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Luc Besson's Europa Corp's latest entry in the neo-Eurospy genre they're single-handedly perpetuating opens tonight in North America. Taken, directed by Pierre Morel ( District B13, cinematographer on the first Transporter), plugs the somewhat unlikely candidate Liam Neeson into the successful Transporter formula as a former spy who sets out on a mission of vengeance, using his unique skill set to track down and kill the people who have kidnapped his daughter–and seriously messing up Paris in the process. ('I'll tear down the Eiffel Tower if I have to!' ) The script is by producer Besson and his Transporter trilogy co-writer Robert Mark Kamen ( Lethal Weapon 3). Goldeneye's Famke Janssen co-stars.
Network's this week is a pretty good one! The British DVD company is offering (that's the Region 2 PAL one that comes with the Len Deighton book and the John Barry soundtrack CD as well as loads of special features) for the greatly reduced price of just £12.99. And bundled with a special, limited-edition from the film's 2006 British theatrical re-release! Sure, it's a couple bucks more than it was during their last week, but it's still a great bargain–and that poster's mighty nice! The poster will come shipped separately, rolled in a sturdy mailing tube.
Movie Review: The Satan Bug (1965) The Satan Bug has a good reputation and an excellent pedigree (written by from a novel by Alistair Maclean, directed by John Sturges hot off The Great Escape), but ultimately it’s a convoluted, plodding affair without much to recommend in it. The movie opens with a stiff, Joe Friday-type government agent in a hat landing in a helicopter at a top secret desert base called Station 3. Just back from Washington, he walks around and talks to enough other older men in suits and hats and lab coats that it starts to look like he might be our main character, which is not an appealing prospect.
Fortunately, he’s abruptly murdered by some thieves who’ve pulled the old Trojan Horse trick and had themselves delivered into the secure top secret facility in crates. They make off with a deadly virus that’s been cultivated in the lab known as (you guessed it) 'the Satan Bug' because it has the capacity to wipe out all life on earth and because there is supposedly no vaccine. Given this dire scenario, it’s clearly time to call in the real hero of the piece, former agent Lee Barrett. We meet Barrett ( Route 66's George Maharis) in a bongo club, which tips us off right away to the fact that he’s not like the Joe Friday guy who got killed. He’ s a different kind of secret agent, clearly more in touch with the counterculture. Consequently, he’s not real big on authority.
'You rate rather high on insubordination,' comments the official tasked with bringing this prodigal son back into the fold. Apparently, he’s been active in anti-war activities as well. 'You’re quoted as saying that war had aged you so fast you were too old to play with toys,' continues the serious-minded official. 'Fired three months ago. Reason: emotional rejection of purpose of project.' Sounds like the perfect guy for the job!
The government man goes on to orchestrate a pretty neat trick in order to test Barrett’s loyalty, which he passes with flying colors. Evidently, he is the right man for the job. It doesn’t take long for Barrett to get back to Station 3, whose security he was apparently once responsible for.
He may not approve of what they’re doing there (cultivating viruses for germ warfare), but he definitely doesn’t want any of that stuff out in the world and in the hands of crackpots. After lots and lots of exchanging of names between more old white guys in hats ('You know Mr. Etc.), Barrett conducts a thorough investigation of the crime scene and determines with Sherlock Holmes-like deductive reasoning how it all went down.
(The movie is at its best when Barrett demonstrates his cleverness.) He then risks his life to discover exactly what’s been stolen, and confirms everyone’s worst fears: the Satan Bug. At this point, lures him away from the base to a nearby resort. But only, it turns out, to put him in touch with her father, the general in command of the germ warfare project (played by Dana Andrews).
Of course, Francis and Maharis clearly have a past together. The general has received the usual sort of telegram from whoever was responsible for the break-in, claiming to have the virus and threatening a demonstration to show they mean business. Barrett spends some time recapping everything that he and we just learned at the base for the benefit of the general, and does all that name-dropping all over again rattling off the identities of all the characters in hats we’ve barely met. The general wants to know who’s responsible. 'Take your pick,' says Barrett. 'The extreme Left, or the extreme Right.' (Another one of those Men in Hats has his own theories on the subject: 'A lunatic!
With the kill of all times! It gives me the creeps. This whole operation gives me the creeps.' ) The bad guys’ threatened demonstration turns out to be quite harrowing, and the film’s most effective moment for its impact. They release the virus in Florida.
The Men In Hats back at Station 3 watch aerial footage taken of the infected area, and see bodies everywhere: in the street, in truck cabs, in cars or just having stumbled out of cars, even on a cabin cruiser off the coast. It’s like the scene in Goldfinger with all the 'dead' soldiers at Fort Knox, only these people don’t get back up again. Unfortunately, such a chilling scene ultimately seems out of place in The Satan Bug, because it isn’t dwelled on and before long we’re back to old white men in hats trading names and acting frustratingly stupid as to how they proceed, but with almost no concern for what’s happened in Florida. Interestingly, the villains are operating out of candy-colored suburban tract homes, which makes a nice change of pace from Ken Adam lairs.
They dress up like fishermen, which makes them almost as ridiculous as the fact that one of them is played by Ed Asner–who just can’t come off that menacing, even when armed with a vial of deadly virus. Normally John Sturges is a master of handling a large cast of characters in a clear manner, but that skill fails him here. Of course, usually he has casts of very recognizable stars populating every role, which helps set them apart. Here, he’s working with a cast largely made up of TV actors and character actors. Old, white, virtually identical character actors.
As a fan of hats in movies, I never thought I’d say it, but there are too many hats in this movie! While the indistinguishable old men in hats bicker about various courses of action (all of which seem to amount to doing nothing as Los Angeles is threatened as the next target), Barrett and Ann (yeah, that's her character's name, too, only without the 'e') have been captured and spend a lot of time riding around the desert in vans and station wagons. This renders the hero pretty much impotent for a good chunk of the movie, while his bosses consider him so 'unpredictable' that his absence doesn’t even alarm them to the danger.
Besides, they’re too busy radioing their other men with helpful instructions like, 'Stay put!' And 'Don’t do anything!' Which gives you a pretty good idea of the speed with which the plot unfolds.
The bland settings don’t help The Satan Bug, either. If its not drab conference rooms, it’s sprawling desert. Not majestic Spaghetti Western desert, either: scrubby desert. Eventually, the action shifts via helicopter to Los Angeles, but it’s too little too late.
The scenes of the city’s last-minute evacuation don’t ring true at all. While the freeways are predictably jammed, the surface streets are entirely empty of both cars and people. Somehow I don’t think a frantic evacuation would play out like that. Barrett struggles with the villain for control of both the virus and the out-of-control helicopter they’re flying in over the city, but all that comes too late to really enliven The Satan Bug too much. Maharis makes a solid enough hero, but he’s kind of bland and his role doesn’t give him enough to do.
His flashes of Sherlock Holmes-like deductive brilliance are his best moments, but they stop as soon as he gets taken prisoner halfway through the film. Anne Francis is criminally underused; she’s undeveloped as a love interest, and frustratingly ineffectual at anything else. Especially for the woman who played! I should also mention that not one but two plot points hinge on cars breaking down.
Granted, they’re all American cars, but those were supposed to be built to last back in 1965, weren’t they? Especially in dry desert conditions, I would think. Ultimately, the movie plays out pretty passionlessly, as if no one involved really put their heart into it. It also plays as stupefyingly square for its time. It’s essentially a slow-moving 1950s drama about Men In Hats paralyzed with indecision when they should be doing something, but that simply won’t work in the post-James Bond world. 007 had already changed all the rules for this sort of adventure.
Despite a hero who’s very carefully designed to seem 'with it,' The Satan Bug is simply too stodgy for its era. Tradecraft: Fleming Biopic Moves Forward The Hollywood Reporter today reports that writer John Orloff has signed on to write the screenplay for Fleming, at Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company for Warner Bros. The project originated at Andrew Lazar's Mad Chance, and they are still involved as well. Mad Chance first announced Fleming in the trades with a press release carefully timed to coincide with the announcement of Daniel Craig as the new James Bond in 2005. The last draft was penned by Damian Stevenson, who seemed to be taking the same approach as the 90s TV movies Goldeneye and Spymaker: The Life of Ian Fleming: eschewing most true details of the author's life and instead turning the movie into a thinly veiled James Bond story.
Hopefully Orloff will approach things differently, since the true story of the life of Bond's creator is incredibly rich and has a lot to offer without embellishment! Orloff wrote the Daniel Pearl biopic A Mighty Heart in 2007, and previously worked on the stellar HBO war series Band of Brothers. DVD Review: Secret Agent Fireball ( Var Man I Beirut) (1965) is a terrifically entertaining little film that has the distinction of belonging to two separate series of Sixties James Bond imitators: it’s both an '077' movie and a 'Bob Fleming' movie, depending on the country you’re watching it in! It’s certainly not an 'official' 077 movie (like the Ken Clark series), but in some territories it was marketed as such. In others, hero Bob Fleming (Richard Harrison) was known as Agent X117, further confusing viewers by alluding to yet another popular Eurospy series, the OSS 117 films. On Swedish label ’s excellent new Region 2 DVD, Fleming manages to be both X117 and 077 at once; the English language soundtrack identifies him as the former while the non-removable Swedish subtitles clearly call him the latter. On top of that, the main character’s name is a clear allusion to James Bond’s creator, so the movie seemingly manages to invoke just about every spy series association possible.
Clearly, it’s derivative, but then that’s the point with Eurospy movies. And Secret Agent Fireball actually acquits itself much better than certain others of its ilk. Within the realm of Bondian tropes, it manages an admirable originality as often as it directly rips off 007. You know the format. Even if you’ve never seen a Eurospy movie, you know the format. Something bad happens (in this case, 'Italy’s Peter Lorre' Luciano Pigozzi kills a scientist with a nifty little dart-shooting pipe), causing the Western spy chief to call in his best agent (um, or whatever agent he can get), naturally interrupting said agent’s attempt to make time with some beautiful woman. And so we’re introduced to Bob Fleming (or, on the English soundtrack at least, 'Bart Fleming.'
What kind of secret agent name is that?), played by the good-natured but unremarkable Richard Harrison ( ). As a former star, Harrison has a good physique (and a kind of Ben Afflecky face), but that doesn’t exactly translate into a distinctive presence. For a spy, though, that’s a good thing, right? Wasn’t Alec Guinness rightly praised for 'disappearing' as George Smiley, and leaving no particular impression?
Well, Fleming’s not Smiley, so perhaps it’s a bit extreme to go comparing Richard Harrison to Alec Guinness at this juncture. But like all Eurospy heroes, Fleming is written with enough cocky swagger to make him a touch loathsome (and I wouldn’t have it any other way; it’s a ), so it’s really a good thing that Harrison exudes no excess of personality. When you get a truly exuberant actor in a Eurospy role, he usually comes off as a jerk.
I’d rather be stuck next to Bart Fleming on a flight than, say, (Tony Kendall). (Then again, I’m not a woman. Women stuck next to Fleming on flights must endure wolf whistles and then, when they prove unresponsive, having those wolf whistles explained to them as being his 'mating call.' ) Anyway, Fleming reports to his boss for the standard briefing. The senior officer stands in for not only M, but Q as well, outfitting his agent with several gadgets. Among them are a pen that detects certain radio frequencies, another pen with a powerful laser capable of destroying doorknobs (they always choose weird things to demonstrate on in these movies, though a doorknob doesn’t come close to my favorite such moment, in, when a disintegration ray is used on a fireplace), and some Aspirin tablets with transmitter devices inside that still serve their primary function as well. 'You can even use it for headaches!'
The boss proudly reveals. 'That’s good,' says Fleming. 'I have a feeling the Russians are going to have a lot of headaches.' Sadly, poor Fleming might have chosen his witticism more carefully, because ironically it’s him who ends up with all the headaches, setting some sort of Eurospy record for the number of times he gets conked on the head in the course of his adventure.
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And that’s noisy, because every karate chop (and there are a lot) in this film sounds like a gunshot! So the audience might be in need of some Aspirin after a while, too. But the boss is unfazed, doling out the tablets to Fleming in front of his curtain. That’s right; I said 'curtain.'
It's a curious thing I’ve come to notice in Eurospy movies: the bosses’ offices almost always have a curtain substituting for at least one of their walls. The productions apparently can’t afford enough walls, and for some reason it’s the boss’s office that always suffers!
Is it just me, or does it seem like rather a bad idea to build a spy headquarters without walls? Anybody could be listening in on the other side of that curtain! The Russians, on the other hand, appear to enjoy an excess of building materials. Their spy boss just happens to have extra balsa wood sitting around on his desk (stolen from the Americans, no doubt), which comes in handy when he wants to emphasize a point by splitting it with a swift karate chop! (That sounds like a gunshot, natch.) It’s a neat touch to see the enemy agents being briefed as well as the hero (and all the better because of the karate chop).
It puts the two sides on roughly equal footing as they each set out in pursuit of the same MacGuffin. That MacGuffin turns out to be the designs for the Soviet H-Bomb, which might seem a bit old hat by 1965, when (as one of the characters points out) both sides already had it. But the writers were actually remarkably forward-thinking here, with the real concern being about those plans ending up on the international black market and falling into the hands of a third, less stable power. The hunt for the H-Bomb plans takes Fleming and his Communist counterparts (whose numbers include Pigozzi and slinky femme fatale Wandisa Guida, of ) to an odd nightclub where the entertainment isn’t just standard Sixties go-go dancing (or even a chaste Jess Franco-style strip tease), but female wrestling. The weird thing is the crowd reaction. As these two shapely women (one with startlingly hairy armpits) struggle for all they’re worth (and some of the moves look painful), the well-dressed, mixed-gender crowd laughs instead of cheering or even leering appreciatively. I guess the mere notion of female sport was hilarious back then.
An assassination at the nightclub leads to a car chase (with Fleming commandeering an ambulance) and the surprising revelation that the Hamburg police drive amphibious boat-cars! Yes, they manage to come in handy, but not in quite as spectacular a fashion as one would hope for. Regular readers know that one of my favorite aspects of spy films is the thrilling locations, and Secret Agent Fireball treats us well on that account.
After already visiting Paris and Hamburg, Fleming sets out for Beirut, which was a pretty cool looking city in the 1960s, with the appropriate exotic feel. Fleming is met at the airport by his contact/driver, who gleefully shows off his car’s optional extras by setting fire to a car on his tail in a pretty unique manner. Shortly afterwards, the driver gets his own car chase, his taxi serving as a decoy while Fleming drives his much more photogenic Mercedes without incident. During this chase, filmmakers Ernesto Gastaldi and Luciano and Sergio Martino display the creativity that will serve them so well the next decade in their gialli–and that elevates Secret Agent Fireball above the more pedestrian Eurospy entries. They give us a clever and humorous variation on the old 'carrying a pane of glass across the road' chase cliche. In Beiruit, it’s not glass but kerosene tanks that people carry across streets prone to car chases!
With much more rewarding results: Bob Fleming’s a risk-taker. When the only lead is a likely trap, he’s the kind of guy who walks into it anyway.
'Don’t you care about your skin?' Asks his colleague. 'Sure,' says Bob. 'But I’ve rented it to my country for $2000 a month.' Don’t you know it’s crass to discuss your salary? The trap is a pretty cool one.
It involves a weird moment where a corpse in an open coffin appears to be talking to Bob, but it’s really just coming from an off-the-hook phone receiver. The details aren’t important, but this leads to Bob being tied up with Lisa (Dominique Boschero), the professor’s daughter.
(Did I not mention the professor? I really shouldn’t have to; there’s always a professor!) There’s a funny moment when he throws her an Aspirin (remember the one with the tracker?) that lands on the floor and mimes that she should swallow it. Poor Lisa looks just as repelled as you our I would if Richard Harrison tried to get us to swallow a pill that had just come from his pocket and was now on a dirty floor!
Fleming, meanwhile, uses his laser pen on his ropes behind his back. It’s a pretty risky move, considering he’s seen the beam disintegrate a doorknob! Luckily, it doesn’t take his hands off. He’s free to go off and steal a helicopter, which he uses to track Lisa from the air with the receiver in his watch. This leads to some great aerial footage of the city, but Bob should have stolen a better chopper.
Or at least one with a full tank of gas. Luckily, this one at least takes Regular, so he can fill up at a local gas station (well before 007 did this in Octopussy) before engaging in some exciting helicopter-versus-motorboat shenanigans. I won’t reveal the fate of the microfilm, but (after some good twists and double-crosses and a hardliner who feels that Russian Communists have betrayed the Party) there’s a nice moment of detente at the end when Bob realizes that he’s been fighting on the same side as the Russians after all, since they all want to prevent the atomic secrets from falling into the hands of a more reckless enemy.
It prefigures the similar ending to For Your Eyes Only by a decade and a half. Like Ian Fleming in his later years and like the producers of the Bond films, the makers of Secret Agent Fireball had a good grip on Cold War geopolitics and the sense that that ideological struggle alone wasn’t really enough to power their plot. And wouldn’t age well. Secret Agent Fireball isn’t quite the cream of the Eurospy crop, but it’s emblematic of the genre nonetheless.
Its action scenes are a cut above average, and it hits every mark you want from a good Eurospy movie. In a genre better loved for following a predictable formula than for transcending it, that’s pretty high praise. In fact, it’s easy to view as a template for the loving 2006 Eurospy parody/tribute –even moreso than any of the actual Sixties OSS 117 movies. There’s a great, quintessentially Eurospy moment in the trailer for to Cairo Nest of Spies where star Jean Dujardin confidently through a poolside patio in swim trunks so snug lesser men would fear to don them.
Not so Eurospy heroes. And Bob Fleming has a pretty directly analogous moment in Secret Agent Fireball, strolling poolside in his own crotch-hugging bathing suit, showing off his Peplem-toned body. Women in bikinis check him out appreciatively. 'All they care about is your musk!'
Says his jealous friend. The scene is slightly repulsive, yet also slightly compelling and entirely appropriate. Like the movie as a whole, it’s the essence of Eurospy. If you like the genre to begin with, you’ll likely love Secret Agent Fireball. And if you’re still on the fence about it, consider the fact that has done a phenomenal job with this DVD. The anamorphic widescreen transfer is top-notch (especially compared to the gray-market versions fans are used to seeing these films in) and the mono English soundtrack is great.
I can’t speak to the Italian one, since there aren’t English subtitles. The non-removable Swedish subtitles aren’t an issue, though, mostly falling outside the picture area on a regular TV. And they occasionally lend an extra layer of amusement to juvenile minds, as when the Russians often shout 'Satt Fart!' There’s even a bonus image gallery, featuring poster art, stills and lobby cards for the film from around the world, courtesy of co-author Matt Blake. One poster lies, 'This man has no name!
Not even a number!' Not true on either count! He has two names (Bob Fleming or Bart Fleming, depending on the translation) and two numbers (X117 or 077)! In America, however, I suppose the prospect of no name or number was seen as a better selling point for some reason. It’s great to get a glimpse at how these films were marketed. What more could a Eurospy fan hope for?
I’m thrilled with this release, and I hope it’s just the first in a long line of Eurospy titles from this label. If you have the means to play Region 2 PAL discs, you can either order Secret Agent Fireball from in America or directly from in Sweden. A beautiful, tranquil coastal villa in Northern Italy. A man catches up on some work outdoors, overlooking the water. Suddenly, its surface is broken–by two Venus de Milos, blonde and brunette (Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina, respectively), rising out of it in tiny bikinis that show off their voluptuous bodies.
They’re the perfect model of Sixties womanhood, but they’re carrying spear guns. The man has but a few moments to bask in their beauty, as they toy with him flirtatiously. Then they kill him. This scene (which you can see recreated in screenshots ) from Ralf Thomas’s 1967 spy film Deadlier Than the Male (produced by the prolific Betty Box, one of the only female producers working in British cinema at the time– and one of the hardest working producers in the business) combines two classic Bond Girl moments: Honey Rider’s famous introduction on the beach in Dr.
No, and Domino’s killing of Largo with a speargun in Thunderball. In doing so, it successfully subverts the established Bond Girl formula, and sets a tone for generations of action heroines to follow. This isn’t the classic femme fatale of film noir, using her whiles to manipulate men, and perhaps turning their own pistol on them. No, this is a new type of deadly female for a more sexually liberated era. These women strut confidently forward, completely at ease with their sexuality, their femininity on full display, blatantly brandishing the most phallic weapon of all, a spear gun.
Without missing a beat, they penetrate their male prey, establishing their dominance in a traditionally male arena: killing. Within the first reel, we’re shown just how apt the title is. From here on in, these women are in control. They won’t be seduced; they’ll be seducers. Richard Johnson’s Bulldog Drummond doesn’t defeat Sommer by conquering her; he ultimately defeats her by denying her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It’s clear from the moment of their introductions that Sommer and Koscina are the forces to be reckoned with in this film. Only after seeing the anti-heroines in action are we finally introduced to Drummond, in the middle of a karate bout. Tough, charming, and in possession of the same distinct brand of masculinity as Sean Connery, this is the man tasked nominally with solving these murders and, more crucially, re-establishing male dominance in a world controlled by women. The odds are stacked against him. The deadly females have struck the first blow, made the first impression. He’s fighting with his hands; they have spear guns!
Ultimately, Drummond can’t hope to defeat Sommer and Koscina. He’s relegated to a battle with the fey Nigel Green instead, and even then it’s an intellectual battle and not a physical one. The two men square off in a life-size chess duel. Not only is this an iconic Sixties spy setpiece (one thinks of Steed thrust into a life-size board game on The Avengers, or The Prisoner’s human chessboard), but by employing giant robotic pawns to do their fighting, it sidesteps the normally requisite contest of strength between the hero and archvillain at the end of any spy movie. That realm still belongs to the women.
Sadly, we never get to see a confrontation between Drummond and the ladies. (Of course, that would have been impossible, because in the context of this world, he would have had to lose, and we simply can’t have the hero losing!) His only victory over them, as mentioned earlier, comes by following the female lead of Lysistrata and denying Sommer sex. (And how masculine is that?) As the dominant force in the film, the two women can only be done in by themselves, and that is exactly what happens. Drummond saves the day (I hope I’m not ruining anything by revealing that), but male dominance never gets the chance to prevail. The battle of the sexes ends in a stalemate at best, but the road has been paved for a new breed of femme fatale, one as comfortable kicking ass as using her sexuality.
While Emma Peel and Honey West blazed the way on TV, Sommer and Koscina did it on film, serving as direct antecedents to the women of Seventies revenge flicks, or, later, the Charlie’s Angels movies and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. A Bond-age update of Bulldog Drummond (its title inspired by the Drummond novel The Female of the Species), is my very favorite non-Bond spy movie.
(And, as should be evidenced by this blog, I love spy movies!) It’s the best Bond knock-off ever, better than all its Eurospy ilk (enjoyable as they may be), and better even than its more famous Hollywood counterparts like. Of all the imitators 007 spawned in the 1960s, Deadlier Than the Male is the only one that can really go toe-to-toe with Bond. Of course, even if the toes match, it only gets up to about Connery’s bow tie in production values.
The Bond movies were so far ahead of anything else of their era, budget-wise and effects-wise, that all imitators pale in comparison. But of those imitators (and there were many), Deadlier Than the Male comes closest. Even on a relatively large budget for its genre, it can’t duplicate Thunderball’s underwater spectacle or You Only Live Twice’s volcano base, but it does manage to duplicate the style, the glamor and–most importantly–the wry tone of the Bond movies–thanks to the winning team of director Ralf Thomas, producer Betty Box and screenwriters David Osborn, Liz Charles-Williams and Jimmy Sangster (a Hammer stalwart). Other spoofs fell short because they attempted to lampoon what was already tongue-in-cheek (even at that stage), but Deadlier Than the Male manages the same level of playful self-parody that Goldfinger achieves. It’s sheer fun. Chief among the movie’s assets are the very.
Assets that the global marketing campaign played up most: and Sylva Koscina. These gorgeous European actresses play a pair of sexy assassins, enforcers for the movie’s mysterious villain, Carl Peterson. (Yes, 'Carl Peterson' hardly has the ring of 'Ernst Stavro Blofeld' or 'Auric Goldfinger,' but that’s the name Drummond creator Sapper saddled his hero’s arch-nemesis with, so apparently the film’s scribes were stuck with it. The Ipcress File's Nigel Green makes the most of the name, relishing his role.) Sommer and Koscina play fantastically off of each other, and as good as Richard Johnson is as the hero, the movie completely belongs to these ladies.
Sommer is the sultry, no-nonsense blonde Irma Eckman, and Koscina the playful kleptomaniac tease, Penelope. In a running gag, Penelope always steals Irma’s things, much to her companion’s annoyance.
'And I told you before not to wear my negligee!' Irma chastises her at one point. In one of my all-time favorite opening sequences, Malcolm Lockyer’s memorable (and suitably Bondian) 'Drummond Theme' plays as we open on a private jetliner, mid-flight.
We’re introduced to the beautiful Elke Sommer in the temporary guise of a stewardess aboard said flight. She uses a trick cigar (handily hidden in her garter belt) to assassinate the CEO of a major corporation. Ever dedicated to overkill, she then covers her tracks by setting a bomb to go off on the plane, putting on a parachute, and jumping out!
Cue the Walker Brothers’ iconic title song (the best Bond song ever not actually written for a Bond movie.), and the main titles roll as Sommer parachutes away from the exploding aircraft. Koscina (clad in a memorable bikini) pilots a speedboat below, and waves up to her descending companion as if she’s casually greeting her at the beach. There’s something sadistically–yet irresistibly–sexy about the way these women treat their deadly occupation as a lark.
Sommer makes a perfect landing on the speedboat, and away they go. (I once had the opportunity to question Charlie’s Angels director McG on whether the opening of that movie was a conscious homage to Deadlier Than the Male, and he confirmed that it was indeed.) And so director Ralf Thomas sets the pitch-perfect tone for the movie to come. The ladies’ next assassination is equally memorable. Together, they rise out of the Mediterranean onto the private beach of a luxurious Italian villa clad in jaw-dropping bikinis, an image sure to ingrain itself in the memory of any heterosexual male viewer.
It’s an Ursula Andress double-act, but deadlier: these women carry spear guns. This vision of perfect beauty is the last one their hapless victim, Mr. Wyngarde, will ever see, as after a brief flirtation, they skewer him. Wyngarde,' laments Penelope with concern immediately after firing her harpoon.
This iconic scene formed the basis for the film’s successful worldwide marketing campaign. As Drummond investigates the deadliness of these particular females and dodges death himself, his brash American nephew Robert (Steve Carlson) inflicts himself on his uncle. The role seems modeled on Robert Wagner’s role as David Niven’s nephew in, and the situations that arise from Robert’s stay in Drummond’s flat mirror that movie as well–but succeed on their own merit.
Carlson remains likable while assaying a rather thankless role unfortunately required of many British movies of the period to secure distribution in the States: the token American. (Even worse, the token American youth!) His attempted seduction of the gorgeous Virginia North (when she has her eye set on his cad of an uncle) makes for a welcome farcical setpiece, which culminates (naturally enough) in another one of those pesky assassination attempts. Mistaken for his uncle, Robert gets caught up in the action–and tied up by Koscina’s Penelope. Koscina lightens the ensuing torture scene by playing it with an appealing, almost childish coquettishness. 'We’ve so much to talk about. And do,' she breathes, burning him with her cigarette.
War is one of Philip Roth's recurrent themes, its martial drumbeat marking. In Roth's work. By Zuckerman's third appearance in Zuckerman Unbound (1981), he is the rich, famous, and hounded author of Carnovsky, a novel. Lies buried just beneath the surface in “The Defender of the Faith,” a story of war. Complete summary of Philip Roth's The Defender of the Faith. ENotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of The Defender of the Faith. Yeshiva University. Got some time to spare? Using a mobile device? Want to try a new genre without having to spend any money or time? Pick a story and start reading right away! Or link to your favorite, as long as it's available online for anyone to read! When submitting new stories, try to stick to the following format (whenever. Philip Roth: “Defender of Faith” page 1 of 27. Defender of the Faith. By Philip Roth. IN MAY OF 1945, ONLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER the fighting had ended in Europe, I was rotated back to the States, where I spent the remainder of the war with a training company at Camp Crowder, Missouri. Along with the. A story is judged by both literary merit and critical reception. In these regards, Defender Of The Faith, by Philip Roth, can be considered an influential short story. Published in 1959, it is one of six short stories contained in the book Goodbye Columbus, Roth¶s first major publication. Not only are the story¶s style and language.
When he grunts in pain, she cringes, apparently contrite. She squeals breathlessly, 'I like you, you know. And I would much rather be nice to you. But Eckman will be back soon.
And she will be absolutely livid if you haven’t talked. So be a good boy, please?' She’s playing with a new toy–and indeed duly chastised for it by the sterner Irma. ('That is a very untidy job, Penelope, very untidy.' ) Whatever her motivations, you can’t really feel too sorry for Robert. The experience clearly isn’t without its pleasures.
In the film’s second half, the action shifts from Swinging London to beautiful, scenic Northern Italy, thanks to that clue about eating the ruler and the ak. It’s ideal Eurospy country–locations just as photogenic as the female stars–and that look great in bold Technicolor. Here we get yachts, speedboats, sports cars and a castle–all the luxuries one hopes for in a Sixties spy movie. Drummond, naturally, is captured in the course of his insurance investigation, and put to the ultimate test: can he resist the allure of the insanely attractive Ms. Sommer, in all of her pulchritudinous, black eyelinered glory? Fortunately he’s aware of her praying mantis-like mating habits, but it would still be a tough choice.
Irma proves herself to be quite the proto-Xenia Onatopp. So we’ve got beautiful women (in bikinis! With spearguns!), ingenious killings, impressive action and breathtaking locations. What else do we need to make this a perfect Sixties spy movie?
Oh yes: a life-size, robotic chess set. In one of the quintessential Eurospy finales, Drummond finds himself doing battle with his nemesis on a giant chess board, dodging the looming, stylized chessmen as Peterson commands them to advance on him. (Several of these chessmen, which evidently sat around Pinewood for years after filming, end up in Scaramanga’s funhouse in The Man With the Golden Gun, visible behind Christopher Lee as he searches for his gun at the beginning of the film.) This is the movie that opened my eyes to the world of Bond beyond Bond; it showed me that there were still exhilarating places left to go once one had exhausted the Bondian canon many times over. It's the movie that inspired me to write a blog about the wider world of spy movies. It's sheer, unadulterated entertainment that delivers everything I could possibly ask for in a rollicking spy adventure–and delivers in spades. I love it as much as I love the Bond movies of its era. It's a movie I'll never grow tired of watching, and if you've never seen it before (yet are reading this blog), I cannot recommend it enough.
Deadlier Than the Male is mercifully (and surprisingly, given its undeserved obscurity) available in the United States from Hen’s Tooth video. There are unfortunately no extras on the disc, but the widescreen transfer is gorgeous (if not anamorphic)–as is the cover, which uses artwork from the American half-sheet.
The from Network makes up for America’s bare-bones edition by featuring nearly an hour of promotional material from the time of the film's release. There are interviews with the principal stars conducted by a rather silly, blinky British interviewer.
They’re not terribly probing or informative (he inquires as to whether or not Elke Sommer is 'for glamor in the movies' and asks Sylva Koscina why she has to wear a bikini so often), but they’re still fascinating time capsules, and Sommer is absolutely adorable. On top of that, we’re treated to some black and white B-roll of Sommer filming, Johnson waterskiing and Green snorkeling while on location in Italy. Each interview contains some amusing moments. When asked if its true that she plays a killer, Koscina coyly (and truthfully) distills the essence of her character, claiming, 'Oh, but I’m very sweet you know! I kill in a sweet way! With a little smile and with a sexy voice!' And Carlson boasts that he 'represents youth and vigor' in the film.
There’s also a pair of excellent vintage promotional featurettes shot on location which give us more behind-the-scenes footage (and more of the ladies in their swimwear), a trailer and (somewhat oddly) the mute, textless elements for the trailer. The featurettes are amazing, showing lots of on-set antics, including Thomas directing, Sommer doing her own hair and makeup, Carlson trying to impress some of his female co-stars with his guitar prowess (that's the youth and vigor he was talking about!) and Johnson conferring with Sapper’s Bulldog inspiration and co-author, Gerard Fairlie. We also see the stars being coached by fightmaster Bob Anderson (a man whose career stretches from Douglas Fairbanks up through Lord of the Rings and Die Another Day, for which he supervised Pierce Brosnan's fencing), rehearsing, and hanging out in their free time. Interestingly, they're allowed to wear their movie swimsuits even when at liesure.
The producers really wanted those bikinis on camera whenever possible! Comes bundled as a double feature with the film’s sequel, Some Girls Do.
Some Girls Do is enjoyable enough and well worth watching once, but it doesn’t come close to capturing the magic of Deadlier Than the Male–primarily because it’s missing the two key ingrediants to that film’s success. While Johnson returns, even the sexy Dahlia Lavi can’t replace Sommer and Koscina. The sequel also fails to capture the tone that makes the first film so successful, opting instead for a jokier formula that doesn’t gel right. Despite these detractors, though, Some Girls Do makes the ultimate special feature in a great Deadlier Than the Male package!
If you have a multi-region DVD player and have the option, this is the version of the film to get. (And it’s for a ridiculously low price through Sunday at!).
Stay tuned for more on Deadlier Than the Male later today or tomorrow:.Lead singer and driving creative force Scott Walker would eventually record an actual Bond song, 'Only Myself to Blame' (written by David Arnold and Don Black) for end credits of The World Is Not Enough. The producers regrettably opted not to use it (they went for The James Bond Theme instead), but it did end up as the final track on the released. The track has spurred a lot of controversy among fans over the years, but I think it’s great and would have been a welcome addition to a fairly lackluster 007 outing.
Waldorf Blofeld
It’s decidedly down-tempo, and maybe more appropriate to a truly downbeat ending like OHMSS or CR than to 'I thought Christmas only came once a year,' but it has a great world-weary spy edge to it. It’s not a good basis of comparison for 'Deadlier Than the Male,' though, which is much more in keeping with the classic, up-tempo Bond sound.
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Related Sites: Discord/IRC: Reference:. Instructions and Manuals:. I've used both the free and the commercial monstrumFeld editor. The monstrum one looks really nice and works fine once you have it all set up, but configuring the VST version of the editor requires a lot of extra steps compared to the free one, and several of the steps you have to make every time you load up a project with the editor in it.
Also, the author can be very slow to respond to support requests (as in, weeks). All editors have certain limitations, apparently due to Waldorf's occasionally spotty MIDI implementations. Like if I edit a patch with the Blofeld editor I think I have to actually go to the hardware when I want to save it? Been a while.
Blofeld Keyboard
I only was interested in editors because my HW synths are on the other side of the room from where my computer is, and I wanted a way to program them without having to get up from my desk. I actually really like programming the Blofeld from the hardware (it's a walk in the park compared to all my old Roland rack units). So far I'm really on the fence about how useful the software editors are.
The monstrum one, especially, so far has been more trouble than it's worth.
Hey all, I've been working on a blofed editor built in MaxMsp on and off for about a week. I still need to do a little work on the arpeggiator section, but everything else seems to be working fine. Below are links to both the editor file and some pics of the current revision, as well as a link to the Max 5 runtime which you will need to run the app.
It only runs as a standalone as max5 has no ability to make plugins at the moment Awesome! I like 'get sound from synth' option. Btw there is Max for Live and with this you can run it as plugin both on Win and MacOsx as well as other amazing sequencing tools inside Max. I am not experienced with max programming that much but i assume Max for live share same base so making this to run in Ableton Max shouldn't be that hard. Ableton forum could contain more info for you. Is the editor supposed to work right-away when a Blofeld is connected using the USB connection? Since there is no MIDI Out in the module, I'd expect USB to be the best way of connecting the Blofeld so it's possible to know what parameters are used for each patch.It doesn't seem to remember the I/O midi port settings on each reboot.
You need to click the midi settings radio button in the editor interface (lowest right most button), and set your ports there. You must do this.each time.
you boot up the editor. USB is fine for your connection. There also is a midi settings selection from the program menu in OSX, but I don't find that it works on my system. You need to use the aforementioned interface Midi Settings radio button. Once you make that setting, then the editor is fully functional, and quite frankly its freekin awesome! Its a one patch at a time type editor.in other words, you select your patches using using the hardware unit, then 'fetch' the patch into the editor by clicking a button ('Get Sound', near the patch name at bottom), and then you have a full graphical editing interface for that patch. Once you are at this point, you have a wonderful overview of the architecture of the Blofeld, and can really maneuver with speed.
If you want to save your work, you do so on the hardware itself. This editor has really enhanced my Blofeld ownership experience, and helped me to learn some great features and tricks of the synth. I can't get this editor to do anything on four different Mac Operating systems on two computers - both PPC and Intel.
I'm wondering if it's because I have the latest firmware in the Blofeld - 1.16.? Any clues?Works fine for me on Snow Leopard and Lion. Make sure you are setting your midi ports in the actual U.I., rather than in the MAX program menu. There is a Midi I/O radio button on the lower right of the U.I. You need to click.then set your ports. The program only receives program data from the hardware.doesn't seem to send it. So you retrieve a program by clicking the 'get program' box in the lower right of the U.I., and then edit it in the U.I.
You save your work on the hardware.not in the program.
Device Details Device Overview Name/Version: Waldorf Blofeld Editor 1.22 Author: Description: Standalone & M4L Editor for the Waldorf Blofeld Desktop or Keyboard Synth. Watch the demonstration video here: Features: - bi-directional control of every parameter of the Blofeld (which are many!) - full sysex support in Ableton live without an external router! - randomiser and initialiser per module - patch mutator (allows for mutating current values by percentage) - editor updates to hardware (including patch name!) - choose midi in and out ports. set a new patch name from within the editor using your keyboard - load and save patches from and to your hard drive from within the editor - load a random patch from the Blofeld (one of the 1024 patches) - create a dirty patch name at the press of a button (3600 possible swearing combinations included!) - free updates for life HOW TO INSTALL? The standalone editor for windows needs the Max Runtime which is available for free here: And obviously if you plan on using the max for live plugin, max for live is needed (which is included in Ableton Suite 9) WINDOWS: Just copy the whole folder containing the.exe somewhere, and launch the.exe. You can NOT rename any files, or it won't work.
MAC: Just copy.app to your applications folder, and launch it. You can NOT rename the.app, or it won't work.
M4L: read the enclosed readme file for additional information and just drag the.amxd file onto a midi channel in ableton. Additional Java scripts need to be installed from the supplied download links in the readme file. Please read the readme file first. This editor was developed by Ruben 'SynnyS' Hulzebosch in collaboration with Patrick 'DSP' Gharapetian. Copyright 2014 by Filthy Filterz.
All rights reserved. All product and company names mentioned in this document, as well as the software it describes, are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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