Three Films Make A Post: Taking Them One Mishap at a Time.

Accident Man (2018): House favourite Scott Adkins stars in the adaptation of a Pat Mills/Stu Small comic I haven’t read, directed by frequent Adkins collaborator Jesse V. Johnson. Adkins plays a professional killer specialized in murders that look like accidents or suicide. Things go a bit out of control when he learns that his ex-girlfriend (who happens to be pregnant by him, too) is murdered by some colleagues. A whole lot of hand to hand fighting and murdering ensues. The film, typical for the Johnson/Adkins combo, goes for the pop-coloured and cynically humorous, with a load of pretty eccentric characters (played by beloved action movie character actors like Ray Stevenson, Ray Park and Michael Jai White) fighting it out in not always completely serious ways, in between scenes of often genuinely funny one-liners and dialogue that at least sounds of a piece with some of Mills’s writing.

That the action sequences are budget conscious yet also excellently choreographed and genuinely fun is rather par for the course for projects from this particular circle.

Meurtre à Montmartre aka Reproduction interdite (1957): Self-important whiny art dealer Marc Kelber (Paul Frankeur), falls in with a pair of art forgers to pay for stuff like his step son’s (whom he clearly despises) piano lessons. Because everybody is incredibly high-strung, and really bad at planning, things quickly go wrong.

There are moments when Gilles Grangier’s crime movie is visually effective and captivating, but it self-sabotages with a melodramatic streak as wide as the ocean, where everybody’s emotions are always at eleven, and no single character has ever seemed to have learned even the tiniest bit of self-control. Worse, the film clearly wants the viewer to sympathize with Kelber’s plight, but neither makes any effort to provide reasons for empathy, nor makes him interesting.

Run a Crooked Mile (1969): This TV movie by Gene Levitt aims for a twisty take of weird conspiracy (like The Prisoner minus the depth, the surrealism and the look) that’s mostly aimed at a viewer’s suspense glands. This works well for the first half or so, but once our hero (played by the seldom interesting Louis Jourdan) gets conked over the head and wakes up two years later in Switzerland as a polo playing playboy married to the yawn-inducing Elizabeth (Mary Tyler Moore), things become bogged down in exactly the things I’m least interested in: the marriage problems of two painfully flat actors, a conspiracy that seems to be run by complete idiots, and suspense plotting that misses out on the whole “suspense” thing.

In short: The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

A formerly famous big Hollywood studio (MGM moonlighting as something called Worldwide Studios for the film) is not bringing in the big bucks anymore, so its boss Roger Cross (Peter Lawford) is planning to sell its backlot to the devilproperty developers and is already auctioning off a treasure trove of props from various classics. However, someone – actually a guy played by Jack Cassidy in a dubious looking costume wielding a morning star – has started murdering and disappearing people on the back lot, be it developers, vandals, or eventually even some poor night watchman. Is he the rumoured Phantom of the Backlot? The police (Broderick Crawford and John Ireland) are certainly not capable to find out, and will indeed proceed to risk the death of innocents in the hope their prey is killed too (seriously), so it’s up to PR guy Ray Burns (Peter Haskell) to find out who is haunting the grounds. This matter will become particularly pressing to him once the Phantom – well -versed in Phantom of the Whatever genre traditions – absconds with Randy Cross (Skye Aubrey), Ray’s girlfriend and the boss’s daughter.

Going into The Phantom of Hollywood I was all pumped for a TV budget Hollywood version of the Phantom of the Opera. The film certainly starts out promising enough, making much of the melancholic ruin of the real MGM backlot in the late stages of decay (the best location for this imaginable, really), and integrating as much nostalgia for old Hollywood as possible. Alas, that’s basically all that’s remarkable here. Whenever he’s not lovingly going over the ruins, Gene Levitt’s direction is terminally bland, making murders and dialogue equally unexciting.

Apart from the old Hollywood guys and gals doing character parts, the acting’s just as bland, Aubrey and Haskell making the least interesting romantic leads anyone could have found at the time. Only Cassidy makes a bit out of the little the script gives him, but he can only fight the sheer boredom of Levitt’s direction so much. It’s a shame, really, for there were quite a few directors doing TV movies in the 70s who would have done wonders with the material.

As it stands, we’ll at least always have the ruins of MGM.