In short: Silver Bears (1977)

Ivan Passer’s caper comedy has one of the more convoluted plots I’ve encountered; not difficult to understand while watching the film, mind you, just absurdly complicated to explain. Given that it concerns an attempt by the Mafia to buy a Swiss bank for money laundering purposes as thought up by a bright Brit (Michael Caine), that needs an Italian Prince (Louis Jourdan in a genuinely good performance, which is not something I say lightly or often about the man) to work, and will eventually involve an attempt to break the world’s silver monopoly with silver provided by a pair of Moroccan ex-nobility (Stéphane Audran and David Warner), as well as a romance sub-plot with Cybill Shepherd in one of the least convincing attempts to make a beautiful woman look frumpy, this should be rather a good time.

Yet it isn’t. Worse, the film doesn’t work for reasons that are really hard to explain. Especially when you keep in mind that not one of the actors puts in a bad or lazy performance (one might argue about Shepherd here, but she simply appears to try and have fun with a not terribly interesting role, and is at the very least charming as hell in the role), and that the script contains about one funny or clever idea a minute. Passer’s direction certainly isn’t offensive either. It does lack a certain degree of spark that would probably be helpful to the movie, but the director paces scenes well, and generally gets out of the way of his cast.

Still, there’s a curious lack of impact to everything in Silver Bears: jokes, the decidedly pretty locations, the plot, the perfectly good performances are all there. Yet somehow, they manage to leave little impression, at least on this viewer.

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.

Three Films Make A Post: Do You Believe In Monsters?

Lost Child aka Tatterdemalion (2017): Sold as a horror film, this in really isn’t one, but rather a film using certain genre tropes of folk horror – as well as some from Appalachian/Ozarks noir – to tell a naturalistically minded story about a woman trying to cope with her past by returning home and the PTSD healing power of found family. This could be the sort of “heart-warming” approach to actual people’s problems and lives that tends to piss me off to no end, but director Ramaa Mosley does demonstrate you can make this sort of movie in a convincing manner. Part of the film’s effectiveness lies in Mosley’s control over the genre elements she uses: the folk horror bits are convincing as folk horror, the mountain noir elements are indeed told in the right tone, and their shift into the friendlier US version of the kitchen sink drama works on a craftsmanship level. That I’d rather have seen a real horror movie or noir is not the film’s fault.

Ritual of Evil (1970): This sequel to the first TV adventure of psychiatrist/occult detective David Sorell (Louis Jourdan) without the important behind the scenes talent of the first one makes it pretty obvious why there wasn’t the projected series following it: it’s pretty damn dreadful, replacing the clever mix of literary horror traditions and the then modern occult horror with loads of barely digestible early 70s psychobabble, characterization that’s the direct result of someone actually believing that nonsense and writing his characters accordingly, and plotting that goes nowhere interesting very, very tediously. The helpings of lifestyles of the rich and famous soap operatics don’t improve things either, nor does director Robert Day’s vehement inability to understand what makes a scene macabre, and what just stupid. Tragically, the man could do a decent scene, as the prologue proves whose proper horror mood blows the rest of the film completely out of the water.

Zombeavers (2014): Jordan Rubin’s little horror comedy that could goes to show that if you just commit completely to a bad joke, think through all of its possible permutations and treat it as if it were a good one for long enough, it might indeed, as if by magic, turn into a very funny one. It does help to find a handful of actresses and actors equally willing to play through the joke with as straight a face as possible, and here, too, Zombeavers wins.

And hell, if you ever wanted to learn practically every single joke about beavers you’d care to hear, the film’s got your back there too.

Fear No Evil (1969)

One night, while clearly in some kind of altered state, Paul Varney (Bradford Dillman) buys an antique mirror from a store, driven to the purchase by forces he can’t quite comprehend. Some days later, leaving a get-together by friend-of-a-friend psychiatrist and occult expert Dr David Sorrell (Louis Jordan), Paul and his fiancée Barbara Anholt (Lynda Day George) have a (vintage) car accident caused by his zoning out just like he did in that night he bought the mirror. Paul is killed, while Barbara gets away with minor injuries.

Obviously, Barbara is not taking this well, and is all too happy when Paul’s mother (Marsha Hunt) decides to break off the cold war that apparently was raging between them when Paul was still alive and invites Barbara to live with her in the family’s rich people mansion. Right in Barbara’s new room is that mysterious mirror Paul bought. On her first night sleeping there, Barbara feels drawn to the mirror – and wouldn’t you know it, a version of Paul that has developed a sartorial interest in French existentialist intellectual chic appears. Barbara is as clearly overwhelmed by intense sexual desire as a TV movie from 1969 can get away with (which is surprisingly much) and she and Paul do get it on late 60s TV movie style, Barbara somehow crossing over into the mirror world with her mind while her body, as is clearly implied, has its fun with the mirror.

After the first night of this, she goes to Sorrell for help. Sorrell does go for the most logical psychological explanation of her encounter being simple grief, but a case some years ago has taught him that sometimes, strange occurrences actually have supernatural sources, and so he begins to investigate what really happened to Paul before his death. This becomes particularly pressing since the now nightly encounters between a Barbara who simply can’t resist the mirror and Paul seem to have a dire influence on her physical and mental health.

This TV movie as directed by Paul Wendkos is a real gem of TV horror, working a very effective occult detective tale into the constraints of late 60s TV. The script by Richard Alan Simmons (based upon a short story buy Guy “The Werewolf of Paris” Endore) is surprisingly inventive in the ways it mixes the TV version of grief with Barbara’s supernatural misadventures, hinting at the connections between love, grief and physical desire, without feeling the need to explain them too much. There’s surprisingly little psycho babble TV of the time loved so much here,too, or really, just as much of it as the film needs for exposition.

Fear No Evil works very well as a tale in the classic occult detective mode, Sorrell’s double-expertise as a psychiatrist and a man of occult interests making him the ideal go-between between science (as much as psychiatry is one) and belief, and position him as one of the healer type occult investigators rather than the researcher of weird shit. I’ve never been the greatest fan of Jourdan – he always feels a bit too smug to me – but his performance here is just right, with just the right mix of that smugness and believable compassion; well, and a lot of cigarettes.

The plotting is pretty neat too, for the whole affair makes sense as a proper mystery, just one involving experimental demon conjuring and a magic mirror.

Wendkos does a wonderful job, too, pacing the investigation well, getting to the core of a scene clearly and efficiently, but also creating the proper mood of the outré as part of the human experience when it is called for. He is also doing wonders creating the supernatural menace on TV budget. The climax in particular is visually and conceptually inventive and makes total sense as a lived example of magical thinking, too.

Apparently, this was a pretty big ratings success for NBC, so the next year, there was another adventure of Dr Sorrell hitting the screen, but one without Simmons or Wendkos involved. About that one, I will complain in a coming “Three Films Make a Post” entry, because it’s as terrible as Fear No Evil is great.

Year of the Comet (1992)

Her father, a big trader in wine as a collector’s item, and not one in visible affection, finally allows wine expert Margaret Harwood (Penelope Ann Miller) to go out and catalogue her first wine cellar out on the Isle of Man. This first outing turns out to be quite the coup, for Maggie finds buried among the dross a humungous and very, very valuable bottle of wine bottled in the year of the Great Comet (therefore the title) for Napoleon’s personal use. How Nappy planned to survive drinking his body weight in wine, we never learn. Maggie’s father sells the bottle right when he hears of it to his favourite customer, who in turn sends out his all-around trouble-shooting macho man assistant Oliver Plexico (Tim “The ‘stache” Daly) to get the bottle home safely.

Alas, there are a few problems for Maggie and Oliver. It’s not just that they are clearly involved in one of those Hollywood romances of people first loudly professing how much they loathe one another to finally fall in just as loud love, for there are several groups after the bottle. There’s the elderly landlady (Julia McCarthy) and her murderous son who just like the sound of one million dollars, one Philippe (Louis Jourdan) and his men who think one former associate has hidden some mysterious formula in or around the bottle, as well as the henchpeople of another wine collector who has been sold the very same bottle by Maggie’s mildly evil half-brother. Looks like the road to true love is paved with adventures through Europe for our heroine and hero.

Year of the Comet’s Peter Yates is one of these directors it is pretty difficult to get a handle on. In the early part of his career he sure knew how to do brilliant crime films and car chases, yet only a handful – and generally the best – of the films he made throughout his career actually fit these talents, while a lot of them are pretty characterless mid-level mainstream Hollywood (and British would-be-Hollywood) affairs of the completely forgettable sort, or Krull.

Once you’ve seen enough of his lesser films (that make a most of his filmography, really), you just might start to notice a pattern with them, though. Yates was clearly an admirer of classic, pre-70s Hollywood style films, and some of his body of work seems to me an attempt to keep the values and the style of these films alive during the 80s and 90s, just generally not with too much artistic success. Classic Hollywood is difficult, even for the talented. The William Goldman-scripted film at hand fits very well into this theory, though it does work much better than many other of Yates’s films of this type, perhaps because it wears its heart and its influences rather obviously on its sleeve.

So, this is one of these adventurous romances you might imagine seeing Cary Grant or Errol Flynn in, with a plot that is light, fluffy,  and quite nonsensical yet also a really fun set-up made to keep the romance moving and the audience entertained with some stunts, some action, some comedy, and so on. Of course, Tim Daly sure is no Cary Grant; on the other hand, Penelope Ann Miller is allowed to be much more fun than she would have been in the olden times (at least after World War II), and is really charming enough to sell Daly too.

There’s really not terribly much else to say about the film, I’m afraid: if you’re in the market for a slightly updated (with the good stuff of less icky romance and a more present female lead) old-style Hollywood adventure romance, with sometimes silly, sometimes witty humour, little depth but a truly polished surface, then this is going to be a lot of fun (remember that?) for you; if not, you’re probably dead inside, say stuff about films like “it’s fun and endearing but there’s just no true depth to it”, and probably don’t even appreciate that sometimes a piece of fluff can save lives, or at least souls.

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