The alpha male gaze... Shamus (1973)

Ah Burt Reynolds, top-earning movie star for five years later in the decade and fresh off the back of his stunning turn in Deliverance, here displaying that unique chemistry that made men want to be him and women, no doubt, want to be with him. This is by way of balance with other films I may has assessed with reference to the characteristics of female stars, always couched in the most respectfully considered of phrases of course, but here the male gaze is very much on Burt’s physique through large chunks of the film. Director Buzz Kulik just can’t get enough of the Burt-bod and it’s displayed as often as possible along with the actor’s laconic charm.

Seymour “Buzz” Kulik worked mostly in TV and this film does have the feel of a TV movie being neither as gritty as a Clint Eastwood cinematic release nor as long on budget. We get plenty of good location work in New York along with a huge dash of class from Dyan Canon who, in the absence of a great script literally laughs her way through certain scenes. She first meets Burt’s character, a private dick called Shamus McCoy, in a bar as he pinches her bottom pretending it was an effeminate man nervously nursing a beer; Dyan knows there’s not enough here and we know but she smiles her way through all the same with enough brilliance to suggest real chemistry between the characters.

Burt

Shamus is indeed “of its time” but I chose to believe that the focus on Reynold’s sexuality is more ground-breaking than it might look, certainly in the absence of overt nudity from Cannon and the other female performers. It feels like a succession of early 70s tropes all tied together by a vaguely believable storyline laden with character quirks and action opportunities for the former parole officer, truck driver and stunt man.

"I don't care whether he can act or not, anyone who has this effect on women deserves a break…” said Lew Wasserman after Reynolds signed a seven-year deal with Universal in the late 50’s. But Burt worked hard to become a naturalistic player and enjoyed that huge career as a result of his work ethic as well as his natural charms. By 1973 it may have looked like he could walk his way through any movie and in Shamus he does exactly that… and he’s a force of nature matched only by Cannon’s elegantly restrained star power: she’s a Dyan Dazzler alright and technically very gifted. She had in fact withdrawn from the business after her toxic time on Such Good Friends (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) but was keen to work with Reynolds and they do work a screwball charm together.

Burt and Dyan showing their chemistry

Shamus starts of with the brutal murder of a couple who are burned to death in their bed and a packet of diamonds stolen. The titles roll as we cut to Shamus waking up with a hangover and a blonde in his bed atop a pool table in his “characterful” warehouse apartment somewhere in downtown Manhattan. Heck, minus the blonde-night stand (Melody Santangelo) and the pool table we’ve all had wakeups like this, albeit without Burt’s Velcro-vulnerable torso.

He gets the call to visit the local Mr Big, or as he is properly entitled, Mister E.J. Hume (Ron Weyand) who has all the signifiers of a weirdo criminal; large mansion, check, security guards walking huge attack dogs, check and aircon in his office which he keeps near freezing… check, but possible over-elaboration. Shamus is frightened of the dogs, possibly hinting at some childhood trauma or at least good common sense given the size of them. He gets offered the job of retrieving Hume’s diamonds and finding out who had the audacity to rob him…

Mister E.J. Hume and his men

This is a hot one and almost no one is talking not even at Shamus’s favourite pool hall not even the insatiably chatty Springy (Larry Block) , who can’t stop quoting sporting facts, unloading the contents of a memory almost full of photographic memories… Springy set out to find what he can while Shamus pops upstairs to a gambling den to chat with his childhood pal is Lieutenant Promuto (Joe Santos – who also played Jim Rockford’s favourite cop!), street-wise and willing to help his friend if only to keep him out of trouble.

A lead from one of the card players leads Shamus to a junky – cue chase and threats with violence – and from there to a bar called The Health Club where he meets Springy for a de-brief and, despite taking a brief time out to sexually harass Dyan Cannon’s Alexis Montaigne, who’s brother owns the bar, he spots a dodgy looking waiter. He stakes out the joint from a bookshop across the road run by an attractive redhead (Kay Frye) and passes the time by making a pass… sometime later her leaves the shop and then sets about assaulting the waiter in exchange for a little more information to lead him on.

Dyan Cannon, Burt and Alex Wilson

He’s beginning to make connections which is exactly why he is ambushed in his apartment by three guys who beat him up and tell him to reconsider his career path. Springy finds him fully clothed in the bath soothing his bruises in his overly quirky way. But he’s not the kind of man to take a beating and knowing now that Alexis’ brother Felix (Alex Wilson) is involved he heads to their plus midtown apartment to find out exactly how much…

The film is a jumble of set pieces and set characters and naturally Felix is an Ivy League smart Alec too involved to feel the need to explain himself to a private eye. Still, it’s a chance for Shamus to charm Alexis some more and we know where this is headed… but he’ll have to work at his chance to play pool with Alexis.

The story has more twists and turns than is healthy and whilst these “McGuffins” are all necessary to move the story on, you don’t necessarily care about the central crime at the heart of the story. What you do get is plenty of action in the closing stages, allowing Burt to run some stunts and escape the bad guys after uncovering – part – of the shocking truth in a warehouse. Then he finds a military connection via Alexis and the two have to escape the same careless henchmen this time driving in a US Army truck… Smokey and the Bandit never had it so good!

Dusty Verdict: This film is fun, but the reasons for it are most certainly not to do with the story, you have two bankable, exceptionally likeable stars and some great period New York City and the vague satisfaction that these are the good guys. But the stakes are rarely raised and that’s surely something that could easily have been fixed.

All the same, worth watching for Dyan and Burt! Plus, a cracking score from legend Jerry Goldsmith!

The dangerous bicycles… And Soon the Darkness (1970)

Time Out called this film "nasty" and, having seen the premise, I was a little wary of watching it expecting gratuitous violence and sexual unpleasantness but I was pleasantly surprised both with the subtlety of the narrative and the overall restrain of Robert Fuest’s direction. I think this film got labelled as exploitation when it has more in common with an Agatha Christie whodunnit. There is tension for sure and the vulnerability of both the female protagonists is amply displayed as they cycle along in shorts but Fuest is firmly of the school where less specifics gives more in terms of dramatic tension and atmosphere.

He’s very good at introducing an array of “suspects” after the fact when the viewer has seemingly made their mind up who the guilty party might be, one by one, they keep on coming and everyone manages to act just oddly enough to persuade us that they might be the kidnapper or even killer… Christie usually starts with a group of people anyone of which may be “the one” but Fuest reverses this building momentum and suspicion as the film goes.

Michele Dotrice

And Soon the Darkness is a film with a tremendous sense of place and space as two young nurses, Cathy (Michele Dotrice) and Jane (Pamela Franklin) cycle along the endless flat roads of rural France on holiday. Events take place on a single stretch of road between small villages either side of a small wood and as events travel up and down that road we see the same signs, buildings as well as policemen, farm workers, and other passers by who may or may not be involved.

Cathy is the more outgoing of the two and is starting to get bored of the travelling as they follow a route laid out by Jane which never seems to get to the point. Cathy makes eyes at a handsome Frenchman at a café, Paul (Sandor Elès) who from then on appears to be following the girls on his scooter. A few miles down the road he passes them and then they pass him standing outside a cemetery… he goes inside and looks at the grave of a young woman, Jan Hele who died two years earlier.

Pamela Franklin

Further on, girls start to bicker and Cathy persuades Jane to let them take a rest for some sunbathing at the edge of the wood. After while she refuses to push on leaving Jane to make her own way towards their next stop. Jane cycles on leaving Cathy sleeping under the sun listening to her radio and, frankly, looking a little vulnerable. Jane begins to feel anxious as she gets further away even as she cycles past a group of policemen outside a station. She reaches a village to find the rather rude café owner, Madame Lassal (Hana Maria Pravda) speaking only French and telling her to go away with a strange concern in her eyes. Her husband Lassal (Claude Bertrand) is even more brusque…

Meanwhile, back at the sunbathing spot, Jane is getting spooked and as one misplaced item leads to an unexplained snap of twig, she finds the spokes of her bike smashed and as the camera hovers over her back you know what’s coming… but Fuest cleverly shows us nothing.

Sandor Elès

Jane, unnerved, decides cycles back and finds Jane and her bike gone although her camera is lying discarded on the floor. She hears a motor and looks hopefully for a policeman but finds only the mysterious man on the scooter… he gives her a lift back to the previous village, Landron, and whilst Paul goes back to the woods in search of Cathy, Jane meets an English woman (Clare Kelly) who teaches at a local school, who fills her in on the source of local concern, the murder of the young woman in 1968… The teacher takes a remarkable interest in the younger woman and looks on with concern or, more likely longing, as she drops her off at the police station. Another suspect added to the list… along with the strange farm hand (Jean Carmet -Renier) we keep on seeing in the fields not far from the woods, it’s beginning to seem like it could be anyone.

Finding the Police station closed, Jane cycles back to the woods, where Paul says he has found something, he takes her into the dense undergrowth on his bike and she gets increasingly suspicious of his claims to be an inspector on leave from Paris…  especially when he unspools a roll of film from Cathy’s camera that may incriminate him. Jane runs and gets a break when Paul’s scooter won’t start, she heads straight to the Police Station where she finds another strange old man, the Gendarme’s father (John Franklyn) who spooks her out before his son (John Nettleton) arrives back.

Now, depending on your deductive reasoning your guess is as good as anyone’s as to who, precisely, Jane can trust!

Dusty Verdict: And Soon the Darkness is strange and compelling but doesn’t step over the mark as it could do. Written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, both of whom worked with Fuest on The Avengers, not to mention inventing the Daleks in Nation’s case and then the pandemic-precient Survivors. There’s also an atmospheric score from Avengers theme composer Laurie Johnson.

The leads perform well, Michele Dotrice is an actor with solid grounding in theatre and as her recent work shows, she can do pretty much anything whether it’s a good time girl on a bike or Frank Spencer’s wife. Here she nails the mood perfectly and is a great foil for the more serious Franklin to act against. As always, the latter actress is superb at nuanced, conflicted emotional signalling!

And for all those potential suspects, Sandor Elès leads the way in giving just enough away to make him, possibly or just maybe the killer… you’ll have to watch it to find out.

The film has recently been getting play on the magnificent Talking Pictures and is also available on Blu-ray and DVD, well worth catching.

Topography of terror… The Reptile (1966)

Horror connoisseur Kim Newman describes this film as one of his favourite Hammer horror films whilst The Monthly Film Bulletin review described its "… unusually controlled dignity for a Hammer production; instead of the customary blood-lettings ... Altogether, a film of quite some merit." Yet Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times was most definitely not impressed; "the script is too silly for all but the most uncritical."

It’s been said many times but Hammer films were made on the tightest of budgets and in the shortest time possible with many having no more than a six week shoot which was strictly 9 to 5.30 and with no time spent working at weekends. The cast and crew were all highly professional and could work with minimal retakes, having to nail these scenes as quickly as they could.

The stories were often pulp fiction but the film-making skills involved in their making is often admirable. So it is with The Reptile which despite a plot located firmly in the depths of the region of daft, manages to be both atmospheric and interestingly human with characters you care about.

The tightly-arranged location; pub, church and graveyard all in one place

Part of this is down to director John Gilling making a positive virtue out of his restricted budgets and the inventiveness of his production designer Bernard Robinson aided by Don Mingaye’s art direction. Together they create a intimate world that you soon work your way around; they seem to have taken the corner of an old house and used it to create a corner of a village with a pub and nearby a Church and graveyard with which we become very familiar. It’s quite a feat but most of the action takes place in this set with the exception of the moors that separate the mysterious mansion from the cottage in which our main protagonists try to work out the mystery and survive.

Few films have The Reptile’s sense of place, you know exactly which direction the danger is at any time and Gilling must either have had an unerring sense of direction or a compass. Into all this are placed his players and, as with a theatre production, he moves them around with such skill as well as getting the upmost from their reactions and anticipations. This is not a gory film but it is decisive and quick with moments of death, just like the viper in question and with those characters constructed as carefully as the narrative, sets and movements the whole thing is an enjoyably unsettling journey into nostalgic unease.

Jennifer Daniel and Ray Barrett

The film was actually shot directly after The Plague of the Zombies, also directed by Gilling who using many of the same sets, including exterior shots in the grounds of Oakley Court near Bray, Berkshire…  The only two actors in both were established character actor Michael Ripper – here playing local publican, Tom Bailey – and a relative newcomer, Jacqueline Pearce, beloved of many as Blake’s Seven’s Servalan, and an actor of real depth and technical prowess (trained at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in Los Angeles).

The story begins with a young man, Charles Edward Spalding (David Baron) investigating strange goings on at a mansion owned by a Doctor Franklyn (Noel Willman), who wears an expression caught somewhere between fear and arrogance and who, we don’t doubt, has paid the price for meddling in Eastern practices that cross the line between mysticism and science… He is unable to prevent Spalding climbing the stairs and confronting a creature that runs at him faster than the eye can follow leaving him instantly poisoned and dead within seconds.

John Laurie and Michael Ripper two superb character actors

He is not the first to die under such circumstances in the village and when his brother, a soldier named Harry George Spalding (Ray Barrett) arrives with his young wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) to make their home in Charles’ humble cottage, he is soon confronted by a wall of silence, emptying Tom’s pub as he casts aspersions on the frightened clientele. Tom’s a good lad, but he’s travelled far and thinks he knows well enough to leave well enough alone… he advises Harry to forget the mystery of his brother’s death and to leave.

There are many types of military men and, in this case, Harry is certainly not one to cut and run and neither is his wife, Valerie being made of stern stuff – perhaps Hammer wrote some female parts better than they were ever credited with? There’s certainly a lot of meat for both the women in this film to get their teeth into.

Talking of chewing, that’s exactly what John Laurie does to the scenery when he arrives at the Spalding’s cottage as Mad Peter, on the cadge for some food and full of tales that clearly hint at the truth of what’s going on. Before he arrives, Valerie is greeted by a beautiful young woman called Anna (Ms Pearce), the daughter of Dr Franklin and as vivacious and delightful as he is rude and repulsive. She and Valerie hit it off over flower arranging before a mysterious oriental figure The Malay (Marne Maitland, playing to type here… he was born in India and of mixed heritage but he was schooled in the UK, attending Bedales School and Magdalene College, Cambridge). Anna returns to the big house with his prompting… who is The Malay and what is his hold over the Franklyns?

While her sitar gently weeps...

Before we find out Mad Peter proves not to be that mad but certainly 100% dead which inspires Tom to finally offer to help the Spaldings. Events move at a place especially when the Spaldings are invited over for dinner with the Franklyns and Anna gets carried away with the sitar… Clearly something happened in the Orient which has bound The Malay, the Doctor and Anna together and the reveal is not overplayed as suspense and sympathy is maintained with admirable restraint.

Dusty Verdict: Well acted and very well directed, The Reptile is a treat and shows the underlying skills involved in Hammer filming: disciplined expression and generous, theatre-honed ensemble playing. Enough to make almost any plot believable.