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On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969, Bond no. 6, Dir. Peter R. Hunt)

After a successful run of 5 Bond films, Sean Connery decided to hang up the holster and explore other ventures. This would not be a permanent departure from the series, in fact it would not be his only departure and return to the series, but we'll get into that. After Connery's temporary retirement from the role, series producers Broccoli and Saltzman began pre-production for filming an adaptation of The Man With The Golden Gun, featuring Roger Moore as Bond, intending to shoot it in Cambodia. However, between Roger Moore signing up for another series of the television show The Saint and political instability in southeast Asia at the time, this didn't come to fruition, thus TMWTGG and Moore were shelved for a later day. In fact, OHMSS was originally to be made post-Goldfinger, but the rights legal battle I mentioned a few posts ago was resolved, and EON was able to move forward with Thunderball.

Enter George Lazenby, a 29 year old Australian model who had more or less no acting experience aside from appearing in a chocolate bar commercial. Lazenby is kind of the movie star that was never to be. He kinda lucked into an astonishing amount of potential by starring in this movie, but unfortunately for him, he squandered it by declaring shortly into filming that he would only be starring as James Bond in one film, as he had been convinced by his manager the the Bond franchise would not remain solvent into the seventies. Yes, time has born this out to be an incredibly poor decision, and incredibly ironic, as the franchise has stood the test of time very well. But, going from the tumultuous 60s into the more civilized and freer 1970s, who's to say if it would have been at the time? Yes, hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to, in 2019, laugh at Lazenby's decision as very poor judgment and mismanagement, but at the time it was not known that the Bond franchise would be a titan that transcends decades.

The movie begins with James Bond driving along in his sweet new Aston Martin DBS Vantage, when he gets passed by a totally bitchin' red Mercury Cougar XR-7. Given that the Merc was driven by a pretty woman, Bond naturally takes an interest, and prevents her from drowning herself in the ocean.....and is attacked by two thugs who presumably want the woman. After beating them down, the women takes off as Bond quips "this never happened to the other fellow", and opening credits role.

The woman, revealed to be contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, or, just Tracy to her friends, is the troubled daughter of an Italian crime lord. Her father, seeing some kind of potential in Bond, attempts to bribe him into wedding his daughter with a princely dowry of one million pounds. Bond refuses, however, he continues to romance Tracy on the condition that her dad reveal the location of his nemesis, SPECTRE numero uno, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Finally having a shot at Blofeld, Bond returns to London only to be told by his superior M to drop it, and Bond resigns from MI6. Well, tries to, at least, as M's secretary Moneypenny changes the resignation notice to a request for vacation. Bond then makes tracks to Tracy's dad's birthday, where he finds himself in a genuine romantic relationship with her. Inevitably, her father's sources lead Bond to a geneologist for London's College of Arms, and learns that Blofeld is scheming to attain a title of nobility, claiming to be Count Balthazar de Bleuchamp, and that he is holed up in a mountain in neutral Switzerland, running an allergy clinic. Impersonating the geneologist and donning his silliest outfit, Bond heads for Piz Gloria, Blofeld's compound high in the Alps, and, after seducing several of the young patients and finding out that they're being brainwashed to taint the world's food supply, Bond is caught and outed at the spy he is, despite coming face to face with Blofeld, who apparently remembered him looking more like a certain Scotsman. Bond is imprisoned, but escapes by skiing down the mountain with the bad guys, including Blofeld's head henchwoman, Irma Bunt, behind him. Hiding from his pursuers in a mountain town, he comes across, of all people, Tracy, who is in town doing some skating. Together they take flight in her Cougar, and more skiing ensures. Blofeld triggers an avalanche, and manages to abduct Tracy. Along with her father and his men, Bond stages a daring raid on Piz Gloria, and rescues Tracy, but Blofeld manages to escape on a secret bobsled. Later, with M, a weepy Moneypenny and a proud Q present, Bond and Tracy wed, only for Blofeld and Bunt to gun her down in a drive-by shooting, leaving James Bond to weep over the body of his dead wife.

Fifteen or so years ago, when I was first REALLY getting into the series, Lazenby and OHMSS were stalwarts of worst Bond/Bond movie lists everywhere. Contemporary reviews seemed to focus on one thing: George Lazenby isn't Sean Connery. Connery had been the face of the series since the beginning, a series for which the public had a voracious appetite for. In my personal opinion, they just weren't ready for the face of that to change. However, in 2019, as I right this, the movie has undergone considerable reappraisal. Industry bigshots Steven Soderberg and Christopher Nolan have cited it as their favorite of the series. Lazenby himself is still rather polarising. You either like him or you don't. I do. I personally believe that had he stuck with the role, and gone on to make Diamonds are Forever and especially Live and Let Die, and we had not had poor Roger Moore languish in the role til 19-80-fucking-6, we would have had a vastly different franchise. A franchise that I lement the loss of the possibilities of, and had Lazenby been the face of that franchise, matured with it, I think he would be infinitely better remembered. He has a youthful flippancy about him, and a greater physicality than Connery ever had. I genuinely enjoy the dynamic between him and Tracy, who is played by Diana Rigg, who modern audiences will probably NOT (it has been 50 years since OHMSS) recognize and Olenna Tyrell from the HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones. A lot of people didn't like when Bond wept over her dead body. I do agree that Connery probably would not have done that. For me Lazenby balances the quintessential hard drinkin' Aston Martin drivin' PPK shootin' womanizin' tropes that the series had become known for with a healthy dose of humanity. The things he could have done...even though it was literally 20 years before my birth....still bothers me.

The action in this movie is both thrilling and beautifully shot. The skiing scenes put that of Moore-era flick The Spy Who Loved Me, which was made nearly a decade later, to shame. The car chase with the big, brawny Cougar XR-7 is just awesome, a chase made better for me by the fact that it's Tracy, not Bond, behind the wheel. The penultimate bobsled scene is, goofiness aside, pretty damn exciting. The music, including the driving opening theme (the first, and only theme in the series to be an instrumental piece) and the Louis Armstrong-sung tune We Have All The Time In The World are really good and have a great late 60's feel.

If I had to pick one thing that doesnt do it for me....it's easily Telly Savalas....Mo'fucking Kojak, as Blofeld. Savalas, despite being a bigger and more physical and intimidating figure than Donald Pleasence,..I just can't take him seriously. I seriously expect him to say "who loves ya, Bondy" and start sucking on a lollypop at any moment. That said....he is easily the most fun rendition of Blofeld, despite Savalas playing the character deadly serious.

Depsite middling reviews and reception, OHMSS brought in over ten times it's budget of 7 milion, which was 3 mil less than YOLT. But Lazenby was out. Who would fill the tux next? Well....to the great joy of the general public, EON would manage to tempt back Sean Connery for one last (official) Bond film....James Bond would be back in Diamonds are Forever.

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You Only Live Twice (1967, Bond No. 5, Dir. Lewis Gilbert)

Bond.  The 1960′s.  Japan.  Bond IN 1960′s Japan.  Should be a winner.  SHOULD BE A WINNER!  But it isn’t.  Least for me, it’s not.  This movie has a lot going for it.  It’s got, as I mentioned, James Bond in ‘60′s Japan.  It has some for the time amazing special effects and set pieces.  It has ninjas!  It has BOND BECOMING A NINJA (take that pirates, was Bond ever a pirate?).  However, it is done in a manor that is....kinda dumb.  Bond in....I hate to say this...but...JapFace is the only way I can put it, really....but...whatever it is.....is kinda hamfisted.  I don’t want to say insensitive.  But in the the world of everyone being continuously offended that we live in now....This film would have never been made like this.

American and Soviet spacecraft are disappearing, hijacked mid-flight by an unknown party, who’s spacecraft-swallowing spacecraft proceeds to reenters the atmosphere and lands somewhere near the sea of Japan.  The US assumes it’s the soviets, and the Soviets assume the US are responsible.  As the world leans closer and closer to nuclear war between the two superpowers, James Bond fakes his own death in Hong Kong to go undercover in Japan.  Ultimately he discovers that SPECTRE is in bed with an unnamed Asian power (implied to be China) to start a war for them to profit from.  It all comes down to a showdown between SPECTRE agents and Ninjas from the Japanese Secret Service in a secret volcano base.

There is a lot to like about YOLT, despite it’s questionable handling of it’s Japanese influences, it radiates the kind of cool that could only be found in Japan in the 60′s.  The soundtrack is nice, with the oriental-inspired theme by Nancy Sinatra being a standout, and other than Goldfinger, the finest theme yet.  Donald Pleasence makes an all too brief appearance as the first physical incarnation of quintessential Bond villain of villains Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  The script (which was written by children’s author, former RAF intelligence officer, and close personal friend of the late Bond creator Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl of all people), despite its relative incomprehensibility, is witty, and flows well.  All the actors and actresses give very commendable performances, despite half of them having an at best rudimentary grasp of English. Gadget-wise, the show is stolen by Little Nellie, a compact but heavily armed gyrocopter that Q carts to Japan in suitcases.  While there is no Aston Martins, the film does showcase Japan’s original supercar, the Toyota 2000GT, a car which did not come with a convertible top.  That had to be improvised as Sean Connery, who was 6′2″,could not fit in the unmodified car.

All is not well in the land of Japface...first and foremost....You can tell Sean Connery was kind of over being Bond at this point.  Whereas in Thunderball he seemed a more world-weary and meditative bond, here, he just feels tired.  He doesn’t have the same low-key sauve energy that he had in the first few movies.  And I can’t blame him.  This WAS the 5th Bond movie in as many years.  It was during filming that Connery announced that he would be retiring from the character of Bond...for the first time.  He’d be back for Diamonds are Forever in the 70′s, and the non-EON productions Bond film Never Say Never Again later yet in the 80′s. He would leave the role to Australian model George Lazenby in 1969′s On Her Majesty's Secret Service .  As I mentioned before, the film has a rather dated portrayal of Japan.  While it tries, and tries hard to push the more progressive aspects of the culture, it still feels very much akin to a Mr. Moto or Charlie Chan type-portrayal.  However, given that this was only about twenty years after the end of the second world war, I suppose that a positive portrayal at all shouldn't be taken for granted.  The aforementioned Donald Pleasence isn’t onscreen nearly enough.  It’s a low-key performance, and, in my opinion, the definitive interpretation of Blofeld (but not the most fun.  Sorry, Don, that honor goes to Telly Savalas), it really does deserve more screen time.  There are some great fights, the one with the unnamed sumo-henchman in the Osato offices being the stand out, but on that note, there aren’t really any really great henchmen.  You have Blofeld’s bodyguard Hans, but he has even less screen time than his boss.  This is also one of the least globe-trotting films of the series.  Bond only shows up in two locals, Japan and Hong Kong.  Though, to be fair, the difference between the metropolitan Tokyo and the volcanic islands that encompass the finale is quite definite.  Bond doesn’t even go to England in this one, with a definite lack of M’s leather padded door.

Despite my misgivings about this one, I cannot deny it’s success.  Grossing ten times it’s budget of a cool ten million, it more than secured that production of Bond No. 6 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service ....sans Sean Connery, of course.

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Thunderball (1965, Bond No. 4, Dir. Terence Young)

Following the unprecedented success of Goldfinger, another Bond film was pushed into production immediately. If Goldfinger was the first Bond to have all of the well known trappings, then Thunderball was the first to have them dialed to 11.

Thunderball is an ambitious movie, filled with special effects of a caliber not seen in all of the first 3 films. Which is appropriate, given that at 9 million, it cost more than the first three put together. There are numerous underwater scenes, all filmed in the ocean, mainly off Nassau in the Bahamas, and all done 25 years before James Cameron decided that filming in the ocean was a rather poor idea. Let that sink in.

Thunderball was actually supposed to be the original Bond film, not Dr. No. However, prior to starting production, Bond creator Ian Fleming was sued by two former collaborators who claimed he had based Thunderball's screenplay on something the three of them wrote. Therefore Dr. No was made instead and one of the suers, a man named Kevin McClory, received legal screen rights to the novel's characters and plot, as well as sole producer cred for Thunderball. I am personally glad for this, as Thunderball could not have been made on No's modest budget, though this did pave the way for McClory's production of Never Say Never Again, the only major studio-made non-EON Bond film.

Of course you have Sean Connery as Bond. Once again Felix Leiter has been recast, this time by some guy named Rik Van Nutter, who, in addition to having a stupid name, has done nothing else that I've seen. In the key Bond girl position you have former Miss World France Claudine Auger as Dominique "Domino" Derval, a seemingly kept woman to the villian, card playing eye-patch sporting SPECTRE operative Emilio Largo, who is played by prolific Italian actor Adolfo Celli. You also have rocket launcher-equiped motorcycle rider/SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi, who is also Italian.

Like it's predecessor, Thunderball was a smash success. It is, to this day, the highest grossing film in the franchise in North America when adjusted for inflation. Reception for the movie, however, was polarizing. Some critics and moviegoers showered it with praise, and some criticised it's comparatively slow pace and over reliance on lenghy underwater segments. However, you know that with success like that, there would be more Bond.

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Goldfinger (1964, Bond No. 3, Dir. Guy Hamilton)

Now we’re cooking with gas.  Goldfinger has it all....the action, the sex, the gadgets, the Aston Martin, all the pieces for a true Bond flick are present.  Not to say that Dr. No or From Russia With Love aren’t true bond flicks, but to me, they were in effect just the warm-up for Goldfinger.  

Sean Connery is back, this time up against Auric Goldfinger, a....really unintimidating but still somehow awesome villain with a real plan.  One of the weaker points of FRWL’s plot was that SPECTRE’s endgame was to sell the stolen Lektor decoding device BACK to the very Russians from which an unwitting Bond had taken it from.  Neither exceptionally smart nor inventive.  Or evil for that matter. Goldie’s master plan is to effectively trash the US’s economy.  

German actor and former Nazi Gert Frobe seems like a kind of buffoonish character at first, but as the movie progresses, he becomes quite menacing.  His henchman is one of the legends, though, in the form of Japanese-American Olympian weight lifter Harold Sakata as MOTHER FUCKING ODDJOB.  Most moviegoers, and hell, any child who grew up in the 90′s with a Nintendo 64 knows well the perils of Oddjob and diminuative stature, to say nothing of his lethal bladed top hat.

The main Bond girl in this one is Honor Blackman as....lets say it together....Pussy Galore.  Stupid name aside, she’s a cool character with some pretty sweet judo moves with which she uses to throw around the much larger Sean Connery with seemingly little effort. Also of note is Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson, a Goldfinger aide and the first woman in the film to be seduced by Bond. For this betrayal, Goldfinger kills her through "skin suffocation" by painting her body completely gold, an image that is synonymous with the film.

The production values got a big kick in the butt for Goldfinger.  Several very large sets are present, with the interior of Goldfinger’s Kentucky home and the inside of the Fort Knox gold depository being stand outs.  Also some very good (at least for the time.  This was the mid sixties so set expectations accordingly.) special effects, such as when Oddjob “blows a fuse” (an effect which seriously burned Harold Sakata), or the famous laser beam scene.  This film also marks the longstanding relationship between the James Bond franchise and English sports car manufacturer Aston Martin, a collaboration, which while not present in every film, persists well into the Craig era (a funny note, the two cars used in Goldfinger had to be bought from Aston Martin at full price.....that includes the one that was crash.  Following the smash success of the movie, and inevitable bump in the sales of Astons, EON studios never had to pay for another car).  I mean, does the Q-customized DB5 really need to be introduced?  

An odd bit of trivia I want to address concerns Sean Connery's hair. Or lack there of. It's pretty commonly known that Connery started to lose his hair early in his life. While he did not wear a toupee for his first two Bond outings, it did required some creativity. Essentially they gave it the Donald Trump treatment. However, by Goldfinger it was thinning to the point that a toupee was a necessity.

The public’s verdict on Goldfinger was swift and pretty damn amazing.  On a budget of 3 mil (nearly three times that of Dr. No, but still pretty small.),  Goldfinger grossed a cool 125 million in the box office, holding the Guinness book of world records record for the fastest grossing film of all time up until that point.  With the the highest expectations for the series, it was only a matter of time before Bond was back...

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From Russia with Love (1963, Bond No. 2, Dir. Terence Young)

After the resounding financial success of the pop culture milestone known as Dr. No, it was a forgone conclusion that there simply had to be a sequel.  That sequel, From Russia with Love, would be bigger, better, costlier, and just generally more Bond-ier that the freshman film.

Sean Connery made his second appearance as James Bond, as well as Bernard Lee as MI-6 head, M, Lois Maxwell as M’s frustrated secretary Moneypenny, and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench, Bond’s as of now sole recurring love interest.  Newly recast is the gadget maestro, Q, played by Desmond Llewelyn, who would reprise this iconic character through five Bond actors: Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan (over a spand of 36 years) all the way up til the Brosnan era film The World Is Not Enough, and while in this film the character hinted at retirement, I believe (mayhaps more like hope) that he would have come back had it not been for his untimely death in a car accident. 

New characters include the central Bond girl, Tatiana “Tanya” Romanov.  Who is in my opinion the film the film’s sole misstep.  She’s whiny and weirdly giddy, and the character is just kinda flat and one note.  You have affable MI-6 Istanbul station head Kerim Bey, played by Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz, who, despite being mortally ill and in great pain (inoperable neck cancer that he likely contracted due to the radiation that he was undoubtably exposed to while filming the John Wayne clusterfuck The Conquerer;  he accepted the role simply for his family’s financial security, and would take his own life in a hospital), he puts in a stellar performance as Bey; for me, one of the highlights of the movie.  One of them.

But one of the bigger highlights is the introduction of a James Bond staple; the henchman, in the form of the murderously sociopathic and seemingly omniscient SPECTRE assassin Red Grant, played by Robert “Captain Quint” Shaw.  Yes, while most people think of his iconic role as the captain of the Orca in Steven Spielberg's original blockbuster, I tend to think FRWL is his finest hour...despite the fact that they had 5′10″ Shaw standing on a box so that he’d appear bigger than the 6′2″ Connery, his presence is dominating. He is like a jaguar, patiently stalking Bond throughout the movie...even impersonating a fellow agent, waiting for the perfect time to strike.  And while 007 manages to outsmart Grant, his fight with him is easily one of the most brutal of the Connery era.

Other villains include, while not by name, Bond’s recurring nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld, complete with white cat, played in this case by Anthony Dawson (though you never see a face), who also played crooked geologist and half-assed assassin Prof. Dent in Dr. No.  Austrian actress Lotte Lenya plays sadistic and conniving Ex-Soviet Colonel turned SPECTRE agent, Rosa Klebb.  Walter Gotell, who would return to the series in the 70′s as KGB spymaster general Gogel in the Roger Moore era, has a role as a SPECTRE agent as well.

Speaking of SPECTRE, FRWL is the first Bond flick to feature the mysterious terrorist organization in earnest. It was mentioned in Dr. No, but in kind of a throwaway manner. This was also the first film to feature a bespoke theme song, sung by Matt Monro, though it is not played over the opening credits, which this time, do appear after a cold open, but they are not however done by series stalwart Maurice Binder, instead done by graphic artist Robert Brownjohn, who would also design the title sequence for the sequel.  Speaking of...

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Dr. No (Bond no. 1, 1962, dir. Terence Young)

In the world of cinematic legends, few names command the kind of respect and reverence as Bond; James Bond.  Tonight I’m talking about the movie that started it all.  As with most movies that spawn massive franchises, Dr. No is a comparatively quaint film.  There is very little of the bombastic action set pieces that the series is famous for.  Little of the razor-sharp dry wit.  Nary a single gadget to be found (and to that effect, nary a single real Q, as the iconic quartermaster would not appear truly until the sequel)  Contrary to the globe-trotting nature of the series, 80 percent of the flick is set in Jamaica.  There’s no cold open, just Maurice Binder’s (quaint by comparison to later efforts) opening credits, then cut to the movie.  No Aston Martins (while the film’s sole car chase features a bitchin’ Sunbeam Alpine, the chase itself is kinda laughable), hell, even the series’s trademarked brand of misogyny seems to be at a level that is modest.

But what is there makes for a pretty damn good movie.  What this movie lacks in substance it more than makes up for in ambition.  It is a beginning of incredible promise, and despite it’s below average budget.  And it also has Sean Connery, the first of six actors to officially portray the suave super spy, and to many, the quintessential actor to do so. Also introduced to the series is the character of CIA agent Felix Leiter, who, despite rarely being played by the same actor multiple times (Thus far, David Hedison and Jeffrey Wright are the only actors to reprise the roll) , is a series staple. In this inaugural appearence, he's played by Jack Lord of classic Hawaii 5-0 fame, with he kind cool only Jack Lord can do. Other inaugural appearances include Bond's MI-6 superior simply known as M, played by Bernard Lee, and his faithful secretary, Miss Moneypenny, played by Canadian actress Lois Maxwell. Both would be featured in these roles repeatedly.

 The Villain, the titular Dr. No, is portrayed by Canadian stage and film actor Joseph Wiseman, who is dolled up to appear vaguely Asian, and honestly, I find him to be very creepy in a kind of understated way.  Another series staple that’s sadly missing is that the not-so-good doctor has no real henchmen.  I mean, yeah, you got the crooked geologist and the three “blind” gun-toting “mice”, but they’re not real henchman.  Not like we’d get later...

The contemporary critical response to Dr. No was not positive, (with the Vatican chiming in that it was  "a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex", and the Kremlin saying that Bond was the personification of capitalist evil.  Damn commies.), but despite this, it’s box office gross was nearly sixty times it’s just over one million dollar budget.  Obviously, there had to be a sequel....

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The Abyss (1989, Dir. James Cameron)

Everyone with a modicum of cinema wherewithal knows the certifiable madman that is James Cameron. Though, depending on the person, it'll probably be as the Avatar guy...or the Titanic guy.

Other than his directoral debut, Terminator, Jim has pretty much always worked with budgets that could be the annual budget of a small African country. With a budget of a cool 50 mil, The Abyss is no exception. I don't know what it was about the ass end of the 80's, but around the time The Abyss came out, there were a bunch of underwater-centric movies....Leviathan, Lords of the Deep, and DeepStar Six all came out the same year as The Abyss. Out of these movies, one thing sets The Abyss apart:. The fact that it was actually filmed with actors under water using SCUBA gear and full size submersibles.

The others all used dry, smokey soundstages with feathers floating through the air to simulate undersea debris. The fact that the Abyss was filmed in a 7.5 million gallon tank (what was to be a nuclear reactor containment dome), well....just look at the movie. The proof is on screen. Necessary? Hardly. Does it look phenomenal? Absolutely.

Also worth noting are the trailblazing digital effects, which may seem crude by today's standards, but for 1989, moviegoers had never seen anything like it. Also of note is that the effects in The Abyss service kind of a prototype or proof-of-concept for those of Terminator 2 which would follow two years later.

In terms of acting, this film is kept afloat (pun intended) by it's male leads. Ed Harris is terrific as lead oilworker Bud, and Cameron vet Michael Biehn is great as deranged Navy SEAL Coffey. To put bluntly....I never liked Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. In anything. She brings the movie down. Just...why he didn't get Sigourney Weaver.....as I'm almost positive he had her in mind.

I am watching this on a special edition widescreen LD that features the directors cut of the film. When negotiating the contract for the film, James Cameron was assured final cut if he brought the film on or under 2 hours and 15 minutes....and in order to do so there had to be some cuts made that adversely effected the story. The theatrical cut of The Abyss is a train wreck...it makes no damn sense. This director's cut restores all the lost footage...nearly a half an hour....and it makes for a much more comprehensive experience.

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Vinyl Breakdown, pt. 2

There are turntables, and then there are turntables. I have owned them for years....never spending more than twenty dollars on one, shunning high grade HiFi gear for goodwill garbage. I say garbage now because my eyes have been opened.

Enter the pioneers PL-518, or as I like to call her, Voyager. Not after Star Trek, because the design dates to 1977, the year the Voyager missions launched.

Voyager features auto return, a direct drive mechanism, buttery-smooth oil-actuated queueing lever, a brand spankin' new Empire cartridge and stylus, fully adjustable tone arm, built in strobe for speed adjusting, a visually appealing heavyweight wooden plinth, and general fit and finish that is simply impeccable. This is all well and good, but on an audio quality level is where she really soars....put simply, the improvement over my old (but ironically several years newer) Technics table is astounding. Also worth noting that the rubber feet on this model are notorious for degrading overtime to the point of breaking. But these ones somehow are in perfect condition.

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Once a powerhouse of the new Hollywood movement, by the 1990s, Francis Ford Coppola starpower had waned thanks the middling success of the third installment in his legendary Godfather series. So, what does he do when his third overblown epic falls flat on its face? Make an overblow epic that has the potential to fall flat on it's face, of course.

Everyone knows the story of Dracula, or some permutation of the legendary blood drinker's story. It has been a minute since I read Bram Stoker's novel, but as I remember, the movie is fairly faithful story-wise to its source material. Some sensationalizing of certain aspects has done, and some sexual scenes that would have made the Hammer Dracula films blush were added.

This film has a couple of major flaws, mainly in the two leads, well the two leaves that don't matter as much as the other two leads but we'll get back into that. On one hand, you have poor Keanu Reeves, who is doing his best to wrap his mind around an Londoner vernacular, and failing spectacularly. To the guys credit, you can see that he's trying, with every word you can see the gears crunching in his head as he tries to formulate the best way to say this in an English manor. The effect is he has the visage of a man with chronic constipation.

On the other hand, you have Winona Ryder, who time has proved to be a very good actress, but at this stage of her career she just doesn't have the chops, and her accent is somehow worse than Keanu's. The other two leads are both one of the bigger millstones on the movie's neck, and one of it's biggest draws......stacked between Gary Oldman (one of the best actors of his generation) and Anthony Hopkins (who was fresh off his oscar win for the iconic cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter), Keanu Reeves never stood a chance. They overshadow who is supposed to be our lead in such a way that is, well, spectacular and depressing at the same time. Francis Ford Coppola went on the record after this movies release saying that he cast Keanu Reeves because he thought the chicks would like him.

Now on to the other leads of this film, the ones that are talked about most, at least in my circles of friend; the visuals and the soundtrack. This is the last really good movie for old school in camera effects, it is, on a visual level, a sight to behold.

So many good trick shots, and blink-and-you-miss-it moments. And it makes for a dense and atmospheric movie that is visually unrivaled. Polish composer Wojciech Kilar's driving gothic score is my personal favorite aspect. It is gloomy and atmospheric when it calls for it, and when it doesn't, it's at the other end of the spectrum, overwrought and bombastic.

As for the disc itself, I am viewing the Criterion collection's 3 disc CAV boxset, and the picture quality gets top marks. Extras include the original trailer and a short documentary about the making of the movie.

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The Blues Brothers

The Blues Brothers is an odd beast of a film. On paper...it shouldn't work. It's disjointed, meandering, and nonsensical. But...it just works. The film concerns the exploits of two ex-convict/blues musicians, Jake and Elwood, the titular Blues Brothers. Following his release from prison, they find that the orphanage they grew up in is about to be foreclosed on. This sets in motion their self-described mission from God, a quest to put back together their band and generate enough money to pay off the orphanage's debts. All of this culminates in a monumental car chase through the streets of Chicago. It's a showdown. Jake and Elwood and their 1974 Dodge Monaco "BluesMobile" Vs. The Illinois state police, country music group the Good Ole Boys, Chicago's Finest, Illinois Nazis, Bob from Bob's Country Bunker, John Candy, the...army (?), and....Carrie Fisher. Wow. As they say....100 miles to Chicago...

But. They won't be stopped. They're on a mission from God.

The movie is held together by several things. The...um...for lack of a better term, chemistry of it's leads, the multitude of celebrity cameos (Frank Oz, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, the aforementioned John Candy and Carrie Fisher, and Cab Callaway as the brother's mentor, Curtis), and....the Music. Music is the gas that makes this BluesMobile's 440 cubic inch plant roar. There is another aspect that I would be remiss if I didn't mention: the BluesMobile itself.

This battered black and white relic of old Detroit is as much a character as Jake and Elwood. From it's broken cigarette lighter to the garbage that sloshes around the dash as it hurtles at 120 miles per hour underneath Chicago's famous elevated train, it oozes personality. So much so, that when, having fulfilled it's purpose and reached the Honorable Richard J. Daley plaza, it falls spectacularly to pieces, you feel Elwood's pain.

[thelaserdiscfiles]

THX 1138

What does the future look like to you? To look like in Utopia like in Star Trek, where war and money have been done away with and everybody gets along and works for the greater good of mankind? Does it look like a dystopia, a nuclear hellscape like Terminator's grim outlook? Or is it somewhere in between? Let's ask man who we all know, who's a bit of a future Aficionado, shall we say...

But wait! Don't all you millennials who suffered through the prequel trilogy Run for the hills yet. What I have to say is important, god dammit! Yes, George Lucas created the multimedia juggernaut that is Star Wars. With that out of the way, some background, George Lucas is a born in Californian who originally wanted to be a race car driver, but after a nearly fatal car accident, he would turn to a profession that he would come to define, for better or worse; filmmaking. To further this ambition he went to USC School of cinematic Arts, where he produced a student film Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138, an Incredibly minimalist 15-minute Affair concerning a man escaping from an unseen community. It was given some acclaim, but not widely seen until much later. You can find it now on YouTube. For his first feature film, Lucas would take the ideas electronic Labyrinth and expand on them to form the cerebral Master work if it is THX 1138.

the titular THX 1138 lives in a future where he exists to consume product and produce the seemingly omniscient Androids that enslave him. All his emotions and desires, including love and sex, are suppressed with drugs. He's being watched constantly, instead of Big Brother leering at Big Brother leering at him from view screens, he has the aforementioned silver-faced robots keeping him in line.

The vision of the future is helped by the settings, never is there an outdoor setting until the very end. Some of the most striking sets are actual California landmarks, such as Marin County Civic Center, San Francisco International Airport, and unfinished sections of the BART system. The postmodern austerity gives the movie and almost surreal sterility. The cinematography is equally bleak and unsettling. On the term of acting, two performances stand out, that have Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence. Duval is the titular THX, and Pleasence is really the closest thing the film has to a human antagonist: the creepy and maybe gay SEN 5241. The cherry on top of this film is a very cool and rather pioneering car chase through the unfinished BART system, doubling is a futuristic dystopian Highway.

Picture quality on the LaserDisc is very good for a 90s of this price range, as is audio. And that brings us to the DVD release. Being cinematic male content that he is, sometime in the 2000s George Lucas Revisited his freshman film and.... Kind of ruined it. It made the CGI treatment in the original trilogy's re-release look like... Well, it made the look good. Which, at least in my humble opinion, makes the LaserDisc version of THX the definitive way to watch this movie.

A personal note, this is one of the movies that was a game-changer for me, I remember hearing about it on the Star Wars documentary Empire of Dreams, and seeking it out. At the time the only release available was the butchered DVD cut, but I saw so much that made me happy, so much so that I sought out eventually a VHS copy off of eBay to see the real deal. And when I got into LaserDisc collecting, this is one of the first discs that I had to have.

One of my most prized possessions is poster from the 80s advertising the VHS and betamax release of the movie, a Christmas gift from my cousin Clint. To say that this movie has been important and very formative of my tastes would be an understatement.

[thelaserdiscfiles]

Rage, or how NOT to ship a LaserDisc player

This mangled heap of circuitry, wires, aluminum, and plastic was in its past life a rather rare Pioneer LDW1, the sole dual drawer player that Pioneer made in their long history with the format. This means that it could hold two discs for a grand total of four sides. Or roughly 4 hours of continuous play-back on CLV format discs. It is also what arrived on my doorstep yesterday morning. I had paid to have it shipped from Maryland, from who I assume, judging by his initials on the back of the player, was its original owner. Mr. James M. Babin of Maryland, I don't know if you'll ever read this, I highly doubt it, but if you do, you suck at Packaging. One layer of bubble wrap for a twenty-eight-year-old LaserDisc player that weighs 45 lbs? I asked you to pack it well. This was not what I meant.

[thelaserdiscfiles]

80's movies galore (12-7-18 score follow-up)

[thelaserdiscfiles]

Special delivery, 12-7-18

Today the UPS man left 75 pounds of goodies on my front door step; part one of a two phase delivery. The contents of this cardboard monolith? 65+ laserdiscs. Detailed pictures to follow.

[thelaserdiscfiles]

Branded to Kill

Banded to Kill, 1967, Dir. Seijun Suzuki. One disc, CLV format, Criterion Collection, spine no CC1513L. Janus would later reuse this artwork for their original DVD release of this film. Letterboxed.

Hitman with a rice fetish. That's the hook I give to people who know nothing about the absolutely batshit absurdist masterwork Branded to Kill. The black-and-white Branded to Kill is, at least in my eyes, a companion piece with the earlier technicolor Tokyo Drifter.

B2K concerns the going abouts of a rice-obsessed assassin in 60's Japan, and the quest he finds himself inadvertently on to achieve the coveted rank of Number 1 Killer. You think i'm joking about the rice, right?

Apparently, director Seijun Suzuki thought the best way to make a character quintessentially Japanese was to make him sexually fixated on rice. That's not even the weirdest thing in it, but I won't spoil any more zaniness. To a non Japanese speaker, the caliber of the acting is kind of irrelevant. The main actor, Jo Shishido, has an....interesting screen presence. Dissatisfaction with his own looks led to him recieving....cheek implants. The resulting visage can look menacing.....but the tends to resemble a chipmonk. Suzuki came from studio Nikkatsu's pink film industry. Which is a nice term for soft core pornography, and thus B2K has some somewhat explicit sex scenes. Nothing that would phase a product of the Internet Age, but disclaimers and what not.

On Suzuki and Nikkatsu, the studio, fed up with his experimental art film antics, fired Suzuki and effectively blacklisted him from working in the Japanese film industry for over 20 years. Though, in Nikkatsu's defense, Suzuki himself proclaimed in an interview, rather proudly too, that he made movies that made neither sense or money. I don't know about the box office take of this one, nut the former certainly seems true...

[thelaserdiscfiles]

The Yakuza

The Yakuza, 1974, Dir. Sydney Pollack, spine no. 11397, one CLV disc

The east meets west culture clash has been the set up of a great deal of creative works. It makes sense why, to your average film goer or book reader, most anything on the opposite side of the globe can be exotic. To my tastes, no film has made this more apparent than Sydney Pollack's neo-noir masterpiece The Yakuza. I mean....it's Robert Mitchum, doing what he does best; playing a tough guy private eye type. 'Cept now he's doing it in mid-70's Japan. For me, that's a hell of a hook.

The film is stylish as all get out, but it's far from an exercise in style over substance. I chalk the intelligent plot up to screenwriter maverick Paul Schrader, the man who created Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver fame. It was, in fact, his first screenplay, and was co-authored with Robert Towne of Chinatown fame. Casting is great, old stalwarts Mitchum and Brian Keith, and Japanese Clint Eastwood analog Ken Takara. This is a markedly different character than Mitchum has played in the past. A tough guy, yes, but a meditative, more introspective tough guy.

There are some stunning visuals, and some really, surprisingly good action. Mitchum dual-wielding a .45 and a 12-gauge is particularly badass. The climatic sword fight is both restrained and tense as all hell at the same time.

Picture quality for this disc is sadly subpar, as is audio.

[thelaserdiscfiles]

LifeForce

LifeForce, 1986, Dir. Tobe Hooper, 1 disc, both sides CLV, spine no. ML105117. Letterboxed presentation.

In the 80's, Tobe Hooper, director of the influential horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, signed an exclusivity deal with schock factory Cannon Films for three films. One of the results of this deal was the sci fi masterpeice (at least in my humble opinion) LifeForce. Worth noting that the other two films of this deal, a remake of Invaders from Mars and a sequel to TCM, were both solid.

The film has so much going for it. The general story, written by Dan O'Bannon of Alien fame, is...kinda hit or miss. Small parts of it make sense. It's got to do with Space vampires. And....yeah. The acting is kinda hit or miss as well. Steve Railsback, who I generally like, is kinda all over the place. Pre-TGN Patrick Stewart is better. Sorta. Peter Firth is good. The real reason to watch LifeForce is the visuals. The effects are, for the mid eighties, top of the line. I mean, whaddya expect when you hand Industrial Light and Magic maestro John Dykstra over twice the budget he used to make the effects for fuckin' Star Wars. You can plainly see that every bit of the towering 25 million dollar budget was on screen. As was...Umm...Shapely french actress Mathilda May, who is nude for most of the film.

Worth noting that this is the unaltered European cut, which has nearly 20 minutes of footage that the US theatrical cut did not have, in addition to Henry Mancini's original epic score, instead having an unremarkable and much more conventional effort from Michael Kamen. Video quality is good for the most part, pretty typical of a 90's disc.