P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE (US - 1986) Directed by Gideon Amir. Written by Jeremy Lipp, James Bruner, Malcolm Barbour and John Langley. Cast: David Carradine, Mako, Charles R. Floyd, Steve James, Phil Brock, Daniel Demorest, Tony Pierce, Steve Freedman, James Acheson, Rudy Daniels, Ken Metcalfe, Kenneth Weaver, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, Henry Strzlkowski. (R, 89 mins) "He's got one rule that's never been broken: everybody goes home!" Released by Cannon in the spring of 1986, the Namsploitation outing P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE isn't a MISSING IN ACTION sequel but it might as well be. It shares one MISSING IN ACTION co-writer and its plot has quite a few surface similarities with MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING, but instead of Chuck Norris as Col. James Braddock, we get David Carradine as Col. Jim Cooper, a military legend and Pentagon strategist who volunteers for One Last Mission. It's 1973 Vietnam, five days before the cease fire, and the US is launching a last hurrah raid on a known POW camp out of concern that the men will be forgotten after the cease fire and declared MIA. Cooper's rule is "Everybody goes home!" but that's not the case when the small unit accompanying him is wiped out in a chopper explosion waiting for Cooper, who went back to save the injured young Teague (Kenneth Weaver), whose fate was sealed the moment he kissed a cross on his necklace and declared "I got my own insurance right here." Instead of freeing the men, Cooper ends up captured with them in a camp run by the ruthless Capt. Vinh (THE SAND PEBBLES Oscar-nominee Mako). Vinh is informed that Cooper is now the highest-ranking American in captivity and his commanders want him taken to Hanoi for a sham trial before being executed, but Vinh has another idea: he wants Cooper to take him to Saigon, where Vinh will renounce his allegiance to North Vietnam and defect to the US to join relatives in Miami.
Of course, Vinh has ulterior motives, mostly involving an ever-growing stash of gold and jewelry he's confiscated from American POWs over the years that he intends to cash in once he's in America, but for the time being Cooper agrees to the plan, with one caveat: the POWs go with them, because everybody goes home. Complicating matters is loose cannon POW Sparks (Charles R. Floyd), who attempts one failed escape before constantly putting everyone in jeopardy looking out for #1, basically functioning as this film's "Waingro from HEAT" before the filmmakers grant him an unlikely redemption in the end. Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE was the directing debut of Gideon Amir, who logged some time in the trenches for Cannon, doing first AD and second unit work on films like THE AMBASSADOR and MISSING IN ACTION, and co-writing AMERICAN NINJA before Menahem Golan gave him a shot at making his own movie. Amir does a serviceable job and keeps the film moving, but there's a couple of hiccups, namely a bizarre moment when a nighttime Jeep chase just abruptly ends and cuts to the next morning. Amir has only directed one other movie to date--1989's ACCIDENTS--but remains active in cable and streaming TV shows, most recently as a producer on Amazon Prime's CARNIVAL ROW and DC Universe's DOOM PATROL.
Shot mostly in the Philippines (as evidenced by the presence of Cirio H. Santiago regulars like Ken Metcalfe, Jim Gaines, Eric Hahn, and Henry Strzalkowski in bit parts), with some obvious reshoots in L.A. (the scenery's different and Carradine's hair is longer in some shots), P.O.W. utilized much of AMERICAN NINJA's crew and, most notably, co-star Steve James, again relegated to sidekick duty as Jonston, a POW who becomes Cooper's closest confidant en route to Saigon. It's always great to see James, a terrific actor with top-notch action skills who succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1994 at just 41, and one who was always cited as a genuinely great guy by everyone who worked with him. Cannon gave James a lot of work, but they never used him to his full potential. Even when he finally secured top billing in 1989's Michael Dudikoff-less AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT, he was still saddled playing second fiddle to new American Ninja David Bradley, when simply handing the franchise over to James would've been a much smarter decision. P.O.W. seems more interested in making a star of "Charles R. Floyd," who had appeared on the last few years of the long-running daytime soap THE EDGE OF NIGHT under the name "Charles Grant," and who, according to Amir in a newly-shot interview on the Blu-ray, was seen by Golan as "a new James Dean." Not quite. Not helping Floyd/Grant--either an aspiring actor or the least cooperative person in witness protection--was the fact that he acted in three different Cannon films under three different names. He's "Charles R. Floyd" here, he was "Charles Floye" in THE DELTA FORCE, and he was credited in RAPPIN' as "Charles Flohe." Following P.O.W., he found consistent work on more daytime soaps like ANOTHER WORLD, SANTA BARBARA, and THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, reverting back to his "Charles Grant" name.
P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE would be one of the last times Carradine headlined a relatively wide theatrical release, even though he never stopped working until his death in 2009, and he was so prolific that he still turned up in over a dozen movies you've never heard of that were trickling out as late as 2013. He was still getting high-profile TV gigs like the miniseries NORTH AND SOUTH and NORTH AND SOUTH BOOK II around the time of P.O.W., but he would soon embark on a long stretch of mostly crummy B-movies and D-list straight-to-video titles. A supporting role as the villain in the 1990 Mel Gibson/Goldie Hawn comedy BIRD ON A WIRE was his only dalliance with the A-list until Quentin Tarantino gave him a brief respite with the KILL BILL films in 2003 and 2004. That got him some better TV guest spots in the short term, but the resurgence that everyone was expecting never happened, and he was soon back to garbage movies, and that includes his supporting turn as "Poon Dong" in 2009's unwatchable CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE. He's a solid hero in P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE, and definitely brings more of a loose screen presence to the proceedings than the more stoical Norris did to the MISSING IN ACTION films. He even goes one step further with the blatant "America! Fuck yeah!" jingoism by spending most of the climactic battle literally draped in the American flag as he blows away VC commies before one of the guys leads them all in a "Proud Mary" sing-along. Suck on that, Chuck!
P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE opening in Toledo, OH on 4/4/1986
BODY AND SOUL (US - 1981) Directed by George Bowers. Written by Leon Isaac Kennedy. Cast: Leon Isaac Kennedy, Jayne Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Peter Lawford, Michael V. Gazzo, Perry Lang, Kim Hamilton, Gilbert Lewis, Nikki Swasey, Danny Wells, Johnny Brown, Azizi Johari, Rosanne Katon, Chris Wallace, Al Denavo, Robbie Epps, J. B. Williamson, Mel Welles, DeForrest Covan, Eddie Mustafos, Ola Ray. (R, 105 mins) "I just wish you were double-jointed so you could turn around and kiss your own ass!" A minor hit for Cannon in the fall of 1981 before being generally forgotten in the ensuing decades, BODY AND SOUL was a remake of the 1947 John Garfield boxing classic retooled for Leon Isaac Kennedy and Jayne Kennedy during the brief moment in time when they were a celebrity power couple. Leon was a DJ in Cleveland and Detroit who broke into movies in the early '70s with small roles in HAMMER and MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS before scoring a huge sleeper hit with Jamaa Fanaka's 1979 prison boxing saga PENITENTIARY. Jayne was a model, actress, and sportscaster who became the first African-American woman to co-host a Sunday NFL show when she replaced Phyllis George and joined Brent Musberger on CBS' NFL TODAY in 1978. Leon and Jayne were married in 1971 and appeared together in Cirio H. Santiago's 1978 Filipino actioner DEATH FORCE (aka FIGHTING MAD), but by 1981, between Leon's success with PENITENTIARY and Jayne's high-profile presence in sports broadcasting and on magazine covers, they had enough clout to get the green light on a dream project like BODY AND SOUL--written by Leon himself--even if it was with Cannon, still finding its niche in the early days of the Golan-Globus era.
Leon stars as Leon Johnson, a gifted boxer who doesn't really take the sport very seriously until his wheelchair-bound kid sister Kelly (Nikki Swasey, who had a recurring role on DIFF'RENT STROKES as Arnold's snobby nemesis, Lisa Hayes) needs expensive treatments to battle sickle cell disease. He drops out of med school to reinvent himself as Leon "The Lover" Johnson, a flashy showoff who even seeks out Muhammad Ali--as himself--as a trainer. Ali turns him down ("Look at you, you look like a mosquito!" the Champ quips), and instead gives him one of his own entourage, grizzled old Frankie (GODFATHER PART II Oscar-nominee Michael V. Gazzo, credited as "Mike Gazzo" in one of those short-lived, mid-career name changes that never stick unless you're Laurence Fishburne--just ask Charles Sheen, Chris Walken, Don Pleasence, Brad Dillman, or Jim Brolin), to function as the Mickey to his Rocky, along with Leon's usual trainer, his goofball buddy Charles (a really terrible performance by Perry Lang). All the while, Leon falls hard for sports reporter Julie Winters (Jayne), who's assigned to cover his quick ascent in the ring and ends up engaged to him over the course of a single montage set to "With You I'm Born Again" by Billy Preston and Syreeta.
Leon and director George Bowers (THE HEARSE, MY TUTOR) lean in on the montage as a way to cut through huge chunks of story, which soon relies on an extensive checklist of every rise-fall-redemption cliche in the playbook: Leon gets seduced by the glitz and glamour, starts sleeping around, Julie catches him in a foursome (!), he's offered a too-good-to-be-true-deal by sleazy, corrupt, mob-connected promoter "Big Man" (Peter Lawford, in one of his last films), and Charles falls under the spell of drugs after one of Big Man's flunkies (Gilbert Lewis) gives him some coke and immediately gets him hooked ("Hey, man...you ever heard of freebasing?" he asks Charles in the most Afterschool Special tone imaginable). Big Man then offers Leon $200,000 to bet against himself and throw a fight, forcing him to get his priorities together, win back Julie, get Charles off drugs after they have a huge falling-out ("Give your money to your dope man for your freebase and your angel dust!"), and finally get some workout time in with Ali, who takes part in a sparring sequence with the writer/star but you can tell The Champ--who would lose his final fight and retire from the ring a month after BODY AND SOUL hit theaters--is going a little easy on him.
Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), BODY AND SOUL has enough overwrought elements that you almost wish it would go all-in on its heavy-handed histrionics, whether it's Charles' drug addiction ("We created monsters, Leon!") or the soap opera melodrama of Leon and Julie's up-and-down relationship. She has to put up with his ego, his female fan base who call themselves "Leon's Lovelies" and throw their panties in the ring during his fights, and then she bets it all when she mortgages her house and puts it all on him to win, forcing him to put integrity first ("I don't play with hearts the way you do!" she yells, reminding him "I bet every cent I have on my man to win!"), even though he's ostensibly only in it for his sister ("You bought into it! You became your biggest fan!"). The climactic bout, pitting Leon against Big Man's next big thing--raging psycho Ricardo "Madman" Santiago (Al Denavo), who's introduced violently hurling a baby to the ground when its diaper leaks on his lap--is one of the most ludicrously absurd boxing matches ever depicted onscreen. Santiago does about 25 things worthy of disqualification--including below-the-belt hits, a very late blow to the head after the bell, and an early version of Mike Tyson's infamous Evander Holyfield ear chomp--and yet the ref never stops the fight.
Sure, BODY AND SOUL is dumb, predictable, and formulaic as hell, but there's a scrappy energy to it amidst all the stupidity. It never goes all the way into full-on bad movie territory but takes itself just seriously enough to be sufficiently amusing in an unintentional way. Leon Isaac Kennedy--who, despite his striking resemblance to Sugar Ray Leonard and starring in several boxing movies, was not an actual boxer--would reteam with Jamaa Fanaka for 1982's PENITENTIARY II and 1987's insane PENITENTIARY III (the latter tragically MIA on DVD and Blu-ray), and would write and star in 1986's KNIGHTS OF THE CITY (featuring Smokey Robinson, an old friend from his Motown radio days and best man at his and Jayne's wedding), while staying busy in B movies like 1983's LONE WOLF MCQUADE, 1985's TOO SCARED TO SCREAM, and 1986's HOLLYWOOD VICE SQUAD. Both Leon and Jayne would retire from acting by the early '90s, with Leon becoming a minister and Jayne devoting much of her time to the charity organization Children's Miracle Network and raising awareness for endometriosis after being diagnosed with the condition in the late '80s. BODY AND SOUL didn't lead to further pairings for the celebrity couple, however: they divorced in 1982, not long after the film's release.
TEN LITTLE INDIANS (US - 1989) Directed by Alan Birkinshaw. Written by Jackson Hunsicker and Gerry O'Hara. Cast: Donald Pleasence, Brenda Vaccaro, Frank Stallone, Herbert Lom, Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister, Sarah Maur Thorp, Warren Berlinger, Yehuda Efroni, Neil McCarthy. (PG, 100 mins) Veteran producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) already had two previous big-screen adaptations of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None to his credit, with both 1965 and 1974 versions titled TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but only his 1989 version cites Christie's 1943 play Ten Little Indians as its basis. The difference is negligible, as the play had a more upbeat ending than the novel, but none of Towers' three versions stuck with the novel's bleak ending anyway. The 1989 version was the last and by far the least of Towers' takes on the material, with 1965 (directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock) generally considered the best, though the 1974 (directed by Peter Collinson) has aged very well, and with its unique setting in a luxury Iranian hotel, its Bruno Nicolai score, and some surprisingly stylish murder sequences, it almost plays in retrospect like an Agatha Christie giallo. Despite Towers' obvious affinity for the material (he also scripted the 1965 and 1974 versions under his pseudonym "Peter Welbeck"), Rene Clair's 1945 version AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is still considered the definitive adaptation of this Christie work.
But this TEN LITTLE INDIANS, released by Cannon in November 1989 as they were transitioning into their life support years, is mostly lethargic and uninspired, blandly directed with little style or suspense by Alan Birkinshaw. A career D-lister who was usually brought in to clean up other people's messes, Birkinshaw replaced two fired directors on the 1984 killer Santa outing DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, and he handled extensive uncredited reshoots on Cannon's 1985 Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE when Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) was handed his walking papers after a disastrous Cannes screening. Birkinshaw's 1978 UK video nasty KILLER'S MOON has its admirers, but he never distinguished himself elsewhere. By 1989, he was finding steady employment with Towers, though TEN LITTLE INDIANS was the only one of their collaborations to make it into theaters: he also helmed two entries in the ill-advised Poesploitation craze of the era--THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH--both shot in 1989 but released straight-to-video in 1991.
Like a lot of Cannon productions from this period, TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 (like Birkinshaw's two Poesploitation movies, which were handled by Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century) was shot in Towers' then-stomping grounds of apartheid-era South Africa, where production costs were low, and even though it was frowned upon by Hollywood, many actors who needed the work had to go where the work was, regardless of the ethical dilemmas inherent in such journeyman assignments (Michael Dudikoff expressed regret after shooting three Cannon films in South Africa, opting to sit out AMERICAN NINJA 3 and only returning for AMERICAN NINJA 4 after they agreed to move the production to Lesotho). Shooting in South Africa also allowed TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 to take advantage of its location for a safari setting, and the cast of mostly familiar faces corralled by Towers is a veritable Who's Who of "Apartheid? Never heard of it!" The set-up is the same: a group of strangers have been invited to a remote location--this time an African safari in the 1930s--by a mystery host named "U.N. Owen." They have no known ties to one another, aside from all of them having a secret known only by Owen: they're all directly or indirectly culpable for at least one death, and Owen is making them pay, exposing the skeletons in their closet and offing them one by one. In no particular order, there's rugged safari guide Capt. Lombard (Frank Stallone); Judge Wargrave (Donald Pleasence); dementia-addled General Romensky (Herbert Lom, also in the 1974 version, but in a different role); boozy actress Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro); former governess Vera Claythorne (Sarah Maur Thorp); Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni); dashing Anthony Marston (Neil McCarthy); private eye Blore (Warren Berlinger), who's been hired sight unseen by Owen to keep an eye on everyone; and Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister), who claim to have won a contest to be on the safari under the stipulation that they play a recording of Owen listing the crimes of those he's gathered.
TEN LITTLE INDIANS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/5/1990
Christie's novel is pretty much the gold standard in classic mysteries, one that's so good that it's difficult to screw it up, but TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 is like lukewarm leftovers. The setting is unique in theory but doesn't make sense in execution, since they're at a small, cramped camp and it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the killer can move about undetected in such a limited space. And of course, the more people are bumped off, the more the remaining survivors continue to split up instead of stick together. No one here is at their career pinnacle (well, except for maybe Maur Thorp, whose entire film career consisted of three Towers productions--this, EDGE OF SANITY, and RIVER OF DEATH--all released in 1989), but most of them seem to be acting with a sense of apathy rather than urgency. They're all suspects at one time or another and of the ensemble, Lom has a couple of Commissioner Dreyfus-esque harumphs and seems like the only one who brought his almost-A-game, but he's taken out fairly early. Vaccaro looks like a past Oscar-nominee who knows this is junk. Berlinger does a lot of Charles Durning/Brian Dennehy blustering but little else. Pleasence can always be relied upon to ham it up but he seems uncharacteristically bored and half-asleep (though the goofy grin on his face during a croquet scene is amusing). Smith does the same stink-eye squint that he perfected in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, PIECES, and however many others, but it just seems stale here. And Stallone is just terrible. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 has some beautiful exteriors when you get to see them, but this third time out for Towers just drags along and is of little interest to anyone but the most die-hard Cannon completists or Frank Stallone stalkers. Birkinshaw also worked with Pleasence on THE HOUSE OF USHER, and with Stallone, Vaccaro, and Lom on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and I'm surprised neither of those have surfaced on Blu-ray yet.
DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE (US - 1980) Written and directed by Charles B. Griffith. Cast: Oliver Reed, Sunny Johnson, Maia Danziger, Virgil Frye, Mel Welles, Kedric Wolfe, Jackie Coogan, Corinne Calvet, Sharon Compton, Denise Hayes, Charles Howerton, Dick Miller, Jack Warford, Lucretia Love, Ben Frommer, Joe Anthony Cox (Tony Cox), Yehuda Efroni, Michael & Steve Ciccone, Candi & Randi Brough, Herta Ware, Dan Sturkie. (R, 98 mins) Though it sports the credit "Screenplay by Charles B. Griffith...with apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson," that pre-emptive mea culpa doesn't begin to atone for DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, an astonishingly unfunny comedy/horror knockoff of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR and probably the worst film of Oliver Reed's career. Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), it was also directed by Griffith (1930-2007), a longtime associate of Roger Corman's going back to 1956's GUNSLINGER. Griffith's place in cult movie history is secure thanks to his screenplay credits on two early Corman classics--1959's A BUCKET OF BLOOD and 1960's THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS--as well as 1975's Corman-produced DEATH RACE 2000. Griffith also wrote notable Corman titles like 1957's NOT OF THIS EARTH and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and 1966's THE WILD ANGELS, and it was good that he was able to dine out on that connection for so long, because when left to direct his own films, the results land in varying degrees of unwatchability, with two of his projects for Corman--1979's JAWS ripoff UP FROM THE DEPTHS and 1981's Jimmy McNichol car chase comedy SMOKEY BITES THE DUST--ranking among the very worst films ever released under the auspices of Corman's New World Pictures.
Sandwiched between those two bottom-of-the-barrel duds was DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, which isn't a Corman production but certainly feels like a particularly abysmal one. Instead, it was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus in the early days of their Cannon reign, before they carved their niche as the home of Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and all things ninja, which kept the lights on while they made doomed, clandestine deals on cocktail napkins. Golan and Globus were still finding their footing in Hollywood, and several of their releases around 1979-1980--GAS PUMP GIRLS, INCOMING FRESHMEN, HOT T-SHIRTS, THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES HOLLYWOOD--seem more like standard-issue New World drive-in offerings from the time. That's especially so with DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE, from the involvement of Griffith, in one of the very few films he would make away from Corman, to the presence of Corman and/or New World stalwarts like Mel Welles (THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), Kedric Wolfe (UP FROM THE DEPTHS), Corinne Calvet (TOO HOT TO HANDLE), Charles Howerton (EAT MY DUST), and the legendary Dick Miller, perfectly cast as a loudmouth garbageman. What HECKYL lacks is the sense of exploitation and fun that Corman films almost always delivered (unless it was a movie helmed by Charles B. Griffith), barely earning its R rating and even cutting away at the first hint of nudity that doesn't even arrive until late in the film, which is something Corman never would've tolerated in a New World product. DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE is so deadeningly tedious and so mind-bogglingly awful that one can't help but wonder if Griffith initially took his script to Corman, only to have him thumb through it, answer a phone that wasn't really ringing, tap his watch and politely say "Yeah sorry, Chuck, I, uh, I got a thing."
The idea of spoofing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is nothing new. Abbott and Costello met the pair in 1953, and THE NUTTY PROFESSOR alredy reversed the formula, with nerdy, socially inept Dr. Julius Kelp turning into "Buddy Love," and is generally regarded as Jerry Lewis' crowning achievement. But HECKYL is absolutely dead on arrival, with Reed--not a guy noted for his comedic skills and in a role initially pitched to Dick Van Dyke--as Dr. Heckyl, a monstrously ugly podiatrist with boils, warts, a bulbous, misshapen nose, awful teeth, a red eye, mop-top hair with the texture of steel wool, green fingernails, and pale green skin, making him look very much like a live-action version of Weirdly Gruesome from THE FLINTSTONES. People flee from him in terror ("Mine is the face that ruins a sunny day," he says) but all he wants is to find love. His colleague Dr. Hinkle (Welles) has been experimenting with a weight loss serum that has a side effect of turning one into what they've coveted, so the obese women he's used as guinea pigs all become young and gorgeous in addition to losing weight. It only takes a drop to be effective, and after Hinkle interrupts his attempt at suicide via garden-shear decapitation, a depressed Heckyl guzzles a significant quantity of the serum and morphs into his own id, "Mr. Hype," a handsome, well-dressed lothario with a nasty penchant for killing his conquests and throwing them in the dumpster outside Heckyl's apartment. Heckyl has no idea what Hype has done when he reverts back to usual self, but his actions have gotten the attention of cigar-chomping Lt. Mack Druck, aka "Il Topo" (Virgil Frye) and Coral Careen (Sunny Johnson), a patient for whom Heckyl has been carrying a torch for some time.
Reed's early narration establishes some level of pathos for Heckyl, but the decision to make him look so cartoonishly off-the-charts grotesque undermines any attempt at plausible empathy for the character or his situation. It also doesn't work as a spoof, since a total of zero jokes land, most of them limited to Lt. Druck's flat feet (he's a flatfoot, get it?) and his "ingrown nail" just being a metal nail impaling his toe and removed with a pair of pliers, a sight gag that's aimed at five-year-olds. Elsewhere, the jokes are limited almost entirely to characters having silly names that are supposed to be funny in and of themselves, like Wolfe as another Heckyl colleague, the lecherous Dr. Lew Hoo; Jackie Coogan as bumbling Sgt. Fleacollar; Calvet as French seductress Pizelle Puree; Howerton as Clutch Coogar, a good ol' boy car salesman with two left feet (more childish sight gags), and others like "Herringbone Flynn," "Fritz Pitzle," "Fran Van Crisco," nurses Pertbottom, Lushtush, and Rosenrump, twin rookie cops (Michael and Steve Ciccone) named "Hollowpoint" and "DumDum," and another cop named "Gurnisht Hilfn."
Sunny Johnson (1953-1984)
There's nothing here for anyone other than the most fanatical Oliver Reed completist (and maybe the curio value of spotting future BAD SANTA sidekick Tony Cox, credited as "Joe Anthony Cox"). It's hard to imagine what Reed saw in this project other than easy money, but he actually appears to be trying here, though one can only imagine the flop sweat under his makeup and the drunken rages he hopefully indulged in off-camera. He gets to sink his teeth into some bile-soaked rants as Hype lashes out at his victims, surrogates for all the women who have rejected the virginal Heckyl based solely on his looks, but through the lens of 2019, it comes off like excerpts from a manifesto by the world's most debonair incel. HECKYL caught Reed just as his days as an A-list lead were winding down on his way to the world of straight-to-video. Not long after this, Reed would basically accept any offer if it paid enough, even starring in 1983's CLASH OF LOYALTIES, a three-hour, mega-budget Iraqi propaganda war epic produced by Saddam Hussein that played at a couple of film festivals but was never officially released anywhere but Iraq. He then became a regular presence in Harry Alan Towers-produced exploitationers shot in South Africa in the waning days of apartheid in the late '80s (DRAGONARD, CAPTIVE RAGE, GOR, SKELETON COAST, HOUSE OF USHER). Once in a while, there was a rare acclaimed lead (Nicolas Roeg's 1987 film CASTAWAY) and an occasional high-profile supporting gig (THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN), up until his final role in 2000's Oscar-winning GLADIATOR. His wonderful performance as wizened old gladiator trainer Proximo would've undoubtedly kick-started a late-career Reedassaince had he not died during production in 1999, collapsing in a Malta bar from a heart attack after buying rounds for everyone and out-drinking a group of sailors, which even Reed would probably agree was the most Oliver Reed way to go. And though she's given little to do, Johnson manages to convey some charm as Coral, enough that you'll feel sad remembering that she died tragically young, taken off life support by her family following a ruptured brain aneurysm at just 30 in 1984, a year after she landed her best-known role as Jennifer Beals' figure-skating best friend in FLASHDANCE. DR. HECKYL & MR. HYPE was only given scant distribution in the fall of 1980 before being shuffled off to cable and home video. Griffith would return to the New World lumberyard for the worthless SMOKEY BITES THE DUST and retired from movies after 1989's WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II, a cheapjack sequel from Corman's Concorde headlined by David Carradine, Sid Haig, and future Phil Spector murder victim Lana Clarkson, and stitched together with copious amounts of stock footage from THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS, BARBARIAN QUEEN, AMAZONS, and DEATHSTALKER II.
GRACE QUIGLEY aka THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY (US - 1985) Directed by Anthony Harvey. Written by A. Martin Zweiback. Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Nick Nolte, Kit Le Fever, Elizabeth Wilson, Chip Zien, Christopher Murney, William Duell, Walter Abel, Frances Pole, Truman Gaige, Paula Trueman, Nicholas Kepros, Harris Laskawy, Denny Dillon. (PG, 87 mins) On the basis of its strangeness alone, the largely forgotten GRACE QUIGLEY should be better known, even if it's for the wrong reasons. It's not every day that one encounters an offbeat, dark comedy from Cannon about elder suicide that offers the unlikely buddy-movie teaming of Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte, with songs by The Pretenders. This was a long-gestating pet project for Hepburn going back to 1972 when, according to legend, screenwriter A. Martin Zweiback (whose credits include 1969's ME, NATALIE, notable as Al Pacino's film debut, and 1980's GORP) tossed a copy of his script over the security gate at director George Cukor's house when Hepburn (star of several Cukor classics, among them 1933's LITTLE WOMEN, 1940's THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and 1949's ADAM'S RIB) happened to be visiting. In its earliest planning stages, GRACE QUIGLEY was set to star Hepburn and Steve McQueen, with Hal Ashby directing, coming off of 1971's acclaimed HAROLD AND MAUDE. The project soon fell apart but was back in pre-production in 1979, minus McQueen but Hepburn managed to get the interest of Nolte, then the Next Big Thing. Again, it never came to be, and it was stuck in development hell until Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus came aboard and were only too eager to work with a Hollywood icon of Hepburn's stature, along with a bonus of Nolte being as bankable as ever following the blockbuster success of 1982's 48 HRS. With some pull that comes with being a living legend and following her Best Actress Oscar for 1981's ON GOLDEN POND, Hepburn got her old friend Anthony Harvey (who guided her to an Oscar for 1968's THE LION IN WINTER) to direct, and production got underway in NYC in the fall of 1983.
The initial result got a toxic response at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, where another Cannon prestige project, the all-star Agatha Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, was also crashing and burning. The bad press at Cannes prompted producers Menaham Golan and Yoram Globus to have Harvey recut the film, chopping it down from 102 to 87 minutes. No one was happy with that version either, and GRACE QUIGLEY only managed a limited release in a few major cities in the spring of 1985 before turning up in video stores a short time later. A third version exists, assembled by Zweiback (who was hoping to direct until Hepburn's friendship with Harvey nudged him out of consideration), and retitled THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION OF GRACE QUIGLEY, clocking in at 94 minutes. With some scenes reinstated and others shifted around, the ULTIMATE version played in even fewer cities than the GRACE QUIGLEY cut and is reportedly the best of the three variants, though it's only the universally-panned 87-minute version that's on Kino Lorber's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead). A comprehensive box set with the three versions of GRACE QUIGLEY would probably overkill with little in the way of a target audience, but it would've been nice for comparison's sake, especially since anyone who's seen it seems to unanimously agree that the Zweiback-supervised cut is the way to go.
So that leaves GRACE QUIGLEY being rescued from obscurity in its least-liked but, relatively-speaking, most-seen version. In its 87-minute incarnation, the film is done in by its schizophrenic tone and choppy editing, looking every bit like the begrudging compromise that a disgruntled Harvey felt it to be (it ended up being his last big-screen directing effort). The subject matter demands that the film find the right tone, which it absolutely doesn't do. Relying solely on social security, elderly widow Grace Quigley (Hepburn) lives with her parakeet Oscar and is about to be evicted from her tiny, rent-controlled NYC apartment by her shady, shitbag landlord (Harris Laskawy). No sooner does she wish him dead than it actually happens, via a bullet to the head courtesy of neurotic hit man Seymour Flint (Nolte). Grace witnesses the hit from a park bench across the street, runs away in a panic and hides in the backseat of a parked car that happens to belong to Seymour. Despite her joy over the landlord being out of the way, Grace is still lonely and depressed (Zweiback's cut apparently mentions that she's also outlived her children in addition to being widowed), and having already survived two failed suicide attempts, offers Seymour $1000 to kill her. His lowest asking price is $2000, so she manages to talk suicidal neighbor Mr. Jenkins (William Duell) into forking over the money and making it a twofer in exchange for not turning Seymour over to the cops. Before long, all of Grace's aging friends and neighbors decide they're ready to pack it in and end it all, as she eventually talks Seymour into offing them--at a "group rate"--and making it look natural or accidental.
Director Anthony Harvey with
Hepburn and Nolte on the set
With some seriously dark shit brewing at its core, the idea behind GRACE QUIGLEY has some terrific black comedy potential, but it just never quite comes together. The more it goes on, the more chickenshit it gets, opting to tug at the heartstrings, and getting maudlin and feel-good as Grace and Seymour bond over the voids in their lives, starting with Grace encouraging Seymour to get serious with hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Muriel (Kit Le Fever) and culminating in a painful moment where orphaned Seymour asks Grace "Can I call you 'Mom?'" It even gets off to a bizarre start with periodically freeze-framed opening credits that seem to go out of their way to be as unflattering as possible to the 76-year-old Hepburn. Though Hepburn rode Nolte pretty hard about his excessive drinking and his wild ways during the shoot, they seem to be having a good time, with Nolte sometimes visibly in awe that he's working with Katharine Hepburn (he's never said anything good about the movie, but he wrote in his memoir they got along great and he loved working with her). To Hepburn's credit, she seems game for the subject matter and is even seen at one point eschewing a stunt double and riding on the back of a motorcycle sans helmet with Nolte. But there's just no sense of consistency with this version of GRACE QUIGLEY. It's filled with weird scenes that seem to come out of nowhere, like Muriel doing a striptease for Grace's elderly friends, several laborious sessions between Seymour and his prickish, twerpy shrink (Chip Zien, soon to provide the voice of the title character in HOWARD THE DUCK), or one embarrassingly heavy-handed bit where Grace talks Seymour into going along with the "suicides" by disguising themselves as doctors and touring a decrepit nursing home filled with depressed old people. GRACE QUIGLEY isn't very good, but any movie with Katharine Hepburn involved in a climactic hearse chase and earlier crouched on the floor of the backseat of Seymour's car while he flees a crime scene to the tune of The Pretenders' "Bad Boys Get Spanked" is simply too bizarrely surreal to dismiss. GRACE QUIGLEY would prove to be Hepburn's penultimate feature film appearance. She made several TV movies throughout the '80s and early '90s before returning to the big screen for a supporting role that saw her dropping an F-bomb as Warren Beatty's aunt in 1994's LOVE AFFAIR. Her final role came in the 1994 NBC TV movie ONE CHRISTMAS before her death in 2003 at 96.
ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE (UK - 1985) Directed by Desmond Davis. Written by Alexander Stuart. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, Sarah Miles, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, Diana Quick, Michael Elphick, Annette Crosbie, George Innes, Valerie Whittington, Phoebe Nichols, Michael Maloney, Cassie Stuart, Billy McColl, Ron Pember. (PG-13, 90 mins)
The critical and commercial success of 1974's MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS kickstarted a big-screen Agatha Christie revival that lasted into the early 1980s, with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in 1978's DEATH ON THE NILE and 1982's EVIL UNDER THE SUN, as well as Angela Lansbury as Miss Marple in 1980's THE MIRROR CRACK'D. The small screen also proved to be a popular venue, with Ustinov continuing to portray Poirot and Helen Hayes taking a few turns as Miss Marple in a series of TV-movies. It was after Christie mysteries seemed relegated to television that Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus belatedly brought Cannon into the act with a trio of mid-to-late '80s Christie projects that received little theatrical exposure, starting with 1985's ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, based on the legendary mystery writer's 1958 novel. Like most Christie adaptations, it was a star-studded affair, but the end result is a dreary, ponderous misfire that's arguably the worst movie version of her work. The novel was a bit of a departure for Christie at the time, focusing less on any mystery and more on psychological drama, but it simply doesn't translate well to the screen. Much of this was due to a troubled production that saw director Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) being relieved of his duties after a disastrous rough cut screening at Cannes in 1984. He was replaced by New Zealand-born British exploitation hack Alan Birkinshaw (KILLER'S MOON, INVADERS OF THE LOST GOLD), who shot about 25 minutes worth of new footage and oversaw extensive re-editing into its finished 90-minute state, though Davis remains the sole credited director (this wasn't the first time Birkinshaw stepped in for a fired director; he also took over for Edmund Purdom on 1984's killer Santa movie DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, juicing it up with numerous splatter scenes and gratuitous T&A). Also jettisoned was a moody, atmospheric score by Pino Donaggio that Cannon and test audiences didn't like and would've had to be significantly reworked after Birkinshaw's new footage and subsequent restructuring. Donaggio had already moved on to another project and was no longer available to tweak the score to anyone's liking, prompting Golan and Globus, in search of a "name" composer, to make the ill-advised decision to sub in newly-recorded versions of existing pieces by Dave Brubeck and his quartet. Brubeck is one of the most important figures in the history of American music, but these compositions simply don't belong in this movie, with dark and somber scenes accompanied by bouncy jazz piano, noodling clarinet solos, and bombastic, pseudo-Buddy Rich drum histrionics that make the entire score sound like a temp track left in as a joke.
Just back in mid-1950s England after a two-year expedition to Antarctica, paleontologist Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) finally gets around to delivering an address book left behind in his car by Jacko Argyle (Billy McColl), a stranger to whom he gave a lift en route to his departure by ship two years ago. They parted ways, but Calgary hung on to the address book, and when he delivers it to the Argyle mansion, he's informed by patriarch Leo (Christopher Plummer) that his son Jacko was hanged two years earlier for the murder of his mother, Leo's wife and Argyle matriarch Rachel (Faye Dunaway). Upon hearing the details of the murder and the time that it took place, Calgary is stunned to realize that Jacko had to be innocent, because he was in the passenger seat of his car when the murder occurred, making Calgary the perfect alibi, albeit two years too late. While Jacko apparently professed his innocence and insisted he was hitching a ride with a stranger at the time, the family sees fit to let sleeping dogs lie and not address the issue that there is a murderer among them. But the persistent Calgary becomes obsessed with exonerating Jacko, conducting his own investigation, much to the disapproval of the Argyles, who are only now beginning to recover from the scandal, and chief investigator Inspector Huish (Michael Elphick), who doesn't want his closed case reopened.
Most of ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE consists of an uncharacteristically bland Sutherland wandering from place to place to interview Argyle family members and ask each of them the same series of questions, which gives you a chance to see a parade of fine actors that are unfortunately not put to good use. Dunaway is wasted in a glorified cameo, seen only in black & white flashbacks, while 43-year-old Sarah Miles is improbably cast as the daughter of 55-year-old Plummer and 44-year-old Dunaway. Ian McShane has a couple of scenes as Miles' wheelchair-bound, Argyle-hating husband. There's also one weird bit where Jacko's widow (Cassie Stuart) attempts to seduce Calgary, with Stuart playing the entire scene topless, a move that has Birkinshaw's greasy fingerprints all over it. Screenwriter Alexander Stuart (who would fare much better by adapting his controversial 1989 novel The War Zone into Tim Roth's acclaimed 1999 directing debut) takes some liberties with the source novel, starting with Jacko being executed instead of dying in prison, but the finished film is so choppy, badly-paced, and obviously truncated (with scenes either cut or never filmed in the first place) that it never builds any sense of momentum, suspense, or urgency (not helped at all by Brubeck's completely inappropriate score), ending with a big reveal about the real killer and Sutherland's Calgary just shrugging and ambling away to the dock to take the boat back to the mainland, likely mirroring the reaction of the very few people who saw this when it was barely released in theaters in the spring of 1985. It's just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), which would've been a good opportunity to have an alternate audio track that played parts of the film with Donaggio's discarded score just for the sake of comparison (it was eventually released on cd), but there's no bonus features other than a couple of trailers, as ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE is met with the same ambivalence today as it was in 1985, seemingly doomed to its destiny as a justly-forgotten footnote to the careers of everyone involved.
Cannon went on to make two more Christie adaptations with 1988's Michael Winner-helmed APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH (with Ustinov returning as Hercule Poirot, accompanied by legends like Lauren Bacall, Piper Laurie, and John Gielgud), and 1989's South Africa-shot Harry Alan Towers production TEN LITTLE INDIANS, directed by Birkinshaw and starring Frank Stallone, Donald Pleasence, and Herbert Lom. Ordeal by Innocence was retrofitted as a 2007 episode of the ITV/PBS series MARPLE (with Geraldine McEwan in the title role), and was recently turned into an acclaimed three-part miniseries by BBC One and aired on Amazon Prime in 2018 with Luke Treadaway as Calgary and Bill Nighy as Leo Argyll (changed to "Argyle" in the Cannon film). While it was much better-received than the 1985 version, the miniseries encountered some controversy when co-star Ed Westwick (as another Argyll son) was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, prompting BBC execs to pull an ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD and completely reshoot his scenes with replacement Christian Cooke.
CRUCIBLE OF HORROR (UK - 1971) Directed by Viktors Ritelis. Written by Olaf Pooley. Cast: Michael Gough, Yvonne Mitchell, Sharon Gurney, Olaf Pooley, Simon Gough, David Butler, Nicholas Jones, Mary Hignett. (R, 91 mins)
An early release from the pre-Golan & Globus incarnation of Cannon, and shown in theaters on a double bill in the fall of 1971 with CAULDRON OF BLOOD, a Spanish cheapie that was one of Boris Karloff's several posthumously released films after his death in 1969, the British shocker CRUCIBLE OF HORROR (not to be confused with the same year's CRUCIBLE OF TERROR) has a nostalgic following after being in regular rotation on late-night TV in the '70s and '80s. Nevertheless, it's a frustrating film because there's obviously some thought and ambition that went into it, but it's so leadenly-paced and indecisive over what it's doing--the first 40 minutes are incredibly slow--that it eventually becomes self-defeating. And it's got what might be the ultimate ambiguous ending that's just gonna piss everyone off. But there's something here, particularly its bleak and disturbing depiction of the cycle of abuse in a seriously dysfunctional family. The great Michael Gough is Walter Eastwood, the physically and psychologically abusive patriarch of an upper class family. He constantly berates his wife Edith (Yvonne Mitchell) and has not-very-subtle incestuous designs on his daughter Jane (Sharon Gurney), while his dutiful and sycophantic son Rupert (Gough's own son Simon) seems to be following in his father's footsteps. Edith and Jane decide they've had enough and plot to kill Walter, with unexpected complications ensuing, namely a corpse that won't stay put, and a nosy neighbor (actor and occasional screenwriter Olaf Pooley, who would also do some uncredited script work on Cannon's insane LIFEFORCE a decade and a half later) whose dog almost exposes the whole scheme.
Michael Gough, a regular presence in countless genre films like HORROR OF DRACULA, KONGA, and DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, but best known to mainstream audiences as Alfred in the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher BATMAN movies in the '90s, is so good here that you'll wish it was in service of a more satisfying film. His character is an absolute creep, whether he's taunting his wife over her favorite pastime of painting, beating his daughter with a riding crop, or sauntering up to her bicycle just after she gets home and feeling and squeezing its warm seat. His issues also manifest with obsessive-compulsive hand-washing, obviously meant to "cleanse" himself of his deranged, impure, self-loathing thoughts and behavior. Perhaps CRUCIBLE OF HORROR had a troubled production--assistant director Nicholas Granby is interviewed on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray, and while he goes off topic a bit, he does reveal one important tidbit in that credited director Viktors Ritelis (who had a long career in British TV; this was his only feature film) left late in production, with shooting completed by producer Gabrielle Beaumont, who would go on to make 1980's OMEN-inspired THE GODSEND, an early hit for Golan-Globus' Cannon that was also written by Pooley.
CRUCIBLE OF HORROR is confused enough that it could very well be two clashing visions haphazardly stitched together, which would certainly explain why it seems to fall flat on its face every time it looks like it's about to get its shit together. There's a lot here to chew on--Mitchell has some heartbreaking moments as Edith, trapped in a prison of Walter's making and almost at a point of resigned acceptance since it's what she's come to know, Jane promiscuously acting out with older men to get back at Walter, and Rupert practically brainwashed to look the other way and even smack his sister around because hey, Father does it--but ultimately, a film must be judged by what it is instead of it what it almost was or what it could've been. And in the end, despite the flashes of something substantive and serious, it's a crushing disappointment that feels like bottom-of-the-barrel Hammer or a really half-baked installment of Brian Clemens' anthology series THRILLER. As far as Scream Factory's Blu-ray is concerned, the image quality is fine but the audio is, to put it mildly, inconsistent, with the first 20 minutes sounding like a muffled mess before getting relatively clear from that point on. Even when you turn on the subtitles, almost every other word is "(mumbles)," which I'm going to assume wasn't in Pooley's script. One interesting trivia bit that made this an important film for the Gough family: while playing dysfunctional siblings, Gurney and Simon Gough fell in love and have been married since 1970. The younger Gough never achieved the cult notoriety of his father (who died in 2011 at the age of 94), and has only made fleeting appearances in movies and TV since the late 1970s, a few years after 24-year-old Gurney (soon to be in the cult classic RAW MEAT) retired from acting altogether in 1974 to focus on raising the couple's (eventually) four children.
Directed by Aaron Norris. Written by Rick Marx, Andrew Deutsch, David Walker and Peter Welbeck (Harry Alan Towers). Cast: Michael Dudikoff, Robert F. Lyons, Rick Fitts, Michael DeLorenzo, Jesse Dabson, William Smith, Brian Libby, Tony Pierce, Michael Rider, Daniel Demorest, Al Karaki, Evan J. Klisser, Dean Ferrandini. (R, 96 mins) A gritty Namsploitation outing from the beginning of the waning days of Cannon, PLATOON LEADER is still big on explosions and firefights but surprisingly light on the flag-waving jingoism so common in the Reagan era with Sylvester Stallone's Rambo and Chuck Norris' Braddock. Based on the 1985 memoir of Lt. James McDonough, PLATOON LEADER--originally titled NAM until Cannon went back to the book's title to take advantage of the success of Oliver Stone's PLATOON--gave Cannon's AMERICAN NINJA star Michael Dudikoff his biggest opportunity to act and build a three-dimensional character. Dudikoff is Lt. Jeff Knight, a book-smart West Point grad sent to Vietnam with an assignment to run the 103rd Airborne--aka "The Herd"--a platoon of battle-hardened, seen-it-all troops tasked with guarding a village from attack by the VC. Knight is inexperienced in battle, talks down to the guys, and commits one mistake after another, quickly earning the derision and scorn of his far more experienced charges. He's severely injured by an exploding landmine and shipped off to recover. It's assumed he'll never be back, but once he's well, he requests to be assigned to the same post, this time learning the error of his ways and becoming a genuine leader, unafraid to get down in it and do the grunt work and earn the respect of his men as they protect the village from invasion by VC forces.
It's a formulaic story that gets a big boost from some solid action sequences and a believable performance by Dudikoff. The film takes a big risk in making Knight kind of a prick in the early going, but Dudikoff wisely doesn't oversell it. Dudikoff always had an engaging presence in his action movies without ever being a particularly gifted thespian, but he steps up his game in the presence of veteran character actor Robert F. Lyons as the cynical Sgt. McNamara, his second in command and the diplomatic peacemaker, keeping the soldiers in line and getting it through to Knight that he needs to quit being such a dick. Usually cast as cops or lawyers in a long career on the big and small screens, Lyons rarely got a chance to shine, but he's very good here, giving a lot more to a low-budget action movie than most jobbing journeyman actors would. And speaking of journeyman actors, PLATOON LEADER gets a little added gravitas from gravelly-voiced B-movie legend and '70s biker movie fixture William Smith, on hand for a few scenes as Knight's commanding officer back at the base.
Shot in South Africa, PLATOON LEADER was a Cannon production farmed out to legendary producer Harry Alan Towers, who also co-wrote the script under his usual pen name "Peter Welbeck." Best known for his many collaborations with Jess Franco in the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Towers was one of the movie industry's all-time great exploitation hucksters. In the late '80s, he was producing a ton of films in South Africa, including several for Cannon and Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century, at a time when apartheid was still a thing and working there was a dubious career choice. Despite the terrible optics, working actors went where the work was, and Tower$ always had a way of getting known names attached to his projects. Accordingly, many established but past-their-prime actors who weren't fielding offers from Hollywood studios opted to take the paycheck and headed to South Africa for Towers, including Oliver Reed (DRAGONARD), Ernest Borgnine (SKELETON COAST), Jack Palance (GOR), Donald Pleasence (TEN LITTLE INDIANS), Herbert Lom (RIVER OF DEATH), Brenda Vaccaro (THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH), and Robert Vaughn (BURIED ALIVE), among others.
In what was one of the worst-kept secrets in Hollywood at the time, Golan and Cannon partner Yoram Globus also had a production facility in Johannesburg that they repeatedly denied existed, and with a bad taste in his mouth after shooting AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, PLATOON LEADER, and RIVER OF DEATH in quick succession in South Africa, Dudikoff decided he would no longer work there. As a result, he sat out AMERICAN NINJA 3: BLOOD HUNT and would only return for AMERICAN NINJA 4: THE ANNIHILATION when Cannon agreed to move the production to Lesotho, a sovereign nation inside South Africa. Easily the best film directed by Aaron Norris (BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III) and the only one that didn't star his big brother Chuck, PLATOON LEADER is an unusual entry in the Cannon Namsploitation canon, lacking the "America! Fuck yeah!" fist-pumping of MISSING IN ACTION and P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE--the latter ending with star David Carradine literally draped in the American flag--and the blunt, right-wing polemicism of THE HANOI HILTON. Call it Cannon's version of THE SIEGE OF FIREBASE GLORIA.
A still from the NAM press materials before
the title was changed to PLATOON LEADER.
THE AMBASSADOR (US - 1985) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Max Jack. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, Rock Hudson, Fabio Testi, Donald Pleasence, Heli Goldenberg, Michal Bat-Adam, Ori Levy, Shmulik Kraus, Avi Kleinberger, Sasson Gabai. (R, 95 mins) It was a box office flop at the time, but 1986's 52 PICK-UP has come to be regarded as a top crime thriller of its era and one of the best films to come off the Cannon assembly line in their heyday. Adapted from Elmore Leonard's 1974 novel and directed by the great John Frankenheimer, 52 PICK-UP stars Roy Scheider as Harry Mitchell, a successful L.A. businessman caught up in a web of blackmail and murder when a trio of porno industry dirtbags (the leader constantly condescendingly calling him "Sport") videotape him having sex with his young mistress, shaking him down for an exorbitant sum of money in exchange for not embarrassing his wife (Ann-Margret), the top aide to a popular mayoral candidate. When he refuses to pay, they kill the mistress and try to frame Mitchell, not understanding that he's a self-made man used to doing things his own way, bullheadedly determined to take on the blackmailers himself, manipulating them and beating them at their own game, of course inevitably leading to Scheider delivering one of his signature "Smile, you son of a bitch!" lines just as he takes out the chief shitbag ("So long, Sport!"). It's lean, mean, gritty piece of vintage '80s L.A. sleaze, not entirely faithful to Leonard--he wasn't happy that the setting was moved to L.A. from his native Detroit--but it stands today as one of the better adaptations of the author's work, which would enjoy a significant renaissance a decade later with films like GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, and JACKIE BROWN, the latter based on his novel Rum Punch.
52 PICK-UP was actually Cannon's second adaptation of Leonard's novel. Prior to the Frankenheimer film, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus produced THE AMBASSADOR, ostensibly based on 52 Pick-Up but veering so far from the source that any mention of Leonard and the "Based on the novel by" credit weren't even included in the finished version. It was obviously a subject important to Israeli-born cousins Golan and Globus, but we may never know what it was about a decade-old, neo-noir novel set in Detroit that inspired them to turn it into a preachy polemic about Israeli-PLO relations, but that's exactly what happened with THE AMBASSADOR. The only plot point from Leonard's book that it retains is the blackmail element, but it even changes that by making it the wife's infidelity that's captured on film. One of Cannon's periodic mid '80s attempts at highbrow respectability, THE AMBASSADOR was shot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and wants to make serious political statements, but it also wants to be a Cannon genre picture. It wants a classy, Oscar-winning actress like Ellen Burstyn to give it awards season credibility, but it needs her topless and doing Skinemax back-arching in a couple of surprisingly revealing, sweaty sex scenes with Fabio Testi, who had just been fired from Cannon's BOLERO after clashing with Bo and John Derek and sent to Israel to have simulated sex with Ellen Burstyn instead. Burstyn is Alex Hacker, the bored, frustrated wife of Peter Hacker (Robert Mitchum, in a role that was probably pitched to Cannon regular Charles Bronson at some point), the US Ambassador to Israel. Hacker is so distracted trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine that he's completely oblivious to his wife's torrid affair with antiques dealer Mustapha Hashimi (Testi), a shady figure with lifelong ties to terrorism. After a bombing in Jerusalem, Hacker is summoned to an abandoned movie theater where he's shown a stag film of Alex and Hashimi having sex, and is promptly blackmailed in exchange for not airing the footage on TV and creating an international incident over the wife of the US Ambassador getting between the sheets with a terrorist. The blackmailers are presumed to be from the PLO, but it's actually a rogue faction of far-right Mossad agents determined to maintain the status quo. There's duplicity and double crosses, and numerous attempts on the Hackers' lives by a renegade KGB agent (Shmulik Kraus), which sends Hacker's security chief and bodyguard Stevenson (Rock Hudson in his final big-screen role) into ass-kicking Cannon action hero mode.
Dull, overly convoluted, and bearing no resemblance to the "He's through negotiating!" thriller the poster art indicated, the barely-released and justifiably obscure THE AMBASSADOR just hit Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber, though it's one of Cannon's worst films. It never finds the balance between serious drama and hard-hitting action, and the finale goes from laughably out-of-touch to appallingly tacky, with Hacker organizing Israeli and Palestinian youth for a candle-lit kumbaya "dialogue for young people" where he delivers a series of rambling talking points while the attendees chant "peace" before being interrupted by a machine-gunning terrorist attack with a Sam Peckinpah level of gore and splatter. It's another example of Cannon trying to have it both ways by taking what they think is a high-minded, serious film and turning it into a grindhouse action shoot-'em-up (outside of the same year's existential action classic RUNAWAY TRAIN, that kind of Cannon crossover move almost never worked). An aging Mitchum looks bleary-eyed and confused throughout, never once looking like he understands the Political Science 101 dialogue he's reciting. You could make a drinking game out of how many times he mumbles "I just want to start a dialogue for young people" and it's one he'd almost certainly be up for playing. Burstyn brings her A-game but the material is simply beneath her (surprisingly, she worked for Cannon again a few years later on the expensive Golan-directed prestige flop HANNA'S WAR), while Donald Pleasence gets to ham it up a bit as the irate Israeli defense minister.
Hudson is solid as the tough-as-nails Stevenson, working well with Mitchum even though they reportedly didn't get along well at all. Hudson was under the weather throughout the shoot and he looked slimmer than he had in the years prior to his 1981 heart attack and subsequent quintuple bypass surgery, but not in an ill way that would indicate the HIV diagnosis he would receive a few months after THE AMBASSADOR wrapped production in early 1984 (the film wasn't released until January 1985; Hudson starred with an unknown Sharon Stone in the 1984 TV-movie THE VEGAS STRIP WAR and appeared on the fifth season of DYNASTY before succumbing to AIDS in October 1985). Leadenly directed by the veteran J. Lee Thompson, who would become of the top in-house Cannon guys throughout the decade (10 TO MIDNIGHT, KING SOLOMON'S MINES, FIREWALKER, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN) and simplistically written by Max Jack and an uncredited Ronald M. Cohen (both vets of the short-lived 1981 ABC series AMERICAN DREAM), THE AMBASSADOR does offer one clever bit of caustic repartee between the Hackers (when she uses horseback riding as a cover story for some afternoon delight with Hashimi, Peter asks "English or western?" and she snidely replies "Bareback") but little else, jettisoning any connection to Elmore Leonard and wasting an overqualified cast in the process. At least with 52 PICK-UP, Cannon got it right the second time.
