Author: Jim McLennan

Joan of Arc: History vs. Cinema

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Joan of Arc Ingrid Bergman Leelee Sobieski Milla Jovovich

“Art imitating Arc?”

Isn’t it always the way. You wait six hundred years for a bio-pic, then two come along at once. Though actually, France’s patron saint has been the subject of films since the very earliest days of cinema – George Melies made a 12-scene reconstruction of her life in 1900 – but for no readily apparent reason, 1999 saw both a feature and a TV miniseries covering the topic. Before we discuss those, and some other related works, some background is probably wise, as when ever you deal with movies based on historical events. Real life is rarely cinematic, and any conflict is liable to leave factual accuracy in the dirt, going “Did anyone get the number of that truck?” So, here is a potted biography of the Maid of Orleans

Born in the French province of Champagne in 1412, to a peasant farmer, Joan (or Jeanne – I’ll largely stick to the Anglicization) never learned to read or write, but was regarded by her contemporaries as a highly pious child. It was at the age of 13 that she first heard voices, but it took several years before they convinced her to leave home and help the French king, who was engaged in a battle to liberate the country from England. She presented herself to the local commander, who was skeptical at first, but was eventually convinced after Joan reported news of an English defeat before official confirmation arrived. Joan, clad in male attire to protect her modesty, travelled to see the king, and convinced him of the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, despite a faction of the court strongly opposing her influence. Her faith, simplicity and honesty won the day, and she acquired her sword, found buried behind an altar, in the exact spot she said it would be.

Although she did not engage in actual combat, her presence in the thick of battle acted as a unifying and galvanising force to the French, and she also imposed a pious attitude among her soldiers (no mean task, given they included the infamous Giles de Rais!), for example, driving away the camp whores. Joan’s soldiers raised the siege of Orleans, despite her being shot in the shoulder by an arrow, and subsequent successes led to the coronation of their king in July 1429. Had she gone home at this point, as she wanted to, her life would undoubtedly have been longer and happier. Instead, she continued her efforts to free her nation, and was injured again during an abortive assault on Paris, this time in the thigh. The following May, she was captured by John of Luxembourg, who sold her to the English. Charged with heresy, Joan continued to make a good impression, eventually causing the case to be held in camera.

This was nothing more than a show trial, despite the efforts of those in charge to find support: according to biographer Jules Michelet, one jurist said “that everything about the trial was wrong; that it failed to respect the proper forms; that the assessors were not free; that the sessions were held in secrecy; that the accused…could not be expected to argue with learned doctors” and finished by declaring that it “was a trial to impugn the honour of the prince whose cause this girl is supporting; you should frankly say so.” Perhaps wisely, the holder of these opinions opted to leave France immediately for the safety of Rome.

Inevitably, her visions were declared diabolical in nature, and she was told to recant or face the stake. Initially, she refused, but faced with imminent death, her courage understandably failed and she gave in. Her death sentence was suspended, to the chagrin of the English, who wanted her disposed of permanently. However, shortly afterwards, she resumed her wearing of male clothes – perhaps to prevent her guards from raping her, or because her normal attire was taken away. This was sufficient to have her condemned as a relapsed heretic; she was burned at the stake on May 30th, 1431. Joan was just nineteen years old. Twenty-four years later, however, a new trial overturned the verdict (albeit rather too late), beginning the process of rehabilitation which would conclude with her canonisation in 1920.

So much for the historical record. What of these subsequent productions telling her story? Are they accurate to the facts? And, perhaps more importantly, do they work as entertainment?

Joan the Woman

By Jim McLennan

★★★½
“The first second* action heroine?”

I don’t watch many silent films: it’s such an entirely different experience, obviously, much less driven by dialogue and more by gestures, leading to a style that can look extremely over-theatrical to the modern viewer. My efforts to enjoy the likes of Nosferatu, for example, have usually ended in my providing an accompaniment of snoring, to be honest. This was much better. Despite a running time of over two hours, this 1916 DeMille epic successfully held my interest, as it told the story of Joan of Arc. The framing device uses the then-contemporary World War I, and an English soldier (Reid) finds Joan’s sword in the trenches, the night before a dangerous mission [Interesting how the English are the enemy in the back-story, but the good guys “now” – at the time of release, America was still several months from entering the war, on the British side]. He then experiences a flashback vision, taking him to medieval France, where he is an English soldier saved by Joan (Farrar) in her milkmaid days. We follow her for the story you know, becoming the inspiration for the French army to defeat the English, before her capture, trial for heresy and – I trust I’m not spoiling this – burning at the stake.

Now, don’t expect Joan to go hand-to-hand with the English army here. Still, she’s no nominal figurehead, instead leading her forces from the absolute front, as they break the siege at Orleans. She’s first into the breach, waving the standard to encourage them on, until she takes an arrow in the shoulder. Certainly, there’s no denying her heroic credentials: she’s portrayed as brave and committed to doing the right thing. The film probably does a better job of establishing her as a credible leader than the Luc Besson adaptation: you can see why people would follow her, and it plays the religious elements relatively soft. And the action sequences demonstrate why DeMille’s reputation for epics is well-deserved, with the battle for Orleans impressively-staged, capturing the chaos of war, without needing to resort the the blender-style editing or shaky camerawork, too often seen in modern war movies.

It’s a shame there isn’t more of that. Instead, after Orleans, the rest of her war campaign is covered in a caption, and the film is, understandably, less successful, when it comes to the more talky aspects of her life. In particular, Joan’s trial and incarceration becomes a lengthy sequence of meaningful stares and dramatic flailing. Still, I liked the way it all wrapped around, Joan’s story giving the soldier the courage to go on his mission, though the ending is more mournful than I expected. All told, for something approaching its one-hundredth birthday, this certainly didn’t feel like it, and DeMille deserves credit for laying some foundations for film-makers to come.

Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
Star: Geraldine Farrar, Wallace Reid, Raymond Hatton, Theodore Roberts
* = I’ve since discovered a 1915 Italian film, Filibus, which predates this. A review is here.

Joan Of Arc (1948)

By Jim McLennan

★★
“Joan of Talk”

joanofarcingridThis film’s origins as a stage play are painfully apparent, and you can also see why the distributor’s felt it needed to have 45 minutes cut out before it could be released, as frankly, it’s a bit of a bore. The battle to recapture Orleans is the only action of note here, even though that represented the start of the Maid’s campaign to restore France to its proper ruler (Ferrer), rather than the end. After that, this more or less skips forward to his coronation, then Joan’s capture, spending the rest of the movie – and there’s a lot of it – going through the trial, and the railroading of the heroine into, first throwing herself on the church’s mercy, then recanting her recantation and returning to wearing men’s clothes, thereby sealing her fate. There’s not much here which you won’t have seen before, if you’ve seen any of the other versions of the story, touching the usual bases from Joan’s revelations that she’s going to be the saviour of France, through her trip to see the Dauphin, and so on. It does downplay the “voices” aspect, especially early on, perhaps a wise move since it’s difficult to depict, without making her seem like a religious fruitcake.

The other problem I find is Bergman. It’s not so much her performance here, which is actually very good, and help hold the film up when things get particularly static: she hits her emotional marks well, and the Oscar nomination she received was not undeserved. However, she was solidly into her thirties by this point, probably close to twice the age of the actual Miss of Arc [hat-tip to Bill and Ted!]; there’s only so far make-up can go in taking years off someone. It does seem to have been a character to whom she related: she’s play the role again later, for Roberto Rossellini in Joan at the Stake, when she was nearly forty. The other problem is Bergman’s Scandinavian origins, which poke through her dialogue persistently, also damaging the illusion; it might have been fine in forties Hollywood, where one European accent was considered much the same as another, but now, it sounds too much Joan was a Swedish exchange student or au-pair – especially when she’s wearing her headsquare, and looks ready for a spot of light dusting.

But there’s no denying it looks the part, with production value seeping out of every frame – the Oscars this actually won, for cinematography and costume design, are hard to argue. However, there’s only so far this can take a film, along with Bergman glowing her way through her scenes, in such a way you could probably read a newspaper by her incandescence. That distance is considerably less than 145 minutes, and by the time this is over, you might find yourself guiltily cheering for her arrival at the stake, knowing this means the end is nigh.

Dir: Victor Fleming
Star: Ingrid Bergman, Francis L. Sullivan, José Ferrer, J. Carrol Naish

Saint Joan

By Jim McLennan

★★
“Joan of Inaction”

saintjoanAn adaptation by noted playwright Graham Green of George Bernard Shaw’s 1924 play, this is most famous for the extensive search undertaken by director Preminger to find the “right” Joan for the job, which involved testing over 18,000 candidates before settling on Seberg. whose only previous acting to that point had been in school plays. That’s in sharp contrast to the experience in the rest of the cast, which included Widmark as Charles, the Dauphin enthroned by Joan’s actions, and Gielgud as the Earl of Warwick, whose schemes lead to the heroine’s death at the stake. But what’s most notable here, in contrast to some of the other versions of the story we’ve written about, Preminger and Greene seem entirely disinterested in the process which brought the Dauphin to the crown. We see Joan’s rise to command, but the film then skips over everything from her approaching the fortress of Orleans, to the coronation of King Charles. In other words: the fun bits.

The framing story has Joan as a specter, visiting the aged king, along with the ghost of the Earl and other participants in her life, such as the English soldier who took pity on Joan at the stake and gave her a makeshift cross to hold. The adaptation whacked out, it appears, close to half the running-time of the play, and one had to wonder whether it is any more faithful to the work’s spirit. For in the preface to his work, Shaw explicitly wrote, “Any book about Joan which begins by describing her as a beauty may be at once classed as a romance. Not one of Joan’s comrades, in village, court, or camp, even when they were straining themselves to please the king by praising her, ever claimed that she was pretty.” This is in sharp contrast to Seberg, who even after giving up her long feminine locks for the almost compulsory crew-cut, looks more like Audrey Hepburn’s tomboyish little sister than someone, in Shaw’s words, “unattractive sexually to a degree that seemed to [contemporary writers] miraculous.”

It’s not entirely without merit; some of Shaw’s text still retains its impact, such as Joan’s explanation of why the French are losing: “Our soldiers are always beaten because they are fighting only to save their skins; and the shortest way to save your skin is to run away. Our knights are thinking only of the money they will make in ransoms: it is not kill or be killed with them, but pay or be paid. But I will teach them all to fight that the will of God may be done in France; and then they will drive the poor goddams before them like sheep.” The sheer certainty in Joan’s mind that’s she’s right, and will accept no arguments to the contrary, is impressive. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to sustain the film overall, and you’re left without much insight into either the history, or the personalities who created it.

Dir: Otto Preminger
Star: Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, Anton Walbrook, John Gielgud

The Messenger: the story of Joan of Arc

By Jim McLennan

★★★
“Joan’s eminent originality was her common sense”

messengerThis was the the very first sentence of Michelet’s classic biography, published in 1853, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise the same person in Besson’s portrayal. A more accurate summary of this Joan would be the line spoken to her as she languished in prison: “You didn’t see what was, Jeanne – you saw what you wanted to see…” Besson comes down firmly in the school of thought which has Joan as a mentally deranged religious loony. While this is a viable theory, it doesn’t work as played by Jovovich – all twitchy, rolling her eyes and staring off into the distance – since it becomes impossible to see why anyone would have followed her. Unless we assume the 14th century French population were entirely gullible, she should have spent her life quietly as some village’s idiot. This cripples the film irreperably, since we feel little or no sympathy for a heroine depicted as a frothing zealot.

Historically too, it gets off to a bad start – an entirely fabricated incident in which Joan sees her sister first killed, then raped by an English soldier. This provides a spurious ground for Joan to hate the invaders, when contemporary accounts tell of her concern being almost equal for both sides. Also made-up is her finding a sword in a field, and there is a sudden leap, with Joan arriving to an audience with the King – in truth, she talked her way up the hierarchy. A rather lurid scene (missing from the US theatrical release) where Joan’s virginity is verified, marks the end of a troubling first act. Once her campaign begins, though, the film improves drastically, with excellent (if somewhat implausible – did they really use something resembling helicopter rotors as weapons?) battle scenes, that are at once enthralling and grim. It’s understandable when they unhinge Joan’s sanity even more; another of the themes seems to be that her mission was really non-Christian, in that it led to the deaths of so many people. Something about “thou shalt not kill”, though given the bloody history of Christianity, singling her out seems somewhat unfair. Tcheky Karyo delivers a fine performance as the leader of Joan’s army, facing the difficult task of balancing her expectations, with prosaic things like, oh, not getting killed.

Joan’s capture, trial and execution are fairly close to the truth, though in reality, the King was less involved and more concerned for Joan than shown. It certainly is reasonable to suggest that a naive innocent such as Joan would have been used for political ends. Once she’d outlasted her usefulness – and with the king on the throne, she quickly became more a hindrance than a help – she would have needed to be disposed of. Must confess, I quite like the concept of Joan as a medieval version of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dustin Hoffman’s appearance as Joan’s conscience is another neat touch, and his sarcasm works well. Indeed, the film is one good performance from being excellent. The bad news is, it’s Jovovich who is the culprit (a messenger who deserves to be shot?), though Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin perhaps warrant most of the criticism for twisting facts and characters in order to fit a predetermined goal. Their Joan is so far from the historical record, they’d have been better off placing their character in an entirely fictitious setting.

Dir: Luc Besson
Star: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Faye Dunaway, Tcheky Karyo

Joan of Arc (1999)

By Jim McLennan

★★★★

joanofarcOne problem with history is that viewers likely know how it ends: if you want to surprise them, why bother making a historical drama? Joan of Arc knows this, so starts with her burning at the stake. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword: it robs the climax of its striking power, yet acknowledges without doubt, that this is a tragedy. The theme of manipulation is again strong here, with Joan discarded after having outlived her usefulness, despite an odd character change in the second half, where she drifts for a jarring moment into petulant bitch mode. It’s almost as if the makers hinted at a megalomaniacal side, crazed by power, and her fatalistic approach to her capture rings false – probably because it is nowhere near the truth. There’s more fabrication early on, with Joan an unwanted daughter who sees a friend (blind, no less) killed by enemy soldiers – must she always be some kind of post-traumatic stress survivor?

Once it hits its stride, however, there is rarely a wrong step, at least dramatically speaking – the French king again comes off as far more implicated in Joan’s death than evidence suggests. Neil Patrick Harris is convincing as Charles, who moves from self-doubt to certainty in his divine right to be king, then on to using that power against the one who put him there. Peter O’Toole too turns in a fine performance as Bishop Cauchon, though more facts are tampered with, allowing him to act as Charles’ spiritual advisor when he was actually always on the English/Burgundian side. That it’s a TV miniseries is apparent, with 15th century France populated by remarkably clear-skinned and straight-teethed people. There’s even hints of romance between Joan and her companion, Jean de Metz, which serves little purpose. The battle scenes, too, are all but bloodless – I wasn’t expecting the decapitations and arterial spurting seen in Besson’s film, but I didn’t really want the Middle Ages, sanitized for my protection. Even the guy dying of plague looks pretty good. [Chris noted a glaring continuity error at the end: on her way up to the stake, Joan is wearing shoes, but by the time she gets there, she’s barefoot!]

However, the main difference between this and The Messenger is that Joan of Arc is convincing. Perhaps with the advantage of having extra time (the DVD of the miniseries runs 189 minutes), they make the effort to show her interacting with other characters, and Sobieski’s calm, complete assurance is a striking contrast to Jovovich. The viewer can see why people would believe her, and it naturally follows they will too – Sobieski’s Emmy nomination was entirely well-deserved. Despite playing fast and loose with the facts (another example: Joan’s brother was not killed in battle, but lived to see her trial verdict overturned), this strong central performance holds the film together and, with the aid of the other fine actors, makes it eminently watchable. It may not be historically accurate, but it does a fine job of explaining why her myth is still honoured in the third millennium, without coming down in one camp or the other regarding the source of her visions. There are few TV miniseries worth watching, and fewer still worth owning, but this one comes highly recommended.

Dir: Christian Duguay
Star: Leelee Sobieski, Neil Patrick Harris, Peter O’Toole, Chad Willett

 

(Development) Hell is for Heroines: The Films That Never Were

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For every script that makes it to the theatres – or even to video – a dozen crash and burn somewhere on the road. The reasons why are often impossible to discover. Movie studios are understandably reticent about their failures, not least because they tend to cost a lot more money than our screw-ups. However, these scripts often refuse to die, and a number have become public, whether from disgruntled writers or through studio interns.

Often, studios won’t give up on the central idea entirely – in two out of the three cases here, the movies were eventually made, and the remaining one is still possible. Obviously, any draft is likely to change en route to the screen, but for the examples here, new and radically different scripts were/will be commissioned. Barely the faintest trace of these proto-versions remain to be spotted, and that is what makes them so intriguing, since they provide a glimpse into what might have been…

George A. Romero: Resident Evil

“I just…never seen ’em comin’, Reddy. Never even…had a chance to…turn a gun on ’em.”

Romero is most – indeed, almost solely – famous for his trilogy, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, so seemed ideal for a movie based on zombie slaughterthon Resident Evil. Brought on as writer/director after filming a Japanese commercial for the game, the script he came up with was rejected by the producers and he was dumped. According to Romero, “I don’t think they were into the spirit of the video game and wanted to make it more of a war movie.” After Steven Norrington (Blade) & Jamie Blanks (Urban Legend) were supposedly attached, the job eventually fell to Paul W.S. Anderson. His take was certainly more of an action flick than a zombie one, and probably also had less in common with the game itself [see elsewhere for our review] But what of Romero’s version?

The main thrust – a mission to contain an outbreak of reanimating T-virus in an underground lab – is preserved, but the hero is male. Chris discovers that girlfriend Jill is part of an undercover military team, and through a (frankly implausible) series of events, ends up on the job as well. The rest of the team is the usual mix of heroes and villains, though “Rosie Rodriguez, a tough, body-built babe” suggests one too many viewings of Aliens.

Romero’s problems are, as ever, plot and dialogue. Chris literally stumbles into a secret entrance, yet apparently played there as a child. Chris and Jill get one brief scene, are separated for 30 pages, then come perilously close to having a quickie between kills. Then there are speeches like, “They made you believe you were doing a good thing when it wasn’t good at all. It was evil! The kind of evil that resides in all of us. Makes us greedy, uncaring. The kind of evil that will wipe us out, in the end. Unless we stand up against it.”

However, the pace is fast and the bio-organic weapons show good imagination – particularly the undead sharks, an idea first mooted in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. There’s also intelligent, aggressive plants, a giant snake, and the pinnacle of research, the Tyrant, simply one bad mother which I’d really like to have seen on screen. It all ends in a hotly pursued dash out of the facility, similar to the eventual movie, though the very end owes a little to Return of the Living Dead.

That sort of thing means you can see why the producers felt deja vu – indeed, a character even says, “Christ, this is like Night of the Living Dead!” The emphasis is on the zombies; in particular, the dispatch thereof – you’d get more head shots from this film than pumping your ticket money into House of the Dead. I sense the intense, graphic violence would likely have displeased the MPAA, a group with which Romero has crossed swords in the past. Dog Soldiers covered similar “soldiers-in-peril” territory and showed the concept was not without promise, though I profess myself satisfied with the way Resident Evil eventually turned out, despite the cool monsters here. Maybe some ideas will eventually surface in Romero’s long-mooted fourth entry in the zombie series: Brunch of the Dead, anyone?

 Daniel Waters: Catwoman

“Sanity to the wind, the large, now-eerily-shadowy lounge has been completely swallowed by the most multi-layered, full-throttle cat-fight in the history of cinema. The women totally communicate in cat-screeches, all human capabilities on hold.”

Daniel Waters’ career has been one of ups and downs. For every brilliantly-observed piece of satire, such as Heathers, there has been…well, Hudson Hawk. However, also on his resume is perhaps the best Dark Knight movie yet made, Batman Returns – though, let’s face it, with a supporting cast including Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito, a telephone directory would likely have made compelling viewing.

After that film’s success, a Catwoman feature was floated, and Waters wrote a script, dated June 16th, 1995, but it never made it into production. Waters seems to have bad luck like that; see also his The Model Daughter and adaptation of Stranger in a Strange Land. Or, rather, you can’t, as neither got made. Nobody seems to know for sure why Catwoman wasn’t produced, but Michelle Pfeiffer’s pregnancy around this time probably helped shove it onto the back burner. The departure of Burton from the franchise also dampened Pfeiffer’s interest.

Waters’ strength is parody through excess, and there’s something about the world he envisages which parallels the society in Demolition Man, except in reverse. While both enforce happiness on their inhabitants, San Angeles has erased violence in all its forms (at least until the arrival of Snipes and Stallone!), while Oasisburg has turned vigilantism into a spectator sport. The Cult of Good, led by Captain God, wipe the floor with criminals, to the cheers of an adoring crowd. However, they aren’t quite what they seem, as Selina Kyle finds out. She’s recovering there after losing her memory in the events of Batman Returns, but dons her catsuit once again to take on the not-so-good guys.

There is a feminist subtext here, particularly a sequence where the camera swoops around Oasisburg, passing over the undertrodden females. Subsequently, a slew of…ah, copycats hit the city streets, in a backlash of feminist fury. Yet Daniel Waters’ middle name is not “subtlety”, and neither sex gets off lightly – this sexual revolution ends in a massive…er, catfight in the ladies’ room.

This is, very clearly, a parody of the superhero genre, playing with the conventions of secret identities, powers, merchandising and so on. The part of Spooky, one of the CoG members who is a woman masquerading as a male superhero, looks to have been written for Michelle Yeoh – one move is described as “a famous maneuver of renowned Hong Kong actress Michelle Khan — hint, hint” which puts Waters several years ahead of Hollywood in recognising her talents.

It is perhaps a little too light-hearted for the likes of Tim Burton, and somebody such as Sam Raimi would have been a better fit. Outside of Selina, there’s not much characterisation, but it’s still undeniably a fun script to read, with any number of scenes – not least the finale – that leap off the page into the imagination.

Subsequently, Selena Kyle vanished from the Ashley Judd version of the story, being replaced by a character called Patience Price – see here for a review of a 2002 script. However, the latest word on the Halle Berry version seems to be to toss everything out: “We aren’t keeping anything from Catwoman except the original idea: the character,” said slated director Pitof in an interview. Odds are that it will be a very different film from Waters’ script. And that’s probably a shame.

Brent Friedman: Tomb Raider

“Lara takes a few steps back, runs and leaps to the first pillar, pulling herself up on top. A tall flame ignites from the top center of the pillar! Instinctively, Lara backflips, executing a half twist in midair as she lunges back for the ledge”

Few films had as twisted a path to the screen as Tomb Raider. [For a three-part history of some of the rumours since August 1997, see here, here, and here] Friedman’s was among the first – and certainly first publicised – attempts at a script, on which Patrick Massett, John Zinman, Akiva Goldsman, Luc Besson, and Steven E. DeSouza later tried their hands. Both Friedman and DeSouza had experience in transforming games to movies (Mortal Kombat and Streetfighter II respectively), but neither received credit for the final version.

Friedman’s script, dated 17th July 1998, is pretty lacklustre and cliched; reports suggest he was caught between the demands of Paramount Pictures and Eidos Interactive, and as a result ending up compromising away any originality and imagination. Part of the problem was that of all the producers and executives involved, only one had actually played the game. This might explain the opening sequence in which both Lara’s parents are killed in a Himalayan air-crash, a radical deviation from the game mythos.

The McGuffin here is a map which points the way to El Dorado, the lost city of the…er, Incas? Aztecs? Mayans? Atlantans? Lara is pitted against Malvern, an Australian who also, in one of the film’s eye-rolling character traits, owns a whaling ship, so must be the bad guy. Lara battles him over a secret treasure capable of transforming base metals – in a twist, it’s used to make plutonium rather than gold.

The script bips from Tibet to Curacao, then settles down in Peru, before a finale in the Pacific, where Lara’s actions are hardly ecologically sound, and kinda contrast with the “villainous aquatic mammal killer” theme. Mind you, there’s something mildly sadistic about this Lara: at one point she shoots two rivals with tranquilizer darts, then covers them in honey and leaves them to the fire ants.

Once they enter the El Dorado complexes, the script reads like a description of levels from the game, with levers to pull, gaps to jump, tunnels to swim through, and keys to rooms located in other places. It’s hard to see how this could have been brought to the screen without feeling like you were watching someone playing the game. In addition, the trick used to locate an entrance is a painfully direct steal from the textbook of Dr. Jones – as is the massive, rolling boulder that forms one of the traps inside.

Interestingly, one element that survived to the final movie is a fight which turns out to be a training session, in which her Tibetan monk mentor, Karak, resembles Clouseau’s Cato. The script is also heavily gadget-laden, making Lara come across like some Jane Bond, rather than someone who is all the secret weapon she needs. Overall, it’s not likely to grab the viewer by the throat, and would likely have failed to satisfy game fans or casual theatre-goers. However, it’s not much worse than the one eventually used – let’s hope the upcoming sequel, Cradle of Life, addresses this weakness, perhaps the most common one seen in game-to-movie conversions.

Postscript: I was also going to include William Gibson’s script for Alien III here, but after discovering that movie went through no less than ten writers, think it deserves an entire article on its own, covering the horde of different versions available. Don’t hold your breath though…

Witchblade: season two

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★★★½
“Girls with gauntlets.”

Much as in the first season, the second series of Witchblade brushed against greatness. Unlike the first, where you can point at the final episode as the key weakness, this time round it is a chronic rather than acute malaise that prevents it from getting the seal of approval. When it was great, it was fabulous – it just seemed that for every full, satisfying episode, there was a lame clunker to compensate. Particularly at the start of the season, there seemed to be precious little imagination on view.

Before we get to that, however, there was the little matter of heading forwards once again, Sara having effectively wished the entire first season into a plot-hole. To the writers’ credit, everything went forward in a completely different direction, from the moment Sara and her partner opted not to go into the theatre where, in the first series, everything had begun. Things diverged so rapidly from here that by the end of the double-length first episode, Kenneth Irons was dead, though as previously seen, this is only a minor inconvenience in the Witchblade universe. As Gabriel says in the finale, “Death is a revolving door.” I profess myself quite satisfied with how this was handled – it was the next few episodes which were distinctly ho-hum, with little in the way of memorable moments. Oh, look: there’s a new drug in town; Nottingham hires assassins to kill Sara; multiple personalities. And I had to cheat and look up synopses elsewhere to glean this much information, since they were notable largely for the lack of impression they made on me. I do recall being immensely irritated by the strobe-lit fight scenes, however, the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to hide ineptness.

Things probably reached their nadir in Nailed, in which a stereotypical, drooling paedophile kidnapped Danny’s niece. The Witchblade, with an impressively convenient sense of dramatic timing, revealed his location just in time for them to rush to the rescue, in what was otherwise little more than a lame rip-off of Cape Fear. Fortunately, I missed this episode when it aired (being off getting married!), and only caught up with it during the marathon. Otherwise, I might well have given up on the show. Which would have been a terrible shame, as things started to perk up thereafter. I always enjoy episodes where external mythos enter the show, and Lagrimas mixed the Wandering Jew fable in beautifully, with its cursed immortal, seeking death at the hands of the Witchblade. Hierophant was a little too Keyser Sose-ish for my tastes, but Veritas probably ranks as my favourite episode to date. Oddly, the legend it utilised, while much more recent, didn’t seem out of place in the slightest. We were largely one step ahead of the story, but only in an “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” way, and I suspect the Powers That Be will rear their ugly heads again in season three.

The finale, Ubique, also has to rate highly, for sheer perversity at the very least – Nottingham reaches new levels of creepiness in his final scenes with Lucrezia. Throw in a kicking soundtrack (Lords of Acid!), some spectacular deaths, and we’ll forgive a central plot device teetering curiously close to the main premise of feardotcom, which opened in cinemas the very same week. Among the interesting themes on view are the way both Pezzini and Nottingham both struggle to come to terms with the loss of their fathers, albeit temporarily in the latter’s case. This may be linked to one of the unresolved issues carried forward; who is the guy with wavy grey hair who always seems to be lurking round Sara? Indeed, the whole Nottingham/Pezzini relationship had perhaps more depth than any other in the show; veering between love, hate and obsession, with never a dull moment.

Season 3 looked like it might have some stiff competition for Sara’s favours, particularly with Concobar (rather less irritating this time round) lurking in a coma. Add in Gabriel’s little kiss in the finale, and it seemed like time for all applicants to take a number and form an orderly queue. On the other hand, couldn’t see why they keep both Jake and Danny in the show, as their roles overlapped far too much. A permanent, irrevocable death would have made people sit up and take notice – my vote in this department goes to Jake… Despite the second season, overall, rating the same as the first, I reached the end of this one with more optimism in Witchblade‘s future. However, TNT didn’t share this confidence, in part perhaps because of Yancy’s inability to keep out of bars, and the series wasn’t renewed. This may have been wise – on January 3rd, 2003, Butler was arrested after allegedly punching her father, punching and attempting to bite her uncle, and head-butting a police officer. For the moment, Sara Pezzini is in limbo, but really, a better fate is deserved for one of the more innovative series to hit the airwaves in the past couple of years.

Star: Yancy Butler, David Chokachi, Eric Etebari,  Will Yun Lee

Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

  By

★★
“Tomb for two, please.”

tomb2aThe first problem with the film is its title, a clunky mess apparently lacking in any punctuation – I’ve taken my best guess at what it should be above, even if it doesn’t line up with the first movie. But hey, new director, new grammar… Interestingly, Steven E. De Souza gets a screenplay credit this time round – he was one of the people who wrote a rejected script before the original film was made, and I wonder how much has been recycled here.

Certainly, a lot of what was said about the first film applies equally to the sequel; despite much affirmation that, this time, they’d really got hold of the character, the potential remains largely unfulfilled. Instead, we get something that (ironically, in the light of previous comments) nicks large chunks from Indiana Jones, adds a flavour of Mission: Impossible 2 and loses most of the more interesting elements from first time round.

The plot here concerns the search for what is, effectively, Pandora’s Box, which turns out to be a genuine artefact containing a deadly plague. Evil overlor…sorry, industrialist Jonathan Reiss (Hinds) wants possession, in order to sell it to the highest bidder as a biological weapon, and use the antidote to control who’ll be allowed to populate the post-plague world.

Though most of the film is concerned more with the struggle for possession of an amber orb, which points to the location of Pandora’s Box. This contest takes the participants from Greece to England to Kazakhstan to China to Hong Kong to Taipei and finally Kenya, though there’s so little local flavour it feels more like an episode of Alias, quickly establishing itself with stock exterior footage, before switching to an obvious sound-stage.

While Barrie and Taylor return as Lara’s sidekicks, they get given very little to do, which is disappointing, since their characters were entertaining elements first time up. Instead, Lara gets a sidekick, Terry Sheridan (Butler), a dubious character who first needs to be taken from a central Asian jail, and who was romantically entangled with Croft in the past. His fate is obvious.

Indeed, so is much of the movie, save the opening sequence, which instead opts to be so ludicrous as to defy belief. Lara lures in a shark with her own blood, then turns it into a jet-ski, before being picked up by her own personal F-sized submarine. Even for a video game, this is stretching it, and the sound you hear, is most of the movie’s credibility, heading shame-faced for the exit as it mumbles something about another appointment. What little is left, gets swamped in an orgy of product placement that rivals recent Bond movies.

tomb2bIt does give you plenty of time to wonder about little things like the wisdom of instigating a shoot-out in a germ warfare laboratory, how many years have passed since someone parachuting off a tall building ceased to be exciting, and the failure to make Sheridan a credible opponent for a fist-fight with Lara Croft. The finale does feature some interesting CGI creatures, though any explanation of their presence, lust for human flesh, or ability to melt into solid rock is notable by its absence. Jolie still is Lara Croft, to an almost uncanny degree, but even her Oscar-winning talents can do little when faced with a script of such limited means.

Director De Bont can direct action, as was shown in Speed – since then it’s been downhill. Twister, Speed 2, The Haunting, and now this, which has almost nothing worth mentioning as far as thrills go. It’s nice to see Hong Kong veteran Simon Yam as a smuggler, and his fight with Croft in a cave full of terracotta warriors is kinda cool, but the rest is distinctly mediocre, relying too much on doubles or CGI. The film desperately needs a tent-pole sequence to make you go “Wow!”, like the training robot or bungee-ballet from part one.

Not the worst big-budget, girls-with-guns pic of the summer (that’d be Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), but it’s significantly below the first film, which was flawed enough in itself. The harsh truth is, there is nothing here that justifies keeping the franchise going, and that’s really sad.

Dir: Jan De Bont
Star: Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, Noah Taylor

Alias: season one

  By

★★★★
“Run Sydney Run”

“My name is Sydney Bristow. Seven years ago I was recruited by a secret branch of the CIA called SD-6. I was sworn to secrecy, but I couldn’t keep it from my fiancé. And when the head of SD-6 found out, he had him killed. That’s when I learned the truth: SD-6 is not part of the CIA. I’d been working for the very people I thought I was fighting against. So, I went to the only place that could help me take them down. Now I’m a double agent for the CIA, where my handler is a man named Michael Vaughn. Only one other person knows the truth about what I do: another double agent inside SD-6. Someone I hardly know…my father.”

“It’s everything you want, and more.” That was Chris’s opinion – I was kinda stuck for the right way to start, and as always, she delivered. As, indeed, Alias pretty much delivers, with a crunchy-yet-chewy first series that juggled drama, action and comedy to fine effect, twisting the plot frequently. One problem in TV drama is that you must allow viewers to tune in at any point and rapidly work out what was going on, and former Felicity scribe J.J. Abrams does so in less than 150 words – see above for the heroine’s monologue which opens each show.

The 22 episodes cover a struggle for control of medieval technology, Nostradamus-style prophecy, and other organizations (good and bad), plus Sidney’s missing mother, ongoing relationship with her father, and perpetual struggle to keep her friends from suffering the same fate as her late fiancee. Each episode contains elements of major and minor story arcs, propelling them alone, yet also stands up well on its own.

After a breathless start in which it seemed that Abrams used every conceivable plot device inside three episodes, he wisely moved into new territory. In particular the introduction of Rambaldi, perhaps the show’s most interesting character, who has actually been dead for several centuries. A Da Vinci-esque inventor, he left pieces of his inventions, and clues to their operation, hidden around the globe, and SD-6 are now on a scavenger hunt to find and utilise these, with Sydney their main operative. The CIA are doing exactly the same, also using her to stay one step ahead of SD-6.

alias1Garner is a good choice to play Sydney, a no-nonsense character who is never one to sit back when confronted with problems. She comes across as a well-rounded person with her own fears and doubts, rather than some kind of Bond-esque superspy. But perhaps the show’s greatest strength is the spectrum of supporting actors, who give the show depth when it could easily become a disjointed series of Lara Croft-like escapades. Marshall, SD-6’s “Q”, provides gadgets and geeky humour, while especial kudos are due to Ron Rifkin as SD-6 head Arvin Sloane. The man who orders the death of Sydney’s fiancee could easily have been a two-dimensional bad guy, but by the end of the show, you feel a great deal more sympathetic to his problems.

The influences are plentiful and obvious, most plainly Nikita and the (let’s be honest, rather lame) TV series which subsquently followed. There’s also a helping of Run Lola Run in there; creator Abrams listened to the soundtrack “almost incessantly” while writing the show, and has said, tongue in cheek, that he demands one scene of his heroine running in every episode. He certainly gets it, even if this does become a little predictable. The action quota generally is variable, but usually well-staged, with Garner doing more action than you might expect. And anyone that gets to beat up guest-star Quentin Tarantino wins my approval (at least it took him away from making more dire films!).

Though Sydney occasionally has romantic dalliances, she is somewhat unlucky in love – these men have an unfortunate tendency to die suddenly, and in one case, at Sydney’s own hands. This is probably a good thing, since I’m no fan of Unresolved Sexual Tension, finding it gets in the way of more important elements. Want romance? Go read Mills & Boon! This is an action series, after all, and I’d rather have Sydney kicking ass than going all gooey-eyed over, say, CIA handler Vaughn (Vartan). Their relationship is the subject of much fan fiction, but the ending of the first series would appear to have put the dampers on that department. [If you saw the finale, you’ll appreciate the particular viciousness of this comment]

Season one ended on a dramatic high with four characters potentially biting the big one, though no actual corpses were seen. Given this, and the twisty nature of the show in general, I think it’s safe to say a number of them will find a way to come back in the next series. I’m already looking forward to it.

Star: Jennifer Garner, Victor Garber, Michael Vartan, Ron Rifkin

Witchblade: season one

  By

★★★½
“Witch watch.”

The summer season of TV is usually characterised by repeats and re-runs, with little to stimulate interest beyond speculation over the fall schedule. This year, however, a dark horse emerged, from the surprising source of TNT, with their adaptation of Top Cow’s Witchblade series, with Yancy Butler in the title role. Over thirteen hours of episodes, including the two-hour pilot, it chronicled the adventures of Sara Pezzini, a New York detective who acquires a bracelet with remarkable powers, not the least of which is its ability to transform into an industrial-strength sword. This brings her into conflict with people like mysterious power-broker Kenneth Irons, and her own captain. She loses partners, lovers and friends on the way to what is unfortunately one of the worst twists in any TV series, since Bobby stepped out of the shower in Dallas. Serious spoiler alert for the following, folks, though this may be a good thing, since it’ll let you get your disappointment out of the way early.

Put simply, having killed of most of the cast (a refreshing change from more cowardly shows, which refuse to let any characters die), our heroine decides she doesn’t like what’s happened, and rewinds time back to just before her partner was killed, way back in the pilot episode. The rest of the season is deemed stricken from the record, and not even Pezzini has any recollection of it. It’s a little like Run Lola Run, except that film actually delivered a beautiful elegy on the role of chance in our affairs, something I suspect Witchblade will not come within a million miles of doing.

The main question is where can the show go from here? I can see how they can move the series in another direction now, with her (now-surviving) partner taking on a larger role, but while none of the characters may know anything, the audience’s memory is still intact. We know, for example, that Jake McCarty is an FBI agent, and are aware of the roles of most of the characters and their relationships. Watching the cast rediscover all this again – as they surely must – is going to be like watching a rerun.

However, maybe they can pull it off, since up until that final ten minutes, the writing on the show was actually very impressive. I confess to no familiarity with the comic-book at all – save for a vague awareness of covers featuring improbably-proportioned heroines – and so can’t comment on how accurately it follows them, but on its own merits, it works well. Several overlapping story arcs were contained in the series, but even if you missed some episodes, there was little trouble picking up on them – another mark of good writing. After the pilot, we kinda forgot about the show for two months (it was on TNT, after all!), and only caught up with the ones we’d missed when the channel aired an all-day marathon. There were plenty of potential angles for future exploration – we were particularly intrigued by the Vatican angle exposed by demonic priest Roger Daltrey, where the Catholic church had the Witchblade for centuries before giving it to Hitler.

witchbladeAbout the only angle that didn’t work for us was the love story between Pezzini and Concobar, her Irish bard. Pardon me if we yawn: Irish people are far too often either Guinness-swilling songsters who’ve kissed the Blarney Stone or terrorists, and the series gave us both. Beyond filling in some interesting sidelight on the history of the Witchblade – a concept worthy of a series in itself – there wasn’t much to this beyond Pezzini getting a shag, though even this didn’t seem to improve her humour. Yancy Butler, despite not having much of a pedigree (she’s perhaps best known for playing opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in John Woo’s American debut, Hard Target), provides a strong central perfomance as Pezzini, striking the right balance between confusion, strength and sarcasm. Could perhaps do with slightly-less use of the sardonic eyebrow though – if she’s not careful, it’ll demand its own spin-off series. She seems to have come on in action terms as the series progressed; early on, the stunt-doubling was painfully obvious, but in later episodes, she appeared to be taking on more of the work herself, which can only be encouraging for the next series.

Most of the subsidiary characters come across as well-rounded, even the likes of Ian Nottingham, Irons’ enforcer, who gradually falls in love with Pezzini and reveals a softer side. This is in sharp contrast to his replacement – Nottingham v2.0, or Nottingham ME, as we call him – who was simply Very Scary. Her first partner, Will, although dead from the pilot on, continued to appear in a nicely-handled fashion, with mostly only Pezzini able to see him. Oddly though, he makes his presence known to McCarty when it proves suitably dramatic, without any explanation of why he can suddenly do so. Maybe it’s normally too straining on his ectoplasm or something. If it wasn’t for the climax, the show would certainly have deserved our Seal of Approval. As it is, any such award is placed on hold pending future episodes, and we see how they resolve the problems posed by the ending of this year’s batch.

Star: Yancy Butler, Anthony Cistaro, David Chokachi, Eric Etebari

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

  By

★★★
“Tomb with a view.”

tomb12.jpgAfter a tortuous journey (about which, see elsewhere), Lady Croft finally made it. The end result is wholly satisfactory in some ways, yet severely deficient in others. First up, the good news: Angelina Jolie is Lara, so much so that you can’t imagine anyone else in the part. [Other suggestions included Elizabeth Hurley, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Peta Wilson and even – ick! – Anna-Nicole Smith. Paragraph break for shuddering, here.]

Helped by Jolie’s reported willingness to do pretty much any stunt, this is crucial, and allows the film to hit the ground running – as well as jumping, climbing, and swinging around, with a gun in each hand. The first half an hour is everything you could hope for, beginning with a sequence where Lara fights a robotic monster, looking more than slightly like ED-209 from Robocop. It turns out to be just a training device, but there’s an edge to it, and even an almost sexual element as the beast drives between Lara’s open legs. PG-13? Hmmm… Her sidekicks are only slightly less satisfying; tech wiz Bryce (surely a nod to the nerd of the same name in Max Headroom), and stuffy butler Hilary are exactly the sort of people you’d expect Lara to have around.

Unfortunately, the further you go from Croft, the lamer things get, with her chief opponent for much of the movie being mid-level henchmen Manfred Powell (Glen), rather than the Illuminati who are apparently running things. To draw a parallel, it’s as if Austin Powers was taking on Mini Me, rather than Dr. Evil, and Powell falls well short of being an adequate villain. Describing the overall plot as weak would be charitable. It’s the quest for various pieces which, when put together, will create a device allowing the holder to control time, rule the world, and presumably, get pizza delivered before they actually order it. There’s also a deadline, due to an imminent planetary alignment which only happens once every 5,000 years.

 This is more an excuse than anything coherent, almost as if the many writers operated on alternate pages, without being able to communicate with each other. It also suffers from an overdose of meaningless exotic locations, leaping from Venice to SE Asia to Siberia, without any real purpose or sense of location ever being present. The theme, according to director West, is time, but you need this pointed out to you, as it never goes beyond the painfully obvious, for example, time lost between Lara and her father. Ah, yes: Lara’s father. The stunt casting of Jolie’s real father, Jon Voight, deserves points for gall, but doesn’t come off as it should. You’re too busy trying to work out whether anyone in the film is actually using their real accent, what that hairy thing on Voight’s lip is, and whether you have enough time to hit the bathroom before the next action sequence.

tomb1.jpgOnly in motion do you sense what might have been. It’s highlighted by the ‘bungee ballet’, when Croft’s mansion is attacked by minions seeking an artefact in Lara’s hands. She starts, swinging from the ceiling on elastic ropes – contrived, yes, but such fun to watch that we easily forgive it – before moving to the garage and back to the main hall. Croft uses everything to hand, and it’s the closest the movie comes to the game’s inventiveness. Jolie even did the bungee-work herself, allowing West (and action director Simon Crane, who deserves his own movie some day) largely to avoid obvious stunt-doubles. [Red Dwarf fans will also appreciate Rimmer stalking around with a shotgun!]

The previously mentioned opening, and the sequence involving a massive rotating orrery replicating the solar system, also work very nicely. But if the final battle with Powell feels like a tacked-on late addition, that’ll be because it was a tacked-on late addition, according to West’s commentary on the DVD. One wonders if much else was changed on the fly, as this would go some way towards explaining the inadequacies in the film’s storyline and villains. Overall, it still ranks well-above average as a video-game adaptation – albeit largely because there have been so many inept ones. Standing alone, it succeeds to a smaller extent, with some truly great sequences, and an excellent lead performance. But there’s way too much padding in a very weak script, and it’s this which prevents it achieving Indiana Jones-like greatness.

Dir: Simon West
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Ian Glen, Noah Taylor, Daniel Craig

"Wholly satisfactory in some ways, yet severely deficient in others."

Black Cat 2: The Assassination of President Yeltsin

  By

★★★

blackcat2While neither Nikita nor The Assassin ever resulted in a sequel, the success of Black Cat lead, immediately to a follow-up. This is both good, in that it forced D&B Films into coming up with some new concepts, and bad, because what they came up with is a barely coherent mess. They take Leung – who had won the ‘Best Newcomer’ award – and give her a role where she gets to speak twice. The real star is Robin Shou, well before his Mortal Kombat days, and with a much better haircut too.

He plays a CIA operative – the laserdisk subs say this stands for Central Intelligent Agency, clearly dating this before 9/11 – who is investigating a group out to assassinate President Yeltsin. Their chosen hitman has been beefed up with some kind of ill-explained technological wizardry, but luckily, one person can detect the radiation he gives off: Black Cat, who now has a chip in her head (to match the one on her shoulder, hohoho). This leads to an amusing sequence where Black Cat heads off on her own, charges into a mall, and shoots an old lady because – wouldn’t you know it? – the senior citizen just happens to be giving off the same kind of radiation, courtesy of her medical treatment. Well, I found it amusing, anyway; there’s something about a head-shot which spatters the face of a nearby clown with copious amounts of blood. Er, just me, then? :-)

 Okay, the movie may never be dull, and is certainly not short on action. Yet it doesn’t make any sense. Why would the CIA send operatives into Russia to save their president? And what are they doing operating in America? Isn’t that illegal? Oh, I forgot – it’s the CIA we’re talking about here. Leung’s robotic performance – even though entirely appropriate, since she now comes with an remote-control off switch – also feels like a terrible waste of her talents. There’s a lot of wire-work in the action sequences, but it’s not badly done; the highlight is probably a fight in a steel-works where both Robin and Jade have to take on large numbers of adversaries. The final battle, when Black Cat fights the assassin around the wreckage of a crashed plane, is cool too, with the two antagonists bouncing off the debris.

However, the overall impact is bitty and sporadic. While there are some nice ideas, they are poorly thought-out and developed, and the script doesn’t meld them into any kind of satisfactory structure. The action sequences feel equally bolted-on, though I did like the use of a President Yeltsin lookalike (at least, one presumes it was a lookalike, though I recall the real ex-President Gorbachev did appear in a Wim Wenders film). After the critical acclaim that greeted her debut, Jade Leung could have turned her skills in any direction; unfortunately, this disappointing follow-up is largely symptomatic of the poor choices that seem to have dogged her subsequent career.

Dir: Stephen Shin
Stars: Robin Shou, Jade Leung, Zoltan Buday, Patrick Stark

Honey West

  By

★★★★
“A taste of Honey.”

Honey West’s significance in television history can’t be exaggerated. She was the first ever woman detective to be the central character in an American network series, and was arguably the medium’s first action-heroine. Even though it ran for just one season, it helped open the doors for those who followed, such as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Get Christie Love and Police Woman. The show was based on a series of books by husband-and-wife team Gloria and Forrest Fickling, writing as “G.G.Fickling”. Beginning in 1957 with This Girl For Hire, eleven novels were produced over the next half-decade, and noted producer Aaron Spelling bought the rights and turned it into a TV series, originally spinning off from Burke’s Law [Gloria Fickling states they were largely screwed over by Spelling, getting little beyond a credit].

Naturally, this being the mid-sixties, the racier elements of the pulp novels had to be toned down, but the presence of Forbidden Planet star Anne Francis added its own share of potential, especially to boys of the appropriate age, which according to Francis, included Oliver Stone. But she was just as fascinating to young girls. It’s hard to appreciate in a world of Rizzoli and Isles, Prime Suspect, etc, that this presented a character which had never been seen on television. Fans included Chris, who even used to have the Honey West doll – given it now is offered on Ebay for up to $250, she wishes she had kept it, in the original box and with all its accessories.

How does the show stand up, almost fifty years later? Firstly, you have to appreciate that…well, it’s fifty years later. Most obviously, this shows in that the action is basically woeful, by modern standards. Honey’s karate skills extend little beyond flipping people on to their back, with the odd chop – and, it appears, in the sixties, everyone had a spot on their neck which would trigger immediate unconsciousness when touched. The doubling, is often painfully obviously a man in a blonde wig, though frequent stand-in (and early MMA practitioner) Gene LeBell does have decent legs. Credit in this area for the later episodes to Sharon Lucas, another stunt-double, and we should be fair and point out that no show from the time could stand against modern era in terms of action.


The unofficial lyrics
“Honey West, she’s a P.I. – for real…
Karate and judo, amazing contraptions,
gadgets, a sports car, and the latest fashions.
Plus… She… Has… Got… An… Oh… Ce… Lot!
But she’s smart, and she’s sexy,
Though her partner’s a little bit bitchy.
So that’s why we love Honey West!
(For real).

In contrast, the show was ahead of its time in terms of gadgetry, with Honey using on an everyday basis tools that have become part of everyday life now, e.g. mobile phones, GPS, etc. Ok, the phone in question was still the size of a normal phone and attached to the car (a really neat Cobra sports model), but this was 1965. One could even argue that the sunglasses used as a two-way communication device, was the first appearance of a Bluetooth headset. Though the illusion of secrecy for these is somewhat damaged, shall we say, by the fact that, in order to communicate, you have to take the glasses off, raise the antenna, and speak directly in to the corner of the frame…

Fortunately, what works really well, and still seems as fresh and entertaining as the day the show first aired, are the characters. Honey is a delightfully feisty character, who wouldn’t seem out of place at all in the 21st century, refusing to be the “little woman” that was expected of her sex at the time. The show feels like it was an ancestor of Burn Notice, with the trio of West, partner Sam Bolt and Aunt Meg more than a little reminscent of Michael Weston, Fiona and his mother. Here, Sam has a bit of a temper, and is always trying to control Honey – despite being very clearly the junior partner [it appears the private detective agency was started by her father] But she blithely ignores him, and does exactly what she thinks best.

There is hardly ever any fat on the storylines, a necessity when you have only 25 minutes or so for the entire episode. The results are plots that are crisp, to the point and miniature models of well-done storytelling. As with the characters, they could largely be transplanted forward 45 years and used, almost without significant adjustment. Admittedly, this seemed to change towards the end of the series, with the last five or six episodes apparently written by eleven-year olds. These include such elements as Mexican gypsies with a pet gorilla in the basement, a killer robot and a bizarre, extended dream sequence where Honey imagines herself to be a movie star in a range of films. It’s a dubious contrast with the well-grounded approach to Honey’s character.

We also appreciated the parade of supporting actors, which include a significant number of familiar names, especially if you watch other shows from the era. Other names should be recognized regardless, including Kevin McCarthy, Michael J. Pollard, Richard Kiel, Joe Don Baker and Dick Clark. The music, by Joseph Mullendore, is an appropriate blast from the past, resulting in much snapping of fingers and shaking of shoulders from the GWG couch by myself and Chris. Indeed, Chris even came up with her own set of lyrics for the theme-tune, which you can find in the sidebar; we were singing lustily along with the opening credits, to the utter bemusement of our son. [The middle section is a bit tricky, and should probably only be attempted by trained professionals. We ended up going, “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…” much of the time!]

 We have to mention Bruce, Honey’s pet ocelot. If you’re not sure what one of those is, think 30 pounds of wild feline. And, by most accounts, “wild” was the word. As Francis put it, “If a cat is happy, it bites and scratches; and if it is unhappy, it bites and scratches.” She was left bruised and in need of a tetanus shot by the end of some scenes, though Anne bore it with grace, as in the publicity pic (top left). It’s undeniably impressive to see a heroine deliver lines with impeccable aplomb, while a sizable carnivorous animal attempts to gnaw off her face. This, however, has not stopped Chris from wanting an ocelot for Christmas, I think our two geriatric dogs would object; something plush might be better for all concerned.

It’s the kind of show that, on a casual glance, is more laughable than anything – the first couple of episodes watched, we were mostly sniggering at the anachronisms and sixties stylings. But as the series wore on, that aspect ceased to be notable, and we found ourselves enjoying the relationships, snsppy repartee and characters present in the show, without any ‘ironic’ overtones. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves looking forward to watching an episode with our morning coffee, and were genuinely sorry to come to the end of the final installment.

The show initially did well enough in the ratings, making the top twenty programs, while Francis won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy, losing out to Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley. However, neither that nor the merchandising returns could save the show. its viewing figures were clobbered toward the end of its run by Gomer Pyle, though the decision not to renew the show for a second season was largely the result of network stinginess. As Francis remembers it, “ABC said, We can buy The Avengers cheaper than we can make Honey West. And that’s exactly what happened.” It was an ironic replacement, West being effectively “killed off” by her Transaatlantic cousin, Emma Peel.

There has been subsequent talk of a movie version, with Reese Witherspoon attached in 2001 and again in 2007, but nothing came of either project. Most recently, 7th Voyage Productions apparently bought the rights, but that was more than two years ago now, with little or no progress since. There have been a series of comics, but in a world where ABC will hand out a lot of money to botch a Charlie’s Angels remake, it’s a shame no-one has made a serious effort to reboot Honey, which in many ways is a property intrinsically better suited to the modern era.

Star: Anne Francis, John Ericson, Irene Hervey