Ace of Aces (1982)

Jean-Paul Belmondo's films usually seem the same to me (I've mostly seen his Eurocrime/Eurospy stuff and know of his swashbucklers), but this is basically a sort of French Biggles via Raiders (there's an army of Tohts). But with his old trench rival Hitler, played by Gunther "Slugworth" Meisner (which means it is in the same world as the Winds of War), and his sister, also played by Meisner in full on Austrian maiden dress. Like the Prize of Peril, it has Marie France Pisier (who I only really know from The Other Side of Midnight and The French Atlantic Affair). An agreeable, attractive little adventure.  There's a cute bear, a Jewish Short Round-type kid sidekick, a motorcycle army chase, a lederhosen dance scene (Remy Julienne stuntwork) and  a Nazi cuckoo clock. For all my hatred of the Nouvelle Vague, I've taken a real liking to French pop cinema. They can make GREAT adventure films.
Vladimir Cosma's soundtrack is good, hints of his theme for forgotten RTE-coproduced Franco-Irish comedy-drama Roses from Dublin (1981), about a Kerry family of rugby-loving brothers including Colm Meaney.
The other WW2 comedy of the era that Belmondo and Pisier did,  Les Morfalous (1984) isn't as good. It's a silly Foreign Legion romp, more comedy than adventure, and the humour  doesn't translate.

The Prize of Peril (1984) 5

Watching this. And already, "this is one of the best films I've ever seen". French sci-fi, based on a book by Robert Sheckley (hence why it reminded me of Condorman), but more of an influence on the film of the Running Man than King/Bachman's novel. It begins in style, with more energy and verve and visual attraction than most SF. Not a dull cinerama of America but an energetic chase through the streets of a European anytown (Yugoslavia), as CTV helicopters and a blimp chase a man through a docklands rail yard and surrounding streets, like a larger-scale quivalent of the Kobe chase from You Only Live Twice. Michel Piccoli is nicely smarmy as the Damon Killian-type (this film's book influenced King, but the films even more so). Plus his ponytail and suits are prescient of Stanley Tucci in the Hunger Games. There is some more game show chintz, a Tittupy Bumpity-type Hawaiian girl chorus of browned-up French girls in bin liner wigs and teacup-wearing maids. Even in unsubtitled French, though, it is astonishing. Exactly the sort of SF I like - fun but intelligent, which often means "doesn't feel American". The night-time chases are as good as any Bond film (and non-Poirot Achille Aubergine  from A View To A Kill pops up). Like the Running Man but not dumb. It's a long time since a film captivated me so much.


Directed by Yves Boisset - whose films I have to explore, especially Purple Taxi as Grandad is in it (it's where he met Fred Stair and Peter Ustinov). EDIT; Purple Taxi (1977) is not good. Gay Byrne said it wasn't good on a retrospective Late Late, and Uncle Gaybo was right. Edward Albert acts all moody in a proper old Irish living room, Fred Stair (this being the film that spawned that monicker) looks frail. Part of that continental view of Ireland, the Ireland of James Last LPs, more mysterious and dark than the Oirish-American view. Jack Watson plays an Oirish farmer. I'm sure he bumps into Grandad while trying to escort burning horses.


Boisset's  Dog Day (1984) has Lee Marvin frying French gangsters with a bazooka, and then hides in a cornfield with a psychotic family of French yokels including the kid from The Tin Drum (David Bennent, age 17 looking like a weird 12 year old, telling his mum that they'll be real shitheads, and she can wear lipstick when they're in America). Aside from the neat ending, it's a bit confused. Ace stunt-work, though from Remy Julienne at the start.  It begins as a stunt-actioner, but then becomes a horrid French "psycho family" movie but with hostages not horror. Then again, because it has Marvin in it, it tries to be a bit American, and it's also incredibly downbeat and hateful and cruel. I agree with Jon Abrams of Daily Grindhouse,  it's  a hateful, horrendous film (a black character called Doodoo, child rape, comedy suicide), but it's hard to forget. It's just sad to see Marvin in such a film. Most of his films are entertaining. A lot of them I don't love, a lot of westerns, crime and straight war - but they are decent, mostly the sort of films that brighten up a Sunday, and this does not.

Boisset's Espion, Leve-Toi (1982), a decent but unremarkable spy-thriller with Lino Ventura, a bit dry, some decent stunt-work, but a bit Smiley-ish. Ventura is great in everything, though.



The other Euro-Sheckley, The 10th Victim (1965) I find a little too overdesigned and meaninglessly Mod, a little aimless. Yes, I like Danger - Diabolik, but that  has a style, an effort, a heart. This is just Ursula Andress and Marccelo Mastroianni running about with lots of people in fab outfits on rooftops, trying to kill each other while cameras follow, shot in a serviceable but unremarkable style. 

Cannon moan + 6 - Jonesploitation

Realise there's few Cannon films I genuinely love - Death Wish III, their weirdo musical the Apple, well bits of that, the songs, and when Joss Ackland appears as God, specific bits, I think it's more the stuff about the films, the way they advertised their films, their brio, a lot of it are godawful Chuck Norris-type action dreck (though Bronson's 10 to Midnight's a decent if quite gross spin on the slasher), or attempt sat seriousness that falls flat. King Solomon's Mines is fun. Highlander I like elements of, but it's played slightly too seriously, and the flashbacks clutter the plot rather than add to it. The Wicked Lady isn't really my type of film. Sahara was the only film I saw while on Netflix, and again it's not great but the fact they went and said,"hey - let's do a Great Race via Lawrence of Arabia with Brooke Shields playing a boy", and put John Mills as a Cambridge don called Cambridge. Even their neo=noir stuff that proper critics like I found kind of boring. Lifeforce is ruined by the miscasting of wet Peter Firth as an SAS hardarse (should have been Collins) and perhaps a different director And some of the Israeli-made stuff is astonishingly terrible - the Magiican of Lublin, Kate Bush-scored Yiddish fairytale- Alan Arkin as a man whose dream is to fly.
A lot of the stuff is enjoyable in moments, but their arty stuff is not my cup. Even their Treasure Island I found to be basically akin to The Legend of Tim Tyler and Silas.

There is Treasure of the Four Crowns (1984), which is one of Cannon's Indiana Jones knockoffs. But it is truly barking, the brainchild/vanity vehicle of American spaghetti western star Tony Anthony, who'd previously made 3-D western Comin' At Ya in 1981, this is his 3-D Raiders. And it begins with a cavalcade of flames, arrows, burning rocks and other things in an astonishing  20 minute non-dialogue opening. It does have boring patches, and the cast isn't great, apart from Bunuel regular Francisco Rabal, but it moves from place to place, and it does weirldy look like a  Bollywood film, due to the film stock and prefigures Temple of Doom with its villain, Jonas, a crazed jewelled bindi-wearing part-Hindi, part-Satanic, part-hippy, part-Jim Jones cult leader who worships a horned statue that looks vaguely like the titular beastie in shonky Greek Cushing-Pleasence vehicle Land of the Minotaur (1976). He also has an army of harem brides and beret-wearing IRA balaclava and beret-wearing tambourine ninjas. With a better script and cast, it could easily have been to Raiders, what Battle Beyond The Stars was to Star Wars, an imitation that goes its own way and becomes just as fun (think a more consistent Sky Bandits, if directed by Brian Trenchard Smith), but the nearest Four Crowns gets to these heights is with the staggering climax, where Anthony gets possessed, his face melted Two Face-style and uses the gems to turn into a sort of fire-demon, and turns the gems into flamethrowers, wiping out Jonas and his brotherhood of Putty-Men IRA tambourine ninjas, as a triumphant Ennio Morricone soundtrack plays. And then as he and his girlfriend leave, a giant swamp monster jumps out.

It reminds me that Antonio Margheriti, whose own Raidersploitation includes Cannon's own Jungle Raiders never put his regular co-star Lewis Collins in a Raiders knockoff. David Warbeck is a serviceable B-movie lead, but Collins was the British action hero of the 80s. And only Who Dares Wins shows the full promise of his would be Bond persona, and even that has long dry spots, mostly involving Judy Davis as the attractive but irritating villain (Paul Freeman, Belloq himself appears as the sequel hook nemesis - an intriguing What If). As Broccoli foolishly rejected the potential 007, someone should have put Collins in a spy knock-off not unlike the exotic but charmless 80s post-Eurospy likes of Codename - The Soldier and SAS - Terminate With Extreme Prejudice, ambitious, glossy but ultimately quite dull Bond imitations that lack that inimitable Bond joy. Team Collins up in something like Four Crowns or those insane Hong Kong films, like the attractive, if sometimes hard to follow likes of the Wisely series, which are at least most ambitious than the cheap "just shoot in a jungle and have a hero in a fedora" Indiana Jones knock-offs of the West. I like those kinds of Hong Kong films. Trad policiers and martial arts film per se don't do it, but mix in a lot of weirdness - and voila!
The Legend of Wisely (1987) especially has that annoying goofiness that is common in HK films, hence why Big Trouble in Little China is a bit silly - because Carpenter was trying too hard for that HK feel). Unlike its ambitious, good-looking but nonsensical Sam Raimi-meets-Cannibal Holocaust Chow Yun Fat-as-Rambo-goes-gore sidequel The 7th Curse (1986), some of it is pleasingly epic, like motorcycles driving on the steps of a temple and avoiding monkeys, and the dragon-spaceship models look good. Certainly better than Jackie Chan's similar but silly folly of a sequel, Operation Condor - Armour of God II (1991). The first Armour of God in 1986 is spectacular (the balloon ending) and quite charming (it has a 70s pop star as Hong Kong and therefore the Commonwealth's answer to Indiana Jones), better than the rival Aces Go Places series, but the sequel is lacking, and feels like it is trying too hard, and goes overboard with the silliness.
See also the similarly spacey and goofy and less impressive Magic Crystal (1986), with added Cynthia Rothrock and Andy Lau, guns behind papers, a Greek travelogue, KGB torturers, and schmaltzy Chinese Tristram Fourmile-type kids who talk to glowing space rocks, going from Raiders to Mac and Me, with wobbly papier-mache aliens and Richard Norton getting vaporised.

Smaller stuff - 13/19-ish inc. refs - Crusoe, Garner, Crichton, ITC, Day of the Dolphin, Powell, Network, Raiders of Atlantis

Crusoe (1989) - Slipshod, confusing chronologically mixed-up adaptation, rather than the traditional staid but adequate version. With a slavesploitation edge. Shane Rimmer 6th billed, directly below Jimmy Nail and Tim Spall (did they have to appear in everything together in the late 80s?).And over William Hootkins, but below Warren Clarke, or Clark, as they misspell it.

Apart from the fun and locally-shot The Great Train Robbery (1978), I find Michael Crichton's directorial efforts stodgy and slow (Westworld's fun but I prefer the Romanworld and Medievalworld settings). Runaway (1984) is too much like a standard, anodyne cop thriller. The future setting is almost non-existent. It just looks like 80s suburbia. It's a bad serial killer film/Dirty Harry knockoff with robot insects as the serial killer, and though Tom Selleck  seems to be  on cop-show autopilot, far from the New Gable that Halliwell pinned him as. Gene Simmons is a good villain, and the robots in the opening are inventive, but everything else feels dull, like a pilot for a bad Canadian  syndicated show from 1988. Then again, I like my sci-fi bonkers rather than being dull and almost ashamed of itself being SF. I am not usually into dystopian noir or post-apocalyptic films (I like most of the original Planet of the Apes, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) I enjoy slightly more than the rather hardgoing others as it feels like an Aussie kids' TV show, Boy and his Dog (1975) I liked as a kid but find silly/Altmanesque now, the Italian ones ditto), unless the setting really appeals.

Tank (1984) - Completely tonally unhinged Lorimar-produced James Garner vehicle, feels like a pilot - a sort of Hal Needham via Stripes. Is it a Disney-ish family comedy? Is it a chase comedy? Is it a small-town drama? Unwatchable. Couldn't quite finish. A lot of Garner's films feel like TV movies - They Only Kill Their Masters (1972) which from what I could see of it, is an action-crime thriller shot like a sitcom), The Fan (1981)...

The US-made ITC films, bar the Muppet Movie I found somewhat soulless. They try to be fun, but they are just TV-level escapism with a bit of extra gloss. Capricorn One (1978), I should like, has a good idea and a good cast, and is well shot  but Peter Hyams seems to be trying to out-Spielberg Spielberg.  It doesn't click. It's too unfocused, too many sides of the same story. Plus the idea is stretched - the idea of astronauts who involved in  a faked Mars landing have to go on the run for the life is better suited to a TV anthology. It spends too long to set the scene. It doesn't fit two hours. And Telly Savalas' character is the  best bit, and he only appears in the last twenty minutes. But conspiracy thrillers can be very samey. And bland. And it's just not quite weird enough. If it had been a bit more over-designed, a bit more fantastical, it may have worked, more action, less conspiracy, and about half an hour shorter. Maybe films set at mission control don't engage.

Raiders of Atlantis (1983) - Garbled knockoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Warriors, Escape From New York and its knockoffs, Warlords of Atlantis and various Rambo-type jungle actioners. Nonsense from Ruggero Deodato. Imaginative at times but visually unstimulating and like most Italian sci-fi, marred by unattractive design. That's the problem with a lot of Italian SF - e.g 1990 - the Bronx Warriors (1982) and the extremely inventive/characterful but also ropey 2019 - After the Fall of New York (1983), there's a lot of ideas usually stolen from other films and combined, but a lot of shite (why is there a Hot Chocolate tribute band who drive around in 1930s cars?). And there's a few quirky innovations - but they need a John Sayles to insert character and add something to the plate.

Day of the Dolphin (1973) - Could have been quite fun but it is tonally a bit nervous, and the plot hard to folow. It is lovingly shot and initially, quite creepy. George C. Scott is good, even though it gets a bit sappy.  Like Orca, there's great underwater scenes and the soundtrack helps. George Delerue's work really makes one take it seriously.  Why does George C. Scott always play Jakes? But it does take the idea of armed dolphins slightly seriously. It's a daft Eurospy idea (especially when we see the brass Dolphin ornament-like bomb), but Scott convinces that it works, even though the rest of the film falls apart. Mike Nichols may have been the wrong choice for director. Perhaps a  J. Lee Thompson. It gets a little talky, a la Phase IV.

Network (1976) - Decent but apart from the Howard Beale stuff, almost instantly forgettable. I had forgotten the Patty Hearst-esque stuff, which struck a chord initially, but now I can scarcely remember. A good cast, though.

I was just thinking of what I think of the work of Michael Powell. In many ways, like the Bible. It's always been there, but I don't have great affection for it. Yes, they're well-made, but I almost feel force-fed it. Peeping Tom (1960) was extraordinary because it was made in 1960. Make it in 1980, and it'd be a slightly above average exploitation film. I prefer Horrors of the Black Museum, the other Anglo-Amalgamated gore film (Circus of Horrors (1960), the third one I remember being fun but very average British film of the era - and it has a theme tune written by Tony Hatch), but I enjoy the weird, which is perhaps why The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972) may be the Powell I most enjoyed. Because it's not trying to say something, it's not trying to say how great the British are or be the cinematic equivalent to the Festival of Britain, it's just trying to make a cinema-load of kids happy. Then again, the more depressing British semi-horror psychothrillers like the Collector (1965), I find them interesting, but currently I'm not in the right mood. Although though some of them go so ridiculously pulpy, they become enjoyable - i.e. Peter Finch being impaled by the flag on a sandcastle in the rather odd Something to Hide (1972 - it doesn't really make much sense, and scenes are shot with the wind blowing in the background, so it feels quite slapdash, though Graham Crowden has a nice cameo as a religious loon and Harold Goldblatt gives good support).

Also watched stylised Soyuzmultfilm anti-American propaganda The Millionaire and Mr. Wolf, done in a pseudo-Chuck Jones style. Very interesting, a twisted inversion of American animation.

Crime Wave (1985 - not the Raimi one, the better Canadian film)

I've always wanted to see this since I read about it on Canuxploitation. A sort of mock-documentary narrated by a 12-year-old girl, Kim about her neighbour Steven Penny, a scriptwriter who wants to make it in the world of "colour crime movies", a sort of alternative noir subgenre. Made in Canada on almost no budget by star John Paizs, it's very strange, somewhere between childlike and childish, with a kiddy theme tune, but it does go down dark passages. I thought it wouldn't live up to the tribute act-themed opening, but there are some neat jokes, i.e. using the same cameras as "Chekhov from Star Trek and Yoko Ono", and taking the mick out of the NFB.  Its narrator Kim is likable but kind of annoying. A straighter more Gordon Pinsent-ish narration might have worked better, or at least more of the punchy narrator used in the "beginnings" and "endings" Steven writes. It does one's patience. I do see a lot of parallels with my own work. Not helped by the soundtrack that sounds like something from a Canadian kids' show from the period.  There are some moments of sensation - i.e. killer rats. But it feels like Paizs had too many things going on his mind, but not enough mileage for a plot. The weirder moments like the Nelson Mingus costume are entertaining, as is a meeting between two creeps soundtracked to the Birdy Song and the celebratory dance sequence. Shots go on for too long, though, e.g. the voyeuristic Body Double-esque bit. There's also scenes of a cowboy riding Steven like a bull, while a Crazies-like "secret stuff" virus contaminates the town, as Hazmat-suited goons run about. The meta-ending works, and suddenly the film becomes as interesting and as punchy as the opening, with such sights as "Steven Penny World" and more glimpses of gory colour crime movies. It is unpredictable even going as far as Steven getting superpowers and a cameo from Christ, and there is a charm to it (a sort of 50s 80s charm, if Shakin' Stevens were a movie), but it is wildly uneven, like Shaky. But unlike Shaky, there's nothing really like it. Recommended, because it

9 - A lot of the mentions I've only seen - Lady Ice, Carny, Sword and Sorcery, Albert Brooks,

Lady Ice (1973) - Average 1970s US heist movie, made for TV but then released theatrically, with Donald Sutherland when he was doing rather bland films that really only exist in my mind as trailers.
Lady Ice does feature an out-of-place Patrick Magee in a nice suit, though.

 I feel like I should the Invasion of Body Snatchers (1978) more than I do. But Kaufman doesn't want to make a sci-fi picture, but a film about relationships. He thinks he's Woody Allen.

Carny (1980) - Gary Busey is typically hateful in a rather Altmanesque/aimless wander through an interesting carnival. A documentary would have  been better. It's tonally confused, and despite a young Jodie Foster, doesn't know what it is. New Hollywood I found spawned many of these aimless jaunts that'd have worked better as documentaries. And that's why I find New Hollywood overrated. I believe cinema is entertainment.


 Even normal swashbucklers don't really do alienate me, especially when they go ponderous, i.e.  the likes of the War Lord (1965) and Taras Bulba (1962 - where the fuck is it supposed to be set? Yes, I know but both those films feel more like a fantasy epic than a historical thing).

High fantasy's never been my strong suit I used to but-not-quite-like Krull (1983) but that's sort of SF. Dragonslayer (1981) is great, but that's very different. I kind of like Conan and Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) has an atmospheric opening, a good soundtrack and some good creature design/FX, so I kind of like that even though it is badly lit, and the cod-Shakespeareanism mixed in with Californian accents does grate, especially mixed in with the Renaissance Fayre (sic) aesthetic. Richard Lynch is a good villain, and it does go a bit overboard on the tits and ass. There is an embryo of a good film hidden in there, somewhere, but Albert Pyun's never made a good film, and this is his first and best.


I find Albert Brooks' comedy to work best in short bursts, i.e. his Tommy Cooper-esque ventriloquist's act. I found Modern Romance (1982) worse than the band of the same name, apart from the George Kennedy-as-Princess-Leia bit, but Real Life (-1979) does have some moments, i.e. Brooks trying to recreate the fire at Atlanta from Gone With The Wind in a living room, as Tara's theme plays. And Lost In America is like a half-baked romcom crossed with National Lampoon's Vacation.

11 - Harry and Tonto, Night of the Hunter, Doctor Death - Seeker of Souls, Grave of the Vampire,Cinerama (Terror at the Wax doesn't count), the Being, Kill and be Killed, Abominable Snowman, the Being

The January Man (1989) - All-star serial killer comedy, a serial killer movie done in the style of When Harry Met Sally or 3 Men And A Little Baby. As wrong as that sounds. Kevin Kline does "quirky tec", Alan Rickman plays unruffled Brit, Rod Steiger plays da Chief, and  ex-RTE stalwart Pat O'Connor tries to direct the chaos.

The Abominable Snowman (1957 - B/W) - Early Hammer horror, despite some good photography and sets, never really holds. Peter Cushing is good, but it still feels like a TV play. It is rather slow.  And the Yetis are not great. I kind of like the design - a sort of feathered Max Wall-thing, but it's not what you'd expect of the Yeti.    The 50s were a strange, transient decade for horror. A lot of the stuff is entertaining, but few are genuinely great.  Someone more like Paul Massie's forceful, mannered Canadian soap opera star-like, almost Shatner-esque Dr. Jekyll for Hammer might have been better than Forrest Tucker.

Kill and Be Killed/Kill And Kill Again (1976/1981) - Apartheid-era South Africa's martial arts sensation, James Ryan stars in these two dodgy, sporadically entertaining for the wrong reasons actioners. Featuring some slight racist overtones (his black sidekick's called Gorilla - because he's subhuman - ha!) and sexism (the kidnapped Professor's daughter, ex Miss World Anneline Kriel can't go on the mission because she's a woman, even if the government say so!) Set in a generic English-speaking milieu full of British Intelligence types, and involves potato oil as a McGuffin. At times like a bad imitation of a Brian Trenchard-Smith film. Also featuring a dwarf who kung fu punches with a Punch puppet, a parrot crashing a jeep, a levitating character called the Fly, early bullet-time and a Nazi baron who lives in the desert, in his own castle. I'm not a kung fu fan per se, but there is something off-kilter about these films, a pleasing nutzoid Bond knockoff quality unlike later SA-shot ninja/kickboxer films. The action is good, but rather generic, aside from the stranger moments, but the cast, mostly radio actors are stiff. The second film in particular predates the A-Team, yet is quite similar, but as if recreated by a gang of Afrikaners going mad in the desert. The first one I have only seen lengthy clips of.

The Being (1983) - Jose Ferrer and Martin Landau star in confused "alien in small town" nonsense, like a lot of similar fare, Mutant, Nightbeast, etc. A "where are they now?" epilogue suggests a spoofy tone that doesn't seem to be there.


70s Imitation-British sorts like Cinerama's Arnold! and Terror at the Wax Museum (1973) are fun if at times a little US sitcom Halloween special, but the LA-set Doctor Death - Seeker of Souls (1974) despite a Moe Howard cameo,  is a bit too TV cop show/Disney movie ish, it's an overlong Night Gallery with a plot more suited to a fifteen minute segment of that show.  The flashbacks are fun, and John Considine does his best, but it's almost like a Highlander knockoff that fell backwards in time and was made by ABC TV. Directed by TV man/second unit guy Eddie Saeta, who worked on Diamonds are Forever, hence why it feels like the "gorilla woman" scene from that film stretched out to feature length, mixed with the "we want to do gothic, but we can't" feel of the likes of Grave of the Vampire (1972 - ambitiously amateurish).
Cinerama also did The Killing of Sister George (1968), which always annoyed me. Beryl Reid's great, but everyone's so hateful. It's about bitchy BBC people in the 60s, but made by ABC, and shot at Paramount. I should like it, but maybe too much camp bitchiness can cause headaches for me.


Watching the 1993 BBC version of Suddenly, Last Summer, very stagey, Tennessee Williams is not my forte, Maggie Smith's southern drawl annoying. Weird to see Irish  comedienne Rosaleen Linehan in something allegedly American.

Also tried watching Harry and Tonto (1974). It's a road movie that is quite sentimental and sweet, a bit too schmaltzy. Art Carney is good, but the trouble is the makeup is a little Clive Dunn-ish. He still looks like he's pushing sixty and not eighty. He looks like a comedy old man. Compared to his performance in the slightly better Going in Style (1979 - not the crap remake which is just a straight heist film - and not the subversion the original is), where he did convince as an old man, but his character there was quite different to Harry. Not quite my kind of film, but Larry Hagman appears in his mid-career phase when he had not yet struck oil.

Night Of The Hunter (1955) I find a strange film. It's not a good or a bad film, it's a singular film, somewhere in between. It's a weird piece of art.  Plus my grandad didn't like Mitchum, so maybe that has got something to do with it.