THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD (US - 1975) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Max Ehrlich. Cast: Michael Sarrazin, Jennifer O'Neill, Margot Kidder, Cornelia Sharpe, Paul Hecht, Tony Stephano, Normann Burton, Anne Ives, Debralee Scott, Steve Franken, Fred Stuthman, Addison Powell. (R, 105 mins) Gifted with a vividly distinctive title that's ultimately more memorable than the film itself, THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD has become one of those horror movies from a bygone era whose scarce availability has led to somewhat of an inflated reputation that it's some mythical, lost masterpiece. Rarely seen since its 1980s VHS release and its long-ago days in regular rotation on late-night TV in what had to be a drastically-cut version, PETER PROUD was never released on DVD but is now reincarnated on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead). It's likely that some may find it a little too dry and too skimpy with the shocks, considering its contemporaries were the likes of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN. In its own way, THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD, from the masters of erotica-infused horror at Bing Crosby Productions, carved its own niche for hard-R notoriety with its then-copious amounts of nudity and occasionally explicit sex, particularly an extended Margot Kidder bathtub masturbation scene that's usually the first and only thing anyone who's seen the film can recall whenever it's mentioned. "The Bathtub Scene" is also the subject of two different extras on the Blu-ray, which may further contribute to the legend that it's the 1970s horror geek equivalent of the LAST TANGO IN PARIS butter scene. But while Kidder leaves little to the imagination, it's still not the quite the teenage spank bank fodder that time and three decades of limited accessibility have made it out to be.
Adapted by veteran TV writer Max Ehrlich (THE DEFENDERS, THE UNTOUCHABLES, STAR TREK) from his 1973 novel, THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD managed to be modest hit in the summer of 1975, though it's almost certain that some of those movie tickets were purchased by people who couldn't get into a sold-out JAWS and were already at the theater anyway. Haunted by recurring dreams where he's someone he's never met being murdered by a woman he doesn't know, college professor Peter Proud (Michael Sarrazin) is referred to parapsychologist Dr. Goodman (Paul Hecht), who puts him in a dream study only to discover that his dream activity isn't even registering and that they may be psychic visions showing him events that took place 30 years earlier. Peter eventually concludes the town he sees in his visions is in Massachusetts, and with his skeptical and eventually unsympathetic girlfriend Nora (Cornelia Sharpe) in tow, Peter travels across the country and eventually finds the town, Crystal Lake (!). He seeks out Marcia Curtis (Kidder), the woman in his visions who he repeatedly sees kill her husband Jeff (Tony Stephano), and in time, he becomes increasingly unable to differentiate between his own memories and the memories of the dead Jeff, feeling certain that Jeff's spirit has been reborn in his body. To get to Marcia, Peter befriends her 30-year-old daughter Ann (Jennifer O'Neill), though Marcia rightly assumes that something is off about Peter, disturbed by the overwhelming sense that she's met him before.
With a bored Nora heading back to California, Peter is freed up, which inevitably leads to a romance with Ann, thus establishing an undeniable ick factor in the sense that Peter, his body slowly becoming the vessel for the murdered and reborn Jeff, is essentially sleeping with his own daughter, who was only three months old when her father was killed. With Jeff inside his head, Peter comes to sympathize with why Marcia did what she did (Jeff was abusive and a serial adulterer) and as his love for Ann grows (even though he occasionally slips and refers to her as "my daughter"), he doesn't want to return to his old life. It wouldn't take a whole lot of tweaking to turn this into a maudlin, supernaturally-skewed Nicholas Sparks story if it were made today. Of course, you'd have to factor out the incestous elements, along with the fact that the masturbation scene is intercut with Marcia fantasizing about a time when Jeff violently raped her, a juxtaposition that, coupled with the incest, would launch at least two weeks' worth of AV Club and Vulture thinkpieces.
Even without her showstopping bathtub scene, Kidder gives the showiest performance, even though half of it is under aging makeup that's passable but doesn't quite stand up in the age of high-definition. Quebec-born Sarrazin, best known for 1969's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? and in the midst of his run as a '70s Hollywood leading man before heading back to Canada in the mid '80s (he was big enough in his day to host SNL in 1978), is fine as the troubled Proud, though his performance requires more reacting than acting and a lot of driving, as the first hour offers so much of Peter behind the wheel that it threatens to become a supernatural road movie. THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD is a middling effort from journeyman director J. Lee Thompson, whose career ran that gamut from revered classics like 1961's THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and 1962's CAPE FEAR to later Cannon essentials like 1983's 10 TO MIDNIGHT and 1989's KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS. There isn't much in the way of suspense or scares as the story plays out, requiring Thompson offer a little more skin than usual for this sort of thing, but there is one of Jerry Goldsmith's most unusual scores, one that eventually turns distinctively Goldsmithian near the end but for the most part, is a lot of eeric electronically-based sounds and effects. The most effective scene isn't Kidder's much-ballyhooed adult bathtime, but an emotional and heartbreaking one where Ann introduces Peter to her dementia-addled grandmother (Anne Ives), whose mind immediately returns from wherever it was as she sees her long-dead son Jeff in Peter and asks where he's been all this time. Most horror fans satisfying their curiosity about PETER PROUD won't be asking that when this reaches its conclusion, but for cult movie connoisseurs and fans of the recently deceased Kidder and the somewhat forgotten Sarrazin (who died in 2011), it's at least worth a look.
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.
MURPHY'S LAW (US - 1986) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Gail Morgan Hickman. Cast: Charles Bronson, Carrie Snodgress, Kathleen Wilhoite, Robert F. Lyons, Richard Romanus, Angel Tompkins, Bill Henderson, Lawrence Tierney, James Luisi, Janet MacLachlan, Jerome Thor, Robert Axelrod, Randall Carver. (R, 100 mins) Charles Bronson's career in the 1980s was defined by his association with Cannon's Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Starting with 1982's DEATH WISH II and ending with 1989's KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS, Bronson starred in eight Cannon productions, with the only outliers during that period being 1984's grisly THE EVIL THAT MEN DO (released by Tri-Star) and 1986's ACT OF VENGEANCE for HBO. DEATH WISH II provided Bronson with his first hit after a string of flops like LOVE AND BULLETS (1979), CABO BLANCO (1980), BORDERLINE (1980), and DEATH HUNT (1981), successfully reigniting his career and setting the tone for the Bronson formula that, with rare exception, would typify his work for the remainder of the decade. Critics were rarely kind to Bronson's '80s vehicles, but he enjoyed a few years as a reliable box office draw, with 10 TO MIDNIGHT (1983), the aforementioned THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, and DEATH WISH 3 (1985) all doing big business. DEATH WISH 3 opened the same day as William Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. and the sequel A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, and landed in the #1 spot. Nearly 25 years before Liam Neeson made geriatric tough guys a box office trend, 64-year-old Charles Bronson was so popular in the fall of 1985 that he emerged the victor in a box office battle with Freddy Krueger.
Much of 1986's MURPHY'S LAW is typical of Bronson/Cannon product of the period: as in 10 TO MIDNIGHT and the later KINJITE, he's playing a cop whose tendency to take the law (and sextoys) into his own hands and play by his own rules gets him in hot water with the department; he's tangling with a villain who has an axe to grind against his embittered cop; and he's directed by veteran journeyman J. Lee Thompson (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, CAPE FEAR), who would become not only a go-to Cannon guy (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, FIREWALKER), but also Bronson's favorite director as the decade went on. Thompson directed five of Bronson's eight Cannon titles, and the pair collaborated several times prior to the Golan-Globus phase of their careers, all the way back to 1976's ST. IVES. A stoical man known for keeping to himself and being standoffish until he got to know someone, Bronson was a man who didn't let just anyone into his inner circle, so he obviously felt a personal and professional connection with Thompson.
But MURPHY'S LAW also allows a bit of a departure for Bronson, which he may have wanted after the cartoonish excesses of the previous year's DEATH WISH 3, directed by Michael Winner. Now a beloved cult classic with its ridiculous plot, over-the-top characters (The Giggler!), and quotable dialogue ("It's MY CAR!"), DEATH WISH 3 is the funniest Bronson movie ever, even if that's not the intention. MURPHY'S LAW gives Bronson some room to act a little as burned-out, alcoholic L.A. cop Jack Murphy. Starting the day with a belt of booze and carrying a flask with him on the job, Murphy is pretty much a walking dumpster fire. Heartbroken over being abandoned by his cheating wife (Angel Tompkins), Murphy regularly tortures himself by going to the trashy strip club where she dances, disgusted by her and her job but still longing for her, unable to look away. A constantly hungover Murphy can barely get himself out of bed, and observing his morning routine play out is actually difficult to watch. Bronson looks like hell throughout MURPHY'S LAW, never more so than in the opening credits, where he seems to be in physical pain waking up, dragging himself to the bathroom, gargling Listerine, grunting, resting his head against the mirror, and looking like he's just about ready to give up on life. Considered a washed-up drunk by most of his colleagues (who mercilessly razz him about his ex's job), except for his only friend, horndog partner Art Penney (DEATH WISH II and 10 TO MIDNIGHT's Robert F. Lyons, another Bronson inner circler with whom the actor liked working), Murphy isn't about to get any sympathy when his ex-wife and her new boyfriend--the sleazy strip club manager--are killed with his gun. Murphy insists he's being framed by pissed-off L.A. mobster Frank Vincenzo (Richard Romanus) as revenge after Murphy kills Vincenzo's idiot younger brother in a hostage situation, but nobody cares. They're just happy to see Murphy crash and burn.
Of course he's being framed--not by Vincenzo but by Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress), a psycho killer who's just been paroled and is obsessed with vengeance after being put away by Murphy and his now-retired partner Wilcove (Ben Henderson) a decade earlier. Freeman follows Murphy, learns his routine, hides in his car, knocks him over the head before using his gun to kill the ex and the boyfriend while he's unconscious, and drives him home, with Murphy out cold the whole time. Assuming he blacked out in his car after a night at the bar, Murphy doesn't think much of it when he wakes up and finds himself parked outside his own house. But after he's arrested and realizes none of his fellow officers are going to help him, he orchestrates an escape, taking with him an unlikely partner-in-crime in Araballa McGee (Kathleen Wilhoite), a homeless, potty-mouthed street criminal who stole Murphy's car at the beginning of the movie. As Freeman continues a killing spree that implicates him, a now-fugitive Murphy is on the run with Arabella, now considered an accomplice, the pair determined to prove their innocence...if they don't kill each other first!
Pairing Bronson with a younger co-star was a good idea and the actor seems to be legitimately enjoying himself...or at least as much as Bronson could enjoy himself. If Golan and Globus had their way, Arabella would've been played by Madonna, who was offered the role but wanted more money than Golan was willing to spend. According to Bronson historian Paul Talbot in his book Bronson's Loose Again, Joan Jett auditioned and PURPLE RAIN's Apollonia Kotero and Prince protegee Vanity were also courted (Vanity would co-star in Cannon's 52 PICK-UP that same year) before the role went to the less expensive relative newcomer Wilhoite, a 22-year-old actress/singer who got an "Introducing" credit even though she already logged appearances in several films and TV shows. Best known to horror fans as the eccentric psychic in 1986's WITCHBOARD ("Psychic humor!") and to TV viewers as Sherry Stringfield's irresponsible older sister on ER and as Liz Danes on GILMORE GIRLS, Wilhoite has a likable presence despite some of the incredibly stupid insults she's required to spew. On the commentary track for Twilight Time's new Blu-ray release of MURPHY's LAW, Wilhoite says that the script by Gail Morgan Hickman (THE ENFORCER, NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET) was originally filled with some really foul and offensive lines for her that were softened to abrasive but silly-sounding zingers like "jizzum breath," "snotbutt," "dinosaur dork," "toejam," "Ya snot-lickin' donkey fart!" and "Kiss my pantyhose, sperm bank!" In spite of being tasked with playing a grating character, Wilhoite, who also sings the closing credits theme song, manages to win you over as Arabella. She does a solid job of playing off of Bronson's cranky persona, and Bronson has some legitimately heartfelt moments late in the film after Murphy finds himself reluctantly bonding with the obnoxious, troubled young woman who, of course, has a heart of gold.
In addition to allowing Bronson some unexpected character depth, MURPHY'S LAW also gives Bronson a different kind of villain in Snodgress' Joan Freeman. Like an angrier and completely deranged version of Sondra Locke's SUDDEN IMPACT vigilante, Snodgress, a Best Actress Oscar nominee for 1970's DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE, makes a memorably maniacal villain without ever going overboard into over-the-top histrionics. The film also makes terrific use of some iconic L.A. locations, from a chase scene through the Grand Central Market and the climax--where Murphy is forced to take on Vincenzo's goons and a crossbow-wielding Freeman--inside the legendary Bradbury Building, so memorably featured as the gloomy home of William Sanderson's J.F. Sebastian in 1982's BLADE RUNNER. By this point in his career, Bronson seemed hesitant to approach departure projects like he did post-DEATH WISH in the 1970s with films like the romantic FROM NOON TILL THREE (1976) and the bizarre THE WHITE BUFFALO. But 1986 saw him tackle the seemingly familiar but surprisingly complex Jack Murphy in MURPHY'S LAW as well as starring in the HBO biographical film ACT OF VENGEANCE, where he played Jock Yablonski, the doomed United Mine Workers president whose 1969 murder was orchestrated by his chief rival Tony Boyle, played in the film by Wilford Brimley.
MURPHY'S LAW opened the same day as the Tom Cruise/Ridley Scott fantasy LEGEND, landing in second place for the weekend. After that, the big-screen fortunes of both Bronson and Cannon began to wane: two 1987 releases, ASSASSINATION (where he was reunited with DEATH HUNT director Peter Hunt), and DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN (directed by Thompson) didn't even debut in the top five at the box office, and his next two films, 1988's low-key MESSENGER OF DEATH (Bronson doesn't even kill anyone!) and 1989's KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS (both directed by Thompson) only received limited theatrical releases before heading to video stores. It can't be a coincidence that Bronson's declining box office clout came at just the time huge and over-the-top Joel Silver-produced extravaganzas like 1987's LETHAL WEAPON and 1988's DIE HARD were reinventing the action genre. The comparatively low-budget Cannon productions couldn't compete, and even an unstoppable force like Clint Eastwood found himself losing audiences with underperformers like THE DEAD POOL (1988) and PINK CADILLAC (1989). Eastwood tried to fashion his own Joel Silver-esque buddy actioner, pairing himself with Charlie Sheen in 1990's THE ROOKIE, but nobody cared. It was out with the old (Bronson, Eastwood, and Chuck Norris) and in with the new (Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger). Eastwood was 62 when he managed to finally establish himself as a serious filmmaker in the eyes of the critics with 1992's Oscar-winning UNFORGIVEN, but by the time KINJITE immediately vanished from a few theaters in 1989, it was clear that, regardless of their entertainment value (KINJITE is great!), there wasn't a place at the multiplex for action movies starring a 68-year-old Bronson being directed by a 75-year-old Thompson.
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.
Watchable but mostly forgettable Charles Bronson outing was a PG-13 change-of-pace for the actor and gave him a chance to work with wife and frequent co-star Jill Ireland one last time. Ireland was offscreen since 1982's DEATH WISH II and had been battling breast cancer since 1984. She was in good health again by the time of ASSASSINATION, and only appeared in one more film (a small role in the barely-released, Billy Graham-financed 1987 religious drama CAUGHT), before her cancer returned and she died in 1990.
Bronson is veteran Secret Service agent Jay Killian, assigned to protect incoming First Lady Lara Craig (Ireland), codenamed "One Mama." One Mama proves to be a bit of a feisty bitch, and doesn't feel like listening to Killian even when it becomes clear that someone is trying to kill her. But why? Killian and One Mama end up spending the second half of the film on the run cross-country, stopping to buy motorcycles in Kokomo, IN, an area that's curiously filled with palm trees and mountains on the horizon (there's also some visible palm trees in a few DC shots), as they try to evade a team of assassins working for someone who ranks high in the government.
ASSASSINATION is a very plodding, slowly-paced film that feels much longer than its brief 88 minutes. My dad and I saw this when it opened in January 1987 and I recall both of us being disappointed. I hadn't seen it all the way through since then, and remembered almost nothing about it other than the terrible rug worn by Michael Ansara, playing a senator. ASSASSINATION looks and feels like a bland TV-movie. Bronson gives it some life in his scenes with Ireland. No one ever accused Ireland of being a great actress, but Bronson loved her more than anything and he was clearly in good spirits being able to work with her. And Ireland has one legitimately hilarious bit where she's trying to dodge Bronson and disguises herself in a black wig and dances down the street. I think you can actually see her trying not to laugh. There's more (intentional) humor than usual here, especially with Bronson being aggressively pursued by his much younger partner Jan Gan Boyd, but it just never gets rolling despite a capable action director in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE's Peter Hunt, who previously directed Bronson in 1981's DEATH HUNT. Also with Stephen Elliott as Bronson's boss (who gets a "No way that would fly today" throwaway line where he refers to the Asian-American Boyd as "Charlie Chan"), William Prince, Erik Stern, Peter Lupus, Frank Zagarino, and, in the film's oddest casting, Billy Hayes as one of the hired killers. Yeah...the subject of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS. THAT Billy Hayes. Harmless and not awful by any means, but probably the weakest film from the Cannon/Golan-Globus era of Bronson's career, despite some promising elements that just never quite come together. (PG-13, 88 mins)
MESSENGER OF DEATH (US - 1988)
Charles Bronson's penultimate '80s Cannon outing is a mostly low-key mystery and another attempt by the actor to try something different. Bronson is crusading Denver newspaper reporter Garrett Smith, who finds himself in the middle of a war between two feuding Mormon brothers (Jeff Corey, John Ireland), but it's really all part of a nefarious water company's plot to gain access to an artesian well on Ireland's property. MESSENGER OF DEATH ambles along and is rather slowly-paced and predictable (never trust a prominently-billed, recognizable actor who doesn't have much to do with the plot), but Bronson makes it enjoyable entertainment.
The star had remained busy throughout the decade (teaming up once again with his favorite '80s director J. Lee Thompson) but as the '80s came to a close, his films became less popular, especially in the wake of big-budget hits like LETHAL WEAPON and DIE HARD. Even an established icon like Clint Eastwood was losing his audience during this period and he was a decade younger than Bronson. Action movies had suddenly changed. They got bigger and they got louder, and by the latter part of 1988, younger audiences weren't really interested in films with 67-year-old Bronson directed by a 74-year-old Thompson, just as older folks who might like a cozy Bronson mystery were likely turned off by all the violence and sleaze in most of his films. The R-rated MESSENGER tones much of that down (not as much as 1987's PG-13-rated ASSASSINATION), with a few bits of gunshot splatter and an occasional "bastard" and "son-of-a-bitch" and one late F-bomb from the bad guy, and feels a lot like the TV movies Bronson would do in the '90s that would represent his final work before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Bronson only fires a gun once in MESSENGER, and it's at an empty casket so he can prove no one's inside of it (I don't know why he couldn't just, you know, open it). All that, plus a cast filled with aging character actors (Corey, Ireland), and familiar TV faces (Laurence Luckinbill, Marilyn Hassett, Charles Dierkop, Don Kennedy, plus Daniel Benzali, Bronson's now-clothed 10 TO MIDNIGHT co-star Gene Davis, and a completely underutilized Trish Van Devere), meant that there wasn't much of a chance for MESSENGER OF DEATH in theaters, and it died a quick death. Bronson and Thompson had the much more typically trashy "vigilante cop vs. scumbag pimp" underage prostitution thriller KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS out in theaters five months later and when it fared just as poorly, Bronson was effectively done in theatrical features except for a small character role in Sean Penn's THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991) and a one-shot return to his vigilante schtick in 1994's DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH.
MESSENGER OF DEATH is hardly top-drawer Bronson, but looking it again 23 years later (I haven't seen it since renting the VHS when it came out) and far removed from the "Bronson just makes the same tired movie over and over again" criticisms, it's not all that bad. Slight and forgettable, yes...but even in B fare like this, Bronson was still The Man. (R, 91 mins)
