movies of all time, a title that has been discussed and analyzed in dozens and dozens of books and articles. 

Plenty of film geeks go gaga over JOHNNY GUITAR. It has been called an expressionist Western, an existentialist Western, a feminist Western, a queer Western, a baroque Western, a neurotic Western, and a statement on the Hollywood blacklist. Many film buffs have read all sorts of symbols and meanings into it, and that's probably why I never went out of my way to view it--whenever the so-called intellectuals go all in on any type of filmed entertainment, I immediately get suspicious. 

It is a striking and unusual production, that's for sure....but is it a great Western?? For all its stylized theatrics, the movie didn't affect me the way it has its legions of fans. I would call it interesting, but not brilliant. There's so much emotional angst in this film that your blood pressure goes up just by watching it. Nearly every scene involves people arguing, confronting, or challenging one another. 

The title character of JOHNNY GUITAR is not played by Joan Crawford, by the way. Sterling Hayden is Johnny, a vagabond and former gunslinger who shows up at a saloon run by the commanding Vienna (Crawford). Vienna knows that the land she owns lies next to a soon-to-be-built railroad line, and she's planning to make the most out of the situation. The citizens of the local town don't want the railroad coming through, and they also don't like Vienna. One woman in particular, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge) hates and is jealous of Vienna with a seething passion. The townsfolk link Vienna with The Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady), her former flame and a presumed bandit. Johnny Guitar is also a former flame of Vienna's, and all the heightened attitudes wind up boiling over. 

JOHNNY GUITAR was directed by Nicholas Ray, a man who is revered by a number of film buffs. I'm not one of them, and that's another reason why I was doubtful of this movie's reputation. Ray takes a basic Western situation and inflates it to a point where it becomes almost camp. The interior of Vienna's saloon resembles the lair of a James Bond villain, and Crawford's wardrobe seems more attuned to a fashion magazine layout instead of the requirements of the Old West. 

Mercedes McCambridge gives one of the most over-the-top performances in any major 1950's American film that I've ever seen. Her overwhelming hatred of Crawford's Vienna borders on the absurd--one expects a scene that gets to the heart of the reasons for her feelings, but it doesn't happen. It wouldn't be much of a surprise to know that McCambridge and Crawford didn't get along. 

Crawford didn't get along with Sterling Hayden either, and the two of them don't have much chemistry in the movie. Despite being the title character Hayden acts as if he would rather be somewhere else (I'm sure he realized Crawford and McCambridge were going to get all the attention). The movie does have a fine supporting cast, with such Western veterans as Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine, John Carradine, Royal Dano, Paul Fix, and Denver Pyle. 

One notable aspect of the film is the Trucolor cinematography by Harry Stradling. Another is how it reminded me of various Euro Westerns made over a decade later. Sergio Leone was apparently influenced by JOHNNY GUITAR.....if Leone had actually directed it, that would have really been something. 

JOHNNY GUITAR is a weird, strange Western that has way more style than substance. Its overwrought nature makes it stand out, but if you're the type of person that just wants to watch good mainstream entertainment instead of getting bogged down in film theories, you may not be that impressed with it. It is worth watching just to see what all the fuss over it was about. 

MODEL FOR MURDER

 

MODEL FOR MURDER is a 1959 low-budget British film that reminds one of the many B pictures made by Hammer Films in the early 1950s. This movie features several performers associated with Hammer: Hazel Court (THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), and Michael Gough, George Benson, and Barbara Archer, who all appeared in HORROR OF DRACULA. 

MODEL FOR MURDER also has a somewhat dull American male lead in Keith Andes, a factor that was a constant in many low-budget British would-be noirs and crime stories in the 1950s. Andes plays David Martens, a merchant seaman who has come to England to clear up some issues involving his late brother. Andes becomes involved with Sally (Hazel Court), who happens to work in the design department at the same couture house that his brother's ex-girlfriend models for. The ex-girlfriend is killed during a jewel robbery at the modeling establishment, and Martens is framed for the crimes. Sally helps Martens to clear his name. 

The best aspect of MODEL FOR MURDER is its cast. The movie itself lasts about 70 minutes, and it's not all that thrilling. The viewer is shown what happens during the robbery/murder, which means the only suspenseful element is how Martens is going to get out of his predicament. It doesn't help that Keith Andes takes a very low-key approach. Instead of a man desperate to prove his innocence, he comes off as someone who is mildly annoyed by the situation. Why the appealing Hazel Court (who looks better than the models that she works alongside) immediately falls for Martens and does everything she can to help him is the real mystery. 

Michael Gough does what he can to enliven things, as he gives another of his slimy, sardonic portrayals as the man who runs the couture house. (Could you imagine a sitcom revolving around a modeling house with Gough as the unctuous owner??) Patricia Jessel (CITY OF THE DEAD) is a grande dame fashion designer who acts very suspicious, but winds up being just a red herring. 

Terry Bishop directed MODEL FOR MURDER. Bishop did a lot of TV work during the same period, and this film feels very much like an hour long episode of a series. (There's even some "cute" music on the soundtrack during what is supposed to be some lighthearted moments.) The entire movie has a very perfunctory feel to it, and it wastes a promising cast. If you want to know how a crime story set in a modeling house should really be presented, go check out Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. 

Book Review: THE HAMMER HORROR OMNIBUS

 

The present-day Hammer Films company has been releasing a torrent of merchandise in the last few years, causing fans who actually work for a living (like myself) to pick and choose what goodies we should spend our money on. One of the more affordable items is THE HAMMER HORROR OMNIBUS. This is a paperback reprint of four novelizations of different Hammer movies, all originally published in 1966. 

The novelizations were written by John Burke, an English writer who specialized in the movie adaptation field. Film novelizations are extinct today, but before the advent of home video they were an important movie marketing commodity (I bought plenty of them in the 1980s). 

The four films adapted in this omnibus are THE GORGON, THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB. Each adaptation runs about 90 pages. 

The adaptations are for the most part fairly basic and straightforward. If you are a Hammer fanatic looking for alternate scenes and/or subplots left on the cutting room floor, you won't find them here. I'm sure Burke's job was to provide an accurate account of the features involved instead of filling in any story gaps or going off on any concepts of his own. Burke's writing style in this volume is brisk and to the point--it won't take an experienced reader long to finish this book. 

The standout items in this omnibus are the adaptations of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Each of them is a first-person narrative from Baron Frankenstein himself, and Burke perfectly captures the Baron's narcissism, snobbery, and self-assurance. You can't help but hear Peter Cushing's voice as Frankenstein while reading these adaptations, and it is a pity that the actor wasn't recorded doing a reading of them. 

The novelization of CURSE has a few subtle differences from the film. One is that the Baron actually looks forward to his marriage to Elizabeth (mainly due to the fact that he believes it will give him a better public persona), while in the movie Cushing barely tolerates her. Another is how the scene where the Baron and Paul Krempe go after the Creature in the woods is portrayed. In the film it is heavily hinted (but not shown) that the Creature kills an old man and his young grandchild. In the book the Baron and Krempe find the two would-be victims very much alive. (Was Burke trying to provide some sympathy toward the Creature this way?) The adaptations of CURSE and REVENGE are placed one right after the other in this omnibus, and the result is that one feels they are reading a mini-biography of the Baron, told from his perspective. 

THE HAMMER HORROR OMNIBUS contains a Forward by Stephen Gallagher, in which he discusses the career of John Burke and the attributes of movie novelizations in general. There is also an Afterword by Ramsey Campbell in which he examines aspects of the adaptations. This book is not illustrated, but it does contain fantastic cover art by Graham Humphreys (I'm surprised Hammer hasn't created a poster of it). 

I wouldn't say THE HAMMER HORROR OMNIBUS is a must-have, but it is a nice collectible for major Hammer fans. A follow-up volume is scheduled to come out in a few months, and one wonders if Hammer might decide to create a whole new line of novelizations for some of their films. 

ARIZONA COLT RETURNS

 

I assumed ARIZONA COLT RETURNS (1970) was one of those Euro Westerns which took advantage of a character's name from another Euro Western, but this movie does have a rough continuity with the original ARIZONA COLT. Ernesto Gastaldi, who was one of the writers of the original film, provides the story here, and actor Roberto Camardiel returns as Arizona's whiskey-swilling comic relief sidekick. (The movie also goes by a number of alternate titles, including the one on the European poster shown above.) 

The main difference between this Arizona Colt movie and the first one is how the title role is portrayed. The original Arizona Colt was played by Giuliano Gemma, a fresh-faced charismatic actor who had a sense of crafty humor about him. ARIZONA COLT RETURNS has Euro Western veteran Anthony Steffen as the main character, and his bounty hunter is scruffy, beady-eyed, and poker faced. 

Steffen is so taciturn and emotionless that one gets the feeling he's poking fun at the typical Spaghetti Western protagonist. In fact, the first part of ARIZONA COLT RETURNS feels like a spoof, with some goofy hi-jinks and a very lighthearted score by Bruno Nicolai. As the story heads toward the end, things become darker and more brutal. 

The main plot concerns Arizona's battle against a fearsome bandit (Aldo Sambrell) who has attacked the spread of a wealthy rancher, while also stealing his gold and kidnapping his daughter (Rosalba Neri). Arizona is hired to bring back the gold and the girl, and he and what few friends his has are made to suffer for it. 

Aldo Sambrell (another Spaghetti Western veteran) and the exquisite Rosalba Neri wind up being more interesting than Anthony Steffen, who looks and acts more like a villain than a hero. Sambrell appeared in dozens of Euro Westerns, and his part here happens to be one of his best in this genre. Neri doesn't get nearly enough screen time in the small but crucial role as the rancher's daughter. 

ARIZONA COLT RETURNS was directed by Sergio Martino, who is best known now for being a Giallo stalwart. As one would expect, the darker parts of this film flow much better. There's nothing all that extraordinary about ARIZONA COLT RETURNS, except perhaps how it goes from an almost Trinity vibe to a story where no characters are safe. I watched this on Tubi, which presented it in a very nice-looking widescreen print, and an English-dubbed dialogue track that could have used more vitality. 

JUST PLAY DEAD

 

JUST PLAY DEAD is a brand new movie, which I rented on demand. It's not playing in any theaters in my area, and after watching it I doubt it is going to have any sort of theatrical future at all. 

The movie concerns con artist Jack Wolfe (Samuel L. Jackson), who is living in luxury on the Caribbean island of San Miguel. Wolfe finds out he is going to be indicted for fraud, so he comes up with an idea to fake his death and collect on a $30 million dollar insurance policy. He tries to entice his wife Nora (Eva Green) into the plot, but she has plenty of reasons of her own to have Jack killed for real, and she's also juggling two lovers who might be enticed to help her: a cop (Eoin Macken) and a dopey boy toy (Jason Fernandez). 

JUST PLAY DEAD has a style that I would call "pseudo-Tarantino", which is probably the main reason Samuel L. Jackson was cast. All the characters try to act as cool and self-assured as possible, there's plenty of long dialogue exchanges in which every other line features a certain four-letter word, and there are flashbacks and flash-forwards. Director Martin Campbell (who is a long way from his THE MASK OF ZORRO and CASINO ROYALE days) tries to make things as edgy as possible, at least from a 21st Century perspective. Nora's boy toy beach bum is constantly stoned, and she and Jack are either always smoking cigarettes or drinking copious amounts of liquor. All the bad-ass posturing gets tiresome after awhile--all the characters are backstabbing each other or screwing one another (literally and figuratively). Due to the overall cynical nature of the film, the viewer really doesn't care what happens to anyone. 

The movie was filmed in the Canary Islands, and it at least looks attractive, as does Eva Green. Eva is once again playing a scheming femme fatale, and she proves here that she's still far more alluring and seductive than just about all the actresses half her age. Samuel L. Jackson does what is expected of him, but it's still entertaining to listen to him recite dialogue in his special way. 

One good thing about JUST PLAY DEAD is that it's only about 90 minutes long, but other than Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green, it doesn't have many more positive attributes. 

SANGSTER DIRECTS HAMMER On 4K/Blu-ray From Severin

 

In my last post, a tribute to LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS magazine, I mentioned that the Hammer Films brand may be stronger than ever. One prime example of that is this mammoth box set from Severin. It contains three Hammer movies--all directed by Jimmy Sangster--but it's the supplemental materials that make this set stand out. 

The set contains 7 total discs--3 UHD and 4 Blu-ray. There are 18 hours of special features spread out over the discs, and this set also contains a 312 page (!!!) book containing all sorts of articles on Hammer and English Gothic cinema. 

The films in this set are THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, and FEAR IN THE NIGHT. All of these productions have been released on home video numerous times, and I wouldn't call any of them among Hammer's best (but I would put LUST FOR A VAMPIRE among Hammer's worst). The first chapter of the 312 page book has Severin's David Gregory even explaining why his company put out this set in the first place. Are these three films worthy of reappraisal? They haven't exactly been in hiding (I think you can even watch some of them for free on the Tubi streaming channel). It appears that Severin got a chance to put together a Hammer set with these three features, and they figured they better make it stand out....and it certainly does. 

Each of the three movies gets a UHD and Blu-ray disc, and each get plenty of extras, along with new audio commentaries. I've had this set for a couple months now, and I'm nowhere near watching or listening to everything on it.....but I'd much rather have a release that has too much stuff on it (if there is a sort of thing) instead of not enough. 

I'm not going to list all the extras in their entirety (you can go on the Severin website to find that) but I will list some of the highlights. There are new interviews with performers such as Judy Matheson, Christopher Neame, and Kirsten Lindholm, and archival talks with Veronica Carlson, Yutte Stensgaard, and David Prowse. There are special programs detailing the life and careers of Jimmy Sangster and Ralph Bates, along with a featurette on the horror film career of Joan Collins. There are also discussions on Mary Shelley, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, the Frankenstein myth, and lesbian vampire movies. 

Now we have to get to the book, which has chapters on Kate O'Mara, Ralph Bates, Mike Raven, David Prowse's performances as the Frankenstein Monster, and Hammer's production history during the early 1970s. The cover of the book has the famous (or some would say infamous) image of Yutte Stensgaard's blood-spattered Carmilla rising from her tomb, an image that pops up all over this set, as well it should. 

The accumulated extras are not just a bunch of random fluff--they are interesting and intriguing, and pure catnip for major Hammer fans. One could say that the extras on this set are more important than the films themselves. 

Speaking of the films, it must be pointed out that this is technically a Jimmy Sangster set. The program on his life and career makes the case that Sangster--whose main work in film was that as a writer--was an important player in classic English Gothic cinema. I agree with his importance to the genre--but I don't feel he was a great writer. I believe that Sangster was good at plot construction and good at coming up with ideas, and he certainly knew how to take famous tales and transform them into Hammer product. The extras on this set point out that Sangster did a lot of work on American television in the 1970s and 80s. That might surprise some, but his knack for quickly coming up with ideas and writing for a certain budget made him perfect for that era of TV. Sangster wasn't the best director in the world--an opinion he would have agreed with--but considering what he had to work and deal with, he did the best he could. I think Sangster's best work as a screenwriter was on the series of so-called "mini-Hitchcock" suspense stories he created for Hammer, and FEAR IN THE NIGHT, included in this set, is an example. 

I'm sure most Hammer fans already own the three films in this set, but Severin has provided so many exemplary extras that it is a must for English Gothic lovers. Severin knew they had to come up with something extraordinary to stand up to all the high-end sets Hammer themselves have been recently putting out, and you can't deny that they truly did so.