SHATTER aka CALL HIM MR. SHATTER (UK/Hong Kong - 1974; US release 1975) Directed by Michael Carreras. Written by Don Houghton. Cast: Stuart Whitman, Peter Cushing, Ti Lung, Anton Diffring, Lily Li, Yemi Ajibade, Huang Pei Chi, Lo Wei, Chiang Han, Liu Ka Yong, Liu Ya Ying, James Ma, Kao Hsiung. (R, 90 mins) Following the success of 1973's ENTER THE DRAGON and the subsequent explosion of kung-fu movies coming out of Hong Kong, Hammer, England's legendary house of horror, tried to get a piece of the action with a pair of co-productions with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers. Both turned out to be critical and commercial failures, starting with 1974's horror/martial-arts hybrid THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, which bombed in the UK and wasn't even released in the US until 1979, drastically and disastrously re-edited as THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. Since becoming widely available in its original, uncut form in the early days of DVD, the very entertaining LEGEND has found a strong cult following and is today held in higher regard by fans. The other was the international actioner SHATTER, which remains the ill-conceived dud that it was decades ago. Just out on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory (because physical media is dead), SHATTER was a troubled production from the start, with Hammer hiring the unlikely Monte Hellman to direct. A Roger Corman protege, Hellman enjoyed some critical success with a pair of low-key mid '60s westerns with Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins (RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, which Nicholson also wrote, and THE SHOOTING), and found a place in the post-EASY RIDER New Hollywood movement with 1971's existential road movie TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.
Despite his reputation as an American cult auteur, Hellman was never above a hired gun gig if he had bills to pay. He finished 1979's AVALANCHE EXPRESS without credit when director Mark Robson died during production, and he would later helm 1989's killer Santa sequel SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT. But it's hard to imagine why anyone thought he was the right guy for a Hammer/Shaw Brothers hit man/kung-fu movie, so it's little surprise that he immediately clashed with producer and studio exec Michael Carreras. Carreras stepped in to finish directing 1971's BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB when Seth Holt died of a heart attack on the set, and he would step in again here after firing Hellman three weeks into production. While Holt remained credited on BLOOD (it was about 90% done when he died), Carreras took Hellman's name off of SHATTER and is the sole credited director, even though all involved parties have said that most of the film was Hellman's work. In its finished form, it's a hodgepodge of ideas and trends that never quite gel, and experienced cinephiles with a sense for behind-the-scenes chaos will see a major red flag in the opening credits that list three cinematographers. It has hints of the themes of existential melancholy inherent in Hellman's films of that period, but it's also required to have some martial arts action, political intrigue (haphazardly represented by grainy, mismatched stock footage pilfered from TV news broadcasts), and some splatter and a little T&A for the exploitation crowd. It's a confused, compromised mess that feels more thrown-together and abandoned than finished.
Stuart Whitman had a pretty good run as a Hollywood leading man in the '60s, even earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as a just-paroled child molester in 1961's THE MARK (he lost to Maximilian Schell in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG). He would end up doing guest spots on TV and appearing in some truly dreadful movies by the 1980s, but here, in 1974, he's definitely finding a niche in drive-in exploitation as Shatter, a freelance international assassin hired to kill Ansabi M'Goya (Yemi Ajibade), a brutal East African dictator. When he goes to Hong Kong to collect his payment from bank executive Hans Leber (Anton Diffring), the representative of his unnamed client, he's told that he won't be paid and if he makes any trouble, he'll be arrested for M'Goya's murder. This understandably sets Shatter off, especially since he's got people taking shots at him, plus Rattwood (Peter Cushing, attempting what sounds at times like a Southern American accent), a cynical agent from the government's "security division" having him roughed up and telling him to get out of town. Shatter finds a love interest in masseuse Mai-Mee (Lily Li) and eventually teams up with her martial-arts expert brother Tai Pah (Ti Lung) to take on the assassins coming after him and help him get his money from Leber, who represents not the CIA or British intelligence, as Shatter assumed, but rather a cabal of international syndicate heads who wanted M'Goya rubbed out because he stood in the way of their lucrative global opium pipeline.
Stuart Whitman (1928-2020)
Released on the US grindhouse and drive-in circuit in 1975 and into 1976 by Avco Embassy as CALL HIM MR. SHATTER, SHATTER does boast an admittedly awesome score by David Lindup, filled with gratuitous waka jawaka, vibraslap, and shrieked "Shatter!"s. And it comes alive on a few occasions, usually during some kung-fu beatdowns by Lung, who had a long career starting in Shaolin movies from that period and is still active today, but is perhaps best known for starring with Chow Yun-Fat in a pre-fame John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW (1986) and A BETTER TOMORROW II (1987). Whitman and Diffring look like they're just in it for the free Hong Kong and Macao vacation, but Cushing, in his last appearance in a Hammer production, manages to bring a spark to his small but unusual role as a tough-talking intelligence agent, usually capping off his smartass bon mots by popping a piece of candy in his mouth (Shatter: "Rattwood, you're a real bastard." Rattwood: "Yes I am, aren't I?"). Carreras initially had some half-baked notion of SHATTER being spun-off into a TV series with Whitman and Cushing, but it obviously never panned out. Hammer was suffering from multiple identity crises in their waning days of the 1970s as established horror trends were completely upended by the likes of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and THE EXORCIST, and their short-lived dalliance with the Shaw Brothers is just another example of them throwing anything at the wall to see what stuck. It was a nice idea, but SHATTER is a dull, dreary misfire plagued by a problematic shoot, and feeling a lot longer than 90 minutes. Whitman eventually retired from acting in 2000, and SHATTER's Blu-ray release was already announced when he died in March 2020 at the age of 92.
Michael Carreras, Peter Cushing, Sir Run Run Shaw,
and Stuart Whitman on the set of SHATTER
CIRCUS OF HORRORS (UK - 1960) Directed by Sidney Hayers. Written by George Baxt. Cast: Anton Diffring, Erika Remberg, Yvonne Monlaur, Donald Pleasence, Jane Hylton, Conrad Phillips, Kenneth Griffith, Vanda Hudson, Yvonne Romain, Colette Wilde, Jack Gwillim, John Merivale, Carla Challoner, Walter Gotell, Kenny Baker. (Unrated, 92 mins) Known primarily for the first dozen films in the long-running CARRY ON series, the British production company and distributor Anglo-Amalgamated occasionally delved into the respectable with BILLY LIAR and DARLING, but was otherwise a prolific B-movie factory through the 1950s and 1960s. They got in on the residual Hammer horror action with what was unofficially termed "the Sadian trilogy" by film historian David Pirie in his groundbreaking 1971 British gothic horror chronicle A Heritage of Horror. 1959's HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (directed by Arthur Crabtree) and 1960's classic PEEPING TOM (directed by Michael Powell) set the tone with their increased focus on the lurid, whether it's the grisly-for-the-time violence or the sexually suggestive elements (particularly in the self-explanatory PEEPING TOM) that took things a step beyond Hammer. 1960's CIRCUS OF HORRORS closed the "trilogy" in grand fashion and became a box-office success in the US, where it was released by American International and spawned multiple versions of Garry Mills' hit UK single "Look for a Star," which is heard several times throughout. Directed by Sidney Hayers, who would go on to helm 1962's terrifying BURN, WITCH, BURN, CIRCUS OF HORRORS is rather tame by today's standards but remains a trashy delight, anchored by the quintessential Anton Diffring performance, and is just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory, because physical media is dead.
Diffring, fresh off off the title role in Hammer's THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH, stars as Dr. Rossiter, an egomaniacal, quack plastic surgeon who flees post-war, 1947 London after a botched experimental operation that leaves a young socialite (Colette Wilde) horribly disfigured. Still convinced of his own genius, and with a pair of fawning sycophants in tow in sibling apprentices Martin (Kenneth Griffith) and Angela (Jane Hylton), Rossiter changes his appearance--primarily the removal of a proto-beatnik beard-- and starts going by "Dr. Schuller" by the time the trio end up in France, which is still in poverty-stricken devastation from the war. A chance encounter on the side of the road where Schuller asks a little girl (Carla Challoner) for directions leads him to a decrepit circus owned by the girl's widowed, drunkard father Vanet (a young-ish Donald Pleasence). The little girl--Nicole--has extensive facial scarring from a bomb blast, inspiring Schuller to concoct a scheme where he can continue to practice his craft by using the circus as a front. He restores the girl's beauty, which convinces Vanet to sign the circus over to him as part of a partnership. Then Schuller does absolutely nothing to intervene when the celebrating, shitfaced Vanet tries to dance with the circus' bear and is promptly mauled to death.
Ten years pass, and the circus has relocated to Berlin, where the grown Nicole (Yvonne Monlaur) now calls Schuller "Uncle," and the other circus performers--among them the star attraction Magda von Meck (Vanda Hudson) and the ambitious Ellissa Caro (Erika Remberg)--are all formerly scarred criminals being blackmailed by Schuller by being given a new lease on life and hiding incognito in the circus in exchange for letting Schuller operate on them. All goes well for Schuller until inconveniences start popping up--like Magda falling in love with wealthy Baron von Gruber (Walter Gotell) and wanting to leave the circus, or spiteful Ellissa making a lot of noise when Schuller starts devoting his attention to new and formerly burn-scarred attraction Melina (Yvonne Romain)--leading to the doctor cajoling the hapless Martin into staging a series of fatal "accidents" to keep them quiet. Adding to Schuller's dilemma is Angela's increasing resentment of being kept on the backburner after carrying a torch for him since his days as Rossiter, plus a detective (Conrad Phillips) who's gone undercover as a reporter to ingratiate himself into the "jinxed circus" to investigate why a dozen of its pretty female performers have died in freak mishaps over the last several years.
Anton Diffring (1916-1989)
The story is beyond preposterous, but it works thanks in large part to Diffring. Born in 1916, Diffring fled Hitler's Germany in 1939 only to find himself typecast as Nazi generals and commandants in films throughout the 1950s all the way to the 1980s (most notably in 1965's THE HEROES OF TELEMARK, 1966's THE BLUE MAX, 1969's WHERE EAGLES DARE, 1971's ZEPPELIN, 1975's OPERATION DAYBREAK, the epic 1983 ABC miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR, and Jerry Lewis' infamous and never-released THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED). Diffring turned up in respectable films like Francois Truffaut's 1966 Ray Bradbury adaptation FAHRENHEIT 451, but he also found consistent employment in Eurotrash fare like 1971's THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, 1973's MARK OF THE DEVIL PART II and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE, Jess Franco's 1977 nunsploitation potboiler LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN, the same year's German EMMANUELLE ripoff VANESSA (where he played Alain Cuny's aging sexual mentor role), and, in one of his last credits before his death in 1989, Franco's all-star 1988 plastic surgery gorefest FACELESS, where his very presence was an obvious shout-out to his turn in CIRCUS OF HORRORS. As sleazy as the proceedings can be, it's given a classy sheen with the cinematography of the great Douglas Slocombe, a future three-time Oscar-nominee whose long career lasted from 1940 until his retirement following 1989's INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, after which he lived another quarter century until his death in 2016 at the age of 103 (in addition to THX-1138 co-star Pleasence, the film has another George Lucas connection with Kenny Baker, seen briefly as a circus dwarf 17 years before playing R2-D2 in STAR WARS). Though Hayers (1921-2000) displayed some undeniable chops in the horror genre between this and BURN, WITCH, BURN (and a pair of 1971 efforts with IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN and INN OF THE FRIGHTENED PEOPLE), the remainder of his career was spent mostly in TV journeyman mode with credits on shows like THE AVENGERS, THE NEW AVENGERS, MAGNUM P.I., THE FALL GUY, MANIMAL, T.J. HOOKER, KNIGHT RIDER, and THE A-TEAM.
THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE (Italy/France/West Germany - 1971) Directed by Willy Pareto (Riccardo Freda). Written by Willy Pareto (Riccardo Freda), Alessandro Continenza and Gunther Ebert. Cast: Luigi Pistilli, Dagmar Lassander, Anton Diffring, Valentina Cortese, Arthur O'Sullivan, Werner Pochat, Dominique Boschero, Renato Romano, Sergio Doria, Ruth Durley, Niall Toibin. (Unrated, 96 mins) Journeyman director Riccardo Freda (1909-1999) remains a key figure in Italian horror, having mentored Mario Bava and encouraged his transition from cinematographer to director by letting him handle large chunks of 1957's I VAMPIRI and 1959's CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER. Bava soon made the groundbreaking 1960 Italian horror classic BLACK SUNDAY while Freda, who often used the Anglicized pseudonym "Robert Hampton" on his films, never seemed particularly beholden to the genre beyond 1962's THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK and its 1963 semi-sequel THE GHOST, with both in very high regard by connoisseurs of Italian horror. But Freda spent most of the decade making a string of HERCULES-inspired peplum epics like 1960's THE GIANTS OF THESSALY and 1961's MACISTE AT THE COURT OF GRAND KHAN and assorted spaghetti westerns and 007 Eurospy knockoffs. Following Dario Argento's trailblazing 1970 giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE and its followups, 1971's THE CAT O'NINE TAILS and 1972's FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, Italian journeymen directors essentially formed a conga line to crank out a series of knockoff gialli with animals in the title, among them Lucio Fulci's A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (1971) and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1972), Sergio Martino's THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL (1971), Paolo Cavara's THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA (1971), Duccio Tessari's THE BLOODSTAINED BUTTERFLY (1971), Sergio Pastore's THE CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972), and Antonio Margheriti's SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE (1973) just to name a few. Following his 1969 krimi-inspired DOUBLE FACE, Freda hopped on the animal giallo bandwagon with one of the genre's most nonsensically random titles, 1971's THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE.
The meaning of that title is shoehorned in almost as an aside and doesn't really make sense even in context, but it's probably the most memorable thing about the film, which suffers from erratic pacing, hilariously awful special effects, and Freda and his co-writers fighting a losing battle to keep track of all of their red herrings, at least two of whom completely disappear from the film. It does benefit from an unusual setting, a great cast of familiar Eurocult faces, an expectedly catchy lounge score by Stelvio Cipriani with the participation of Edda dell'Orso, whose wordless vocals were essentially legally mandated by this point, and an admirably off-the-rails climax that prefigures both Brian De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL and Dario Argento's TENEBRAE to a certain extent. In Dublin, a woman has acid thrown in her face and her throat slashed before being stuffed in the boot of a Rolls Royce belonging to Sobiesky (Anton Diffring), the Swiss ambassador to Ireland. Police inspector Lawrence (Arthur O'Sullivan) gets nowhere with the investigation since Sobiesky immediately plays the privileged asshole card by flaunting his diplomatic immunity and refusing to cooperate. It turns out the dead woman was his mistress, and when another Sobiesky mistress, a sultry nightclub chanteuse (Dominique Boschero), also turns up dead after trying to blackmail him over their affair, Lawrence sends rogue, plays-by-his-own-rules detective John Norton (Luigi Pistilli) undercover. Norton, who's persona non grata with the Dublin police after a suspect grabbed his gun and committed suicide during a brutal interrogation, and who's still plagued by the unsolved murder of his wife (a plot point that's mentioned and never revisited), lets himself get picked up at a bar by Sobiesky's promiscuous stepdaughter Helen (Dagmar Lassander), much to the chagrin of her arrogant boy-toy Walter (Sergio Doria), and manages to ingratiate himself into the Sobiesky household, also questioning the ambassador's alcoholic wife (Valentina Cortese, who would earn a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination three years later for Francois Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT) and generally not giving much of a shit about the ambassador's diplomatic immunity privileges. There's also suspicious, conjunctivitis-afflicted limo driver Mandel (Renato Romano), who's also blackmailing Sobiesky's weirdo stepson Marc (Werner Pochat) for his own indiscretions back home in Switzerland, a doctor (Niall Toibin) who's creepy for no reason whatsoever, and comic relief in the form of Norton's teenage daughter as well as his doddering, Agatha Christie superfan mother (Ruth Durley), an amateur sleuth whose annoying habit of misplacing her glasses with attached hearing aids leads to one of the dumbest contrivances in the entire giallo genre.
Never released theatrically in the US, THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE has been available only in bootleg format stateside, never even hitting home video and remaining one of the most obscure giallo offerings that, thanks to that title, was certainly read about more than it was actually seen. That is until now, thanks to Arrow's new extras-packed Blu-ray that gives it its first official US release, 48 years after it was made, because physical media is dead. That doesn't mean it's a classic waiting to be discovered. Structurally, THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE is a mess that's needlessly convoluted--is there anyone in it not involved in a clandestine blackmail scheme?--and goes to absurd lengths to make sure every character is a suspect at one point, usually in the form of an aggressive zoom into their faces, sporting expressions that land somewhere between suspicious and constipated. The best thing about the film is the unique Dublin setting, especially with some extensive location work done by Freda and his crew, particularly some breathtaking shots at the Cliffs of Moher. There's also a cringe-worthy shout-out to an iconic Dublin business--the Swastika Laundry and yes, that was its logo--which was in existence since 1912, well before the swastika was co-opted by Nazi Germany (it ultimately closed in 1987). And speaking of cringe-worthy, don't miss the scene where O'Sullivan's spectacularly unappealing Lawrence sneeringly hypothesizes that the first murder shows signs of "a woman's hand, or that of a colored person...they're experts at such things," which is the worst hunch by a cop this side of Jack Hedley's Lt. Williams in 1982's THE NEW YORK RIPPER expressing with certainty that "we know the killer has lived in New York his whole life."
Freda wasn't happy with much of anything about THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, starting with Pistilli (best known as the priest brother of Eli Wallach's Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and in a rare lead here), who he felt was forced on him by the producers after they failed to secure his first choice--Roger Moore, of all people (Ivan Rassimov was also considered at some point). Displeased with the end result after post-production, Freda decided to take his name off the finished film, where he's credited as "Willy Pareto." It's not a top-shelf giallo, but it's hardly the worst ever made and it's definitely worth seeing for completists. And it's a masterpiece compared to Freda's next film, his 1972 career nadir TRAGIC CEREMONY, which was so bad that it would be nine years before he made another, 1981's MURDER OBSESSION, aka FEAR. MURDER OBSESSION is no great shakes, but it's a decent enough second-tier giallo that's marginally better than THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, if for no other reason than it co-stars Laura Gemser. Freda's comeback was short-lived, however, as he opted for retirement with MURDER OBSESSION proving to be his final film.
