Site Closing Down

This site is due to be paid for again on 26 February. If it had become really popular and loads of people enjoyed its whinsical whimsy, then maybe I would have kept it going. Sadly, none of this happened and I have therefore decided not to meet the demands of mine hosts and instead close the site.

If you have been following my reviews at all, then you may be interested to learn that updates will continue at TBW’s Film Journal partner. This includes my now regular attempt to stop up on Oscars night and do a kind of live blog type thing of the affair, which is hardly original but I’m not paid for any of this.

In the meantime, thanks for your support, whether you stumbled across these pages via a search engine, IMDb, etc, or you even left a comment.

‘I wish we could stay here forever… and ever… and ever’

Over the weekend, I watched Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, the biographical documentary that was packaged with the ‘Stanley Kubrick: Collection’ set. How it made me want to catch up with some of the old master’s work, not least the series of earlier works (Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory) I bought recently and is now sat on a shelf begging ‘Play me… play me…’

It also got me thinking about The Shining, the only Kubrick I ever felt able to comment on and did so in an article I wrote several years ago. The trouble with The Shining, let alone the trouble with Kubrick generally, is that with each viewing of the movie I have very different reactions and feelings to what’s happening. Sometimes I think it’s all in crazy Jack’s head. On other occasions I watch it as a straightforward ghost story. Both interpretations work, as do various alternatives - is it all in Danny’s head?

Ultimately all that really matters is The Shining’s status as a great movie. It’s very scary, particularly in a creepy, unsettling way, and it leaves more questions than answers, which all good horror movies should. To date I am yet to see anyone look more frightened in a film than Shelley Duvall, and hopefully that wasn’t the culmination of regular bollockings from Kubrick. It contains many memorable scenes. Among the best has Wendy reading through Jack’s ‘writing,’ a bit of movie magic so potent that plans are afoot to publish a Torrance manuscript. But there are so many, from the camera tracking Danny Big Wheeling along the endless hotel corridors through to Jack standing over a replica of the maze before it becomes the maze itself, complete with Wendy and Danny trying it out. And what about Jack’s conversation with Lloyd, the demon bartender of the Overlook? Or his chat with Grady, the tension heightened by the fact both protagonists are almost perfectly still while delivering their lines?

Memorably, Stephen King disliked Kubrick’s interpretation of his novel, disagreeing entirely with the choice of acting personnel. Had the author been given his own way, Jon Voight might have been cast as Jack, the logic being that - as in the book - the character would experience a descent into madness, whereas Nicholson plays him as already being at least halfway there. King also saw Duvall as the wrong choice for Wendy. In his eyes, she looked too emotionally damaged already, before having to deal with Jack’s antics in the Overlook. Needless to say, King was wrong. Nicholson and Duvall are superb in The Shining, giving definitive performances, whilst the casting of Steven Weber and Rebecca de Mornay in the King-approved, 1997 mini-series led to an unmemorable experience and a largely forgotten production.

Anyway, what follows is my rather lengthy review from 2004, written for a long-dead website. This is kind of a Director’s Cut, tidied up with bits cropped and added here and there. I really like this film and intend to follow publishing this piece with another viewing, lights off and surround sound on for that supremely unsettling score and disturbing sense of claustrophobia. All work and no play…

—

There was once this haunted house in the middle of nowhere. During the summer, it was a hotel, and lots of people stayed there, never seeing the ghosts. But later, when the snow fell and the house was cut off from the outside world, and only the caretaker and his family remained, the ghosts came out…

The Shining is about more than that, of course. ‘Haunted house’ stories are ten a penny, and most of them follow the same sort of path. Where The Shining differs is in its subtlety, the inference that maybe, just maybe, there are no ghosts at all, and that what you’re seeing is a family breaking through the strain of being locked up in a building together with no realistic route of escape. There’s plenty in the movie to suggest this isn’t the case, that what we’re watching is indeed the classic tale of a man falling under the presence of malevolent spirits, but I don’t think things are ever that easy.

I read the book long before seeing the film. Back in my early teens, Stephen King was more or less the gateway into adult literature yet in the specific case of this book, I didn’t think it was one of his best. All the ingredients were there, but it just didn’t appear to deliver a spooky whammy in the way Salem’s Lot did, nor did it have the emotional core of Pet Sematary. It fell way behind Misery in terms of sheer suspense, the latter being a tome I read in several breathless hours. The novel of The Shining had a greater sense of fantasy, of being a tale of the supernatural, than the picture - there aren’t, for instance, any shrubberies that come alive in the celluloid version, and a good thing too.

King’s novels were great because they could be genuinely scary, believed in the power of building up tension (this is his secret; not that it’s really a secret at all, but you have to appreciate his ability to mount the suspense until it hangs by the very last thread) and the characters swore occasionally. That was something you didn’t get in Fighting Fantasy. But unlike many of the movie adaptations based on his work, Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining blew the book away.

On with the plot, which starts with Jack Torrance visiting the Overlook Hotel in the Rockies. He’s applying for the job of winter caretaker, a position that will see him more or less incarcerated in the place because of the harsh winter. Quite brusquely, he waves off any suggestion that life will be difficult for his wife and child, explaining they’ll love it, whilst it’ll give him a chance to crack on undisturbed with some writing. Does the implicitly creepy note that the hotel is built on an ancient Indian burial ground (quite a common theme in King’s work this) deter him? Course not. What about the fact that a previous caretaker, Grady, ran amok and killed his family? Not a problem.

Thus armed with this information, Jack gets the job and shows up at the appointed time with his wife, Wendy, and little boy, Danny. We soon learn that the latter is a bit special. He has a gift that is outlined to him as ’shining’, an ability to see into the future, know things that are happening far away, etc. It’s a form of telepathy, in other words, only here it’s used more abstractly, and because Danny’s a child it is personified in an immature way. During a quick chat with the hotel’s chef, Dick Halloran (played by Scatman ‘Heeeenrific!’ Crothers), the boy learns he isn’t the only one with this talent, and is warned that some of the memories left in the hotel aren’t all good. You can say that again. Within minutes of walking over the threshold, Danny is visited by the spirits of twin girls, shades of Grady’s murdered daughters, and will do so again before the end.

The Torrances start life on their own. Pretty soon, the storms are rolling in, cutting telephone communications and making them rely on a radio to the nearest police station (which, we assume, is miles away). Danny and Wendy explore the hotel, in particular its magnificent maze, and Jack writes. Or does he? Shorn of inspiration, we see him aimlessly bouncing a ball against the wall. Later, he’s doing nothing at all, simply staring out of the window. The ideas aren’t coming, he tells Wendy, and a note of irritative sarcasm enters his voice more and more. This threatens to spill over into violence later when Wendy happens to disturb him at his typewriter. But then Danny enters an open bedroom during one of his frequent Big Wheels trips around the floors, and things get worse very quickly.

During these early scenes, the slow breakdown is taking place before our very eyes. Not only is Jack struggling to work, but he’s also experiencing some weird feelings about the hotel. He senses he might have been there before, and in a chat with Danny declares he wishes he could stay there ‘forever and ever’, which for the boy is an echo of something the ghost twins said to him previously. After Danny goes into the bedroom, he emerges with marks around his neck and tells Wendy a ‘crazy woman’ tried to strangle him. It’s now time for Jack’s visions to take over. Having been blamed by Wendy for attacking their son, he tiredly makes his way to one of the opulent bars. And he isn’t alone. In my personal favourite scene from the picture, Jack finds that Lloyd the barman is waiting and ready to serve him whiskey, which naturally is on the house. On the subject of Lloyd, have there been many more demonic characters than him in the movies? I don’t mean in the Al Pacino shouting his head off as Satan, but for sheer creepiness and quiet malevolence. I’m not sure what it is - the lighting that brings out all the lines in his face, his deep, serpent-pleasant voice or the easy vice he allows, but there’s something purely evil about him.

Is The Shining a horror film? It certainly is, and an extremely atmospheric one at that. Kubrick pushed all the right buttons in delivering frights by putting everything into the build-up to the moment rather than the moment itself. As is often the case in such fare, the music often gives a clue as to what is about to happen, and here it’s absolutely spooky, barely music at all when it comes down to it, but instead the sounds of nerves audibly jangling. The Shing is no ‘traditional’ horror. There’s no hand reaching out of the earth to clutch the heroine’s wrist as in Carrie. Kids don’t see their dead kin floating outside their bedroom windows, eyes burning white, as happens in Salem’s Lot. In fact, you see very little that’s deliberately scary. Ninety per cent of the frights come from the actors themselves. You see it in Jack Nicholson’s deranged performance as Torrance, in the looks of abject terror on Wendy’s face. Most haunted of all is Danny, who does so well in portraying childlike fear. The bit where he sees the dead girls and covers his eyes with his fingers, only later removing them slowly to let one eye peek out, is exactly what a small kid would do.

The movie relies on Nicholson, however. In 1980, he was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, an Oscar winner thanks to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and a veteran of Chinatown and Five Easy Pieces. In his early scenes, such as his job interview, he talks quite deliberately, almost forced, as though the madness is never that far away. Indeed, later we learn that he’s cracking up before he even goes to the hotel, a victim of his recovery from alcoholism, writing failures and domestic problems. All this spills over into his experiences whilst being the caretaker. When he speaks to Wendy, his dialogue is punctuated by slow, eyebrow-jerking nastiness, a man on the very edge. It’s only with his ghosts that he becomes more natural, and even here there’s a twist in store. Notice the times he banters with Lloyd and Grady, supposed spirits from the building’s past. He’s actually looking at himself in the mirror, speaking to himself. In other words, all the ghosts are in his head.

That isn’t to say The Shining doesn’t contain spectres. Explaining away Wendy’s visitations in the last act are more difficult, though how much reason does anyone have when they’re running around in terror? What she glimpses are instances from the past, memories of parties that took place long ago. Finally, there’s the elevator doors gushing out blood. I have an explanation for this, which readers may or may not choose to accept. Always an image I had difficulty in taking on board, it’s only when I revisited the film and recalled the bit about it being built on your Indian burial ground that it made any kind of sense. We all know about the ‘pioneering spirit’ in the USA that led to thousands of native Americans being slaughtered, captured and having their heritage demolished. The Overlook Hotel is a symbol of this very act. Its erection shows a casual disregard for the native population, and its grandeur a poke in the eye - what could be worse than having a graveyard where your parents lie being torn down in favour of a hotel for the rich? So is the place representative of a society built on blood, on the destruction of one group of people by another? Maybe…

And that’s only one theory behind the hidden meanings of The Shining. One of Kubrick’s typically ambiguous works, it defies easy explanation and I ought to know. In preparation for this review, I’ve read a vast array of comments and there’s only one certainty - nobody agrees on it. One suggestion was that it was a satire on modern television, that Jack’s uttering of TV lines at the climax are the end product of a clever criticism of the goggle box. Or is it a rumination on depression? Is it about a failed marriage, or the projections of a child with powerful telepathic capabilities? Or, as the most astute comments suggest, does this matter at all? Can’t we just see it as a great ghost story and have done with it? Of course we can, and that’s what’s so good about it. You can delve into the potential allegory, or you can sit down, turn the lights off and prepare to be afraid. And I think you will be.

Kubrick himself remained oblique about his intentions, which is really what we want. His job was to throw together the elements of gothic horror, sublime camerawork (e.g. following Danny as he races headlong through the maze; tracking back from Wendy while she reads the ‘All work and no play’ papers and Jack, unnoticed, is creeping up on her), mounting suspense and Jack Nicholson’s mesmerising performance, and leave the interpretations to us. One more point I’ll make before I leave you to rush off to your beloved shelf of films and dust off your DVD copy. The majority of us enjoy being with our families. I like living with mine wife and The Boy. No problems there. But if we were placed in a similar situation, how long would it take before I became irritated to the point of insanity by their foibles, to have the things they say and do become magnified because I had no counterpoint, no balance in my life to play against their annoying nuances? At what point would I lose it? And when I did start to ‘kick off’, what would I do about it?

Star Trekking: The Motion Picture (1979)

While it’s possible to look upon such films as City of Ember and The Dark is Rising as rather cynical attempts to cash in on the success of Harry Potter, it would take some effort to beat the desperate gold rush that took place in the wake of Star Wars. Movie after movie was churned out, the majority of them hopeless dreck (seriously, can anyone watch Battle Beyond the Stars without cringing?) that proved science fiction done on the cheap just does not work.

One decidedly lucrative alternative to the Imperial Wars, however, was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979 at considerable expense and with a fair amount of hype behind it. At the time, the original series was being repeated on BBC2, no doubt a further consequence of the Wars bandwagon. Considering how shabbily the show was treated, particularly towards its premature end, the fact Paramount plunged a hefty $35m into a spin-off feature film ought to have come as something of a surprise. Even more amazing was the sheer talent drafted in to get the thing made. Two-time Academy Award winner, Robert Wise (this site gushed over The Day the Earth Stood Still several weeks ago) was hired to direct. Jerry Goldsmith (who had clinched an Oscar for The Omen) provided the score. Richard Kline (two previous nominations) was the cinematographer, and the film also had the considerable likes of Douglas Trumbull - who produced the groundbreaking special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey - to call upon. A more marquee crew you can barely imagine, though it was only with the reassembling of the original cast that the production really gelled. The hardest of these to entice back into his unflatteringly tight-fitting uniform was Leonard Nimoy, who was involved in a legal dispute with Paramount at the time and had to have this settled out of court in order to don the ears once more.

The story, originally conceived by Gene Roddenberry and written by science fiction novelist Alan Dean Foster before Harold Livingston polished it off, was intended to form the pilot of a new Star Trek TV series. For various reasons, the show never came close to being made, but the film was. In a pre-release marketing bonanza that was reminiscent of a certain other science fiction epic, we could buy all sorts of Trek related goodies, including Klingon action figures that seemed a bit redundant considering they hardly feature in the movie at all. Indeed, the rather solemn picture that finally hit the screens bore little resemblance to the ripping action adventure promised in the trailers and publicity. The Motion Picture was far from a blockbuster of Wars proportions. It did all right commercially, but to younger viewers expecting another special effects driven boys’ own story it must have been a great disappointment to come across this stately epic, the ‘action’ rarely leaving the bridge of the Enterprise.

It’s only with later viewings that the intelligence of the screenplay, a cast that manages to take it all so seriously, Goldsmith’s beautiful score and some superb special effects work come to the fore. The flagging pace of TMP remains a problem. Much of the film’s first hour is taken up with reuniting the Enterprise’s crew, from McCoy’s unwillingness to step foot on a transporter through to Spock’s spiritual journey back to the ship. The extended scene where Kirk is shuttled to the refitted Enterprise is an exercise in sheer indulgence as we get to see the old thing from almost every conceivable angle. Hardcore ‘Trekkies’ might love this stuff. For the rest of us it’s unforgivably dull, as though the production team insist on their audience sharing with them the experience of putting this much effort into innovative effects.

Eventually, The Motion Picture sets into, er, motion. Suddenly, the serene character setting we’ve been treated to begins making sense. We get the tension between Kirk and Deckard quite early. The former, now an Admiral, wants the Enterprise back and uses the threat of a potential alien invasion to gazump the much younger Deckard out of the captain’s chair. Once the ship catches up with the approaching cloud of matter that makes up the enemy, Kirk gets niggly with his executive officer, his respect only growing once Deckard’s quick thinking and knowledge of the Enterprise gets them out of one or two tight spots. For Deckard, the appearance of his old flame, Ilia, on the ship creates yet more tension and leads to the film’s final, decisive twist.

Spock comes with a fair amount of baggage also. At first he’s at his most imperiously haughty with his comrades, but this is just a facade. Spock’s journey is one of exploration. He’s the first to guess at the entity’s purpose and by this stage his austere, Vulcan front drops entirely. Little wonder that Nimoy agreed to play Spock once more. The character is allowed far more depth than he ever got on the TV series.

As is so often the case, however, it’s James T Kirk who holds the space opera together. William Shatner puts in a performance that’s entirely winning. Slimmed down, effortlessly charismatic and showing few of the mannerisms that give impressionists hours of material, it’s like he has never been away. One of the running issues Kirk experiences during the Trek film series is that of age, of becoming old. It’s present in The Motion Picture, shown most clearly in his spats with the younger Deckard, Dr McCoy never far away to administer a summary of the good Captain’s failings.

Shatner and Nimoy are the best things in the movie’s cast, but Stephen Collins is worthy of note as Deckard, his latest appearance in a promising career that perhaps didn’t go as far as he would have liked (I, for one, loved Tales of the Gold Monkey). Indian actress Persis Khambatta plays Ilia, beautiful enough to go bald-headed for the role and striking a considerable rare note in Trek by playing a woman who has some significant part to play in the plot i.e. not some cursory love interest or minor character.

The edition I bought is the Director’s Cut. This doesn’t add anything in terms of deleted scenes that have since been spliced into the main picture. Instead, under the supervision of Wise himself the main difference is in its visual effects, which have come in for a series of CGI enhancements. The fortunate thing is that this doesn’t mean endless Lucas-esque tinkering with backgrounds, digitally inserted characters, etc, though in certain scenes it’s pretty clear that technicians working in 1979 could not have produced the effects we’re watching. For the most part, the enhancements are reasonably subtle, upgrading shots to twenty first century standards quite unobtrusively. They can do this because the original effects were hardly terrible. Money, time and love was invested on this stuff. The shots of the Enterprise passing through the outer layers of the alien entity, V’ger, still make various lists of best special effects, rubbing shoulders with any number of CGI monstrosities.

If the Motion Picture isn’t exactly Star Wars, then it’s obvious inspiration is 2001, and certainly the scenes described above are very reminiscent of the ‘Jupiter journey’ sequences in Kubrick’s masterpiece. It can’t quite manage the profundity of 2001, but at the same time it’s far more accessible. Kirk and Co’s discovery of what V’ger is and what it’s about has emotional resonance and delivers a rather thoughtful payload that wouldn’t have been achieved with a straightforward comic book movie. And if everything happens too slowly, then perhaps that’s not the film’s fault but ours for expecting a different kind of experience, especially after the marketing. In any event, the box office spoke loudest. The Motion Picture’s sequel, though perhaps the best in the run of Star Trek movies, gave audiences what they wanted in terms of action and explosions and shifted the tone away from what this episode tried to produce.

The 199 Club: Godzilla (1998)

It’s a comfort to us DVD buyers that in this credit crunchworthy world, retailers are making their wares available for next to nothing. ‘The 199 Club’ covers movies I bought for £1.99 or less. Some of them are great, others considerably less so and in many cases I haven’t even seen the film before purchasing it. After all, two quid isn’t much of a gamble, is it? I’m about to embark on my annual attempt to stop smoking, and it humbles me to think that I could buy nearly three bargain basement movies for the price of a single 20-pack of Lucky Strike.

Still, that’s the mess up that is modern economics for you, and let’s kick off with a flick that I actually picked up as a stocking filler for mine son, one that was entirely overlooked in the wave of excitement that came with unwrapping a Nintendo Wii. Quite understandable too, particularly when you imagine that even a nine-year old has enough good taste to avoid a stinker like Godzilla, the disastrous disaster movie helmed by Roland Emmerich and released in 1998. Thinking about it, 1998 wasn’t a great year for blockbusters in general. We went to the pictures quite frequently in those pre-parenthood days, which means we got to take in the full horror of Lost in Space, the ‘when’s the meteor going to hit?’ tedium of Deep Impact, and the slightly underwhelming experience that came with seeing a movie spin-off of the ace X-Files. I don’t think it matters how affectionately you remember the general craziness of Michael Bay’s ear-splittingly loud Armageddon; nothing changes the fact that it simply isn’t a very good film. And it was one of the better ones, certainly in the eyes of cinema audiences who made it the second highest grosser of the year.

Flopping in apologetically at ninth is Godzilla, now reduced to a £1.99 purchase from play.com and virtually forgotten. The $136m gross it took at US theatres just about covered its lavish production expenses. It did precious little for the careers of anyone involved and turned off both critics and audiences. Roger Ebert, lampooned in the movie after slating some of Emmerich’s previous works, called it ‘a sterile exercise’ and it’s hard to disagree. At whom is Godzilla aimed? Fans of the Japanese kaiju were alienated entirely. Kids struggled to make out the 300-foot monster amidst the inky, rain-soaked Manhattan cityscape and no doubt everyone else just felt like they had been patronised by a film that has virtually no sense of style and makes little attempt to crank up the tension. Godzilla turns up, fights some toy soldiers, lays some eggs and gets offed. And that’s it. There’s a romantic sub-plot that isn’t developed enough to make it interesting. Jean Reno shows up as a French secret service agent and knocks several points off his own kudos by putting on a terrible impression of Elvis. According to the IMDb trivia pages, Godzilla is laced with in-jokes, homages and subtle gags, but it’s as though all the creative work has gone into these, the main plot going through the most predictable of motions as it lurches towards a conclusion that can be predicted by any viewer with a passing knowledge of movie monster mythology. And yes, I include in that remark the bit with the egg just before the credits.

Two years previously, Emmerich directed the critically unloved but commercially successful Independence Day, indeed it was the millions raked in by his alien invasion movie that greenlit the twenty-story high budget for Godzilla and gave him the freedom to do what he wanted with the concept. Like many others, I enjoyed Independence Day as a bit of sci-fi trash, cringed over some of the intentionally hopeless dialogue and marvelled at the special effects work. But garbage it was, saved as it might have been by the unlikely pairing of Jeff Goldblum’s nerdy scientist and Will Smith playing the Fresh Prince in military get-up. Godzilla has no such luck. Matthew Broderick takes the lead role of Dr Niko ‘Nick’ Tatopoulus, leading to moments of ‘hilarity’ as character after character gets his name wrong. Brilliant in Ferris Bueller’s Day off and excellent in the more offbeat Election, Broderick is nevertheless lost here. It isn’t really his fault, more his character has the thankless job of finding out what Godzilla is all about and therefore progressing the narrative. To give him something else to do, the writers shoehorn in a shallow bit of plotting that involves him getting back in touch with his childhood sweetheart, Audrey (Maria Pitillo). Now a struggling news researcher, Audrey is working for a terrible, mysogynyst boss and sees Nick as her way towards getting a scoop. Helping her cause is happy go lucky cameraman, Animal (Hank Azaria), who is actually far better value than either of the bland leads but is still forced to come out with some horrible dialogue - ‘Cool, threesome’ - for which he was presumably well paid.

And then there’s Reno, who frankly leaves all his credibility at the door. When not complaining about the state of American food and coffee, he somehow realises something that all the experts have conveniently overlooked - that Nick knows more than anyone else about what’s going on - and kidnaps him in order to set up the encounter with Godzilla’s brood in the guts of Madison Square Garden. Reno leaves no cliche about the French unturned in his toe-curling depiction, again not so much his fault as that of the script, but you hope he was well paid.

The silly plot - Godzilla is the result of French nuclear testing in the Pacific; fully grown at 300 feet (I think), he travels to Manhattan island to lay his eggs (where else would you go, after all?) - is in thrall to the only reason you would have gone to the cinema to see the movie in the first place. Independence Day featured some awesome visual effects, and Godzilla is no different in this respect. The permanent nightscape of a Manhattan in which it’s always raining might have been cited by critics as an excuse to cover up for the fact that any amount of CGI can’t make the lizard look real, and perhaps there’s something in that, though the overall effect is impressive. Even better rendered are the ‘Godzookies’ who show up later in the film, though by this stage the similarities in dinosaur encounters between this and the altogether superior Jurassic Park can’t be avoided. Godzilla’s babies are clearly the velociraptors; the main man doubles for T-Rex even if he’s a far cleverer beast than Spielberg’s monster. One of the keys to Jurassic Park working so well was that the dinosaurs, for all their otherworldly scariness, behaved like animals. The Tyrannosaur’s memorable attack on the kids’ car was frightening because you could imagine it happening exactly like that. Far from this stab at realism is Godzilla, who can use the labyrinth of skyscrapers in New York to fox pursuing helicopters, and knows enough about heat-seeking missiles to guide one straight into the path of a submarine. Had they frozen the movie at one stage in order for Graham Chapman’s major to enter the foreground, wielding his baton at the screen and demanding ‘Stop that, it’s silly!’ I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

All this makes worse the death of Godzilla. Having shot at the poor bugger for the duration of the picture, once he actually croaks the rest of the cast remember their King Kong and start feeling sorry for him. There seems to be no reason for this than the fact it happened in King Kong and there’s a chance that audiences’ sympathies may lie with the lizard. The scene is a rare stab at pathos, one in which we are invited to share thanks to engineers cranking up the sound of the rain and sparing us David Arnold’s overblown score for a moment.

Elsewhere, Godzilla plays for laughs.Whereas Independence Day kept its tongue in its cheek whilst telling its story more or less as straight, in this one everybody involved seems to be fully aware that none of it should be taken the least bit seriously. The consequence is a complete lack of any real threat whilst Godzilla trashes Manhattan, because why should anybody watching be bothered when the characters plainly aren’t? Indeed, even when half their city lies in ruins it appears most New Yorkers would come out with a cheeky quip rather than get upset, something that oddly enough wasn’t the case when a real-life devastating incident rocked it several years later. Now, where do I go to get my £1.99 back?

From out of Space - a Warning and an Ultimatum

I am yet to see the new version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which by all accounts is an insipid affair and further proof that great films don’t emerge from throwing lashings of CGI onto the screen. Critics have pointed out the obvious - the 1951 original is a genuine classic, a play on Cold War American paranoia that didn’t need to be remade. Simply swapping the theme of war with one of environmental concerns just isn’t enough. Though the subject matter of TDTESS is flexible enough to lend itself to a fresh perspective, it really needs more than Keanu Reeves looking blank-faced alongside computer rendered visions of an apocalyptic Earth. A pity. I quite fancied seeing it, particularly on IMAX. Now it looks like I’ll be waiting for the DVD.

That isn’t to say the film from fifty seven years ago is poorer as a result. It’s not, and I was lucky enough to pick up a copy for under a fiver during some Christmas presents purchasing bonanza (you all know how it is, I’m sure). I would definitely recommend owning this one. The Region 2, 20th Century Fox ‘Studio Classics’ edition comes with an original 1951 poster on the front cover, a rather schlocky affair depicting a scene that doesn’t actually take place in the film but no doubt dragged them in off the streets. I sort of wish I’d made the greater outlay for a two-disc ‘Cinema Reserve’ copy, but no matter. The restoration is a thing of beauty, rendering into sharp focus the use of light and shadow that Robert Wise employed to near perfection.

It’s no surprise to learn that Wise served as editor on such classics as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. His work with Orson Welles must have offered him the perfect grounding in cinematography, in using the limited space on the screen to create great visual shots. His direction here transforms what should perhaps have been a pulp, third rate science fiction cheapie into something thought-provoking, technically excellent and with real depth. Check out, for example, the scene where Klaatu first visits Helen Benson’s boarding house. As the residents watch the news on their no doubt recently bought television set, they’re bathed in its light, whilst the alien newcomer is enveloped in the shadow of the darkened hallway. Another memorable moment comes as Klaatu and Helen share an elevator, only to find it’s become their prison thanks to his plan to switch off the world’s electricity for thirty minutes. He sees it as an opportunity to reveal himself to her, but her initial reaction is of being trapped, and the camera reflects this by turning the silhouette of the elevator car grid into prison bars.

Of course, it isn’t scenes like these for which the film is remembered. Rather the primitive special effects work that has Klaatu’s flying saucer landing in Washington DC is recalled scornfully, as is the costume covering Lock Martin as Gort, Klaatu’s robotic accomplice. Certainly, the lumbering, often inert Gort isn’t a being to strike terror into the hearts of 21st century audiences. As a killing mchine, it isn’t a patch on the Terminator. Yet it’s part of a minor plot twist that makes its role much fuller than that of a mere mechanical moron, and it’s consistent also. Writers Edmund H North and Harry Bates don’t cop out by giving it emotions or a mind of its own, which makes its automaton presence all the more sinister.

TDTESS is certainly of its era. A tale of American sensibilities at the height of the Cold War (one onlooker even hints that Klaatu’s saucer might have been sent by the other side of the Curtain), it wisely doesn’t lay on its message too thick, instead weaving its yarn in an almost impassive, documentary style, indeed much of the exposition comes from the mouths of radio and television people who commentate on the action. Elsewhere, Wise points the camera at his characters and lets them go about their business, as though we’re spectators also, albeit ones on the inside track. We follow Klaatu as he decides to immerse himself in human life before delivering his message to the world, better to understand the beings he is dealing with. Fortunately, he spends much of his time with Helen’s child, Bobby, who takes him to signficant places like the Lincoln memorial, all so our friend from another world might intone about meeting great people.

As we follow Klaatu’s progress, the Christ parallels become more obvious. Taking the assumed identity of ‘Mr Carpenter’ (do you see?), he doesn’t have any great difficulty in winning the trust of the Bensons. As Klaatu the alien, however, he is treated with suspicion and occasional revulsion. Twice he is shot without posing a threat, the first time by a nervous, trigger happy soldier as he approaches. Before he can meet his ‘disciples’ within the scientific community, he is again shot and this time apparently dies, though Gort and some nifty technology on the saucer resurrect him. This gives Klaatu an opportunity to deliver his message, a seemingly predictable polemic about the need for peace but with an undertone of threat.

The allegories are indeed there if you look for them; otherwise TDTESS is just a great slice of entertainment. Further mastery comes with the casting, and it’s here we get a perfect example of why the recent release might have failed. Bradford born actor Michael Rennie was offered the role of Klaatu after the producer, Daryl F Zanuck, watched him on the stage in London. Though he had already appeared in numerous British films, Rennie was largely unknown to American audiences, and Zanuck felt the character might have more credibility if the actor playing him wasn’t already a star. He was proved right. Rennie underplays his role, imbuing Klaatu with a kind of studied curiousity about the world he’s flown to and there’s something exactly right about that. It’s easy to see why Keanu Reeves was considered right for the remake, yet everyone’s knowledge of the star’s limited range seems to have given critics an all too easy stick. Sam Jaffe is excellent in the relatively minor part of Professor Barnhardt, the scientist whose lifelong work is solved instantly by the spaceman. And Billy Gray overturns the usual theory about child actors by playing Bobby exactly as a real child. For much of the film, the boy trusts and admires Mr Carpenter, only to run home scared once he learns the identity of his new friend, all prior loyalties forgotten.

Patricia Neal, who plays Helen, confessed that she spent her time on set trying to overcome her giggles. The actress thought she was starring in a low budget potboiler and struggled to take any of it seriously. However far we can view the film as an enduring classic, the fact remains it was cheaply made and very little appeared to differentiate it from other trash flicks of time. Though the movie tries to insinuate a planet threatened, it achieves this merely by the cinematic staple of people using different languages whilst talking into microphones in order to hint at the world’s press. The actors playing Klaatu and Bobby didn’t really visit the Lincoln memorial and Arlington Cemetery; they never left the studio and simply acted their scenes in front of background screens. Klaatu’s flying saucer, which was supposed to be made from an impervious metal, was in fact a prop cobbled together using wood and plaster of paris. Lock Martin’s Gort costume had a zipper in the back for scenes where he was shot from the front, and vice versa when filming from behind.

Little wonder that Neal considered the production to be more than a little silly. And maybe in different hands that’s exactly how it might have turned out. Instead, with Wise as director it happened to have one of the country’s up and coming film makers at the helm. He would go on to win Academy Awards for West Side Story and The Sound of Music, two superbly staged musicals that didn’t let the songs get in the way of riveting storylines. TDTESS came long before these films and carries all the trappings of greatness. At a shade under ninety minutes in running time, it’s taut and never gets dull, covering vast swathes of plot and somehow not getting bogged down in its own story or mythology. Another significant contribution to the crew was Bernard Herrmann, like Wise a veteran of Welles’s halcyon era and here hired to provide the film’s memorably otherworldly score. Herrmann hit upon the idea of using two theremins to create the high pitched effect that is now considered a staple of science fiction movie music, and won a Golden Globe for his pioneering work.

Aspects of TDTESS certainly come across as dated to our eyes, and that isn’t a further weary stab at the special effects. I was stunned at the scene in which Helen quite happily foists her child for the day on Klaatu despite him being more or less a perfect stranger, and a quietly spoken one at that. The effects of the electricity outage are revealed in some loveably quaint vignettes; my favourite showed a farmer trying irritatedly to milk his cows. It’s moments like these that suggest why a modern update was seen to be justified, even if the results were not.

The 1951 vintage is simply a great movie. Its influence on later films can be seen very clearly, as it can on TV (notably The Twilight Zone, which ran a variety of similar tales), not to mention the countless homages and references that have popped up in other works. Does this make it one of the greatest science fiction films of all time? The American Film Institute ranked it fifth, slotting it between Blade Runner and A Clockwork Orange. However you look at it, that isn’t bad going for a 1950s Cold War thriller.

‘Shaken, not Stirred’ - Goldfinger (1964)

‘You’re a woman of many parts, Pussy’.

During Goldfinger, James Bond (Sean Connery) spends much of his time in custody. A guest/prisoner of the eponymous villain, Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), 007 alternates his stay by being in a cell, sharing quips with his nemesis and getting involved with Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). In the meantime, Goldfinger puts his plan of blowing up Fort Knox into action, dispatching those who are present to help and hinder him with equal abandon whilst rather inexplicably keeping alive the one person who can possibly stop him. Rarely have I felt so much like echoing the words of Scott Evil and crying ‘Why don’t you just kill him?’

Goldfinger was the Bond outing that truly defined the series. Dr. No offered an introduction to the adventures of a glamorous secret agent and From Russia with Love embellished it, yet it’s only with his third entry that we get the template for the next two decades’ output. That is both its blessing and its curse. Goldfinger is of course really god fun. Connery makes for an agreeable and charismatic lead, whilst Fröbe’s playing of Goldfinger sets the tone for all megalomaniac, ever so slightly unhinged villains to follow. The action rarely lets up even though it becomes obvious early in the film that Bond is going to walk away with barely a scratch. He’s hardly a spy by now and more like a superhero, seemingly impervious to bullets, aware of every pitfall before him and armed with a ready supply of quips to sum up all happenings in a pithy one liner. Speaking of arms, Q (Desmond Llewellyn) is now fully formed and a regular member of MI6. Already irritated by 007 thanks to the agent’s offhand way of losing and breaking his gadgets, he nevertheless creates for him a souped up Aston Martin that contains a dazzling array of gizmoes. So many of these are there that the film doesn’t even have enough time to show them all off. We are left to imagine just what else Bond’s car can actually do - fly? Make him an espresso? Give him a short back and sides?

The hard-bitten 007 of the first two films has gone. Here, he’s fighting someone who is rich enough to retire from his life of crime yet aims to bring the west to financial ruin all the same. The reason, presumably, is just because he can and it’s at this point that it doesn’t do to think about what’s happening in Goldfinger too hard. Once you do, the plot collapses like the fantasy it so clearly is. As possible as it was to understand the motives of SPECTRE in the first two movies, why Goldfinger bothers putting together an elaborate plot is less easy to fathom, as are his reasons for keeping Bond alive once he’s in his grip. I lost track of the number of occasions when 007 was at his mercy, beginning with the early scene where Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) is suffocated by having her entire body covered in gold paint whilst our hero is simply knocked unconscious. I can only guess that Goldfinger likes to play dangerously, that it pleases him to dangle Bond until he’s had enough, or possibly that he just needs to impress someone with expansive plans that few people will ever hear about.

At the bad guy’s side is the first in a series of larger than life henchmen. Oddjob (Harold Sakata) is Goldfinger’s mute, Korean bodyguard, a figure of incredible strength who tops off his prowess with a steel-rimmed hat that he can throw with deadly accuracy, as Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) learns to her doom. Behind Oddjob is a small Korean army of servants, the sort that can be offed with some ease and keep coming back for more. Finally, there’s Pussy and her circus of formation pilots who also double as glamour models. I think they were last seen dropping millions of footballs onto London as part of an advertising campaign for The Sun.

John Barry is on hand once more to provide the score, one of the better known in the Bond canon thanks to its fantastic signature tune, which is belted out by Shirley Bassey. That it lacks any of the subtlety of From Russia with Love kind of suits the extravaganza unfolding on the screen. The film is directed by Guy Hamilton, supposedly with a tongue lodged firmly in his cheek. Hamilton would go on to direct three more Bond epics, along with Funeral in Berlin once the Harry Palmer series took a turn for the sillier. This is his best work. He’s more than capable of shooting large-scale action sequences and maintaining a blistering pace. The slow burning tension that marked Bond’s relationship with Red Grant is a thing of the past. Instead, we get 007 and Goldfinger exchanging memorable quips and beneath the ideological differences actually appearing to admire each other, indeed it’s possible to imagine a slightly less Alpha Male Bond ditching Pussy for a life of amused antagonism with the villain. Besides, there’s little chemistry between him and Ms Galore. Maybe this is why she doesn’t appear until the movie’s halfway point, which gives viewers time to forget his brief yet far steamier affair with the lovely, tragic Jill.

Perhaps the absurdity of Goldfinger is best illustrated in a single scene. Having assembled the cream of America’s crime world in his lair, Auric outlines his plans for detonating Fort Knox. However, instead of using an overhead projector for his presentation, the mastermind has a scale model of the base located beneath the floor of his games room, accessible via some switches on a console that happens to be on the underside of a pool table. Clearly this was the pre-PowerPoint era, though it seems an overly decadent means of explaining his scheme and particularly to a group of men that he has every intention of killing. The film teases us by letting the one mobster who doesn’t want any part of Goldfinger’s plan walk out alive whilst the remaining audience is gassed. But this doesn’t last very long. The appropriately named Solo (Martin Benson) is driven towards the airport by Oddjob who then shoots him and leaves him in a car that is finally crushed into a cube.

It’s all done with elan, affection and a sheer willingness to entertain. At no point does Goldfinger even attempt to suggest that the world of an agent is really like this; nor should it. Cinemagoers loved Goldfinger and even now the film is seen routinely as the definitive Bond adventure. But its success carried a sting in the tail. Saltzman and Broccoli naturally saw the film’s massive box office as the direction the franchise needed to take, leading to a succession of copycat follow-ups that recycled its composite parts, grew more fantastical and grandiose in their efforts to outdo previous movies, and ultimately bored Sean Connery into quitting.

‘Shaken, not Stirred’ - From Russia with Love (1963)

Hidden in with all the other reasons for Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman choosing From Russia with Love as their next James Bond adaptation (apart from the fact it’s one of Ian Fleming’s best novels) is the fact that it was a favourite read of one John F Kennedy. By tragic irony, it is also credited as the last movie the President watched before his assassination. In a nod to Kennedy’s averting of the Cuban missile crisis and thawing of the Cold War, the villains in the story were amended. Fleming’s version has Bond battling covert Sovet organisation, SMERSH, whilst in the film both 007 and the Russians turn out to be pawns in the plans of international terrorism ring, SPECTRE. Indeed, such were the renewed feelings of warmth towards the USSR that in the movie it’s best represented by glamorous defector, Tatiana ‘Tanya’ Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), possibly the most adorable Bond girl of the lot thanks to being given enough screen time to work her charms both on Bond and the audience.

FRWL underwent a fraught production process. Costs rose ridiculously, expensive stunts were botched and director Terence Young relied more and more on the creative editing of Peter Hunt to pull the shambolic movie into a cohesive whole. Its problems were encapsulated by Pedro Armendàriz, who was hired for the pivotal role of Bond’s Turkish liaison, Ali Kerim Bey. It’s widely accepted that Armendàriz gives a charismatic, winning performance, yet in reality the actor discovered halfway through shooting that his previously undiagnosed cancer was already in its advanced stages. Refusing to give in to the disease whilst simultaneously getting weaker by the day, Armendàriz’s scenes were brought forward in the shooting schedule. At times, he had to be propped up as he delivered his lines. Within two weeks of completing his work on the film, Armendàriz was dead, shooting himself rather than allowing his body to waste away. The loss was felt by the entire cast and crew, though it’s impossible to see any of the actor’s suffering within his memorable playing on the final piece. A dedicated professional who carried out his duties through sheer force of personality, Armendàriz is indeed one of the best things about the movie.

And what a movie! Though Goldfinger is considered to be perhaps the definitive Bond, FRWL is the franchise at its finest. Despite the problems everyone experienced in making it, the finished product is a treat, not just a fantastic 007 film but excellent also as a single body of work. Part of this no doubt has to do with everyone involved having experienced Dr. No and being more comfortable in their roles, whilst having the drive and ambition to make something even better. Fortunately, ‘better’ did not necessarily mean bigger in this instance. Though Q’s gadgetry makes its introduction here, what Bond receives isn’t some impossible toy straight out of the realms of science fiction but rather a briefcase featuring a few subtle refinements. The villain isn’t based in an incredible underwater lair and, as in Dr. No, 007 needs to rely on his own skills to prevail.

It’s fair to suggest that as his tensure progressed, Sean Connery’s boredom with the role of Bond was beginning to show. But that was later. Here, Connery was comfortable in the shoes of his secret agent protagonist and thriving. There are many moments in FRWL where he is compromised or uncertain of himself. His is a 007 who could fail or die and that enriches his character, as does the disappointment glimpsed on his face when he learns someone is betraying him. He is nearly matched by the richy played pair of baddies. Lotte Lenya plays Rosa Klebbe, SPECTRE Number Three whose advances towards Tanya hint at the sort of character depth that’s unusual for the franchise.

And then there’s Red Grant (Robert Shaw), the assassin who tracks Bond through Istanbul. For the majority of the film, he is 007’s silent shadow, a malevolent presence who leaves a trail of corpses whilst never quite keeping the agent out of his sight. As we learn in the teasing opener, Grant is a fearsome killer and more than a match for Bond, who clearly knows it also. The scenes between the pair on the Orient Express are charged, Bond coming across Grant as a friend and then slowly finding out that he isn’t at all what he appears. Grant leaves clues for his foe, ordering red wine with fish, which pricks at 007’s gentlemanly sensibilities almost as much as being irritatingly referred to as ‘old man.’ When the pair inevitably fight in a confined train carriage, it’s a visceral, ‘to the death’ affair. Had it been filmed now, it would no doubt have featured the jump cuts that speed up the action to confusing dimensions in an effort to be more grittily realistic. But Young keeps everything coherent and spares us not one single blow.

Perhaps even more sizzling than the fight is the banter between Bond and Grant. Cornered and vulnerable, 007 tries every trick in the book to buy time for himself and it’s only when he offers Grant money that we find a chink in the assassin’s armour. When it comes down to it, for all the relentless tracking he’s done the killer is a petty criminal at heart who risks it all for a belt of sovereigns. Before this point, he seems utterly unstoppable, indeed he goes down as one of the scariest Bond villains. Silent until his meeting with the agent, his face more or less an impassive mask, he cuts a sinister foe, never more so than when Bond is pacing outside the Orient Express waiting for his contact to arrive whilst on the train Grant follows him, the spectre of death floating from window to window and never taking his eyes off his prey.

The scenes containing Grant are so electric that his exit leaves a vacuum, one the film tries to fill with the kind of expensive, set-piece action sequences that 007 would become so famous for. It works, largely because of the previous lack of excess. Bond and Tanya are pursued by a SPECTRE helicopter as they flee through the Croatian countryside (Argyll substitutes for a part of the world that was behind the Iron Curtain), whilst a later attempt by the agent to sail to Venice leads to an ambush on the Adriatic. This is good exciting stuff, if slightly undermining the slow burning narrative developments that took place beforehand. It also gives a hint of the direction the series would take. Whereas one might have hoped for further labyrinthine plots as served up here, what we got were elaborate stunts, grand explosions and the suggestion that money was being thrown at the screen instead of relying on imaginative scripting and giving the performers time and space to act.

But that, of course, is what makes this instalment so special. According to the DVD’s ‘Making Of’ documentary the producers were concerned viewers would be put off by the dense plotting that underpinned the movie, the ‘cat and mouse’ game SPECTRE plays with both Bond and the Soviets. They needn’t have worried. FRWL is all the better for its intelligent story and for making its star look at times like a human being capable of feeling and even the occasional sign of vulnerability. It’s the closest Bond will ever get to being a ’spy’ movie, with all the espionage and undercover machinations this implies. The next episode, Goldfinger, would take the series down an entirely new route, that of the action hero, a point from which it would never quite return. FRWL is simply as good as it gets and even contains some of the most memorable music that John Barry contributed to the franchise.

‘Shaken, not Stirred’ - Dr. No (1962)

‘That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six’

Dr. No might seem a little tame by today’s standards. The famous gadgetry is notable by its absence (as is its inventor, Q) and the villain’s lair isn’t based inside a vast, hollowed out volcano or similar. 007 doesn’t drive the flashiest of sports cars, neither does he jet to a series of glamorous locations. But make no mistake - Dr. No rightly establishes a template for everything that is to follow. And it’s better for its lack of gimmicks. Bond has to rely on his wits or brute force in order to prevail and the concept thrives as a result.

On its release in 1962, Dr. No was an enormous international success. It isn’t hard to see why. Setting a movie in Jamaica adds a sheen of gloss that must have figured rarely in the output of the time. Instead of using a studio backlot or thinly disguising some English location as a foreign clime, the action really does take place in the Caribbean and that must have mattered a lot to the hard-up, working class audiences who wouldn’t get to see such sights otherwise. It’s also clear that rather a lot of money was plunged into the movie. Set explosions take place on a large scale. Dr. No uses a decadent, imposing dome as an interview room and that’s before we get to see the monstrous scale of his headquarters.

But it’s no real secret to suggest that the true heart of Dr. No’s success is its star, Sean Connery. Previously a little known jobbing actor, Connery was selected for the part ahead of the likes of Cary Grant, which turned out to be a masterstroke. In Grant’s capable hands, Dr. No would have been a vehicle for its star. Instead, Connery is Bond. Emerging fully formed and enjoying one of the most accomplished introductions ever lent to a movie character, Connery simply enjoys himself, playing (as ever) a variation of his own personality to great effect. It helps that the agent can appeal to both sides of the gender divide. Bond’s dress sense, impeccable taste and utter coldness in the field must have appealed to male viewers, whilst women got to see a leading man who was all man and incredibly handsome to boot. The series of ladies he beds in the film, not to mention all the others who lust after him unrequitedly, are as in thrall to him as at any other time in the series, but in Dr. No it’s made clear he has charm as well as raw charisma. Women don’t just melt at his feet. Bond has to put in a bit of work himself, but he’s always up to the task. In short, it’s never been truer that his is a character that men want to be and that women want to be with.

In his co-star, Connery got a similar unknown whose introduction to the film is every bit as iconic as his. Ursula Andress plays Honey Ryder (sparking off a succession of Bond girls with deliciously risque names), a local shell collector who gets involved in Dr No’s machinations by complete accident. The image of her emerging from the sea is the stuff of poster legend, equal to the famous shot of Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. True, her lines were dubbed (by Nikki van der Zyl) but she has enough presence and natural beauty to shine next to 007.

A number of actors were considered for the role of the evil Doctor. By all accounts, Christopher Lee was a name in the mix, as were those of Max von Sydow and Noel Coward, the latter responding to the offer with a telegram that pithily read ‘No, no, no.’ Joseph Wiseman took the part of the German-Chinese nemesis and gives a splendid performance, albeit one that has been mimicked by Bond baddie after baddie over the years. Unlike most larger than life movie villains, No doesn’t start cackling at his own schemes; he doesn’t even go nuts when his plans turn to naught. Instead, his is a wholly understated turn, one of almost unnatural calm even as Bond goads him over dinner. The only ‘cartoon’ aspect of his character are his hands, but these don’t define him, a point that gets sadly missed all too often in other 007 films.

Terence Young directs with a real sense of pace, if not momentum. The action sequence-exposition-action sequence-exposition successionism of the plot might seem obvious to twenty first century eyes, but it holds together and Young ensures that the movie’s muscular 107-minute running time never lags. Quite simply, Dr. No doesn’t have time to get dull. Too much is going on for the action to sag and there is even a sense that Bond is in danger from time to time, something that doesn’t always happen elsewhere, when the agent is virtually invulnerable. Helping the movie along is Monty Norman’s score. The crucial element of John Barry isn’t quite in place yet, though he was consulted over various aspects of the music, including the world famous Bond theme. Talking of which, that particular series of notes appears often, accompanying almost every shot of 007 during the first half of the movie and it’s every bit as impressive as it is intended to be. Elsewhere, we get ‘Under the Mango Tree,’ especially written for the movie, whilst during the opening credits there’s an extended bongo drum sequence, which films in the sixties were clearly obsessed with.

007 would return, and with better results, but Dr. No is a fine start to the series and contains scenes that even now are fairly shocking, such as the rather merciless slaying of Professor Dent, who is shot in the back for his villainy. Bond barely twitches, an insight into the man with a license to kill and the cold bloodedness to carry it out. It’s a teasing hint at character depth, unfortunately one that would be developed only occasionally as 007 is transformed from a movie secret agent into a cinema icon.

My Twilight Zone Top Ten (No. 6)

Back several days later than expected (sorry - blame World of Warcraft), and submitted for your approval…

6. Will the real Martian please stand up? (Season 2, 1961)

‘A wintry February night - the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out you’ve just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You’ve heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you’ll be a part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle - no, their task is even harder. They’ve got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you’ll search with them, because you’ve just landed in the Twilight Zone.’

Synopsis
A snowstorm forces six bus passengers to make a stop at a diner. But when the police arrive seven people are present - which one’s the Martian?

Review
Zone stories about people searching their own ranks for an outsider are nothing new. Season One’s rather harrowing The Monsters are due on Maple Street gave us a chilling snapshot of a small community falling apart when the folk suspect one of their own of being an alien. The twist of course is that they’re all 100% human, but the idea of a danger from within undermines them entirely. Will the real Martian please stand up? is wittier and less dark than that, but it adheres to the same basic premise. A diner contains seven passengers from a bus that has had to make its unscheduled stop due to a bridge being declared out of use during a snowstorm, yet there should only be six of them. One is a doppelgänger, a Martian in disguise. It’s up to the investigating troopers to discover the alien’s identity before the road is considered passable once again.

Having watched this episode on a number of occasions, I’m still hugely entertained by it. Partly this is due to the fact that none of the passengers really give anything away. It would be easy to label the bad-tempered businessman, the obvious baddie, as the Martian, but having also read and seen an endless number of murder mysteries over the years I have to consider that it’s very nearly always the one you least expect who is actually to blame. This episode isn’t a whodunnit. Not until its climax does the yarn give the merest clue over the Martian’s identity. It’s tempting to point the finger at wily Avery (Jack Elam) thanks to his bulging eyes and the fact he seems to take none of it seriously. But just as cuilpable is the beautiful Ethel (Jean Willes), or one member from within the two innocent couples. Everyone is a potential suspect. At one point, a girl accuses her boyfriend of missing a mole that she was sure he once had, and he doesn’t even turn out to be the alien!

Will the real Martian please stand up? is a great episode because it plays on the national paranoia of the era. With America engaged in Cold War antics against the Soviet Union, people were afraid of an unknowable foe, an enemy of untold might that could seek to undermine the good guys of the West in all kinds of ways, not least by infiltrating society at all levels. The alien doesn’t provoke any of the susipcion within the party of trapped passengers. It plays the part of an innocent traveller to perfection, being as human as everyone else as the collective finger is pointed at one of the group, and then another, and another. The unravelling of the party is such that the story doesn’t even need the occasional aural effect to take place. A jukebox starts playing a record all by itself. The lights flicker on and off. Sugar pots are violently spilled over. Yet you get the impression that everyone is spooked enough; this just adds to the creepy ambience, suggesting that the people are indeed being played by a presence more powerful than themselves.

If the episode has a weak spot, it comes with the conclusion. We get not one but two twists for our money, the second a bit on the unnecessary side as it was probably enough just to know the identity of the Martian. It’s good fun all the same, and the yarn features a very fine turn from classic movie villain, John Hoyt, who manages to be both irritated and composed as the denouement plays out all around him.

My Twilight Zone Top Ten (No. 7)

Back a day later than expected, and submitted for your approval…

7. A World of His Own (Season 1, 1960)

‘The home of Mr Gregory West, one of America’s most noted playwrights. The office of Mr Gregory West. Mr Gregory West - shy, quiet, and at the moment very happy. Mary - warm, affectionate. And the final ingredient - Mrs Gregory West.’

Synopsis
A playwright possesses the ability to bring his own characters to life, much to the consternation of his wife.

Review
A nice change of pace arrives in the shape of A World of His Own. Despite featuring all the usual Zone staples, it’s an episode played very much for laughs, and it’s all the more welcome for that. Given the story is about a playwright, it’s nice to find that we’re watching a Zone that’s structured like a play. The action takes place on a single set, with characters wandering on and off as though working to stage instructions.

In the yarn, Gregory West (Keenan Wynn) is first seen in the company of a lovely blonde woman, Mary (Mary La Roche). Rod Serling’s narration sets it up as though the latter is Gregory’s wife, but then a third character appears, and she’s introduced as Mrs Gregory West, Victoria (Phyllis Kirk). Convinced that her husband is having an affair, Victoria is understandably nonplussed when he tells her the blonde is merely one of a number of characters he has brought to life. Speaking into a tape recorder, Gregory can describe a person or an animal and then suddenly find them stood before him, whether it’s the homely Mary or even an elephant. ‘Uncreating’ them is just as easy - he simply cuts the piece of tape on which he has talked about the character and throws it on to the fire, extinguishing them instantly.

Even after he has explained all this to Victoria, going so far as to recreate his ‘bringing to life’ ritual as proof, she’s unconvinced, and it soon becomes apparent that this couple has no business being together. Gregory is quiet, bookish and mild. Victoria is ravishing in the aloof, ice queen kind of way that made Joan Collins a star. Over the course of the episode, she threatens to both have him committed and claim all his assets, an unwise move as it turns out that she too is a character Gregory has conjured up via the tape recorder and he can get rid of her any time he likes.

In the best bit, Serling himself turns up, delivering his closing narration. Describing the story as ‘purely fictional’ and ’such ridiculous nonsense’ he’s suddenly cut off by a very much still active Gregory, who shows Serling the tape that proves he too is a creation of the playwright’s. Angered at the narrator’s dismissal of his story, Gregory feeds the tape to the flames, at which point Serling looks resignedly at the camera, says ‘Well, that’s the way it goes’ and vanishes.

Gregory it seems is in control of the Twilight Zone, and his story is one of its finest. A comedy of manners that retains the essential Zone spirit, A World of His Own is a hoot and demonstrates the enormous flexibility of this series.