STREET SMART (US - 1987) Directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Written by David Freeman. Cast: Christopher Reeve, Kathy Baker, Mimi Rogers, Morgan Freeman, Jay Patterson, Andre Gregory, Anna Maria Horsford, Frederick Rolf, Erik King, Rick Aviles. (R, 97 mins)
Directed by Jerry Schatzberg, who guided a young Al Pacino to his breakout role in 1971's THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK, 1987's STREET SMART represents Cannon/Golan-Globus in serious mode, a gritty look at ambition and ethics in the world of TV and print journalism. Christopher Reeve is Jonathan Fisher, a reporter in a slump, pulling the desperation move of fabricating a piece about 24 hours in the life of a NYC pimp he dubs "Tyrone." "Tyrone" has alarming similarities to Fast Black (Morgan Freeman), a sadistic pimp who's facing a murder charge. The article becomes a sensation and Fisher the toast of the town, but when the D.A.'s office wants to subpoena his notes--which don't exist--and Fast Black wants him to produce notes that provide him with an alibi, things quickly head south for the fabulist--with his employers, with a ruthless Fast Black, and with his girlfriend (Mimi Rogers), when he gets dangerously close to Punchy (Kathy Baker), one of Fast Black's long-suffering hookers.
STREET SMART still has the look and feel of a Cannon film, and though there's some NYC location work, most of it was shot in Montreal, which isn't the most convincing understudy for pre-Giuliani Times Square. A longtime pet project of Reeve's (he only did the embarrassing, corner-cutting SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE for Cannon because they agreed to make this), STREET SMART was supposed to be the actor's latest shot at escaping his SUPERMAN image but is best known today for launching the little-known, 50-year-old Freeman, up to then a jobbing character actor in minor roles going back to 1970. Prior to his portrayal of Fast Black, Freeman's biggest gig was as a cast member of the PBS educational series THE ELECTRIC COMPANY during its 1971-77 run, where his recurring characters included Easy Reader, Mel Mounds, and Vincent the Vegetable Vampire. Though STREET SMART was not a hit, Freeman stole the film from Reeve and made enough of an impression on critics and the few who did see it that he scored a surprise Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, losing to Sean Connery in THE UNTOUCHABLES. Everything Freeman does as Fast Black commands the screen--facial expressions, adjusting his ballsack, the snarling look when he bites his lower lip, or just his terrifying glare. He takes what could've been a cardboard cliche in any random Cannon genre offering and adds depth and complexity while turning him into one of the most terrifying villains of the '80s ("It's not your face, bitch. It's my face. My tits and my ass," he tells one of his girls when she begs him to not cut her with a broken bottle). For the most part, STREET SMART is a TV-movie with a lot of F-bombs, and sometimes it's kind of dumb and takes some too-easy shots at Manhattan high society (represented by Fisher's editor, played by MY DINNER WITH ANDRE's Andre Gregory), but Freeman's unforgettable performance makes it mandatory viewing.
RUNAWAY TRAIN (US - 1985) Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Written by Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel and Edward Bunker. Cast: Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, Rebecca De Mornay, Kenneth McMillan, Kyle T. Heffner, John P. Ryan, T.K. Carter, Stacey Pickren, Walter Wyatt, Edward Bunker, Reid Cruickshanks, John Bloom, Hank Worden, Danny Trejo, Tommy "Tiny" Lister, William Tregoe. (R, 111 mins) Though they were primarily known for Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and ninja movies, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had serious aspirations as Cannon hit its stride in the mid '80s. Wanting artistic credibility, they began courting important, influential filmmakers like John Cassavetes (LOVE STREAMS), Robert Altman (FOOL FOR LOVE), Liliana Cavani (THE BERLIN AFFAIR), Lina Wertmuller (CAMORRA), Franco Zeffirelli (OTELLO), Roman Polanski (PIRATES), Jean-Luc Godard (KING LEAR), Barbet Schroeder (BARFLY), and Dusan Makavejev (MANIFESTO), among others. Released in late 1985 and expanding wide in early 1986, RUNAWAY TRAIN was the closest Golan and Globus came to working with legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, whose films like SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO are among the most iconic in all of cinema. Based on a never-filmed script that Kurosawa wrote and intended to shoot in 1966 following the release of RED BEARD, RUNAWAY TRAIN was re-written by the unlikely trio of Djordje Milicevic (VICTORY), YA novelist Paul Zindel (The Pigman), and crime writer and ex-con Edward Bunker, who scripted STRAIGHT TIME and would go on to play Mr. Blue in RESERVOIR DOGS. It was the second of four Cannon productions directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, a Russian filmmaker who more or less became Cannon's go-to, in-house art-house guy with 1984's MARIA'S LOVERS, 1986's DUET FOR ONE, and 1987's SHY PEOPLE. Konchalovsky broke away from Cannon for the 1989 Whoopi Goldberg/James Belushi bomb HOMER AND EDDIE and directed most of Warner Bros' mega-budget TANGO & CASH before he was fired and replaced by an uncredited Albert Magnoli (PURPLE RAIN).
Perhaps more than any other Cannon production, RUNAWAY TRAIN is representative of Golan and Globus straddling the line between mainstream and highbrow, with one foot in the grindhouse and the other in the art-house. At its core, it's a no-bullshit, edge-of-your-seat action movie with a very simple premise--right there in the title-- straight out of a B movie. At a maximum security prison in Alaska, lifer Manny Manheim (Jon Voight) is considered such a danger and an escape risk that he's spent the last three years in solitary with the door welded shut. When a court order forces vindictive, borderline psychotic warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) to let Manny back into general population, Ranken has another inmate attack Manny, which backfires and starts a prison riot. With none-too-bright and eager-to-please youngster Buck McGeehy (Eric Roberts) in tow, Manny manages to escape and the pair sprint miles through the snowy wilderness and hop aboard a four-car train. "Why this one?" Buck asks. "Because I want it," Manny replies, as if fate is drawing him to it.
As the train departs the railyard and Manny and Buck hide in the fourth car, the conductor suffers a fatal heart attack, falling off the train and leaving it in a way that overrides the automatic stop. The train accelerates at such a rate that it burns through the brakes and gains momentum, going at a high rate of speed with no one in control, barreling through the middle of desolate Alaskan nowhere. It takes the pair a while to figure this out, while railroad command center dispatcher Frank Barstow (Kyle T. Heffner) tries to manage the situation. Of course, arrogant hot shot Barstow designed the foolproof, fail-safe transportation communication system, which naturally, is neither foolproof nor fail-safe when the shit hits the fan. Ranken, meanwhile, correctly assumes that his two escaped cons are on the train, along with a third passenger, a rail line employee named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay), who eventually makes her way back from the second car to the fourth, where it's theoretically safer when the train inevitably crashes.
RUNAWAY TRAIN is one of the best films to come off the Cannon assembly line, but it's still basically a Cannon production, from a good chunk of Trevor Jones' score demonstrating that distinct '80s keyboard-and-drum-machine sound to the presence of perennial B-movie villain Ryan, best known for one of his rare good-guy roles in Larry Cohen's IT'S ALIVE and his other Cannon bad guy gigs in AVENGING FORCE and DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN. Nevertheless, RUNAWAY TRAIN got a lot of love from critics: it won rave reviews, was a Palme d'Or contender at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, and received three Oscar nominations: Voight for Best Actor (William Hurt won for KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN) Roberts for Best Supporting Actor (Don Ameche won for COCOON), and Henry Richardson for Film Editing (Thom Noble won for WITNESS). While it is a terrific genre film, it seems odd in retrospect that RUNAWAY TRAIN was such a critical favorite, especially given the dismissive treatment given to most Cannon fare. There's an argument to be made that the tenuous Kurosawa connection--1985 was also the year of RAN--made critics treat it with kid gloves or take it a little more seriously than they might have otherwise.
While seething with intensity, Voight and Roberts both use indecipherable accents and seem to be playing things far too broadly, with their performances--Voight's in particular--ranking among the hammiest to ever score Oscar nods. Roberts--back when he was supposed to be the Next Big Thing--really just offers a louder variation on his dumb, would-be gangster character in the previous year's THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE, even using the same affected voice ("Aw, Manny...take me wit ya!" and "I need some shooooooes!" providing some memorable moments). Voight, in his showiest role in years and one of only four films he made in the 1980s, chews the scenery in ways unseen until his incredible performance over a decade later in ANACONDA. There's really not much difference in Voight's acting here ("You gonna clean dat spot!") or when he winks at Jennifer Lopez after he's barfed-up in a partially digested state by a giant CGI snake. Voight dials it up to 11, which is extremely entertaining, but it sometimes seems like it's too much considering all the praise he and Roberts received. Watching RUNAWAY TRAIN again after many years, it's easy to picture a less frothing Manny providing a serious stretch for say, Cannon stalwart Charles Bronson if he felt like breaking away from vigilante movies. Voight and Ryan rage through clenched teeth and make perfect adversaries (though playing a maniacal villain, Ryan actually comes off as more restrained than Voight), and while many have questioned Ranken's thought process in dropping from a chopper on to the runaway train when it means certain death, it just goes to show that yes, at its core, RUNAWAY TRAIN is really just a dumb Cannon action movie with John P. Ryan as a very John P. Ryan bad guy--a great, textbook example of a Cannon action movie, sure, and maybe a bit more gritty than most, but had Kurosawa's name not been attached to it, it seems doubtful this would've received the accolades and the respect it got from critics.
For this blog's regular readers--a number that is coming perilously close to double digits--"Retro Review" will be shorter, less-detailed reviews of older (2015 and back) movies that I'm either looking at again or seeing for the first time. I'm still doing the regular new theatrical and DVD/Blu-ray reviews and the infrequent "Cult Classics Revisited" and other longer pieces, but with my regular day job, I simply don't have the time to write as many of those longer (sometimes too long) pieces as I'd like to, but I don't want to taper off on my writing. In other words, I think something is better than nothing, and honestly, sometimes there's just not much to say.
NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET (US - 1987)
A disjointed buddy-cop movie that feels like it was made up as it went along, NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET was Cannon's quickly-made attempt to beat LETHAL WEAPON to theaters, which it did by a week, despite switching directors at some point late in production. Veteran journeyman Jack Smight (HARPER, DAMNATION ALLEY) is the credited director, but Roger Corman alumnus Steve Carver (AN EYE FOR AN EYE, LONE WOLF MCQUADE) ended up doing reshoots and finishing the film after Smight either quit or was fired. Along with Gail Morgan Hickman (who scripted the 1976 Dirty Harry entry THE ENFORCER), Jim Belushi was one of four credited screenwriters and was originally set to star, though he ended up being replaced by Robert Carradine--the same year he reprised his signature role in REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE--as loose-cannon, no-rules L.A. cop Ray "Berserk" Berzak. Billy Dee Williams is Frank Hazeltine, Berzak's long-suffering, jazz-loving partner who's constantly dealing with Berzak's annoying antics, ranging from chasing off his ladies by pretending to be gay or through his obsessive pursuit of DaCosta (Barry Sattels), a BFF of the mayor and a prominent businessman that "Berserk" is convinced runs the city's drug business, with help from someone deep inside the LAPD.
The story is on the episodic side and meanders from set piece to set piece, with an emphasis on obnoxious comedy, like Berzak stalking his ex-wife (Valerie Bertinelli in one of her very few appearances on the big screen) and chasing off her current beau by implying that she has AIDS. In addition to pretending to be gay, Berzak also cock-blocks Hazeltine by telling a bullshit story about him wasting a nine-year-old boy who was wielding a toy gun and subsequently disposing of the body. Definitely not for those susceptible to microaggressions, but it's entertaining if you're in a stupid enough mood or a completist of '80s cop movies where two mismatched cops have to work together to bring down the bad guys...if they don't kill each other first! Also with Doris Roberts as Berzak's nagging mom, Bobby DiCicco, Mykel T. Williamson, Sunset Strip icon Bill Gazzarri, and Peter Graves as Berzak and Hazeltine's perpetually aggravated captain, who of course threatens to bust the troublemaking duo down to traffic if they don't get with the program. NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET bombed in theaters, landing in 15th place (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS opened the same weekend) and not even sticking around for a second week to give LETHAL WEAPON any competition, thus depriving us of any further Berzak & Hazeltine adventures. Smight (1925-2003) directed one more film, 1989's little-seen INTIMATE POWER, before retiring from the business. (R, 101 mins)
THE NAKED FACE (US - 1985) Written and directed by Bryan Forbes. Cast: Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, Elliott Gould, Anne Archer, Art Carney, David Hedison, Ron Parady, Deanna Dunagan, John Kapelos, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Dick Sollenberger, Cynthia Baker Schuyler, Virginia Smith. (R, 105 mins) Action movies and ninjas may have been what kept the lights on during their heyday, but Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus wanted to take Cannon in a classier direction. Occasional prestige projects like Jason Miller's THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON (1982) would get made, but it wasn't until 1984 that Golan & Globus started to actively court respectable filmmakers who were on the outs with Hollywood or fed up with playing the major studio game: 1984 saw the release of John Cassavetes' LOVE STREAMS and Golan's own Woody Allen-esque OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, while 1985 brought Robert Altman's FOOL FOR LOVE, Liliana Cavani's THE BERLIN AFFAIR, and two American films from famed Russian auteur Andrei Konchalovsky with MARIA'S LOVERS and RUNAWAY TRAIN. With the late 1984 hit MISSING IN ACTION, and then the likes of MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING, DEATH WISH 3, INVASION, U.S.A., and AMERICAN NINJA, 1985 was really the year that Cannon blew up and that beautiful logo became a weekly staple in American multiplexes. However, there were several big-star Cannon offerings in 1985 that, for various reasons, fell through the cracks and didn't get much exposure: Anthony Harvey's offbeat dark comedy GRACE QUIGLEY, an unlikely pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Nick Nolte in a doomed production whose troubles began when original director Hal Ashby quit during pre-production and ended with the film existing in three different versions that satisfied no one; Desmond Davis' Agatha Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, starring Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway, and Christopher Plummer; J. Lee Thompson's THE AMBASSADOR, a very loose adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 52 Pick-Up, with Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, and Rock Hudson in his final big-screen appearance; and THE ASSISI UNDERGROUND, written and directed by Polish author Alexander Ramati and based on his own novel, dealing with the Catholic Church's rescue of Italian Jews from the Nazis. ASSISI, starring CHARIOTS OF FIRE's Ben Cross, Maximilian Schell, Irene Papas, and James Mason in his last film (it was released over a year after his death), was originally a three-hour epic that Cannon chopped down to two before they stealthily unveiled it in a few markets.
One such 1985 cast-off was THE NAKED FACE, based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon. The project was chosen by Roger Moore, who was growing tired of his James Bond persona and was looking to branch out into more serious acting roles. Moore tried to leave the 007 franchise after 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, but was wooed back for two more films: 1983's OCTOPUSSY and 1985's A VIEW TO A KILL. Golan & Globus were happy to accommodate Moore and even went along with his recommendation of hiring Bryan Forbes to write and direct the film. One of Moore's oldest and dearest friends since the two met while in the British Army just after WWII, Forbes was a veteran British journeyman with numerous highly respected films to his credit: THE ANGRY SILENCE (1960), THE L-SHAPED ROOM (1962), SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON (1964), KING RAT (1965), THE WRONG BOX (1966), and his biggest commercial success, THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975). He also wrote several novels and acted occasionally, with his best-known role being Turk Thrust, the guitar-strumming attendant at the nudist colony visited by Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards' A SHOT IN THE DARK (1964). Forbes also produced and co-wrote Basil Dearden's doppelganger suspense thriller THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF (1970), regularly cited by Moore as his personal favorite performance of his career. Forbes took the job and THE NAKED FACE was shot entirely on location in Chicago in the fall of 1983 when Moore had some downtime between OCTOPUSSY and A VIEW TO A KILL. During this period, Moore also managed to fit in a cameo as a post-plastic surgery Clouseau in 1983's misbegotten CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER, where he was credited as "Turk Thrust II" as an inside joke for his buddy Forbes that's more amusing than anything in the movie.
THE NAKED FACE presents Moore as Dr. Judd Stevens, a successful Chicago shrink who finds himself the target of a killer. First, a patient is stabbed two blocks from his office after Stevens loans him his raincoat and he's mistaken for the doctor. Then Stevens' receptionist is killed. Stevens, who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident two years earlier, leads a quiet life and is greatly disturbed by these events. Not helping matters is Lt. McGreevy (Rod Steiger), the irate cop assigned to the case with the more sympathetic Det. Angeli (Elliott Gould who had just starred in OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE). Loud, bad-tempered bigot McGreevy thinks Stevens is the killer and has something to hide, so he harasses the doctor mercilessly, probing every aspect of his life to find incriminating evidence against him. McGreevy's beef with Stevens is personal: several years earlier, McGreevy's former partner was killed by a perp who got to plead insanity thanks to Stevens' testimony. McGreevy ignores any leads that don't involve arresting Stevens, and even when two gunmen break into his apartment and try to kill him, Stevens still can't convince McGreevy that someone is trying to kill him. Angeli sees that McGreevy is trying to railroad Stevens and gets him taken off the case, which then adds him to McGreevy's endless shit list. While Angeli actually works the case, Stevens resorts to eccentric private eye Morgens (Art Carney), who finds a bomb planted in Stevens' car and quickly finds out who's causing all the mayhem, as McGreevy secretly follows Angeli to stay peripherally involved in the case, plotting his next move.
THE NAKED FACE is a simple and straightforward thriller with some moments of genuine suspense and a good performance by Moore. Moore seems enthused to be away from his winking and increasingly self-deprecating James Bond act and playing a real character who's often presented as weak and vulnerable. Frequently sporting thick lenses in a set of large and unflattering eyeglass frames (even by 1985 standards), Moore's Stevens is hardly a fighting man of action and takes his share of physical and verbal abuse throughout. When he's trapped in his apartment by a gunman, he's practically cowering in the corner of his bedroom when he's rescued by his surgeon brother-in-law (David Hedison, Moore's LIVE AND LET DIE Felix Leiter), who scares away the intruder. There's no wry, snide one-liners here and Moore is quite good in a more subdued role than audiences were accustomed to seeing him play. The major problem with THE NAKED FACE, other than its overbearing score by Michael J. Lewis, is that once the antagonist and their motivation are revealed, your response will likely be along the lines of "And?!" It seems like a lot of people are killed for not much of a reason, and having the villain order his flunkies to kidnap Stevens and bring him to his base of operations so he can talk and talk and over-explain his motive and address Stevens in a dismissive tone seems like something that would happen in a 007 movie. Forbes also changes the ending of the book in a way that does nothing to help the film, which fades to black on a truly bizarre note that doesn't seem to know the difference between "open-ended ambiguity" and "opening a whole new can of worms." The ending of the film wants to be a shocking twist, but it's handled very poorly and comes off as botched and clumsy.
There's still a lot to like in the mostly enjoyable THE NAKED FACE. Though Gould, Carney, Hedison, and Anne Archer (as one of Stevens' patients), turn in solid performances, they have little to do (the rest of the cast is rounded out by Chicago-based actors, including John Kapelos and former Northwestern University theater professor Ron Parady in prominent supporting roles, which begs the question: where's Ron Dean?). Perhaps everyone was just deferring and leaving the scenery for Steiger to gorge himself on. Shouting throughout like a Windy City Chief Gillespie and sporting a terrible toupee, Steiger turns in one of his great bellicose asshole performances in THE NAKED FACE. Moore may have been trying to show some range here with a sincere, serious performance, but Steiger just goes Full Throttle Rod, and while it could easily be construed as self-indulgent overacting, it's a performance that works considering the all-consuming bitterness of the character he's playing. It's hardly the most out-of-control he ever was in a film, and it still pales in comparison to his legendary "You wanna fuck me?!" outburst to Danny Aiello in the otherwise insignificant THE JANUARY MAN (1989), but still, the incomparable Steiger is on fire in THE NAKED FACE.
THE NAKED FACE wasn't the breakaway from Bond that Moore anticipated. Cannon sat on it for over a year before dumping it in a handful of theaters--mostly in the Chicago market--for a one-week run on January 25, 1985. There were reports of disagreements between Forbes and Golan, particularly when Moore's mother became gravely ill during production and Forbes rearranged the shooting schedule to allow the star to take a week off to visit her in London without consulting Golan about it first. A furious Golan reportedly slashed the budget and shortened the shooting schedule, forcing Forbes to make rushed compromises that may be an indication of why the film seems so clumsily-structured in its second half (among other things in the unsatisfying finale, it feels like there should be one more scene between Moore's and Steiger's characters). Whatever the reason--and the clashing with filmmakers and the shelving of relatively prestigious fare out of spite sounds more like Harvey Weinstein than Menahem Golan--THE NAKED FACE was one of several high-end, big-name Cannon projects from 1985 that were buried and quickly forgotten as Golan & Globus turned their attention to the money generated by guys like Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson, and Michael Dudikoff. It was also Forbes' last big-screen directing effort. He went on to make the 1990 Showtime miniseries THE ENDLESS GAME, based on his own 1985 spy novel, and he co-wrote Richard Attenborough's CHAPLIN (1992) before retiring from movies. Forbes died in 2013 at the age of 86.
Sir Roger Moore in a publicity photo
for his 2014 memoir One Lucky Bastard
Now 87, Sir Roger Moore has acted sparingly in the years following his 1985 retirement from the world of 007, instead focusing on charity work and his tireless humanitarian efforts (he was knighted in 2003 for his work with UNICEF). Cannon's proposed remake of the classic GUNGA DIN, announced in 1988 with Ben Kingsley in the title role and Moore, Michael Caine, and Sean Connery as British soldiers, obviously never happened, though Moore would star with Caine in the straight-to-video comedy BULLSEYE! (1991) for Golan's short-lived, post-Cannon outfit 21st Century Film Corporation. He played the villain in the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle THE QUEST (1996) and had campy turns opposite the Spice Girls in SPICE WORLD (1998) and as a flamboyant passenger on a gay cruise ship, aggressively hitting on Horatio Sanz ("Would you like a bite of my sausage?") in the Cuba Gooding Jr. atrocity BOAT TRIP (2003). He's done some voice work in a few animated films, usually spoofing his 007 image (2010's CATS & DOGS: THE REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE had Moore voicing debonair feline spy Tab Lazenby in a joke almost certainly over the heads of the film's intended audience), and in 2006, recorded essential DVD audio commentaries for all seven of his Bond outings. He's written a personal history of the James Bond films (2012's Bond on Bond: The Ultimate Book on 50 Years of Bond Movies), and penned two enormously entertaining memoirs (2008's My Word is My Bond and 2014's One Lucky Bastard), and even if he isn't busy on the big screen, he shows no signs of slowing down. Kino Lorber recently released THE NAKED FACE on Blu-ray, and it's a shame they didn't get Moore to contribute a commentary. As his books and his work on the 007 DVDs demonstrate, he's grown into one of the cinema's great raconteurs. Let's face it: Roger Moore was never going to win an Academy Award. He's rarely busted his ass as an actor and most of his non-007 career choices seemed dictated by where the films were being shot and how nice of a working vacation they'd provide. But Moore has always been the kind of charismatic guy who could get away with that. He's never pretended to be a great actor, but he's a class act and many of those critical of his more lighthearted interpretation of 007 have rightfully come around to appreciating him as a living legend in his emeritus years.
THE VIOLENT BREED (Italy - 1984) Directed by Fernando Di Leo. Written by Nino Marino and Fernando Di Leo. Cast: Henry Silva, Harrison Muller, Woody Strode, Carole Andre, Debora Keith, Danika, Hector Wells, Loris Bartock, Serge Doran, Adrian Jeffries. (R, 91 mins) In recent years, there's been a resurgence of interest in poliziotteschi--Italian crime films of the 1970s, the subject of the recent documentary EUROCRIME!--and in particular the work of Fernando Di Leo (1932-2003), one of the most prominent figures in the movement. Di Leo began his career as a screenwriter on spaghetti westerns like NAVAJO JOE (1966), HATE FOR HATE (1967), and BEYOND THE LAW (1968), but it was the politically-charged crime thrillers that he wrote and directed in the 1970s that have cemented his place in genre history. Four of his best-known films were collected in Raro USA's acclaimed 2011 DVD and Blu-ray box set FERNANDO DI LEO: THE ITALIAN CRIME COLLECTION. Compiling Di Leo's essential "Milieu Trilogy" of CALIBER 9 (1972), THE ITALIAN CONNECTION (1973), and THE BOSS, aka WIPEOUT! (1973) with the bonus film RULERS OF THE CITY, aka MISTER SCARFACE (1976), the first Di Leo set made an airtight case that the filmmaker, with his recurrent themes of nihilism, corruption, and Italy in chaos, his ability to stage an exciting action sequence, and his expert use of actors (so long as you don't count the impossibly Irish Cyril Cusack as a NYC Mafia don in THE ITALIAN CONNECTION), was deserving of respect and serious study.
Raro released a second volume of Di Leo crime films in 2013, featuring the excellent SHOOT FIRST, DIE LATER (1974), which has since had a couple of airings on Turner Classic Movies, the decent but unspectacular KIDNAP SYNDICATE (1975), and the disappointing NAKED VIOLENCE (1969), a controversial film in Italy in its day that's interesting for Di Leo completists, but is more of a giallo and really has no business in a set representing Di Leo's crime films. Di Leo's cynicism and his view of society and humanity as inherently and irredeemably evil reached its apex in 1978's TO BE TWENTY, which spends about 85 minutes being a fluffy, lighthearted sex comedy about the wild and wacky misadventures of two nubile teenage girls...who end up getting viciously gang-raped and slaughtered in the final five minutes when Di Leo smacks the viewer upside the head by abruptly turning it into THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (the film was also released in a differently-edited version that completely eliminated Di Leo's intended shock ending). Di Leo scripted Ruggero Deodato's excellent polizia LIVE LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN (1976), but after TO BE TWENTY, his career more or less fizzled. He explored some more LAST HOUSE-type territory in 1980's MADNESS and did a couple of hired-gun TV gigs, but by the middle of the decade, he would eventually retire from filmmaking altogether after the little-seen 1985 actioner KILLER VS. KILLERS, aka DEATH COMMANDO. He gave interviews for some Italian DVD releases before his death in 2003, some of which made their way to the later US-released Raro sets. Though he was largely a typically genre-hopping journeyman, the polizia explosion in the early-to-mid 1970s helped Di Leo carve a niche for himself, very much the same way that Lucio Fulci found his true calling with the cinematic zombie outbreak in the early 1980s.
Di Leo's penultimate film, THE VIOLENT BREED, finds him hitching a ride on the then in-vogue Namsploitation and commando explosion bandwagon that kept Antonio Margheriti busy throughout the '80s. A few elements of Di Leo's misanthropic worldview are on display--most notably an admittedly chilling and effective scene where the villain mows down some peasants after taking over their village--and the abrupt, ineptly-executed twist ending seems to be making some muddled statement about government corruption, but for the most part, THE VIOLENT BREED is probably Di Leo's worst film. If he was growing disillusioned enough to retire a year later, then THE VIOLENT BREED may very well be a significant reason why. Produced by busy '80s Italian schlock king Ettore Spagnuolo, the film was shot in the summer of 1983 in NYC, Rome, and Bangkok, and was acquired by Cannon, who released it in the US in 1984. It opens during the Vietnam War as a band of soldiers led by Kirk Cooper (Henry Silva) rescue some refugee children who all seem to be dressed in conspicuously early '80s attire. Cooper and fellow soldier Mike Martin (Harrison Muller) are shocked when their buddy Polo (Woody Strode) sends them on their way and tells them he's staying behind as he promptly deserts and vanishes in the jungle. Years later, Cooper is a big shot with the CIA and gets some intel that Polo is running a complicated drugs-weapons-prostitution empire centered in the fabled Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. He's getting help from both the KGB and the Mafia, and Cooper sends top agent Martin into dangerous territory to eliminate Polo's operation and settle some old scores.
Di Leo just never gets things going with THE VIOLENT BREED. It has some enthusiastic blood and squib effects late in the game and some early NYC location shooting shows a theater with a ZABRISKIE POINT/BLOW-UP Antonioni retrospective, but overall, it's cheap-looking and Di Leo's disinterest is obvious. He never once gives this the gritty feel that his polizia classics displayed. Di Leo's direction is uncharacteristically lazy and corner-cutting: in the early Vietnam scenes, Polo sends Martin to "get some bandages," and all Muller does is walk out of frame and pop right back in with the bandages, probably handed to him just out of camera view by Di Leo. In another instance, one of Polo's stooges is keeping a sharp eye out for Martin, who just saunters into the frame and shoots him. Wouldn't the guy see him coming? Maybe Sergio Leone can get away with a move like that, but it doesn't play here. The climax, which goes on forever, has Martin and one of Polo's captive prostitutes (Debora Keith) running from one yellow cabin to another in Polo's supposedly massive compound, but it's clear from the cutting that they're just running into the same cabin over and over again like an unintentional homage to a Hanna-Barbera wraparound background. The size of Polo's compound is never convincingly conveyed. Instead, it looks like what it is: Muller and Keith repeatedly running into the same structure and Strode's Polo and his men driving their Jeeps around in circles. There's also an odd amount of long shots of people awkwardly standing around or walking into buildings, almost like it's second-unit footage that was supposed to have been whittled down to give it some semblance of pacing.
Silva, Di Leo, and Strode in better days, during the
filming of THE ITALIAN CONNECTION
THE VIOLENT BREED is badly-made and badly-edited, and the performances are terrible across the board. After the opening sequence, where he gets to indulge in some customary overacting while getting a bullet scooped out of his chest, Silva is seen only fleetingly, occasionally popping up to grit his teeth and look irritable at the CIA command center, which looks exactly like a conference room at the budget-priced hotel where Spagnuolo had the cast and crew booked. This is also where Cooper and some CIA officials keep tabs on Miller's progress, which realistically would take days or weeks, but Silva and the actors playing the CIA officials are always shown wearing the same clothes in these cutaways--a clear indicator that these shots were likely knocked out in a few hours and Di Leo failed to consider or simply didn't care enough to have them change clothes. Silva's looping of his dialogue sounds halting, groggy, and half-asleep, and it's doubtul that he put in more than a few days' work on this.
Strode (1914-1994) is actually in THE VIOLENT BREED quite a bit, though his voice was dubbed by the gruff Ed Mannix. And, at nearly 70 years of age, he's likely the oldest grunt in the entire Namsploitation subgenre. Prior to being an actor, Strode excelled in multiple sports, and was a noted college football star who made NFL history as one of the first four men to break the league's color barrier when he was signed by the Los Angeles Rams in 1946 after a 13-year ban on black players. He was also a symbol of stereotype-shattering progress in black Hollywood, as well as a Golden Globe nominee for Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS (1960), and a prominent member of John Ford's stock company. But by the 1980s, he was reduced to appearing in some truly terrible Italian D-movies, with the low point being his entire performance in the 1984 Italian post-nuke THE FINAL EXECUTIONER (where he's dubbed by gravelly-voiced Robert Spafford) being revoiced and recycled into 1989's very similar THE BRONX EXECUTIONER, probably without the actor's knowledge or financial benefit. Both Silva and Strode fared much better as a pair of NYC hit men hunting down an Italian mobster in Di Leo's THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, and they also worked with the director separately, with Silva starring in THE BOSS and KILLER VS. KILLERS, and Strode appearing in the lighthearted LOADED GUNS (1975). In the late '90s, Xenon Home Video, a company largely focused on "urban"-themed fare, tried to cash in on the burgeoning, I'M BOUT IT-inspired rapsploitation scene by re-releasing THE VIOLENT BREED under the absurd new title REAL SOULJA, with a now-top-billed Strode prominently displayed on the box art.
Little is known these days about American actor Muller. Born in 1955, his parents were post-Vaudeville entertainers in the 1940s and 1950s, with his father--also named Harrison Muller--a well-known dancer and an occasional guest on THE GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW. Like his older sister, actress Nadia Cassini (PULP, STARCRASH), Muller Jr.'s short-lived acting career was spent almost entirely in Italy, with only a bit part in the Christopher Reeve flop MONSIGNOR (1982) and a supporting role in the 1983 Pia Zadora bomb THE LONELY LADY allowing him the slightest whiff of a Hollywood breakthrough. Muller found a niche in low-grade Italian ripoffs like the post-nuke offerings 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS (1982), WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD (1983), SHE (1985), and THE FINAL EXECUTIONER. He also co-starred in the 1983 CONAN ripoff THE THRONE OF FIRE, produced by Spagnuolo, who spent a good chunk of the 1980s unsuccessfully trying to turn Muller into an action star. Muller took a few years off after THE VIOLENT BREED and THE FINAL EXECUTIONER (though released in 1985, the insane SHE was shot in 1982), and returned in 1989 with pair of back-to-back Spagnuolo productions that teamed him with none other than SHAFT himself, Richard Roundtree. MIAMI COPS, directed by the legendarily incompetent Alfonso Brescia (Al Bradley) and released in the US by Cannon, tried very hard to be an Italian ripoff of MIAMI VICE, keeping its fingers crossed that however few viewers it mustered wouldn't notice that many of its exteriors were actually shot in the decidedly un-Miami-like Detroit. GETTING EVEN, directed by Leandro Lucchetti and released by Menahem Golan's doomed post-Cannon outfit 21st Century, had Roundtree and Muller going after a serial killing Vietnam buddy, trailing him from NYC to Thailand, which gave Spagnuolo the perfect excuse to recycle a long action sequence in Polo's compound from THE VIOLENT BREED, intercutting it with badly-integrated new footage of Roundtree standing by himself lobbing grenades. Spagnuolo even went so far as to cast Debora Keith in GETTING EVEN simply because she was in the footage he was borrowing from THE VIOLENT BREED (it's worth noting that these are Keith's only two film credits). After these last two action duds, Muller pulled a Mark Gregory and fell off the face of the planet, his legacy buried near the bottom of the VHS Glory Days scrap heap, his films remembered only by the most ardent devotees of the justifiably obscure and the deepest cuts in the bottomless back catalog of '80s Italian exploitation ripoffs.
In other words, he's gotta have some stories to tell. In the unlikely event you're reading this, Mr. Muller, I extend an open invitation for a career-spanning interview covering your adventures in the wild world of 1980s Eurotrash cinema.
KING SOLOMON'S MINES (US - 1985) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Gene Quintano and James R. Silke. Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, John Rhys Davies, Ken Gampu, Shai K. Ophir, June Bethulezi, Sam Williams, Bernard Archard. (PG-13, 100 mins)
Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus wanted Cannon to have its own Indiana Jones, and the answer came in the form of Allan Quartermain, the heroic adventurer and protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and a subsequent series of adventures. Cannon's KING SOLOMON'S MINES was released on November 22, 1985, in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the novel. It opened at #1 at the box office and stayed in the top ten for several weeks, proof that the public was still jonesing for some RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM-style adventure. It proved to be one of Cannon's bigger successes, despite almost across-the-board negative reviews that dismissed it as a RAIDERS knockoff. Well, of course it was. That was the whole point.
What gave KING SOLOMON'S MINES a little more appeal to moviegoers was the presence of Richard Chamberlain as Quatermain. The 51-year-old actor had appeared in many critically-heralded and/or financially successful films over his career, ranging from PETULIA (1968), THE MUSIC LOVERS (1970), THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973), THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974), THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974), THE LAST WAVE (1977), as well as the bad-movie classic THE SWARM (1978). However, with rare exception (THE MUSIC LOVERS, THE LAST WAVE), Chamberlain was usually part of an ensemble and not the lead in feature films and ended up enjoying his biggest successes on the small screen. He starred in the popular NBC series DR. KILDARE from 1961 to 1966, getting his breakout role after two other up-and-comers--William Shatner and James Franciscus--turned it down. After appearing in several big-screen movies, the success of the two MUSKETEERS films got Chamberlain two expensive TV adaptations of other Alexandre Dumas works for NBC: THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO (1975) and THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1977). In 1980, Chamberlain hit his career pinnacle with the gargantuan NBC mini-series SHOGUN, based on James Clavell's best-selling novel. SHOGUN captivated America and established Chamberlain as the king of the mini-series, the extended, multi-part format made popular by ROOTS (1977), JESUS OF NAZARETH (1977), and CENTENNIAL (1978), the latter featuring Chamberlain as part of its large cast. While it's difficult for those accustomed to today's technological conveniences and the internet and the ease of binge-watching to fathom a time when homes didn't have DVRs or even the ancient relic known as the VCR, America did indeed drop what it was doing and, for five consecutive nights in September 1980, orchestrated their lives around Richard Chamberlain and SHOGUN. Chamberlain was bigger than ever, and it led to ABC mini-series THE THORN BIRDS, another phenomenal success that had audiences glued to their TVs for four nights in March 1983.
Chamberlain would go on to other mini-series and prestige TV projects--1985's WALLENBERG: A HERO'S STORY for NBC, 1986's DREAM WEST for CBS, and 1987's CASANOVA for ABC--and in 1988, nearly a decade and a half before Matt Damon popularized the character, he would become the first Jason Bourne in the ABC mini-series adaptation of THE BOURNE IDENTITY but, while people tuned in, these later projects didn't pull in the ratings of SHOGUN and THE THORN BIRDS. Chamberlain starred in the one-season CBS series ISLAND SON in 1989 and his output slowed after that. He starred in CBS' TV-movie THE THORN BIRDS: THE MISSING YEARS in 1996, but for most of that decade, he focused on stage work. He occasionally popped up in a made-for-TV movie like ABC's remake of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1991) or a late-comer mini-series like CBS' TOO RICH: THE SECRET LIFE OF DORIS DUKE (1999), where he played the faithful butler and companion of the billionaire tobacco heiress, played by Lauren Bacall, but he generally stayed out of the limelight and gravitated to stage work, possibly due to offers dissipating with age as he entered his 60s, but probably more likely because of persistent rumors that the very private actor was gay. A 1989 People article more or less outed him, but Chamberlain never publicly confirmed it until his 2003 memoir Shattered Love. In the years since, the now-80-year-old Chamberlain has had small roles in a few indie films that didn't expand much beyond the festival circuit, guest spots on TV shows like WILL & GRACE, NIP/TUCK, and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, as well as recurring roles on CHUCK, BROTHERS & SISTERS, and LEVERAGE.
Chamberlain and director J. Lee Thompson
More than capable of holding his own in a Ken Russell film like THE MUSIC LOVERS or among the impressive cast of 1970's JULIUS CAESAR, Chamberlain was often dismissed by film snobs in his heyday as "a TV actor," but he's always been underrated, and his enthusiastic, affable interpretation of Allan Quatermain in KING SOLOMON'S MINES is quite enjoyable. Chamberlain hoped to take his SHOGUN and THORN BIRDS triumphs and jump-start his stagnant big-screen career and, even it was for one week, a Richard Chamberlain movie topped the box office as late as 1985. Chamberlain's days--all seven of them--as the nation's leading box office draw were brought to a swift end the next weekend when ROCKY IV opened, but KING SOLOMON'S MINES holds up nicely nearly 30 years later. Much of that is due to the directorial skills of veteran journeyman J. Lee Thompson (1914-2002), a guy who knew how to get in the can quickly and on budget, and though he was often slumming in his later years, he had experience with big, epic movies. Sure, he ended his career with the 1989 Charles Bronson sleazefest KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS, a film that opens with an enraged Bronson rescuing an underage hooker and jamming a dildo up a guy's ass, but Thompson also directed 1961's THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (earning him his lone Oscar nomination), 1962's TARAS BULBA, and 1963's KINGS OF THE SUN. While no one mistook Thompson for the second coming of David Lean, these big films were grand, majestic adventures with big budgets, big crews, and big spectacle (he also managed to fit the original CAPE FEAR into 1962). Though his Cannon contributions consisted mostly of working with his buddy Bronson in the '80s (10 TO MIDNIGHT, MURPHY'S LAW, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN, MESSENGER OF DEATH, and KINJITE), Thompson became an in-house Cannon guy, also directing the THE AMBASSADOR (1985), the studio's first adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 52 Pick-Up before John Frankenheimer's more faithful second version a year later, as well as the Chuck Norris actioner FIREWALKER (1986). Thompson was already over 70 when he was given KING SOLOMON'S MINES, and though he was obviously working with some budget limitations and the film doesn't look quite as good as an INDIANA JONES movie, it is one of Cannon's more handsomely-mounted and well-shot productions. The aging workhorse cranked out at least a movie per year for Cannon until he retired after KINJITE, which was also Bronson's last Golan-Globus production. Thompson died in 2002 at the age of 88.
The other key player in KING SOLOMON'S MINES is Sharon Stone, several years before 1992's BASIC INSTINCT made her a worldwide phenomenon. Stone's success didn't happen overnight, and she was already in her 30s by the time BASIC INSTINCT happened. KING SOLOMON'S MINES marked her first major starring role in a feature after years of supporting roles in films like Wes Craven's DEADLY BLESSING (1981) and the "Drew Barrymore divorces her parents" comedy-drama IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES (1984) as well as TV work like the short-lived Michael Nouri sports series BAY CITY BLUES, cancelled by NBC after four episodes in 1983, and the Rock Hudson TV-movie THE VEGAS STRIP WAR (1984). Stone paid her dues for years before her breakout role in TOTAL RECALL (1990) got her the BASIC INSTINCT gig, even logging time as Steve Guttenberg's love interest in 1987's POLICE ACADEMY 4: CITIZENS ON PATROL and as Steven Seagal's wife in his 1988 debut ABOVE THE LAW. Stone is OK but doesn't do much more in KING SOLOMON'S MINES than play the damsel in distress and incredulously proclaim or frantically scream "Quatermain!" whether she's reacting to his antics or in need of rescue, and there's little indication of the fame (and, I suppose, infamy) that would come a few years later. In documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley's upcoming ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, a look at the history of The Cannon Group, Chamberlain reportedly shares a story about Stone's casting in KING SOLOMON'S MINES being accidental: Golan wanted "that Stone woman," and his casting associates signed Sharon Stone. According to Chamberlain, Golan meant Kathleen Turner, whose ROMANCING THE STONE had just been a big hit and, with its lighthearted tone, an influence on KING SOLOMON'S MINES.
The plot of KING SOLOMON'S MINES is updated to WWI as soldier of fortune Quatermain is hired by Jessie Huston (Stone) to locate her missing professor father (Bernard Archard). The professor has been kidnapped by evil German Col. Bockner (Herbert Lom) and nefarious Turkish slave trader Dogati (John Rhys Davies) and forced to interpret what's reputed to be a map to the legendary King Solomon's Mines, allegedly housing wealth and treasure beyond imagination. Accompanied by Quatermain's faithful native companion Umbopo (Ken Gampu), Quatermain and Jessie encounter all manner of adventure that retains some elements of Haggard's novel but takes its share of wild liberties, including an encounter with a giant spider. While Thompson succeeds in making a relatively inexpensive film look bigger than it is, Chamberlain's and Stone's stunt doubles are often distractingly obvious, but he keeps things moving at a frenetic pace in what's basically a series of chase scenes, all propelled along by Jerry Goldsmith's rousing score. The script by Gene Quintano (TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS) and James R. Silke (NINJA III: THE DOMINATION) has some amusing elements, like Bockner using the dead bodies of his officers as a bridge to cross quicksand or yelling at a drowning officer to "Stop sinking! That's an order!" Lom and especially Rhys Davies are terrific as the villains, both chewing the scenery with comical gusto and seemingly having fun with the project, despite what was a sometimes arduous shoot on location in Zimbabwe. There's some pretty blatant racism in the script that comes across as rather cringe-inducing today, and it's not just the comic relief of the perpetually frightened Umbopo, who's too scared to ride in a car and stops just short of exclaiming "Feets don't fail me now!" Nor is it just the tribe of savage cannibals putting Quatermain and Jessie in a giant pot to boil. It's Jessie calling untrustworthy merchant Kassam (Shai K. Ophir) a "cheap-suited camel jockey" and a "towel-headed freak." It's an unfortunate misstep in an otherwise immensely likable and highly entertaining film.
ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (US - 1987) Directed by Gary Nelson and Newt Arnold. Written by Gene Quintano. Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, James Earl Jones, Henry Silva, Robert Donner, Doghmi Larbi, Aileen Marson, Cassandra Peterson, Martin Rabbett, Alex Heyns. (PG, 100 mins)
KING SOLOMON'S MINES was successful enough to warrant a sequel, though that sequel was planned all along. Shot concurrently with the first film in 1985 by a different director and crew, ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD almost gets by on the easygoing charm of Chamberlain but is a vastly inferior film. It looks cheaper, moves slower, and lacks the playful revisionist goofiness of KING SOLOMON'S MINES. It was a troubled production that could've used J. Lee Thompson at the helm. The director was Gary Nelson, another journeyman who made some good films but lacked the expertise of a seen-and-done-it-all pro like Thompson. Nelson directed the Disney films FREAKY FRIDAY (1976) and THE BLACK HOLE (1979), as well as the Gary Coleman comedy JIMMY THE KID (1982). He started directing NIGHTHAWKS (1981) before disagreements with star Sylvester Stallone resulted in Nelson getting fired and Bruce Malmuth stepping in, though many sources claim Stallone directed most of the film and Malmuth was merely present on the set and collecting a paycheck by being the guy yelling "Action!" to skirt around the DGA's "Eastwood Rule" that a fired director can't be replaced by the film's star, a rule created in 1976 when Philip Kaufman filed a grievance after Clint Eastwood fired him from THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES and took over as director himself.
Inactive since 2000, the now-80-year-old Nelson was primarily known in the industry as a TV director, working on everything from HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND and GOMER PYLE, USMC in the 1960s, KOJAK, MCMILLAN AND WIFE, and POLICE STORY in the 1970s, TV-movies like THE PRIDE OF JESSE HALLAM and NOBLE HOUSE in the 1980s to EARLY EDITION in the late 1990s. Nelson knew how to work on a tight schedule and his plethora of TV credits indicates that the networks saw him as a go-to guy for the small screen, but he seems in over his head on ALLAN QUATERMAIN. That may not speak to his abilities or lack thereof as the guy calling the shots--after all, FREAKY FRIDAY and THE BLACK HOLE were successful--but more likely, the corner-cutting circumstances under which Golan & Globus had him working. Though shot simultaneously, it's obvious that the producers considered KING SOLOMON'S MINES the more important of the two films, as ALLAN QUATERMAIN looks like a disgruntled younger sibling forced to make do with tattered hand-me-downs. KING SOLOMON'S MINES needed to be successful to justify a sequel...which they were already shooting at the same time. It's obvious that it didn't matter to Golan & Globus if ALLAN QUATERMAIN was a piece of shit. At least some attempt was made to make it presentable: after principal photography was finished, veteran second-unit director Newt Arnold (who would go on to direct BLOODSPORT) was given a crew for extensive reshoots in Los Angeles. It's never been said whether Nelson was fired or if he was just busy with another assignment or simply didn't want any further involvement in the film, but there is an "Additional scenes directed by Newt Arnold" credit. Some of these scenes stick out like a sore thumb: Chamberlain's beard and Stone's hairstyle change throughout, Chamberlain's hair has some clearly visible gray streaks in some scenes, and Henry Silva, who turns up an hour into the film as the villainous high priest Agon, has two noticeably different wigs that sometimes switch back and forth in various shots within the same scene. The theatrical trailer also has numerous shots--including Quatermain tangling with some Agon's warriors over a pit of melted gold--that don't appear in the released film.
This cheery publicity shot of the stars constitutes
the most convincing acting associated with ALLAN
QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD
But even before the obvious Arnold-directed reshoots, confined mostly to the film's second half, ALLAN QUATERMAIN is sloppy and carelessly executed. The visual effects and process screens are laughably crummy, no effort is made to hide the wires attached to the actors--one character is lifted by another and the "lifting" actor barely has his hands on the person as black wires yank him out of the shot, and though Goldsmith is uncredited, the score is almost completely recycled from the first film. Chamberlain gives it his best shot as Quatermain puts off his wedding to Jessie as the two search for his missing brother Robeson (played by Chamberlain's longtime partner Martin Rabbett), who's involved with a cult led by the loony Agon. Silva makes up for his belated appearance by hamming it up mercilessly, as does Robert Donner (MORK & MINDY's Exidor), mugging shamelessly as the cowardly, comic relief mystic Swarma. One of ALLAN QUATERMAIN's biggest offenses is having James Earl Jones in the cast and giving him nothing to do with the role of warrior Umslopogaas, an old friend of Quatermain's who, with Donner's Swarma already fulfilling the comedy obligation, basically functions as a badass version of KING SOLOMON'S MINES' clownish Umbopo. A surprisingly lean Jones looks appropriately intimidating but he's far too vital a screen presence to be saddled with the noble savage sidekick role. In his memoir Voices and Silences, Jones completely dismissed the film as "a failure" and said he only did it because he'd never been to Zimbabwe and the production was paying for everything.
As far as the general public was concerned, once was enough for Chamberlain's pseudo-Indiana Jones act. ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD tanked badly, landing in seventh place with less than $2 million. It opened on January 30, 1987, the same day as the Bette Midler/Shelley Long comedy OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, which took the #2 spot as everything fell victim to Orion's wide release expansion of Oliver Stone's landmark, headline-making PLATOON, the talk of the industry at the end of 1986 and the beginning of 1987. QUATERMAIN took a serious beating, grossing less in its opening weekend than STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME in its tenth week of release and even being beaten out by THE GOLDEN CHILD, Eddie Murphy's attempt at being Indiana Jones, in its eighth week out. In short, regardless of how much they may have enjoyed KING SOLOMON'S MINES 14 months earlier, moviegoers didn't give the slightest semblance of a shit about a second Allan Quatermain adventure, and it fell out of the top ten in its second weekend and was in second-run discount theaters in its third.
TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (US/Spain - 1983) Directed by Ferdinando Baldi. Written by Lloyd Battista, Jim Bryce, and Jerry Lazarus. Cast: Tony Anthony, Ana Obregon, Gene Quintano, Jerry Lazarus, Francisco Rabal, Emiliano Redondo, Francisco Villena, Lewis Gordon. (PG, 101 mins)
When 1983's TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS aired on The Movie Channel's JOE BOB'S DRIVE IN-THEATER back in the late '80s, host Joe Bob Briggs remarked that it was "the first hit in a series of one" for producer/star Tony Anthony. A funny line, yes, but not exactly true. Though he enjoyed some minor success and his COMIN' AT YA! was a surprise hit in 1981, he is, for the most part, an almost completely-forgotten C-lister as far as mainstream audiences are concerned. But the long, strange journey of Tony Anthony is the kind of oddball story that should be made into a movie. He wanted to run his career his own way, and like most independent-minded mavericks, his career achievements, such as they were, came about from ingenuity, perseverance, salesmanship, and having some good friends in unexpected places.
Anthony was born Roger Anthony Pettito in West Virginia in 1937. He broke into movies with his buddy Saul Swimmer (1936-2007) with their 1961 Miami-shot indie FORCE OF IMPULSE. Anthony and Swimmer wrote the script, Swimmer directed, and Anthony co-starred with a decidedly odd cast that featured Robert Alda, J. Carrol Naish, and jazz great Lionel Hampton. Anthony played a poor high-school student trying to woo a rich girl, so he robs his father's grocery store with tragic results. FORCE OF IMPULSE was barely released and probably hasn't been seen in decades, but Anthony and Swimmer kept at it with the 1962 circus drama WITHOUT EACH OTHER. Anthony and Swimmer briefly went their own ways, with Anthony going to Europe and finding work in some Italian films and Swimmer heading to London. As the spaghetti western genre exploded following 1964's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, which wasn't released in the US until 1967, producers were scrambling to find the next Clint Eastwood, and Anthony would soon parlay what little notoriety he had into a series of "Man with No Name" knockoffs as "The Stranger." A STRANGER IN TOWN (1967), THE STRANGER RETURNS (1967), and THE SILENT STRANGER (shot in 1968, shelved until 1975) has varying degrees of success in America and Anthony took on more creative control as the series went on. Swimmer, meanwhile, directed the 1968 Herman's Hermits movie MRS. BROWN, YOU'VE GOT A LOVELY DAUGHTER and, through his friendship with Abkco Records chief and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, would eventually be part of the Beatles' inner circle once Klein took over managing the band after Brian Epstein's death in 1967. Swimmer co-produced the Beatles' 1970 documentary LET IT BE and would later direct George Harrison's THE CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH (1972). Anthony would eventually be pulled into the Beatles' orbit via his old friend Swimmer, and the pair wrote the post-EASY RIDER road movie COME TOGETHER (1971), starring Anthony, directed by Swimmer and produced by the pair with Ringo Starr. Starr and Anthony hit it off, and after COME TOGETHER, Starr co-starred in Anthony's next film, 1971's BLINDMAN, co-produced by Klein and directed by Italian journeyman Ferdinando Baldi. Due mostly to the novelty of seeing a former Beatle playing a bad guy in a spaghetti western, BLINDMAN was, to that point, Anthony's most significant success with American audiences. In 1972, he starred in the Italian gangster film 1931: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK, unfortunately retitled PETE, PEARL AND THE POLE for its US release, one of the last titles handled by National General Pictures. In 1975, he and Baldi made GET MEAN, the fourth and final "Stranger" outing. Anthony appeared in just 12 films from 1961 to 1975, and other than BLINDMAN and whatever cult status his spaghetti obscurities have, his career appeared stalled and he didn't even pursue hired-gun acting gigs.
Anthony had other things in mind and it would be six years before the world heard from him again. Teaming with American producers Gene Quintano and Marshall Lupo, Anthony formed a new production company and found his true calling: he was bringing 3-D back in a big way. The process had been used only sparingly since its flash-in-the-pan craze from 1953 to 1954. Anthony recruited his BLINDMAN and GET MEAN director Baldi for COMIN' AT YA!, a violent, R-rated, 3-D spaghetti western throwback that became a sleeper hit for Filmways in 1981. Anthony and his collaborators had one goal: throw everything at the screen. Audiences loved it, though obviously because of the novelty of 3-D rather than the inanities of Anthony's script. COMIN' AT YA! was enough of a success that the same creative personnel--Anthony, Quintano, Lupo, and Baldi--moved on to their next 3-D outing, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, a modernized but still quite blatant ripoff of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Anthony and Quintano conceived the story, which was scripted by frequent Anthony collaborator Lloyd Battista, Jim Bryce, and co-star Jerry Lazarus. Shot in Spain with American and Spanish actors and an Italian crew, with music by none other than Ennio Morricone, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS was acquired by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and released by Cannon in US theaters on January 21, 1983. By this time, the second big 3-D craze was underway with the previous year's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 and PARASITE, and, later in 1983, films like JAWS 3-D, AMITYVILLE 3-D, METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN, and SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. Additionally, 3-D classics from the first wave like 1953's HOUSE OF WAX and 1954's DIAL M FOR MURDER were given nationwide re-releases to capitalize on the trend. To the surprise of no one, the fad fizzled as quickly as it did 30 years earlier, but the renewed enthusiasm, however brief, can largely be credited to Tony Anthony and COMIN' AT YA!
While today's digital 3-D primarily adds depth, texture, and detail, the old-school 3-D films were about having things pop out of the screen, and few understood this as well as Tony Anthony. After an opening crawl in no way inspired by STAR WARS, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS commences with a 20-minute prologue as soldier-of-fortune J.T. Striker (Anthony, of course) searches for a hidden key inside a haunted castle. Over the course of those 20 minutes, Baldi and Anthony throw bats, buzzards, snakes, dogs, glass, spears, ropes, arrows, swords, cigarettes, and fireballs at the viewer. Anthony does everything short of unzipping his fly and showing the goods in his non-stop quest to just constantly dangle things in the audience's face. Virtually every scene--even boring exposition--features awkwardly-staged shots of people just sticking things in front of the camera. Usually, you can clearly see the strings pulling the items. Audiences ate it up, and while FOUR CROWNS is a sentimental favorite to those of a certain age thanks to it seemingly being aired on a constant loop on cable in the '80s, it really doesn't play well flat. Time and again, things come to a dead halt when an actor has to stop the flow of a scene to hold something--a pen, a piece of paper, a key--in front of the camera for an absurd amount of time. And the story is utter nonsense: Striker is hired by an aging professor (Francisco Villena) and money man Ed (Quintano, a terrible actor) to seek out the remaining two of four mystical, supernatural crowns with otherworldly powers. Striker assembles his team: Ed, "90 proof courage" alcoholic Rick (Lazarus), and father-daughter acrobatic pair Socrates (Francisco Rabal) and Liz (Ana Obregon) to infiltrate the impenetrable fortress of crazed cult leader Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo), who has the Crowns hidden in a booby-trapped lair inside.
While its set-up owes pretty much everything to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, right down to Striker being chased by a boulder, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS becomes more of a goofy heist movie. And it's never goofier than in the bonkers climax, which makes the whole tedious affair worthwhile. Striker finds the remaining two Crowns and the jewels inside cause him to be possessed by an otherworldly entitiy. His head spins around EXORCIST-style and his face mutates before he starts wiping out Jonas' army of followers by shooting fire from his hands. That's capped off by a nonsensical appearance by a disgusting lizard creature that seemingly there to set up a sequel that we're still waiting to see.
Sweating profusely throughout and looking like Christopher Hitchens with a bad case of heartburn, Anthony has absolutely no charisma and zero screen presence, making you appreciate Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, David Warbeck in some of Antonio Margheriti's Italian RAIDERS knockoffs, and Richard Chamberlain's affable Allan Quatermain in Cannon's KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1985) even more. Anthony had his biggest box office hits with COMIN' AT YA and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, and that must've made him happy: after his triumphant turn as J.T. Striker, Anthony retired from acting and shows no signs of making a comeback. He continued producing movies with Quintano, like 1990's HONEYMOON ACADEMY and the popular 1998 TNT western DOLLAR FOR THE DEAD. Anthony also co-produced the Zalman King late-night cable favorite WILD ORCHID (1990), while Quintano went on to write the aforementioned KING SOLOMON'S MINES, as well as POLICE ACADEMY 3: BACK IN TRAINING (1985) and POLICE ACADEMY 4: CITIZENS ON PATROL (1987), and direct the instantly forgotten Christophers Lambert & Lloyd heist comedy WHY ME? (1990) and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON 1 (1993).
Tony Anthony doing a Q&A
at a 2012 screening of
COMIN' AT YA!
Now 76, Anthony has been inactive in movies since his producing credit on DOLLAR FOR THE DEAD, but he occupied his time owning and operating a successful optical supply company that stemmed from his longstanding interest in camera and projection equipment (he designed a special lens around the time of COMIN' AT YA! that was used by studios and theater chains in the subsequent early '80s 3-D craze). He briefly returned from his self-imposed exile in 2011 when he converted COMIN' AT YA! to digital 3-D and it was re-released on an Alamo Drafthouse tour. TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, meanwhile, has finally been released on DVD as part of a Shout! Factory "Action Adventure Movie Marathon" four-film set, with I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND (1973), THE FINAL OPTION (1983), and SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959). I wish the news was better, but Shout!'s presentation of FOUR CROWNS is one of the worst DVD transfers in the history of the medium, barely sub-YouTube in quality, cropped from 2.35 to 1.33, and riddled with extensive scratches and debris, inconsistent color, and significant print damage, rendering it an almost-unwatchable travesty. Yes, the four-film set retails at $9.99, but the picture quality is shockingly bad for a company of Shout!'s reputation. I get that it's the only print they had access to, but you could find a 30-year-old VHS tape at a flea market and the picture quality would be better. It does offer a pleasant and enthusiastic commentary track by "pop culture historian" and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS superfan Russell Dyball, but a sentimental cult favorite like this deserves something a little more than what Shout! has given it.
