THE AMATEUR (1981)

Just opened, an action-oriented remake (not seen here) with Rami Malek in a new adaptation of this Robert Littell novel.  The same ‘70s paranoid political thriller used here with another fragile looking shorty, John Savage (both stars 5'7"), playing the cipher code-breaker turned unlikely avenger after his intended is murdered by a gang of political terrorists.  The gimmick?  He starts his amateur international hunt with CIA blessings, unaware they’re only humoring him to keep things under control.  But when he starts showing natural abilities at the job, and besting pros in the field, he’s quickly labeled a nuisance, and eventually an adversary they have to take down.  Trouble is, he keeps beating them at their game.  Add on confused Ruskie agents in Czechoslovakia (as it was then known) with their own agenda, and of course the terrorists he’s stalking, and Savage is putting everyone in grave danger, including Marthe Keller, the CIA contact who thinks she’s still under orders to help him.  Sounds passable if not probable, but script & technical execution as shabby as any Golan/Globus production made at the time for quick pre-sell in the international market.*  Lucky for journeyman director Charles Jarrott, Christopher Plummer shows up about halfway in as a university professor of literature whose real job is Russian KGB head in Czechoslovakia.  He starts his own cat-and-mouse game with Savage and things come to life.  Plummer single-handedly lifting the film toward something near its potential.  The big set piece, a bombing of an indoor pool, is cleverly done (and apparently an even bigger deal in the remake), but there’s more fun spotting weird production choices, like a near quote of the theme from Henry Mancini’s PETER GUNN at a church rendevous.  Or in trying to figure out why Marthe Keller was a certain commercial kiss of death for so many films at the time.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *But it ain’t the notorious Golan/Globus boys this time.  Instead, Garth H. Drabinsky, a Canadian producer more active in live theater before he got caught with his hand in the till and went to jail.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Jarrott, a decent enough megger (his rep peaking on two Tudor pics: ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS/’69; MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS/’71), but infamous for all-time terrible films like THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT/’77; THE LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH’S ARK/’80; CONDORMAN/’81; and most of all the disastrous 1973 musical remake of LOST HORIZON.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=jarrott

CONDORMAN (1981)

Laugh-free (yet laughable) attempt by Disney during the inept Ron Miller era* to start their very own PINK PANTHER franchise.  (Note the threat of a never-made sequel at the end.)   Poor Michael Crawford (think Dick Van Dyck doing Stan Laurel meets Peter Sellers) cold-cocked his film career with this one*, mugging like mad as a comic book artist posing as a spy to help Barbara Carrera give Ruskie boss Oliver Reed the slip and defect to the West.  Typical for Disney kiddie fare under Miller, the script lacks sense, craft or development, coming across with sheer contempt for a presumably indiscriminate audience of young mallers, parked at the multiplex while Mom shops.  Shot in Europe, at least production values are up a tad from Disney house style of the period, even Henry Mancini on the score.  (More wishful PINK PANTHER thinking.)  But the laugh's on them with Hank’s annoying Condorman fanfare repeating ad infinitum.  Director Charles Jarrott not at his worst (his infamous musical remake of LOST HORIZON/’73 holds its place), but still falls on his face trying to ape Blake Edwards’ masterly compound action slapstick.  And why bother with an animated Condorman who never shows up after the credit sequence?  Just Crawford in a silly costume.  (Oh, yeah, PINK PANTHER had animated credit sequences.)  One good gag in the whole pic: Crawford passing as a rich Arab oil tycoon disguised under Alec Guinness’s Fagin makeup from OLIVER TWIST/’48.  Must have been accidental.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Taking over post-Walt, son-in-law Miller was a college gridiron star with little aptitude for film.  Three years after this, Miller was out and Michael Eisner came in to save the studio.  In all Hollywood history, only 20th/Fox’s Spyros Skouras his clueless equal.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *A remarkably adept performer, Crawford reinvented himself to create the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in London and then on B’way.  But first, career transitioned playing BARNUM throughout the U.K.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/barnum-1986.html

ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS (1969) \ MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1971)

After legendary stints @ Warners (‘31-‘45) & Paramount (‘45-‘70), producer Hal Wallis took his unit over to Universal for a final handful of hit-&-miss pics (‘69-‘75). First out was ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS with Richard Burton & Geneviève Bujold, a solid Tudor historical that was both a critical & commercial success. Two years later, much the same creative crew re-upped for MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, a less well-received follow-up with Vanessa Redgrave & Glenda Jackson. Seen now, the film’s respective reps seem flip-flopped; ANNE’s a bit of a stiff and MARY’s a pip. Go figure. Some of the change stems from director Charles Jarrott, who’s a good deal looser in the later pic. (A faceless megger at the best of times, he’d self-destruct right after MARY on the disastrous LOST HORIZON musical remake.) He also gets a huge boost from lenser Christopher Challis who completely outclasses Arthur Ibbetson’s dutiful work on ANNE. (Dark glowering skies & dynamic angles help, but just have a look at the Old Master lighting he achieves in the chamber scene right after MARY’s Intermission Break.) John Hale did both scripts, but where ANNE never quite shakes off the poetic goo of the Maxwell Anderson lyric drama it's adapted from, MARY uses a freer dramatic structure and, of course, has the ultimate Wild Card in Glenda Jackson’s phenomenal Elizabeth Tudor. They add two meetings for the Queens who never met, which turn out to be one too many, but you hardly need to see them together to cast your lot against a sanctimonious hypocrite like Mary. The supporting casts of both pics look equally good on paper, but again, MARY gets the edge with undervalued scene-stealers like Patrick McGoohan, Timothy Dalton, Ian Holm & Daniel Massey harking back to the unmatchable character roster of Warners in the ‘30, where the young Hal Wallis got his start.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Vanessa Redgrave always made the controversial political headlines, but it was Jackson who gave up acting to serve as a British M.P.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  Considered one of the chilliest executives in Hollywood, producer extraordinaire Hal Wallis comes off as a reasonable, if frustratingly terse, character in STARMAKER, his auto-bio.   Worth it for the Jerry Lewis stuff alone.

DOUBLE-BILL: Well, duh.

LOST HORIZON (1973)

BATTLEFIELD EARTH/’00 and GOTTI/’18 give John Travolta two. Eddie Murphy’s shows on THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH. PEPE/’60, an old default, finds Cantinflas doubling down on AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS to his regret. And honorable mention to George Lucas for HOWARD THE DUCK/’86 and RADIOLAND MURDERS/’94. All canonical choices for Worst Film of All Time (big-budget division). But after viewing a restored to full-length DVD of this Ross Hunter clunker, a remake of James Hilton/Frank Capra’s 1937 nutjob classic LOST HORIZON (see below), now sprinkled with twinkly tunes from Burt Bacharach’s lowest drawer, it surely sweeps the boards! A ghastly representation of a late ‘60s/early ‘70s ‘Family Musical,’ with Peter Finch finding Shangri-La, a valley of Love, Peace & spontaneous lobotomy, run by John Gielgud & Charles Boyer, hidden from the war-torn world amid the snowy Himalayas, alongside fellow travelers Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Michael York & Bobby Van. (Bobby Van? The sole cast member with musical comedy chops, he’s all but unwatchable.) Liv Ullmann, like a Zombie Julie Andrews without talent or voice for the genre, gambols with the children of this Utopia and gazes longingly at stout, sagging Peter Finch while Olivia Hussey longs to flee this gilded cage with York. Technically shabby from top to bottom (editing & voice dubbing particularly inept), with exteriors that rival a super-sized Putt-Putt course for beauty, and interiors that glow like a pre-fab Tiki-themed Las Vegas conference room. But only truly reaching its peak on one of its excruciating songs, with a fertility dance invaded by a unit of Polynesian(?) Chippendale dancers in color-coordinated Speedos and waving dancing ribbons. Sounds like mad, campy fun, no? No. Hack megger Charles Jarrott hasn’t a clue. Poor Ross Hunter. After hit mellers with Douglas Sirk and smash coy sex comedies with Doris Day back at Universal, he’d just been pushed out by mogul-in-charge Lew Wasserman after bringing in AIRPORT/’70, the biggest hit of the year*. Moving over to Columbia, this initial project insured he’d never make another feature again.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The Frank Capra 1937 version, nearly as silly/just as racist (Shangri-La your basic slave state with Euro overlords living in a palace while Asians work & live in the fields), does cast a spell of sorts thanks to Ronald Colman’s graceful playing & preternatural empathy, along with the pace, excitement & comic relief of Capra’s directorial legerdemain. For a quick lesson in moviemaking, compare the opening reel of the two versions. The loss of craft between ‘37 and ‘73 painfully evident.     https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/07/lost-horizon-1937.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *In Hollywood politics, Lew Wassermann’s distaste for Hunter could have survived a flop or two. But owing the survival of his currently struggling studio to the unprecedented success of a Hunter corn-fest like AIRPORT was more than he could stand.