(Spoilers.) Aka Nightmare House, Cries of Terror and Frantic
Heartbeat.
Paul Naschy movies are a bit like
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. They've been around forever and (generally) have terrible
ingredients — i.e., dull direction, bad acting and worse dubbing, hilarious
storylines and etc. vs. "no artificial ingredients" and empty calories — and are in
no way a culinary cum cinematic treat in accordance to traditional values, but
if you're a fan no one will ever be able to convince you just how terrible they
are. But then, much like eating crap is more fun than eating healthy, watching
crap is usually more fun than watching quality.
John Landis & Joe Dante on Paul Naschy:
And what's crappy about Panic Beats? The acting, for one.
Perhaps some of those involved in this movie can act — we've seen a believable
Naschy in other movies, for example — but the atrocious dubbing guarantees no
one will ever know here. And then the direction: for the most part, it is of
the Tom Slaughter school of static filming — see, for example, Slaughter's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(1935) — displaying the workmanship simplicity of point and shoot, a constant
exercise of the kind of dull and inexpressive camerawork endemic of no-budget
productions or visually uncreative directors. (We love the long, dull scene of
Naschy, to the right, and his on-screen wife, to the left, shot from the waist
up and with the Eifel Tower in the background — why cut and edit or give an
expository scene life when you've got the Eifel Tower?)
Then, of course, there is the improbable
narrative involving an innately extreme number implausibly successful murders
in a short succession — Wifey! Loyal family maid! Bothersome mistress!
Bothersome husband! — and a poorly timed re-marriage that ruffles no feathers,
a bloody murder site that is easily cleaned, two unscrupulous henchmen who
simply disappear when no longer convenient to the plot, and so much more.
Including that classic of low-caliber movies we (meaning: us men) all love:
attractive babes with respectfully trimmed bushes doing gratuitous female nudity!
(Gals get Naschy discreetly naked in the bathtub or bed, something that all
women outside of his movies probably don't really want to see.)
But then again, all those flaws —
all that which is "crappy" in the movie — are also a major
contributing factor to the appeal of Naschy's movie. Were Panic Beatsa tad more professional, a tad more efficiently
made, it would play out like a second-rate TV movie with nudity and gore. And
thus be indefinitely less enjoyable than it actually is.
As is the case with so many Naschy
movies, Panic Beats hearkens back
to both a previous Naschy production, Horror
Rises from the Tomb (1973 / trailer),
as well some cinema classics of the past, in this case Gaslight (1940 / clip
and 1944 / trailer)
and Diabolique (1955 / trailer).
But in regard to Horror Rises from the
Tomb, although Panic Beatsutilizes
both the character of the long dead, killer knight Alaric de Marnac and the basic location of a secluded
countryside mansion, the film is not a direct sequel to the earlier movie. No,
as is the case with the let's-scare-her-to-death plotline and the
dead-man-rising-from-the-bathtub scene, Naschy merely reuses familiar aspects
to cook up a new movie. In the case of Panic Beats, an almost schizoid one: up until the very last five minutes or so,
it remains solidly grounded in the realm of the thriller (albeit with
occasional scenes of cheap but exorbitant gore) only to suddenly pull the
supernatural stops out of the hat before ending abruptly and bloodily. One
could, basically, compare the last three minutes to a vodka or tequila chaser
that follows a beer: it sure adds a nice kick.
The title, Latidos
de Pánico / Panic Beats, is an obvious reference to the heart of the
doomed and uniquely beautiful Geneviève (Julia Saly, aka Julia "La
Pocha" Salinero*), the loving if annoyingly clinging and slightly
hysterical wife of the fawning Paul (Paul Naschy [6 Sept
1934 – 30 Nov 2009]), a man who cannot say a single sentence to his wife
without an endearment. As she is weak of heart, her doctor suggests that Paul
remove her to the countryside for her health, and so, after a long scene in
which Paul tells the doc all sorts of stuff that one would normally not tell a
doc but that does well to fill in the viewer about everything they might need
to know about the husband & wife and their past, the Parisian couple make
their way to his family manor.** What follows is a tale of greed, betrayal,
evil, horniness, death and killer ghostly knights that has as many twists and
turns as it does women with speaking parts. The result is a movie as
incompetently told as it is enjoyable — and, yes, you will laugh when you
aren't supposed to.
*July Saly, who aside from the 14
films she made directed by Naschy also appeared in two directed by Amando de Ossorio
(6 April 1918 – 13 Jan 2001), Night of
the Seagulls(1975 / trailer) & The
Possessed(1975 / full movie), as well as two by León Klimovsky (16 Oct 1906
– 8 April 1996), The People Who Own the
Dark(1976 / trailer) & Death
of a Hoodlum (1975 / credits),
stopped making movies by 1985 and has seemed to have disappeared completely. That's her below on the cover of a flamenco record. (Ole!) In
Panic Beats, the only thing more
notable than her extremely bad acting and extremely protracted death scene —
she literally (and hilariously) groans and moans and grasps at her heart for
forever — is her exquisite, non-traditional beauty... and her penchant for
wearing furs.
**According to Ninja Dixon
and others, Panic Beats was shot in
General Franco's old villa. If true, the film reveals that Franco had an
absolutely horrendous taste in interior design. Half the rooms look like those
of a cheap whorehouse (or at least a cheap film set). But then, has good taste ever
been expected of mass-murdering fascists?
Like during Panic Beats' opening scene, before we are even introduced to Paul
and Geneviève, which is set in a time the long past with a modern-looking naked
woman (Carole Kirkham*) running through a foggy
and strobe-light-lit forest,** only to stumble, fall, and be beaten to death with
a mace by the evil knight Alaric de Marnac. It seems that his cheating wife
robbed the crazed knight of all mercy for women, and legend has it that he
returns every 100 years to kill the wives of his descendants. A legend that Julie
(Frances Ondiviela), the conniving niece of housemaid Mabile (Lola Gaos [2 Dec
1921 – 4 July 1993]) makes sure to tell Geneviève: from the moment Julie and Paul
first cast lust-filled eyes upon each other, any viewer with a brain knows that
Geneviève is in the way. But, wait! There's more to Paul than meets the eye: he
not only has an unwanted wife, but an unwanted mistress, Mireille (Silvia
Miró***), as well. With or without Viagra, the guy gets around it seems.
* Kirkham's auspicious film career of exactly
four movies includesEligio
Herrero's post-apocalypse set Animales
racionales / Human Animals (1983
/ trailer),
in which she gets porked by a dog, and ended with Ismael
González's intriguingly entitled I
Love Hitler (1984 / full film).
** A type of lighting of scenes
extremely popular in horror films of the 80s, a decade in which nights and
graveyards were always fog-filled and lit by strobes (see: The Night Flier
[1997]).
***A woman of intriguing
facial features, she hands down has the best bod of the movie (below). Panic Beats appears to be her final
film appearance.
Although Paul Naschy is the
nominal lead of the film, he probably has less screen time than that of the
women combined, despite his presence in two roles, possibly three: aside from
playing Paul and Alaric de Marnac, the physical shape of the junky boyfriend, whom
one never fully sees, looks an awful lot like that of Naschy. (He's also the
director, actually: "Jacinto Molina [Álvarez]" is his birth name — a fact that probably already
known to fans of the man.) But if one character truly gets the most attention,
then it is Julie, a woman as rotten inside as she is youthful and beautiful.
She commits the most unexpected and gore-laden killing in Panic Beats, and at one point also offers a nice homage to the
Euro-gothics of yesteryear by wandering around the darkened house in a long and
lacy white nightgown.
As mentioned, Panic Beats is hardly the best film in
the traditional sense of a good movie. But if you make it past the somewhat
plodding bit after the opening scene of gratuitous nudity and blood, it proves
to be a twisting and turning, trashy and entertaining hodgepodge of borrowed
ideas and bad dubbing lightly splattered with nudity and guts. And as an added
plus, everyone dies in the end!
Directed by Ivan Maksimov. This month's Short
Film is located smack dab in the middle of "WTF Land" — as in: "WTF
does that mean?"
Left to Right, aka Sleva
Napravo (Russian: Слева направо) is a student film, the first animated film made by Russian
animator Ivan Leonidovich Maximov
(born 19 November 1958). The music is by the Polish electronic
music artist Marek Bilinski
and, according to the imdb, four authors — Bakir Dzhusupbekov, K. Konirkulzhaev,
Dzhamshed Mansurov and Maksimov — wrote the Bolero-like non-narrative of the
"dreadful visions of a hungry puppy" [MUBI].
Over at Print Mag
they have a rather terse interview in which Maximov
says the short is "a sketch
of transformation and vanity". The vanity we do not see, the transformation, yes: the short
is basically a plotless continuity of growth, metamorphosis and pooping that arguable
belies Maksimov's own assertion that he doesn't take drugs.
"Many
people have no channel to their unconscious, so their
fantasy and imagination can work nice only with the help of drugs. They cannot realize that someone can be constructed otherwise."
In any event, we
would say, like Wilf Shaw,
that Left to Right is a "lovely
little short, genuinely weird and [with] interesting visuals and very
pleasingly rhythmic, though not much more to be said about it than that."
It is also not the weirdest short of the numerous short films Maksimov has made
over the years, most of which can be viewed on his blog (click on his name above to get there). It is, however, the
first of his films that we saw, and thus the one we choose to present. Enjoy!
We were so busy
putting together Part II of our
career review of cult actress Janine Reynaud that the passing of another cult
beauty of the 60s slipped past us: Vienna-born Maria Rohm (nee Helga Grohmann),
talented cult actress and wife of British independent film producer and
screenwriter Harry Alan Towers (19 Oct 1920 – 31 July 2009), went the way
of the wind at the age of 72 in Toronto, Canada, the home of Bruce McArthur.
Rohm, who began her acting career as a child stage actress, seems to have begun her film career at
the age of twenty playing a prostitute in a 1964 film, but soon after she
married producer Towers (also in 1964) he began putting her in many of his
projects, including nine different movies directed by Jess Franco (12 May 1930
– 2 April 2013). She retired from acting in 1976, but like her husband remained
active as a producer. Let's take a look at her movies...
Teufel im Fleisch
(1964,
writ & dir Hermann Wallbrück)
Maria Rohm's
feature film debut as a prostitute. As far as we can tell, this German language
production was released in the USA in 1967 as Devil in the Flesh. In Germany, it recently even had a DVD
re-release — German language only. German sources generally list this movie as
a 1963 production.
German
trailer to
Devil in the
Flesh:
Director
Wallbrück is a bit of a mystery: his oeuvre seems limited, the earliest credit
being as cameraman for a German comedy entitled Das Bad auf der Tenne (1943 / credits),
the third feature-length, full color film production in Nazi Germany (though the
fourth to be released); Goebbels supposedly wasn't too fond of the film due to
the "sparsely dressed ladies", but the film was a hit.
Post-war, Wallbrück showed up next in Austria. According to Robert
von Dassanowsky in his book Austrian Cinema, A History: "The
third [post-war Austrian] film of 1946 was Schleichendes
Gift / Slow Poison [poster above],
an "enlightenment" film by the German director and cinematographer
Hermann Wallbrück on the post-war venereal disease epidemic."
And it is to
this topic, venereal disease, that Wallbrück returned to in what seems to be
his fourth and final directorial credit, Devil
in the Flesh. Interesting
names in the cast are above all the females: Ruth Gassmann, who went on to star
in the classic German "enlightenment" films of the 60s, Helga (1967
/ trailer),
and it sequels Helga und Michael
(1968) and Helga und die Männer – Die
sexuelle Revolution (1969 / poster below), and the singer-actress Dunja
Rajter, who is found in both one of the best Rialto-produced Edgar Wallace
films, Der unheimliche Mönch (1965 / German trailer),
as well as an infamous movie considered one of the all-time worst ever made in
Germany, Christian Anders' unforgetable Die Brut des Bösen /Roots of Evil (1969
/ trailer).
The male lead, Aleksandar Gavric [28 May 1932 – 6
Dec 1972], is also found in one of the better forgotten films about war and joy
girls, Valerio Zurlini's Le soldatesse /
The Camp Followers / Women at War (1965 / full subtitled film).
The text at Videobuster
(like the German trailer voiceover) is properly sensationalistic: "The
fear of an unwanted child disappears, and the high risk of sexually transmitted
diseases increases. A topic that cannot be any more pressing than it is now. Shocking
pictures show the viewer the cruel magnitude of diabolical, sexually
transmitted diseases. This movie changed Germany. It received extensive
press coverage, and was highly praised by the highest political
offices."
For that, at 2001, the
Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt
more or less says: "A German medical team is dispatched to the tropics of
Africa to study the spread of venereal diseases brought in by white colonizers.
Under the excuse of 'we care', viewers are presented an awkward,
pseudoscientific storyline and documentary footage about the situation of
sexually transmitted diseases in Europe and Africa. A speculative snapshot
without any relevance and lasting educational effect."
Mozambique
(1964, dir. Robert Lynn)
The German poster
above is by August Hoff,
about whom we could find nothing. Mozambique
is one of producer Towers' first feature-film productions after working for almost
a decade producing programs for TV; he turned to director Robert Lynn (9 June
1918 – 15 Jan 1982) as his director.
Robert Lynn was
primarily active on TV or as a second-unit and/or assistant director, but he
occasionally took the helm and directed a feature film alone. The result was competently
directed, entertaining flicks like this one orCoast of Skeletons
(1965). Producer Harry Alan Towers (as "Peter Welbeck") supplied the
"original story" from which the professional, Aussie-born scribe Peter
Yeldham created a screenplay. (Among his other scripts: And Then There Were None
[1965] and The Liquidator [1965
/ trailer].)
Towers' young wife, Maria Rohm, makes an uncredited appearance — don't blink —
as "young woman at bar" ("wearing a very vivid shade of
lipstick").
Trailer
to
Mozambique:
DVD Drive-In
has the plot: "Rumpled, down-on-his luck American pilot Brad Webster
(Steve Cochran [24 May 1917 – 15 June 1965], of The Beat Generation [1959 / opening scene])
can't get arrested in Lisbon, after cracking up his plane and killing everyone
aboard. He can't get arrested, that is, until he gets arrested in a bar fight,
giving Police Commandant Commarro (Paul Hubschmid, aka "Paul
Christian" [20 July 1917 – 31 Dec 2001], of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [1953, see: Ray Harryhausen]
and The Day the Sky Exploded [1958 /
trailer])
a chance to blackmail Webster into taking a job in Mozambique for the
mysterious Colonel Valdez. Why? Well, Commarro makes the plan appear to be his
way to get troublemaker Webster out of Lisbon, but really he's using Brad for
bait. Webster's new employer, Colonel Valdez, has made millions of pounds
sterling selling drugs to Zanzibar, and the only way the money can be traced to
its Swiss bank locations is through a coded sheet that Commarro hopes to ferret
out, with Brad's unwitting help, after Valdez's lawyer was zapped in Lisbon.
However, once Brad arrives in the city of Lourenco Marques in Mozambique, he
finds out Valdez is dead, and three people are vying for his smuggling empire:
his beautiful, tortured widow, Ilona (Hildegard Knef [28 Dec 1925 – 1 Feb
2002], of Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns [1946] and Witchery [1988 / trailer]);
his second-in-command, greasy Da Silva (Martin Benson [10 Aug 1918 – 28 Feb
2010], The Strange World of Planet X
aka Cosmic Monsters [1958 / trailer],
Gorgo
[1961 / trailer]
and Night Creatures [1962 / trailer]);
and friendly competitor Henderson (Dietmar Schonherr [17 May 1926 – 18 July
2014], of Das Geheimnis der chinesischen
Nelke / Secret of the Chinese
Carnation [1964 / German trailer],
Das Ungeheuer von London-City / The Monster of London City [1964 / German trailer]
and Die Nylonschlinge / Nylon Noose
[1963 / German trailer]).
Brad now has to figure out what cargo he'll be flying around Africa (take a
guess), while also trying to find Christina (Vivi Bach [3 Sept 1939 – 22 April
2013]), the attractive blonde singer he met on the plane to Mozambique. You
see, naive Christina didn't realize she was hired by Valdez to be a hooker in
his night club, so when she's carted off to Zanzibar by a horny sheik (Gert van den Bergh [16 Oct 1920 – 16 Feb 1968] of The Naked Prey [1965 / trailer]), Steve has to rescue her as well as crack the case of
Valdez's murder."
The critical
view: "At least the outdoor scenery is good. That's basically my
assessment of this Harry Alan Towers production about organized crime in
Portuguese Africa. Filmed on location, Mozambique
is a spy thriller that simply falls flat in producing any sense of intrigue or
excitement. [Mystery File]"
The
song sung by Hildegard Knef in Mozambique,
Das geht beim
ersten Mal vorbei:
The forgiving
view: "Actually shot in the country of its name […] Mozambique has some seriously politically incorrect charms. Cochran
[…] was approaching 50 at this point and looked like a retired boxer. Seeing
him paired up romantically with adorably sexy 20-something actress Hildegard
Kneff [sic] is quite amusing. From the moment they meet on a plane her
character starts hitting on him. The oily Da Silva is played for all its
sinister Latino stereotypes with gusto by Benson. There's also a white slavery
ring with the creepy Da Silva selling hot white girls to a nasty Arab
tycoon/sheik and my personal anti-PC lottery winner — a killer dwarf. The movie
tries and fails miserably to ape Hitchcock but it does swing a gorgeously
mapped out climax shot on Victoria Falls — which has our hero dangling from a
bridge while assassins (and a hot Teutonic blonde, natch) try to pick him off.
[…] As a bit of a soundtrack aficionado, I'm in love with the marvelous Johnny
Douglas score that accompanies Mozambique.
Simultaneously groovy and evocative and period perfect, it oozes sex appeal and
lifts the film above its station more than once. […] Slightly ludicrous. Dated.
Sexist. […] But if you dig groovy 60's escapism and get a kick out of the Harry
Alan Towers fun-loving worldview, there's a lot of enjoyment to be had here. [Rock! Shock! Pop!]"
Regarding
legendary screen heavy and ladies man Steve Cochran, Mozambique was his last movie. Over at the imdb, Gary Brumburgh has the
details to Cochran's demise: "In 1965, Steve hired an assortment of
ladies for an 'all-girl crew' to accompany him on a boating trip to check out
locations for an upcoming film he was to produce and star in entitled Captain O'Flynn. Leaving Acapulco on
June 3rd, the boat encountered extremely stormy weather and Steve's health,
which was not good in the first place (he took ill while filming Mozambique and failed to see a doctor),
quickly took a turn for the worst. He died of an acute lung infection and was
dead for nearly a week when his drifting schooner and the girls (one of whom
was several years under-age) was rescued from the ocean near Guatemala on June
21st. A fitting if not troubling end for the one-time he-man Hollywood star."
And while we
don't know where Vivi "The Danish Bardot" Bach and Dietmar Schonherr
met— that's them directly above — they married in 1965.
From
the movie — Vivi Bach sings
Hey Boy, geh'
deinen Weg! (Hey You!):
Twenty-Four Hours to Kill
(1965,
dir. Peter Bezencenet [15 June 1914 – Sept 2003])
Set in Lebanon,
filmed in Lebanon: Towers' young wife, Maria ("Marie Rohm") Rohm,
plays Claudine — she works for "The Firm". The real stars of the
movie are the slumming Mickey Rooney (23 Sept 1920 – 6 April 2014) and Lex
Barker (8 May 1919 – 11 May 1973). The latter was always a bigger name in Europe than
the US. In her autobiography, Detour: a Hollywood Tragedy — My Life
With Lana Turner, My Mother (1988), Cheryl Crane claimed that
he sexually assaulted her several times while he was married to her mother.
Nice guy.
Oh, yeah:
Barker's stewardess gal pal is played by Helga Sommerfeld
(5 March 1941 – 28 Sept 1991), who's also found in the Bryan Edgar Wallace
krimi, Das Phantom von Soho (1964
/ German trailer).
That's her doing cheesecake directly below, found at one of Quentin Tarantino's favorite websites, WikiFeet.
The plot, as
more-or-less supplied at the German language website Remember It For Later:
"On a flight to Athens, technical problems force pilot James Faulkner (Lex
Barker) to land in Beirut. While most of the team is dazzled by the unexpected
visit to the metropolis, flight attendant Norman Jones (Mickey Rooney) is less
is thrilled. What his colleagues don't know: for years he was employed as a
messenger for Beirut-based smuggler Malouf (Walter Slezak [3 May 1902 – 21
April 1983], of Hitchcock's Lifeboat
[1944 / trailer]),
from whom he stole 40,000 British pounds. It doesn't take the gangster boss
long to find out that Jones is back in the city… in desperation, Jones appeals
to his colleagues for help, without telling them of his criminal past. They now
have to survive the next 24 hours until the machine can start again..."
The Movie Scene,
which says that "Twenty-Four Hours
to Kill is one of those movies which when you watch for the first time you
will quickly become fascinated by […] but it isn't the sort of movie which you
will find a desire to watch more than once," also says: "When someone
says the words Beirut, I tend to think of 'war-torn Beirut', the words so
frequently used on the news whenever a journalist was there giving a live
report. So it is interesting to come across Twenty-Four Hours to Kill, which takes us to a very beautiful
Beirut before the war-torn part became synonymous with its name. The irony is
that the Beirut shown in this 60s movie is not that different to other Middle
Eastern locations used in other movies during the 60s, but because this is a
Beirut so few of us will have ever seen it adds something extra to the movie
and what a beautiful place it was."
City of Fear
(1965, dir. Peter
Bezencenet)
Towers' young
wife, Maria Rohm, works with Peter Bezencement again in what seems to also be
his last directorial project; a former film editor, he seems to have left the
film biz after City of Fear. The
movie is clearly a Marissa Mell vehicle. (Go here for a fun Melissa Mell fanblog.)
Co-scripter Max Bourneseems never to have written another screenplay.
Though a
Austro-British production, the only plot description we could find was in German
at Italo Cinema,
and it reveals plot developments that just don't fly in the contemporary world (the
following translation is loose): "The American journalist Mike Forster
(Paul Maxwell) is waiting for his flight to Budapest at the Vienna Airport when
he meets and gets in a conversation with a stranger named Ferenc (Pinkas Braun
[7 Jan 1923 – 24 June 2008] of Mission
Stardust [1967 / trailer],
Im Bahn des Unheimlichen
[1968], Der Bucklige von Soho [1966
/ German trailer]
and much more). Ferenc tells of his sister's deathly ill child who needs a
serum that isn't available in Budapest. He tries to convince Mike to smugger
the small package over to his sister, as Ferenc, as a refugee, cannot. The name
and phone number of the woman are on a piece of paper. Before he can say no, Ferenc
has disappeared again, so Mike has no other choice but to do as requested. Arriving in Budapest, the journalist loses the
piece of paper with the address. Since it could be a matter of life and death, he
gets an announcement broadcast on radio Budapest, whereupon soon after a
mysterious woman named Ilona Kovacs (Marisa Mell) shows up at his hotel. As
they talk, Mike becomes increasingly suspicious and finally checks the contents
of the package. To his astonishment, inside are two American passports issued
to Ilona and her father (Albert Lieven [23 June 1906 – 22 Dec 1971] of Das Geheimnis der Gelben Narzissen
[1961] and Gorilla Gang [1968 / trailer])…"
In the book Harry Alan Towers: The Transnational Career
of a Cinematic Contrarian, author Dave Mann opinions that City of Fear is "a tentative and
ill-made venture filmed in Austria and Hungry": "This time the
McGuffin is a package containing false passports to enable dissidents to escape
from behind the Iron Curtain. In order to satisfy the requests of both American
and Austrian sponsors, British-based Canadian Paul Maxwell starred opposite
former star Terry Moore then on the way down and Austrian Marisa Mell then on
the way up. Shot in B&W, like the other Towers film directed by Peter
Bezencenet, Twenty-Four Hours to Kill,
City of Fear is essentially a rehash
of countless episodes of British spy series […]."
Our
Man in Marrakesh
(1966,
dir. Don Sharp) Trailer
to Our Man in
Marrakesh:
Aka: Bang! Bang! You're Dead! Once again:
story by Towers, script by Peter Yeldham, and Towers' young wife, Maria Rohm —
this time in an uncredited appearance as "Woman in Carriage". We took
a quick look at this movie seven years ago in our blog entry R.I.P. Donald Sharp.
There, we
wrote: "Retitled Bang! Bang! You're
Dead! for its US release. The New
York Times says "Films like Bang,
Bang, You're Dead helped kill the movie career of Tony Randall in the
mid-1960s" — but who ever believes The
New York Times? [Hey, if Donald "Dotard" Trump doesn't, why
should you?] This euro-spy persiflage possesses a must-see relevance best
summed up simply with: 'Tony Randall versus Klaus Kinski.'
Web of Mystery calls it 'One
of the best of the 60s Euro-Spy cycle,' pointing out its great cast which,
aside from Randall and Kinski, also includes Herbert Lom
(99 Women [1969 / trailer]), Wilfrid
Hyde-White (The Third Man [1949 / trailer]), Terry-Thomas (The Abominable Dr Phibes [1971 / trailer]), Margaret Lee (Venus in Furs [1969 / trailer])and a
delectable Senta Berger (Sherlock
Holmes & the Deadly Necklace [1962]).
Bang!
Bang! You're Dead! is basically a low budget riff on North by Northwest (1959 / trailer) but set in
Marrakesh, with Randall playing an innocent oil company rep (verses Cary
Grant's ad executive) who gets caught up in a plot involving 2 million bucks
bribe money to fix UN votes."
Among the many
films Margaret Lee — seen below, not from this film — made, 11 were with Klaus Kinski — the last of which is
the wonderfully sleazy La bestia uccide
a sangue freddo (1971), aka Slaughter Hotel. She pretty much retired thereafter, but for a rare
appearance.
Trailer
to
Slaughter
Hotel:
The
Million Eyes of Su-Muru
(1966,
dir. Lindsay Shonteff)
Towers' young
wife, Maria Rohm, finally gets a larger part (but no name on the poster) in
this adaptation of a Sax Rohmer (15 Feb 1883 – 1 June 1959) novel. Rohmer,
born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, was one of the most successful and well-paid
English-language authors of 1920s and 30s, his success built upon his famous
personification of the decidedly non-racist (NOT!) concept of the "the
Yellow Peril", Dr. Fu-Manchu, whom he introduced to the world in 1913 with
the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
Rohmer went on to write 15 Fu-Manchu books — some of which Harry Alan Towers
was to later adapt, if extremely loosely. After Towers' first Fu-Manchu film,The Face of Fu Manchu (1965 /
trailer), Towers also
turned to a later and possibly somewhat less-known Rohmer character, a female
counterpart of Fu-Manchu named Su-Muru, whom Rohmer had introduced in 1950 in
the novel Nude in Mink / The Sins
of Su-Muru and eventually
featured in five more novels. (Both characters, of course, existed beforehand
in other forms — i.e., radio and/or serials. Indeed, Nude in Mink was a novel form of the Su-Muru radio series of the
late 40s.)
Trailer to
The Million
Eyes of Su-Muru:
Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff (5 Nov 1935 – 11 March 2006) is now unjustly forgotten, but in his day
he worked on a number of fun low budget movies ranging from agent to
horror to sex. He began his illustrious career by directing the Richard Gordon
productions Devil Doll (1964 /
trailer)
and Curse of the Voodoo (1965 /
trailer)
and ended it with satire Angels, Devils
and Men (2009 / trailer).
While Maria
Rohm gets a lot of screen time as Helga, the right-hand breasts of the titular
evil babe Sumuru, the true female star of The
Million Eyes of Su-Muru is, of course, Shirley Eaton (of What a Carve Up! [1961 / full film]
and And Then There Were None
[1965]). As Classic Film and TV Café
points out, Shirley Eaton "retired from acting in 1969 [after doing the sequel to
this film, which we look at later] to raise her family. That hasn't kept Ms.
Eaton from becoming a sculptor and photographer, penning an autobiography
(1999's Golden Girl), publishing a book on poetry, and appearing at
film conventions." In an interview conducted with the said website in
2014, Ms. Eaton said, "After I finished The Million Eyes of Su-Muru and
[the sequel] The Girl from Rioand was coming home in the
plane was when I made the decision to quit. I hated being away from my baby
Jason and his brother Grant! However, I did enjoy being the wicked lady Su-Muru
in two rather bad films, which I had not had the chance to be before. I do
believe they have become cult films now."
The Million Eyes of Su-Muruwas filmed at
the Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong and stars, as the good guys, Frankie Avalon
(of Panic in Year Zero! [1962 / trailer],
The
Haunted House of Horror [1969 / trailer,
with Jill Haworth],
and more) and gay heartthrob George Nader (19 Oct 1921 – 4 Feb 2002, of Robot
Monster [1953 / trailer]).
George
Nader gets a girl:
The plot, as found at the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review: "Su-Muru (Eaton) leads an all-female army and
has a plan to conquer the world by sending her women out to seduce the world's
most powerful men. However, one of her girls has committed the ultimate
betrayal — fallen in love — and so Su-Muru sends a team to kill her in Rome.
British Intelligence persuades CIA agent Nick West (Nader) to go to Rome to
investigate because the murdered girl was an aide to the Sindonesian military
chief Colonel Medika (Jon Fong). There Nick and his playboy friend Tommy Carter
(Avalon) are plunged into action when Medika is abducted and killed by Su-Muru's
girls. West and Tommy are then sent to Hong Kong where West is asked to
masquerade as the Sindonesian President Boong's (Klaus Kinski*) new security
chief. Instead, West is snatched and taken to Su-Muru's nearby island base where
she persuades him to help Helga (Maria Rohm), one of her girls, get close to Boong in order to assassinate him. A
spanner is thrown in the works when Helga decides she cannot go through with
her mission and wants to flee Su-Muru's organisation."
*"The
sexual abuse claims levelled against Klaus Kinski by his daughter Pola make it
clear that cinema fans have deified a monster. The evil that he oozed on
the silver screen has now been retroactively authenticated by his alleged
depravity. [Spiegel]"
Fantastic Musings
laments, "Poor George Nader! Not only is he saddled
here with some of the lamest comic one-liners ever written, but he also
receives lower billing than Frankie Avalon, who plays what amounts to (for all
practical purposes) his sidekick. Not only that, most of the audience is
probably too busy ogling the beautiful women to pay any attention to him, and
then Klaus Kinski comes along in a cameo and out-acts the rest of the cast.
[...]"
I'm in a Jess Franco State of Mind,
however, infers that the film is "entertaining and visually stylish"
and that "fun is the key word here", adding that Su-Muru "owns
an island undermined with high explosives and populated by a crack army of
female assassins dressed in black tights. We see plenty of bare midriffs but no
nudity. Boot and leather fetishists will have no complaints and watching Eaton
whip a chained-up Nader is camp fun of the highest order. Su-Muru's dream is a
world dominated by women where Love is a capital offense. That seems just fine
with Nader as he takes every chance to get into a hot clutch with every Su-Muru
operative in reach."
Five
Golden Dragons (1966,
dir. Jeremy Summers)
A German/British
coproduction shot on location in Hong Kong, it is the first of four films
Jeremy Summers (18 Aug 1931 – 14 Dec 2016) was to direct for Harry Alan
Towers. Previously, Summers directed the rather dated Gerry and the Pacemakers
feature film, Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965 / trailer
/ song).
As to be expected, though set in Asia and featuring five bad guys — the titular
Five Golden Dragons — everyone is Caucasian. At least on the German poster,
Maria Rohm is finally listed. She plays the leading lady Ingrid; the bigger
female name, Maria Perschy ([23 Sept 1938 – 3 Dec 2004], of The Ghost Galleon [1974 / trailer]
and so much more), who plays Ingrid's sister Margret, bites the dust, thus making
Ingrid the leading lady be default.
Trailer
to
Five Golden
Dragons:
Five
Golden Dragons is often sold as an Edgar Wallace movie, but it hardly qualifies
as such: Towers simply wrote a Wallace character, Commissioner Sanders (Rupert
Davies [22 May 1916 – 22 Nov 1976], of Frightmare [1974 / trailer],
Sapphire
[1959], Witchfinder General
[1968], and so much more), into the movie and Viola! The film became a Wallace
movie although it isn't really based on anything he wrote.
From
Five Golden Dragons —
Yukarito
Ito sings:
Over at the
generally non-critical website Aveleyman,
some guy named Scott Palmer reduces the plot to the following: "Often
amusing little mystery/adventure picture starring Bob Cummings (9 June 1910 – 2
Dec 1990) as an American playboy in Hong Kong. After a man named Porter is
pushed off a rooftop to his death, the police discover a note in his pocket
addressed to Bob Mitchell (Cummings). The only thing in the note is the cryptic
message 'Five Golden Dragons'. Mitchell encounters murder, intrigue and
beautiful women…."
"You could be forgiven for expecting Five Golden Dragons to be a
knock-off of the 1960s Fu Manchu series, given the title, the Hong Kong setting
and the involvement of Fu producer Harry Alan Towers, director Jeremy Summers
and star Christopher Lee. In fact, this is a very different kettle of fish,
being more in the tradition of the Bond-inspired spy spoofs that littered the
decade […]. As such, it's a bit of an oddity — needlessly convoluted with far
too many characters (seemingly, the need to cram in as many recognizable names
as possible was more important than plot cohesion) and having an uneasy mix of
comedy and action. It has that odd Euro co-production vibe to it as well, here
made even more uneven by the Hong Kong connection. The result is a film that is
never boring, but which really fails to hang together. [...] Eventually, we get
to meet four Dragons — a marquee-busting and budget-friendly brief appearance
from Christopher Lee, George Raft, Brian Donlevy and Dan Duryea, who presumably
did a day's work and got a holiday in Hong Kong out of it. The identity of the
fifth Dragon is the film's big mystery — the solution to this makes no sense at
all, given that none of the Dragons know each other anyway. [...] But if you
forget about wanting any sort of storyline and simply sit back to enjoy the
sheer ridiculousness of it all, then this is enjoyably wacky. It's the sort of
film that couldn't have been made in any other decade, the somewhat camp,
lightweight nature of the narrative giving it a curious innocence. There's
violence, but nothing too graphic; sexiness, but no sex. [From: Reprobate]"
"A largely
forgotten film despite its big name cast, Five Golden Dragons is an
effective little thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat first
time around, and has enough interesting direction and storyline to keep repeat
viewings interesting. Viewers just wanting to see Kinski, Donlevy, etc. will
probably be disappointed, but the film should prove of general interest to cult
movie fans and comes recommended. [From: Mondo Esoteria]"
Ninja Dixon
is more right than wrong when he gushes, "Harry Alan Towers was a genius.
I've never been bored watching a Harry-movie. Sometimes they've been bad, but
still entertaining and good quality. Five
Golden Dragons is a very charming and witty thriller set in Hong Kong, and
who deserves much more attention. [...] But the main reason to watch this movie
is Robert Cummings. The guy's a blast and with the wrong actor in this role the
comedy would be terrible. But it's not, thanks to destiny, Towers and whatever
reason Robert was cast."
The third sexy
babe of the movie is once again Margaret Lee, as Magda, a nightclub singer who proves to
have more up her sleeve than one initially thinks. In the clip below, of her
performing at the club, she speaks briefly to Peterson, played by one Austria's
more versatile character actors, Sieghardt Rupp (4 June 1931 – 20 July 2015).
He began his film career as "Tommy Rupp" in the rather obscure Mädchen für die Mambo-Bar(1959), and is perhaps best known
internationally for his juicy part in A Fistful of Dollars(1964).
Margaret
Lee sings
Five Golden
Dragons:
The
Vengeance of Fu Manchu
(1967,
dir. Jeremy Summers)
As always, the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review
has a concise plot description: "Fu
Manchu (Christopher Lee)
abducts a missionary doctor (Wolfgang Kieling
[16 March 1924 – 7 Oct 1985]) and
forces him to surgically turn one of Fu Manchu's Dacoits into a double for Sir
Dennis Nayland Smith (Douglas Wilmer). The double is substituted for Sir Dennis
and, under hypnotic command, kills Sir Dennis's maid (Mona Chong). As 'Sir
Dennis' is placed on trial and sentenced to be executed, England reels in
shock. Fu Manchu makes plans to disrupt the world by substituting doubles for
the police commissioners of other countries."
Trailer to
The Vengeance of Fu Manchu:
This is the
second movie of four that Jeremy Summers was to direct for Harry Alan Towers,
all with Maria Rohm on the cast. The German poster at the top of this entry was created by Ernst Litter (5 July 1918 – 27 Dec
2006), "one of the favorite and most productive poster artists from the
40s to the 60s"; between 1946 and 1968, he created around 600 different
film posters for the German-language market.The poster was later recycled for the English-language release of the next Fu Manchu movie, The Blood of Fu Mnachu (1968).
Somewhere in the movie, the since-retired starlette Suzanner Roquette appears as the character Maria, a fact we mention only so we have reason to use her photograph below — not from the movie, obviously enough..
The Vengeance of Fu Manchu is the third British/German co-production in
the Fu Manchu series, and the first to be filmed in Hong Kong. In the UK, it
was released on a double-bill with Lindsay Shonteff's The Million Eyes of Su-Muru.
Maria Rohm gets poster credit on most posters, no matter what land. As Ingrid, a
nightclub singer, she sings in the movie, but her singing voice is supplied by Samantha Jones.
Not from the
film —
Samantha
Jones sings My Way:
Trivia: Christopher
Lee (Dr. Fu Manchu), Tsai Chin (Lin Tang) and Howard Marion-Crawford (Dr.
Petrie) are the only actors to appear in all five Fu Manchu films. As Nayland
Smith, Douglas Wilmer [8 Jan 1920 – 31 March 2016],
who made this and the preceding movie, The
Brides of Fu Manchu (1966 / trailer),
and had replaced Nigel Green ([15 Oct 1924 – 15 May
1972] of The Face of Fu Manchu [1965
/ trailer]),
was in turn subsequently replaced by Richard Greene
(25 Aug 1918 – 1 June 1985) for The
Blood of Fu Manchu (1968 / trailer) and The
Castle of Fu Manchu (1969 / trailer).
TV Guide
shares a tale about the movie that seems more like a tall tale than
anything else: "Shot in color, the picture was mysteriously released in
the US in black-and-white. […] The Chinese extras, according to Christopher Lee,
were by no stretch of the imagination inscrutable; one pushy extra, who tried
to be in every scene, was actually killed by his colleagues for his rudeness.
Hollywood, take note."
"[…] In Vengeance, the third and most violent
entry in the series, […] producer Harry Alan Towers, again scripting as 'Peter
Welbeck," errs in having Lee, Wilmer, and the delirious central plot take
a backseat to uninteresting supporting characters, like various gangsters
(Horst Frank and Peter Carsten), an FBI agent (Noel Trevarthan), a Shanghai
detective (Tony Ferrer) and a sultry nightclub singer (Maria Rohm, Towers'
wife). Towers seems to have spent most of the budget on Lee (who's absent for
long stretches) and some location shooting in Hong Kong, but other than some
occasional attractive exteriors, Towers and director Jeremy Summers don't really
take advantage of it visually. [Good Efficient Butchery]"
"[The Vengeance of Fu Manchu] isn't
really a bad Fu Manchu movie; the plot is straightforward and easy to follow,
and the basic story is interesting (even if certain plot elements don't stand
up to close scrutiny). Yet, it made me realize just how much the whole sixties
Fu Manchu series disappointed me. […] At their best, the movies seem competent
but uninspired, as if everyone was working for the paycheck but little else. I
think there was some potential for this series that never got realized. [Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings]"
The
House of 1,000 Dolls
(1967,
dir. Jeremy Summers)
"There is
a good reason this movie gets very rarely shown anywhere."
The third of
four movies that Jeremy Summers was to direct for Harry Alan Towers, and the
third he made in 1967. He split the chores with German co-director Hans Billian (15 April 1918 – 18 Dec 2007), oddly enough
credited as "Manfred Koeler", a director usually associated with sex
comedies. The movie is available in multiple cuts, the German version even
including "alternate material". A German-Britain co-production, House of 1000 Dollswas shot in Spain.
Trailer
to
The House of
1,000 Dolls:
Dan Pavlides at
All Movie
has the plot: "Felix Manderville (Vincent Price [27 May 1911 – 25 Oct
1993] of The Last Man on Earth
[1964], The Masque of Red Death[1964], and Witchfinder General
[1968]) is a traveling magician who manages to make young women disappear in
this exploitation thriller. The trouble is, Felix drugs the femmes and sells
them to white slave traders with the help of his mind-reading assistant Rebecca
(Martha Hyer [10 Aug 1924 – 31 May 2014] of The First Men in the Moon [1964 / trailer]
and Picture Mommy Dead [1966 / full film]).
Marie Armstrong (Anne Smyrner [3 Nov 1934 – 29 Aug 2016], seen below but not
from this movie) and her husband Stephen (George Nader) are American tourists
who fall into the trap of the felonious flesh pedlars. Price plays the part
with his usual suave and sinister manner in this routine production."
The two fall
into the trap, actually, because they run into an old friend, Fernando (Sancha
Gracia [27 Sept 36 – 8 Aug 2012] of one of the most violent spaghetti westerns
ever made, Django, Kill! [1967 /
trailer below]), whose fiancée, Diane (Maria Rohm), has been kidnapped by the
dastardly duo working for a mysterious figure known only as "The King of
Hearts". Fernando gets killed relatively quickly, but Stephen proves to be
a man's man…
German
trailer to
Django,
Kill!
"Well you
don't go to a movie like this for stark realism, and I'm happy to say that House of 1,000 Dolls doesn't
bother with any. There's a fairly rudimentary plot about George's wife getting
enlisted in the brothel's Ladies Auxiliary, some mystery about who The King of
Hearts will turn out to be, a few fights, chases, murders and a slave-girl
revolt […] all handled passably, sometimes stylishly… but somehow never
memorably. This is a film you will soon forget, but it's painless and
sporadically fun to watch. [Mystery File]"
"This
little oddity of a film is, aside from being a lesser-seen Vincent Price
vehicle, a thoroughly entertaining (in that guilty sort of way), though really
quite tame romp. Produced by Harry Alan Towers […], it is, according to Mark
McGee, author of Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International
Pictures, 'quite possibly the sleaziest movie AIP ever made'. I
sincerely doubt that. […] Instead it unspools as a rather campy yarn complete
with ropey dubbing and extras wearing a lot of tanned make-up. The brief
moments of exploitation — scenes depicting the scantily-clad beauties
mud-wrestling, cat-fighting or being whipped for trying to escape — provide
much of the guilty entertainment; but it isn't as remotely sleazy as it sounds.
[…] The plot becomes quite bogged down with myriad characters and subplots and
it takes a while to pull everything together. Meanwhile much camp amusement
ensues. […] A couple of chase scenes are effectively handled and provide a
little respite from the uneven pace, but even the scene in which a leggy Danish
gymnast () makes a break for it, shimmying down the wall of the house only to
have her already scant clothes ripped off by the guards in hot pursuit, is more
akin to Benny Hill than a suspenseful thriller. […] While its tameness is a
little disappointing, House is never dull, and even if
it simply can't live up to its seedy, sex-fuelled and exploitative promise;
it's still a distracting little thriller with enough twists and camp delight to
hold your interest. [Behind the Couch]"
