BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967) - Ken Russell's offbeat cold war epic

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN
(1967, UK)

This was the third Harry Palmer film, based on the books of Len Deighton, following the adaptions of The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, and helped to confirm Michael Caine as an international star.

This was also Ken Russell's first feature, and seems restrained compared to his later outrageousness in The Devils, Mahler, Women In Love, Lizstomania... But the director's love of classical music and silent cinema is evident here, with several key sequences playing over orchestral music with minimal sound effects. I noticed an advanced echo of the visuals of Tommy, when a hundred soldiers in shiny silver helmets funnel through a narrow archway. It looked very much like pinball imagery to me.

While much of the film is a cold war spy thriller, Russell's style is in evidence whenever characters get tight close-ups and look straight at the camera, or when action is shot with wild hand-held camerawork.

This is in line with the surreal cinematography of The Ipcress File, where Sidney Furie used deep focus and wide-angles to make London look more sinister. Although the Harry Palmer films were made by many of the same production crew as the 1960s James Bond films, they took pains to distance the two series. This is initially an unglamorous depiction of spying - Palmer has to cook for himself, argue about pay with his boss (Guy Doleman, also a star of Thunderball), he doesn't have any gadgets, and he wears glasses... Bloody hell!But the last of the trilogy is veering nearer to Bond territory, with its tale of world domination, silvery sci-fi settings and larger-than-life baddie (Ed Begley Sr at his most grotesquely frightening). The title sequence is also designed by Maurice Binder, verging on Matt Helm goofiness, with its repetitive, looped animation.

Harry gets a weird phone call from a faltering, monotone voice telling him to deliver a package... to Finland. There he meets Leo, an old friend who offers him work in a secret organisation supporting a revolution in Latvia that will threaten the stability of the USSR. Leo is also getting his orders from the same computerised voice and recruits Harry for assassinations and other dirty work. The trail, or in this case wiring, leads all the way to Texas, where a communist-hating oil-billionaire has designs on the fall of Russia...

The super-computer central to the plot also reminds us how hacking used to be done in the 1960s, by changing reel-to-reel tapes and shuffling punch cards. Computing is presented as a new threat to the world, just before Hal 9000 threatened 2001: A Space Odyssey. The science-fictional technology predicts retinal scans, voice-activated computers and bio-weapons, which still looks a little futuristic, if it wasn't for the punch cards...

The extensive location photography makes the most of the unusual frozen lakes, churches and castles of Finland, contrasted by the shiny petrol tankers and cutting-edge skidoos.

The soundtrack music is another reason I keep revisiting Billion Dollar Brain. Richard Rodney Bennett's score accompanies the snowbound landscapes with the surreal ondes martenot, a keyboard adaption of the theramin (famously used in The Day The Earth Stood Still). Barry Gray was also a fan of the martenot, using it to accompany the loneliness of space travel in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Bennett's cascading piano theme couldn't be more dramatic, but the most serious scenes use adaptions of Russian classical symphonies, in line with the Soviet sub-plot.

Michael Caine's character prompted his appearance as Austin Powers's dad in Goldmember, as well as Myers' choice of glasses. Karl Malden plays the slippery Leo, years before he raced The Streets of San Francisco with Michael Douglas. The enchanting Francoise Dorleac (Polanski's Cul-de-sac) was en route to being as big a star as her sister, Catherine Deneuve. The jovial Oscar Homolka (Mr Sardonicus) makes a welcome return as Colonel Stok, reprising his role from Funeral in Berlin.This was a latecomer to DVD, now available 2.35 widescreen by MGM. The delay was presumably because of the music rights to a Beatles track. Unfortunately, the solution has been to remove a short scene, but you might still catch that on TV.

The Harry Palmer Movie Site has much more on all three films, and boasts rare behind-the -scenes footage.

The soundtrack liner notes (from a huge and expensive MGM boxset) are full of insight into the production, including the sad news that Francoise Dorleac died at 25, shortly after the film's release.

LE MAGNIFIQUE (1973) super spy spoof... with splatter!

LE MAGNIFIQUE
or HOW TO DESTROY THE REPUTATION OF THE GREATEST SECRET AGENT
(1973, France/Italy)

I was and am a fan of the pulp novels of Doc Savage - Kenneth Robeson's 200-novel odyssey. I was and am a fan of the films of George Pal - having been awed and amazed by The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953) and When Worlds Collide (1950) on TV in the 1970s. So when Doc Savage - The Man of Bronze was released, produced by Pal, I had to see it! (I'm talking London, in 1975.)

Astutely tuned in to the tongue-in-cheek nature of this whiter-than-white hero movie, the British distributor paired the film with this French spoof of James Bond movies. I’d seen the star, Jean-Paul Belmondo in thrillers on TV (like The Burglars) and knew that he was an actor who performed many of his own stunts, from library books on the history of stuntwork. It was because of Belmondo’s range as a both a dramatic actor and a comedian, a glamorous star and a stuntman, that made him huge in France and even some of his movies were even dubbed for international release.

Le Magnifique, ambitiously retitled How To Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent, is a real treat - there's nothing else like it. Besides spoofing the smugness of the Bond image (the guy's so vain he carries a comb in his swimsuit), the gadgets, the casual violence, the way he woos women… it’s also one of those films that shows the fictional creation at the mercy of its author - as we cut from super-smooth Bob Saint-Clair enjoying the sun (and Jacqueline Bisset), to the struggling writer Francois in his tiny Paris apartment, trapped only by pouring rain. His alter-ego can shoot four men out of a tree with a single bullet, while he can’t even get his electricity fixed. But as a hapless author, at least he can write the people he hates into his story, and then despatch them however he likes.

Like Billy Liar (1963), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Tarsem Singh's The Fall (2006), we watch the fantasist and the fantasy. The characters’ stories start to run a close parallel as we discover that the heroine of his latest book is also his upstairs neighbour. But will she be as impressed with a middle-aged hack in a cardigan...

The story is a delight, the many scenes of Bond spoofs are spectacular, funny and astonishingly bloody, as director Philippe de Broca also targets Sam Peckinpah’s exaggerated slow-motion death scenes. These were obviously heavily cut in the cinema, to suit a children’s double-bill, but the DVD has everything intact, including a head shot that pre-dates Scanners… The excessively bloody take on the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin has to be seen to be believed…

The comedy sub-plot of the author vs his boss is quite broad, as is the depiction of 'pulp novels versus literature' subplot, from a time when even paperbacks were frowned upon. But it's very different from the movie spoofs which happily cashed in with their version of Bond (like the Derek Flint and Matt Helm films) rather than this very savage lampoon on spies and movie violence.

There’s even a gag that reappeared in Top Secret (1984), of someone crushed in a car into a metal cube, but still alive. Top Secret takes it further (a spoof spoofing a spoof?) but Le Magnifique has a car-crusher built into the back of a lorry! Impressive, if such a vehicle really existed.

Lobby card image from the Cinedelica website

Belmondo is superb, looking the part of a super-sexy super-spy, as well as the author struggling with his deadlines and smoker's cough. I’d love to see more of his thrillers and comedies – of course, he’s still acting today. As is Jacqueline Bisset, who was soon to be mega-famous as eye candy in danger in The Deep. She'd already been in the notable Airport, Truffaut's Day For Night and Bullitt.

An international cast in a French/Italian co-production ineviatbly means that there's no version of this film where one of the major characters isn’t dubbed! Much like the spaghetti westerns. Belmondo talks French, Bisset English and Vittorio Caprioli (as his bullying boss) is Italian. The French DVD, from Studio Canal, has a choice of English or French audio, and though I’m not a fan of dubbing, the English dub is still very funny, Bisset’s voice is her own, and the actor voicing Belmondo is a treat.

Inevitably, Doc Savage couldn't really match the antics of Bob Saint-Clair, but it was certainly a top-value double-bill.


I’d still like to see the film in French, but only the out-of-print American DVD from Image Entertainment, had subtitles for the French audio version. If you just want the English dub, all of the current European DVD releases appear to include it.

Respect also for Claude Bolling's witty soundtrack, which was released on CD in Italy a few years ago.

For a taster, the French trailer is currently on YouTube...

CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD (1975) Cleopatra, comin at ya!

CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD
(US, 1975)

The slickest-looking, biggest budgetted blaxploitation film of the seventies.

Region 2 PAL DVD (Warner Bros)

This was the only sequel to Cleopatra Jones (1973), that also starred the late Tamara Dobson. I watched this to get me in the mood for my first trip to Hong Kong. It was the first time I'd seen the film widescreen - it's shot in 2.35 Panavision and has recently been released this way on DVD. Before that I'd been unimpressed with the film on a cramped full-frame VHS.

The new DVD makes the film look fantastic. The extensive location photography shows off Hong Kong as it was back when Enter the Dragon (1973) was still hot. Now, almost all of the old Hong Kong has been built over, and the city is almost unrecognisable. It's new buildings are very impressive, but I'd love to have seen it all thirty years ago...

With a large budget, dozens of Chinese stuntmen and the movie studio facilities of Run Run Shaw, the film boasts endless action and huge sets, not least the enormous split-level casino which practically gets destroyed in the climactic fight.


The story is slight, but fast-paced. The likeable cast enjoy a stream of catchy dialogue.

The formidable Tamara Dobson as Cleopatra, cuts a swathe through every crowd, sporting a fantastic new outfit in each scene. Her magnetism and optimism almost make her glow - an embodiment of the sixties' catchphrase "black is beautiful". It's surprising that her screen presence wasn't used for a third film with this character. Besides her charm, she looks comfortable with pistols and machine guns, but never dominates the fights like James Bond. All of her allies get a sizeable piece of the action too.


Her guide around Hong Kong is Tanny (Ni Tien), no mean crimefighter herself - she get's a marvellous fight scene to herself, where she has to fend off six baddies while dressed only in a bathrobe, with her arms strapped to her sides!

Fun to see Albert Popwell enjoying himself in a comedy/action role for a change, rather than being gunned down in Dirty Harry movies. He plays one of Cleo's fellow government agents, trying to crack a drug cartel.

Stella Stevens plays crime boss, The Dragon Queen. While she's obviously giving it all she's got, in swordfights and hand-to-hand combat, she's not quite as imposing an adversary as Shelley Winters (the baddie in the first Cleopatra Jones), or as menacing. But compared to her usual 'helpless blonde' characters, like in The Poseidon Adventure, her gritty performance as a sadistic lesbian is nearly a revelation!

The ridiculously fast and furious action, with stuntmen falling through the air every time Cleo so much as looks at them, is knockabout fun rather than a serious thriller. The kung fu fighting isn't very clearly choreographed, or rather may not have been shot by someone familiar with fight choreography. But that makes this more of a fun film than a vicious one.



While much of seventies 'black cinema' preached to the converted about under-explored issues, this is an example of blaxploitation as escapist entertainment. A supercool black woman crime-fighting in an exotic faraway city.

But in 1975, the blaxploitation bubble had almost burst. Black actors were integrated higher up in the casts of Hollywood films, in non-stereotypical parts, but in supporting roles, rarely the lead. That's what made the blaxploitation films special while they lasted - top billing, and all-black casts... and big hats.

Tamara, you're still looking good.

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MODESTY BLAISE (1966) - a goofed spy spoof

MODESTY BLAISE
(1966, UK)

A mute recommendation...

(Updated September 2010 - out on DVD in the UK)

I really wish this was good, but it always disappoints. It fits into two sub-genres of the sixties that I really enjoy. Lightweight comedy spy flicks - the ones that Austin Powers movies reference – like Our Man Flint and Casino Royale (1967), and also comic strip adaptions - a more varied bunch than the endless Marvel Comics franchises that we’re choking on at the moment - like Batman, Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik.

Unfortunately Modesty Blaise is the least watchable in both camps, despite having enough talent to have made it the best. With Joseph Losey directing, one expects daring and gritty dramas. The Servant, King and Country and Accident (all also starring Dirk Bogarde) are all heralded British films that critics agree are the work of a quality auteur. But they forget to mention Losey’s disastrous lapses with Modesty Blaise and Boom! (possibly Elizabeth Taylor’s worst movie).

Monica Vitti as Modesty uncannily looks the part, is devastatingly glamorous and a natural comedy actress to boot. Terence Stamp was at his sexiest too. Dirk Bogarde is blond arch-villain Gabriel, Clive Revill has a dual role as his book-keeping sidekick and an Arab sheik…

To digress for a second – it’s sad when talented actors are hot one moment and then dropped the next. Clive Revill was great in comedies, often playing Russians, and could hold his own as a lead (The Legend of Hell House) but disappeared Stateside to do TV and still does high profile voiceover work in animation. I guess his turn as the voice of the Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back changed his life.

Michael Craig too, here playing an MP being twisted around Modesty’s little finger, was a familiar face in sixties movies. He lead the castaways in Mysterious Island, but his film career was buried alive with Vault of Horror (1973), and he’s been working on stage and TV ever since.

So, Modesty Blaise - the cast is good, what’s wrong with the film? I’d say that the director was extremely condescending about adapting a 'comic strip'. So much so, that he refuses to take the characters, the premise or any of the action seriously. Most of the fights are played for comedy, especially the climactic battle. Losey seems to lose interest whenever the plot is involved, instead pushing the camera towards close-ups of pop culture fads, fashions and furniture, while making in-jokes, most of which we don’t get.

Losey’s humorous touches may have been warranted if they’d been funny. Only the occasional black comedy works, and it’s especially sadistic, even for James Bond. The scene where Gabriel’s ‘wife’, Mrs Fothergill, silently tortures a mime, and the use of a dead body to counterweight an escape down a cliff, are both grimly amusing.

Apart from Johnny Dankworth’s theme tune, the music is ill-chosen and rarely complements the mood or the action, instead being used to amuse. The monk serenading Gabriel on the church organ, as he arrives on his island, seems to go on forever. The cacophony of barrel-organs during the Amsterdam knife fight is totally distracting. The songs that Vitti and Stamp are required to sing are just embarrassing.

Maybe with different music, a different edit (too long at two hours) and tighter post-synching, this could have been, should have been, a whole lot better. Though the groovy sets and fashions make this an excellent choice to play in the background at a party, but with the sound down! An odd recommendation, I know.

Mostly shot on location in Amsterdam and Naples, particularly spectacular are Gabriel’s clifftop monastery (actually in Sicily, I believe) and the un-exciting car chase up and down the winding roads of Mount Vesuvius (which is where I've just been and why I watched this again).

The Region 1 DVD (from 20th Century Fox) has absolutely no frills or notes, but is presented anamorphic widescreen 1.85 for the first time. The mono and stereo audio tracks sound a little dull, which is very apt.

Modesty's creator wrote the movie tie-in novel, launching the comic strip heroine as a successful literary character - the best thing that came of the film!

Sayonara, Tiger Tanaka

Tetsuro Tamba, Akiko Wakabayashi and Sean Connery

in You Only Live Twice

I don't do this every time one of my favourite people passes away - maybe I should - but in this case it's certainly relevant to these pages.

Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba passed on September 24th. I just learnt the news on TwitchFilm.

I saw the fifth James Bond epic You Only Live Twice on the big screen before I was ten. It was my first glimpse of Japan, and of Tetsuro Tamba. As far as I knew then, Tiger Tanaka was M's equivalent, the head of the Japanese Secret Service and he did have his own private monorail under Tokyo, and he did have a castle just for training an undercover ninja army and he did have a helicopter with an underslung electro-magnet specifically for picking up baddies' cars from the roads for dumping them into Tokyo Bay.

Of course I was impressed, and always assumed he was a very important actor. Indeed, recently I learnt that the role was originally turned down by no less than Toshiro Mifune, before Tamba got the role.

It was only by getting into Japanese films recently that I also discovered that, forty years later, Tamba was still working, when I saw him in the wonderful Sakuya, Slayer of Demons. Indeed, his last film The Submersion of Japan has only just been released in Japan, and I've yet to see it.

If you're a fan of samurai movies or Yakuza thrillers or even Happiness of the Katakuris, chances are you already know his work. Some online obituaries have said that Tetsuro Tamba, (sometimes credited with the spelling Tanba) appeared in over 300 films, and I don't doubt it. I just wonder how many of them we'll get to see.

Unfortunately for us, he only lived once.


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