Spectre (1977)

(This is based on the film’s longer UK cut with a bit of nudity and more sleaze that never made it to NBC at the time, for obvious reasons)

Former top criminologist turned occult detective William Sebastian (Robert Culp) calls his estranged former friend and associate, alcoholic sleazebag and medical doctor “Ham” Hamilton (Gig Young) for help in his newest case. He really needs a doctor, too, for somebody is regularly using magic to pierce his heart, leaving him not in ideal fighting shape. Ham doesn’t really believe in anything occult, and the men’s parting of ways some time ago might have had something to do with their difference in opinion. Ham is beginning to change his mind when Sebastian’s witch assistant Lilith (Majel Barrett) gives him a draught that causes an instant aversion to alcohol, and even more so when an oversexed succubus version of Sebastian’s client, one Anitra Cyon (Ann Bell) appears and tries to seduce our hero into what looks a lot like an erection based heart attack to me, or as much as a TV movie from 1977 can suggest that. But don’t worry, hitting her with the right page in an occult tome does get rid of her nicely.

After that business is through, we finally learn what the real Anitry Cyon wants from Sebastian and Ham: find out if she’s assuming right and her decadent brother Geoffrey (James Villiers) has indeed been possessed by EVIL, and when necessary, kill him. So off to Great Britain our heroes jet, piloted by Anitra’s other brother Mitri (John Hurt) who may or may not already be under a malevolent influence himself. There are further attempts on our heroes’ lives and virtue (such as it is), of course, action archaeology happens, and exposition tells of the time when druids and Christian priests teamed up to imprison Asmodeus.

This pretty incredible artefact directed by Clive Donner is another of the many attempts of Gene Roddenberry to make a successful non-Star Trek TV show, this time around with British money. I’m not surprised Spectre never made it to series, because it is absolutely bonkers. What we have here is a mix of a Dennis Wheatley style occult thriller minus Wheatley’s actual ideas about occultism (though fortunately also minus his unpleasant politics) with the toned down “sexy” fantasies of a middle-aged guy with very peculiar interests who never left the swinger party mindset behind, paired with the sort of random crap you put in your movie not because it is a good idea to use it, but because you think it is absolutely awesome.

As a serious horror film the result is of course pretty terrible, but it’s also ridiculously fun to watch, having given up all restraint that could turn it into a proper movie and replaced it with the mandate to just make as much absurd fun, and quite a bit embarrassing stuff, up as possible. So of course Sir Geoffrey proves his decadence by only employing young, female servants who try way too hard to be sexy; of course his sister dresses like the old maid in a 30s comedy; of course one of the main characters turns out to be Asmodeus and looks a lot like a bluish Klingon when uncovered. Of course there’s a particularly awkwardly staged satanic orgy with dancing bad and half-hearted even by the standards of bad movie satanic orgies (one hopes real-life ones are a bit more enthusiastic, because this really doesn’t cut it as a seduction to evil). There’s an evil sort of ape person costume; things feel evil to the touch; Asmodeus lives by rather complicated rules; Gordon Jackson wears demon make-up; more “how we get rid of demons” nonsense that makes not a lick of sense than one could possibly hope for is expounded upon, and so much more.

The film’s tone wavers between embarrassing – just cringe through the unbelievable scene with Ham and the three maids trying to “seduce” him and ask yourself how many people must have thought this was an idea that needed to be put to film – and utterly hysterical, Culp, Young, Hurt and Villiers hamming it up in each and every way possible. I am usually not much of a fan of Culp and find him rather bland and affectless, but clearly, if he wanted, he could take bites out of scenery so large, Vincent Price must have been jealous; it’s the only correct acting decision to take in this particular movie, too, for playing any of this straight would simply ruin the film by dragging it back to Earth from whichever planet Roddenberry was on at the time.

In short: Rogue Male (1976)

1939. Driven by reasons that’ll become clear during the course of the movie, British aristocrat and sportsman Sir Robert Hunter (Peter O’Toole) nearly manages to assassinate Hitler. Instead, he falls into the hands of the Gestapo, who proceed to torture him, including pulling out his nails. They can’t just kill Hunter, though, for his uncle (Alastair Sim in full-on “demonstration why the aristocracy is a very bad idea” mode once we meet him) has a rather high position in the British government and the Nazis are still trying to draw the British on their side. So it’s best to arrange an accident to befall him.

However, Hunter manages to escape when he’s left for dead and slowly, with luck and talent, reaches British shores. That, one would assume, would be that. However, Nazi agents are still after him; worse, as his uncle explains, his own government (at this point Nazi appeaser Chamberlain still being in office) is very much willing to give him to the Nazis. So Hunter goes underground, fleeing to the countryside. But even living in an actual hole in the ground isn’t quite enough to escape his enemies, specifically another British aristocrat and sportsman, one Major Quive-Smith (John Standing), Nazi hireling.

This BBC production directed by Clive Donner adapts a novel by Geoffrey Household, a great British thriller writer who isn’t terribly known anymore, the destiny of many a writer of popular fiction. It’s a very successful film, apparently shot on something of a higher budget than most BBC productions of the time – why, even the interior scenes are shot on 16mm! – and clearly making good use of every penny, even if Wales has to stand in for Germany. Donner has a good hand for the staging of clear and effective suspense sequences that emphasise clever planning and patience over outright action for the most part and rather purposefully, but also using very simple set-ups to build tension. The scene in the subway, for example, is a prime lecture on how to make much of a simple set-up, eschewing the more involved camera work a theatrical feature would have used for clarity and focus to great effect, thereby turning the film’s nominal weaknesses into virtues.

In general, clarity and focus are some of the film’s main strengths. Its tightness really works wonders for a film in which probably not all that much happens for some contemporary tastes now; the trick is to make the things that do happen important.

O’Toole is obviously perfect casting for the role, playing Hunter as a man of his class and time, with all that entails for good and for bad, but also as a man who has developed empathy through experience unlike others of his class. The films builds a meaningful contrast between him and Quive-Smith here, a man who shares all the same telling signs of Hunter’s class, but none of the insight and empathy the other man has developed through loss and the willingness to try and understand others.


If all that doesn’t sound interesting enough, the film also features a cameo by playwright Harold Pinter as Hunter’s (Jewish) friend Saul Abrahams.