vjetorix

Don't miss this little treat of a film. If you liked The Hired Hand, this has the same laid back style that works great for a Southern story. But it's not so much the story. It's the ripe dialog and a cast of Great American Actors that make this one to catch. Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton make a great team of ornery fishing guides. Burgess Meredith has a great role and makes the best of it. Margot Kidder looks absolutely great here too. But Joe Spinell is worth the price of admission in a small role. The cinematography is experimental like The Hired Hand but is not as successful. Overall, this film is a gentle surprise and would be perfect for a warm evening. Recommended without hesitation.

KOYAANISQATSI remains a profound statement over twenty years after its original release. the point then is the point now.

one of the great things about this film is that while the intrusion of man is initially presented as profane and abhorrent, ultimately there is found a symmetry to the human experience that is as organic as anything found in the `natural' world. i used to be tempted to perceive humans as the only species on the plant that didn't fit, that threw everything out of balance, as it were. but over time it has become apparent that even the blight of man on earth is a naturally occurring phenomenon. the evolution of life is the destruction of life. the circle is unbroken.

Stuart Whitman made one of his very best movies in 1976 (Magnum Special per Tony Saitta, Una), the same year as Las Vegas Lady. I was hoping for a couple of things from LVL; a little of that kick-butt Stu and some cheezy 70's Vegas sights. I got a little - very little - Vegas cheez and virtually no Stu action. He hits a fat guy in the stomach.

This hang dog production is simply an embarrassment. We're talking Amateur Hour, folks, in all departments. There's a little swimming pool near-nudity, some implied violence, and a lot of non-suspense.

Stella Stevens' two female cohorts in crime are Lynne Moody (pretty bad) and Linda Scruggs (really bad) and the main evil guy (George DiCenzo) is severely lacking in menace.

Don't bother.

HYENA OF LONDON is a gothic mystery very much along the lines of THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER aka HORROR which came out about the same time. I'd call it part of the cinema of meaningful glances.

For fans of Tony Kendall, here he plays an ineffectual hero for a change. He's the secret lover of the local doctor's daughter, whose house is full of conniving servants and suspicious characters, like Luciano Pigozzi. They all stay very busy lying, cheating, and sneaking around the old dark house. Mysterious murders begin to occur in the vicinity and everyone points fingers at each other until the twist ending reveals an actual surprise.

This is an atmospheric, nicely photographed trifle that I always enjoy watching but never seem to remember much about later.

This has to be the epitome of the eco-horror subgenre. The absurdity of it all makes this a favorite amongst aficionados.

These are the cutest monsters imaginable and they exist in one of the purest 70's universes you'll ever see. You get Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, and Rory Calhoun along with all those big bell-bottoms and big cars in a desert setting. What more could you ask for?

Don't miss this fever dream of a movie.

What we have here is a delightful French romantic comedy with espionage overtones that even the most spy-hardened viewer will find diverting. Jean Marais is a married businessman with the unlikely moniker of Stanislas Everest Dubois who stumbles into true love and the danger of espionage in the same night.

Marais inadvertently picks up the wrong coat while on his first date with Genevieve Page and thus begins the sequence of events that leads him into a world of humorous cops, dimwitted spies, curmudgeon cab drivers, and other sundry characters that cause him much frustration.

Marais is a winning hero who deftly carries the film and Page is cute and clever as the love interest. Gaia Germani has a small role as a double agent who meets her end in Marais' apartment.

There are more throwaway lines and gags here that work than can be found in many out and out comedies. The score by Georges Delerue is unobtrusive but also unmemorable. The finale of this film charges wholeheartedly into improbability but all is forgiven by the viewer won over so completely from the start.

The film opens with a nasty scene: a young boy uses his toy car to blow up two men and a blowgun to murder a third. This killer kid is none other than Rex Miller who professes to want to grow up to become a secret agent. And indeed he grows up to be Guy Madison, a spaghetti western star who has the distinction of being in two of the strangest spy flicks of the era; this one and The Devil's Man (67). Here, Madison, as Rex, is a secret agent working for an undisclosed country when a bizarre plot is uncovered to take over the world by dosing important `nerve centers' with potent LSD.

The film postures itself as being anti-drug of course. The LSD trips represented are only somewhat hallucinatory using minor tricks of lighting or superimposition to portray the wild effects of the drug. There isn't much imagination (or money) spent on convincing us of the horrors of LSD so these sequences are unfortunately rather dull and repetitive which in turn makes the drug seem like a boring way to amuse oneself.

The best line in the film is spoken by the villain, Mister X, as he describes his international crime syndicate: `We're a secret organization with a strange name: ECHO.' Finally, the film boasts an excellent sound track by Egisto Macchi. There's plenty of catchy tunes and thrilling motifs for spy music fans that easily outclass the visuals.

This, one of the premier ambience films of the genre, appears at the end of the sixties cycle of spy films. It is a serious, even dour film that focuses equally on both sides of the espionage fence with sympathies for neither. Here, spying is a business but it is not without its emotions, albeit suppressed and discarded as required, and death is almost always a matter of honor. When death is unexpected it is also unfair, a matter of happenstance that triggers far reaching consequences.

The plot consists of good guys and bad guys trying to out maneuver each other while both are after Stephane Audran. The complexities of the film extend beyond plotting. The `good' guys in the film are hardly more than cyphers; they play the espionage odds, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, without developing traits one would associate with human character. The `bad' guys on the other hand, are well rounded people that suffer and consider but do their jobs anyway.

Suicide, the controlled death, plays a large part in the film. It is a means of conquering enemies, expressing love, admitting defeat. It's those that live on in their confusion and misery that we must pity. This fine mood piece is complimented by a melancholy score by Francois de Roubaix which captures the ennui without bringing too much attention to itself.

American Wayde Preston is better known as a star of spaghetti westerns but like many of his Euro-comrades he had to try his hand at the spy game. This would be his only foray into the genre but based on the results he could have made a career of it. Preston's easy going personality works well towards defining the unruffled spy archetype. Preston is agent Jerry Land who travels from Madrid to Rome to New York to Beirut and back again several times in his quest to bed as many women as possible and, oh yes, to solve the case.

You know you're in for a good time when a film opens with a car chase, especially when a Piero Umiliani soundtrack wails on as a car goes over a cliff and explodes. The camera surveys the wreckage, then zooms in on some false teeth uppers, the grisly but humorous detritus of death. Turns out those teeth house a hidden camera! Cool.

The film has its share of violence and torture too. The fights are choreographed well and feature lots of judo and karate-type action. Preston gets the best of the multiple (and recognizable) henchmen he frequently takes on. Throw in some good location shooting in Beirut and that cookin' Umiliani soundtrack and you have an above average actioner worth investigating.

Occasionally a low budget film achieves a sort of quaint lyricism, a quality arrived at not by intention but by necessity. You may count From Istanbul, Orders to Kill among those few films. Even though we are comfortable recognizing the thriller film conventions, there is an esoteric element that eludes and amuses us.

Christopher Logan (presumably a pseudonym for an Italian actor whose real name is unknown to us) is offered twenty grand by CIA agent Williams to impersonate a certain Felix, who smuggles drugs for an international crime syndicate. The plot becomes convoluted concerning who is betraying who but the story is not the primary reason for watching. We are unfamiliar with most of the actors in this somewhat obscure offering but it certainly appears to be genre film stalwart Janine Reynaud who gets killed in the opening scene.

Economics comes into play as there are lots of (actually interesting) travelogue shots of Logan walking around the real Istanbul, killing time to the jazzy beats on the soundtrack. Speaking of which, the score is a set of terrific combo jazz pieces by an unknown composer. It could easily stand on its own and is another one of the elements that lift this film above its lowly brethren.

A melancholy air permeates The Defector. Perhaps the knowledge that this was Montgomery Clift's last role taints the viewer's experience somewhat but there certainly is very little else memorable about the film. Clift looks gaunt and nervous and even the actors around him seem to sense his imminent demise.

Raoul Levy (who also died the same year) directs with a listless hand and never draws any emotion from what could have been a much more resonant movie. Levy had just come off a terrific little road movie about hit men called Hail Mafia! (65) and in that light we are doubly disappointed with this lackluster effort.

Cynicism is the main theme here and although the film tries to take on the larger issues of patriotism, loyalty and betrayal it pulls up short, relying instead on cliché and a surface resemblance to better examples in the genre.

Gerard Barray must protect a scientist and his new invention. The invention is another super fuel that will `advance the exploration of space by ten years' and the plot devolves to stopping the bad guys from blowing up a factory where the invention is being worked on.

Barrray is actually quite good in the role of a secret agent. He has the qualities required to seamlessly blend humor and determination and his dark good looks are softened by an impish gleam in his eye. He previously played a spy in Gibraltar (64). His love interest here is Manya played by the lovely Sylva Koscina who graced several other spy pictures as well. Here she plays a nurse who falls for Barray and joins him not only in bed but on several adventurous episodes. The more of her the better.

The bulk of the Georges Garvarentz score consists of an annoying zither theme but there is one nice jazz tune played on a radio. So, overall this is an enjoyable film even if has been made nonsensical by the dubbing into English.

More a murder mystery than a spy flick, Ladies' Man qualifies under a vague espionage angle; four beautiful women (naturally) who happen to be married to powerful men in politics and industry are blackmailed into revealing government secrets.

Eddie Constantine reprises his role as the hard-drinking FBI agent Lemmy Caution with his usual winning sarcasm whose fame is such that when we first see him, he is being mobbed by female admirers. Such is the life.

There are plenty of humorous moments, nice cars, and beautiful women to keep the viewer amused but this film, like many in the series, tends to slide by without making much of an impact. Paul Misraki's score is as undistinguished as the rest of the film.

It's a pleasant diversion and the popularity of Constantine at the time is easily understood as he chides the back guys, woos the women, and relies on brains and brawn to get the job done.

This half-baked spy thriller starts out promisingly enough with a cool title sequence fueled by the sounds of Francesco De Masi. If only the rest of the film measured up to this auspicious beginning. Unfortunately we end up in tepid water rather quickly and never find our way out.

Lang Jeffries does his best as Mike Drum who's assigned to find out just what the heck is happening when several of world's great scientists are killed off. Well, we never figure exactly why either but it doesn't matter much. The villain is completely scatterbrained, changing his plans at the last minute by unveiling a second super weapon with which to rule the world!

There are some decent things about the film to mention however. Jeffries is a good fighter and gets plenty of chances to show it because there's a fight every ten minutes or so. That part's okay. And don't forget the excellent score by De Masi. It's the one asset to the film that never lets up as Lang jets from Beirut to London to Madrid to Beirut and back to London before returning to Beirut for the finale. Whew!

So unless you're a Lang Jeffries stalwart or just like to hear a good score stay away from this slapdash effort.

Yet another of Roger Browne's half-dozen spy flicks and the first of two for director Civirani, who followed this up with a better one, The Beckett Affair. This is a rather middle-of-the-road film but it is unusual in that we get two adventures for the price of one. Both adventures center around a professor's new invention, of course.

The invention everyone is after is definitely of the science fiction type. It's a special tie-clip that when used with a pair of infra-red contact lenses enables the user to see through walls! The guy that stole them from the professor is putting it to good use by wearing it while playing poker and cleaning up! He should think bigger. The first thing Roger does when he discovers this little novelty is use it to spy on his girlfriend getting dressed! That's more like it.

This film really gets around. We travel from the Riviera to Geneva to Paris to Casablanca (the Casbah no less), and to Copenhagen. We even get a tour of the Tuborg brewery. There's a prolonged gun battle amongst the giant beer tanks. Talk about product placement!

For all its advantages, this isn't really a very good film. As I mentioned, it is middle of the pack stuff. You could do worse but you could definitely do better.

Welcome to the low rent district. While Operation White Shark is colorful in places, it is clear that the filmmakers were working with a budget embarrassingly low even for Eurospy knockoffs. We're in for some third-rate spy action!

It's the old kidnapped scientist routine for this adventure but it will take an extraordinary man to accomplish the mission since the qualifications are described thusly: `We must find a man with perfect knowledge of Italian, French and a complete understanding of nuclear science, and the man must also be an expert sailor.' No problem.

There's no true villain in the film, only a vague criminal organization known as `The Third Eye,' but one of the rival gangs is headed by sexy Janine Reynaud. We're introduced to her character, Freda, in a club as she belts out a cool (and heavily over-dubbed) rock song with a snazzy rock combo behind her.

This is one of those movies that has much unintentional humor in the dialog and situations. It will keep you rolling. Also, Robbie Poitevin provides an entertaining score that far outshines anything on the screen.

This was Tab Hunter's only spy movie, thank goodness. He's a lousy actor, even flubs his lines at one point, so it's fortunate for us that this aging beach bum didn't find more work in the genre. The film is very convoluted and doesn't make much sense in the end so it's hard to give a damn about Tab anyway. Tab's a journalist who prints a story that neither the good guys not the bad guys like very much. Hence, he's marked for death by bad spies and framed for murder by the good spies. He can't win.

There are a few good things about this general failure of a film. Daniela Bianchi is a big plus. Two more actors help to ease the pain of watching too much Tab. Umberto Raho and Franco Ressel aren't given enough to do here but their presence will help keep you awake. Both are good guys in this film, a rare treat in itself.

The score by Carlo Rustichelli (conducted by Bruno Nicolai) is one of the best things about the film but frankly you won't be missing much if you skip this one.

If the prospect of watching Jean Seberg dangle from a crane is appealing to you then perhaps you may get something out of this pointless exercise. As it sits there is really very little to recommend here other than the luminous beauty of the star.

The story, the smuggling of little black boxes that jam the Greek radar stations, is nothing to get excited about and director Claude Chabrol refuses to inject much in the way of action or suspense to offset it. Chabrol made a few spy flicks early in his career (see Our Agent Tiger) but this one must be considered the weakest.

The film opens with an anonymous quotation: `I don't ask you to believe it but I suggest that you dream about it.' There is a certain dream-like quality to the proceedings but this lackadaisical film is nearly anti-spy cinema. If the question is `Who has the black box?' the reply simply has to be `Who cares?'

This short film, the English-dubbed print only runs about an hour, is by-the-numbers spy stuff but it is never boring. It doesn't have time to be! Luis Davila (Ypotron, Make Your Bets Ladies, The Viscount) is agent Mike Murphy (for us English speakers) and he's after a ray gun that completely disintegrates whatever gets in the way of its blue beam.

The ratio of action per minute is way up there. Four people are killed in the first five minutes! The last of these is unfortunate enough to have his head caught in a car window and is then dragged down the street! There are plenty of fights (contrary to the short blurb on the back of SWV's tape box, the fights are actually pretty well staged and exciting), car chases, gun battles, torture, and people getting slapped around.

You could actually do a lot worse than this little adventure, believe me. Director Gregg Tallas (Assignment Skybolt) has made a pretty fun no-budget thriller that falls into the so-bad-it's-good category.

This was Ken Clark's first foray in the spy genre and it's easily the weakest of his half-dozen adventures. FX-18 is a juvenile take on one of Paul Kenny's Coplan novels although I suspect it's been `dumbed' down beyond recognition. Ken's name in the English-dubbed print is Francis Cabtry or something like that and he's given the voice usually reserved for thugs.

Second-billed Jany Clair is a pouty beauty who graced Mission to Caracas and FX-18 Superspy but here she's given little to do but get slapped around and tortured. Yes, this is a world where the men are brutes and the women like it.

Director Maurice Cloche also made Baraka X-77 and The Viscount but this time around it seems all the departments of film making are second rate; acting, editing, even the score by Eddie Barclay and Michel Colombier, which has its jazzy moments, is largely forgettable. There's some nice scenery off the coast of Spain to look at but that isn't enough to salvage this wreck.

While not the best of Ken Clark's spy adventures, Tiffany Memorandum is by no means the bottom of the lot. It has a great score by Riz Ortolani, some good locations in Paris and Berlin, lots of exciting fisticuffs, and death by clock. TM's main failing is the complicated and not very exciting plot. There are so many twists and false identities that it is sometimes hard to tell who is doing what and to whom.

This time, according to the English-dubbed print anyway, Ken is Dick Hallan, a journalist for the Herald-Tribune. He gets mixed up in international politics through a series of incredible coincidences and is finally coerced by the CIA (not really) to follow the intrigue to its unremarkable end.

This one's for fans of big Ken and I know you're out there.

Part of the fun of watching Last Plane To Baalbeck is discovering for yourself just who is who. Is Jacques Sernas the agent sent to stop the illicit arms sales to the Middle East? Is Rossana Podesta the drug addicted stewardess out to make a big score? Is George Sanders running the show behind his archaeologist day job? Or is it Yoko Tani, his assistant, who is the real brains behind the operation?

I'll tell you one thing, it ain't Fulco Lulli. He went on to play the rotund beer magnate villain in the lesser Lightning Bolt. Here Lulli's a jolly fellow in the company of Sernas but just who's side is he on exactly? Lulli does things in this movie like shoot seagulls from Sernas's yacht. Not only that, his gunfire turns out to be Morse code! Good thing ammunition is cheap when you have to send long messages.

The true identity of the secret agent isn't revealed until well over an hour into the picture so in the mean time you can enjoy the groovy jazz score by Marcello De Martino, the nice black and white photography of some exotic and ancient Beirut-area locations, and the fun gangster-era lingo of the bad guys like `go fly a kite,' `you heels,' and the ever-popular `you dirty low-down rats.' And don't laugh when a cop tells his men to go over the classifieds in the newspaper for the last two years and see if there's a secret code. They find one!

Despite the bad rap this OSS 117 adventure has taken over the years, a recent reevaluation suggests that kinder words be spoken about it. The U.S. re-titling, Shadow of Evil, turns out to be quite appropriate for a low-key adventure that relies more on atmosphere than action. This is not to say that the film is a resounding success but neither is it one of the genre entries that should be passed by entirely.

Director Andre Hunebelle, credited on this print as Cyril Grize, made four OSS 117 movies in the sixties of which this is the second. One might argue that Hunebelle's familiarity with the character of Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath aka OSS 117, lead to his experimenting with different approaches in filming his adventures.

Hunebelle takes a noir approach, at least visually, to large sections of the film. Much of the action takes place at night with plenty of shadows in which our characters can hover about. Contrary to what the film's detractors say, this is a good looking film even if experienced as a bad VHS dupe. The score by Michel Magne, credited here as Garry Sherman, uses eastern influences to good effect in creating soundscapes rather than themes, an unusual approach for the genre.

Shadow of Evil is not a failure but neither will it land at the top of most people's list. Make up your own mind.

Berlin in winter. The days are wet and dark, the deeds darker. Thus the scene is set for one of the genre's most enjoyable serious entries. Yes, it's a simple story; there are no madmen with visions of world domination, no fancy gadgets to distract but it's a story told with flair and the swift pace is that of the petty thief on the run, drawn into a high-stakes game of espionage.

Christian-Jaque, director of one of the segments of The Dirty Game, pulls all the elements together this time; a first rate score by Gerard Calvi, a great and varied cast, an excellent script, and appealing locations result in a minor gem. Dutch camera angles abound as we chase the European winter in Berlin, Lucerne, Paris, and Vienna. The look of the film manages to stay just this side of drab, the natural light is weak but the feeling isn't one of hopelessness, rather it's a sort of dignified gloom.

If you're looking for a well-crafted piece of espionage drama that treads the fine line between humor and bleakness, and features a stellar cast at their best, you just found it. As Georges Geret remarks halfway through the film `Spying is no job, it's a profession,' and this is a very professional look at it indeed.

Much-touted mainstream entry recommended to serious spy buffs as a well-crafted, bleak treatise on perceived realities. Deeper than many other spy films, the pleasure is derived from sifting through the strata of meaning in John Le Carre's story and reveling in the fine performances and top-notch film making.

This is one of those movies where you'll recognize all the actors; Harry Andrews, Roy Kinnear, Robert Flemyng, Lynn Redgrave, David Warner, etc. One standout is Simone Signoret as Elsa, a woman without a country, who scorns Dobbs and his attempts at clearing up the death of her husband. A concentration camp survivor, Elsa has no illusions about patriotism nor allegiances in that regard, remarking to Dobbs `I am a battlefield for you… toy soldiers."

Quincy Jones plays some fun cinematic tricks with the soundtrack (Astrud Gilberto sings the theme song) and it is appropriately melancholy for the material. Director Sidney Lumet is in fine form here and through the half-light of Freddie Young's cinematography is revealed the gray world beneath our intricately constructed lives.