A mixed bag… Candy (1968)

There was a time in the late 60s when studios just couldn’t keep up with the rapid emergence of young talent and the demand for “artistic freedom”… blame The Beatles and the growth of accelerated career paths built on the “new”.

The bread-heads never knew if they were granting funding to people with sustainable talent - so many started well only to fall at the second or third hurdle. It has ever been thus… but probably not so much as in the psychedelic years from which every gaudy miss-step stares in stoned disbelief at the phase-shifted after image of its own folly… man.

Ewa Aulin

Candy has been described by some as the worst movie ever made (Cinema Retro actually made this the cover story a few years back: back issue still available!) but is it really that bad… with Burton, Brando, Matthau and Coburn?!

Well… not quite. Candy is a bit of a mixed bag and no amount of acting talent can completely rescue this over-wrought, over-thought, irritating and sometimes actually funny and good-looking sprawl… it’s a triple album which should have been an EP.

Elsa Martinelli, Ewa Aulin and "Uncle" John Astin

Candy is based on Terry Southern’s novel of the same name written in the late fifties as an updated version of Voltaire’s Candide. Southern’s book is well regarded and he has an impressive CV but he wasn’t involved in the film and subsequently disowned it. Buck Henry – writer of The Graduate – concocted the script and he couldn’t maintain its author’s coherence, snap or wit.

The film was directed by French actor Christian Marquand who had plenty of ideas but no consistent style although the cinematography is pretty good and there's no shortage of budget in evidence. His good buddy Marlon Brando played a major part in getting the film made and naturally enough appears along with the above-mentioned host of A-list Hollywood.

Maybe Marquand gave his actors too much freedom?

Walter Matthau and Marlon Brando

The ads for the film – distasteful like their subject matter – said that the only thing Candy is faithful to is the book. This is not entirely true either of the character or the story.

Candy begins the film as some kind of extra-terrestrial spirit which descends through space onto earth… transforming into the beautiful form of Ewa Aulin. The Swedish actress was just 19 at the time and is very good looking but, in so many ways, this works against her and the film. She’s not acting in her first language and appears to lack emotional engagement through all of the indignities she faces… which makes things so much worse.

Police harassment

Turning that PR line on its head, Aulin’s Candy can’t be “faithful” to anyone as she seems to be incapable of making any decisions of her own… thoughtlessly compliant to every forced advance, she’s innocent and trusting. She has “faith” in everything and everyone – there is no lack of it in her soul.

No guru, no method...

The redeeming feature is that, ultimately and literally, Candy rises above it all leaving Brando’s phoney mystic exhausted in her endlessly inquiring wake as she strides almost dismissively through all of the film’s flawed characters to a destiny beyond…

This final section is well done with the various parties lounging around on a sunlit hillside covered in brightly-coloured flags… Candy ignores them all and makes her own way away from their pointless depravity. Or maybe I was just relived that the film was over?

Richard Burton as Macphisto!

After the cosmic beginning, we see Candy as a college student being taught by her father Jack Christian (John Astin… a talented comedy actor formerly of The Adams Family). There’s an inappropriate moment even between father and daughter which foreshadows much of what is to come.

Richard Burton rolls up as the continuously wind-blown pisshead poet, Macphisto who wows his impressionable audience before taking Candy home. He abuses her in his car – chauffeur-driven by Zero (Sugar Ray Robinson) - and is too drunk to proceed further which allows Mexican gardener Emmanuel (an excruciating turn from Ringo Starr) to grab handfuls of Candy.

"Aw noo, thees is no good!"

 Dad returns to find the mess and resolves to send Candy away to private school in New York. He is joined by his twin brother (Astin again) and his sassy wife Livia (Elsa Martinelli). Chased by Emmanuel’s three sisters on motorcycles (a funny bit!), they just about manage to board a military plane carrying  General R.A. Smight (Walter Matthau) and a squad of troopers who patrol the skies in constant battle-readiness.

Matthau gives perhaps the best/least-worst performance and can carry the OTT satire better than the drama specialists. But the general has been starved of companionship and proceeds to maul Candy in the cockpit (see what they did there…?).

Landing in NYC, Candy’s dad has to undergo brain surgery at the hands of superstar surgeon, Dr. A.B. Krankheit  (James Coburn) in front of a paying audience… this being an operating theatre and all (see what they did…?).

Coburn does his best and is aided by a vicious turn from Anita Pallenberg  as his psychotic left-hand, Nurse Bullock  and a creepy cameo from John Huston as Dr. Arnold Dunlap. Things go a bit dull for a while with an “after-show” party and the bad Doctor’s inevitable examination of his patient’s daughter.

James Coburn, Anita Pallenberg, Ewa Aulin, Elsa Martinelli and chums

But Candy escapes the medical fraternity’s attention and runs into downtown where she is abused by the mafia and then a random man with a camera who insists on filming her in the gents toilets… he’s beaten by the Police as she runs off to encounter a Hunchback thief played with creepy intensity by Charles Aznavour… Here the mix of European and American sensibilities does jar and maybe that's one of the core issues: we weren't all in on the same joke... man.

Marlon Brando is Grindl!

As our winding plot finally starts to eat itself, Candy finds guru  Grindl in the back of a lorry… it’s Marlon Brando! Grindl improvises that Candy’s route to a higher state will be through sustained sexual congress… but Candy outlasts his energies and heads out over the desert where she meets a mysterious mud-caked pilgrim who turns out to be her “father”.

There’s too much and whilst the ending is enigmatically pleasing – Candy having overcome all the low-life around her – the humiliations of the previous two hours just feel gratuitous.

From an age when simply to ask questions was enough, Candy has little in the way of actual answers. It’s too cynical and abusive to be viewed as merely a “period-piece” retro-treat although it’s drenched in the spirit of the times.

Matthau apart, the big names are mostly flapping about, Burton takes the piss out of himself well enough as does Brando but their characters have no depth and rapidly run out of steam. As pop culture Candy is pretty shallow and its ultimate point, that we should respect ourselves a little more and always seek the answers beyond societal norm is as applicable to the film as the wider world. What would Candy do if she had to sit through this film?

Dusty verdict: Just about entertaining and worth preserving so long as you don’t feel too guilty about ogling Ewa Aulin when the narrative gets tough… The poor woman never got beyond her looks in her short career - a fact that nails Candy’s vapid pretensions firmly to the floor.

Cold war comedy… Catch Me a Spy (1971)

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are amongst the major figures in UK TV comedy, responsible for The Likely Lads, Porridge,  Auf Wiedersen Pet and many others. They bought dramatic sensibilities to sit-coms and created richly worked – edgy - characters. It’s a magical mix and one that most comedy fails to achieve.

In their early careers they also tried their hand at a number of films including Villain, Hannibal Brooks and the wonderful Otley with Tom Courtney, Leonard Rossiter and the ethereal Romy Schneider.

Marlene Jobert

These films began to mix  international stars along with the usual array of home-grown stalwarts. On Villain they got to work with Richard Burton and in Catch Me a Spy they had rising French star Marlene Jobert and Kirk Douglas, well into his 50s but still a leading man: Hollywood royalty.

Catch Me a Spy falls into the genre of spy-spoof and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It hasn’t got the wit and balance of Otely, the plot is predictable and meandering but is enjoyably daft throughout with some good moments from a talented cast – Kirk Douglas is funny and scary at the same time: who else can do that?

Funny and scary?

The film kicks off with a school football match improbably refereed by teacher Fabienne (Jobert) in hot pants, thigh boots and bright red stockings… a challenge for the contrast control on this aged print but very impressive none-the-less. A man watches amused at the side-lines – James Fenton (70s mainstay romantic rogue Patrick Mower… a cut-priced Kirk) who ends up helping out with the match, romancing the teacher and then marrying her in quick order.

The French always had more soccer style...

This we see rapidly was a ploy… Fenton is working for the Russians and, knowing that Fabienne is the niece of high-ranking British spy Sir Trevor Dawson (Trevor Howard), he inveigles his way into her affections with the aim of becoming a fake hostage to be exchanged with captured Eastern block spies.

He is duly “arrested” on the couple’s honeymoon in Romania forcing Fabienne to call in favours from her Uncle and his band of hapless Brit-spies. In Bucharest she encounters a suspicious individual, Andrej (Kirk Douglas) who allegiance is unclear… and who places something in Fabienne’s case under the guise of room service.

What do you mean: "cut-price Kirk"?

Returning to the UK Fabienne is frustrated with the listless attitude of her uncles’ colleagues who seem more interested in playing billiards than playing spies.

An attempted exchange of a rather well fed Russian agent goes awry when, weighed down by his decadent western bounty, he cracks through the ice during the border exchange… Fenton has to return to his well-heeled captivity whilst the Brits are at a loss: they don’t have anyone important enough to exchange.

Tom Courtney in a hat, in a pub

Fabienne decides to catch herself a spy to exchange but only succeeds in entrapping Baxter Clarke (the great Tom Courtney) – a backroom boy assigned to follow her by Sir Trevor’s colleagues and who is innocently entranced with Fabienne.

Isabel Dean, Trevor Howard and Wilfrid Brambell

Undeterred Fabienne arranges a party at her uncle’s house to try and catch her spy. It’s a fab party with dinner served by their inebriated butler (Wilfrid Brambell) and guests including the late Angharad Rees in a middle-less dress that has to be seen to be believed whilst Fabienne’s see-through blue number is equally eye-popping… the early 70s eh?

It's called style dear...

Fabienne spots Andrej who has tried to retrieve the item he placed in her luggage. But it’s not there. He thinks she has it and she thinks he’ll make a good exchange for her husband… But Fabienne’s attempts to snare him only ending up with their both being captured by Russian agents.

They awake, hand-cuffed together in the back of a van heading through Scotland (shades of The 39 Steps…).  But they manage to dive free of the van and run off through a herd of cows and across the glens where they take refuge in a hotel on the banks of Loch Awe.

Kirk checks the temperature

Here the “com” becomes a bit more “rom” as Fabienne starts to trust this man who she had hoped to hand over in exchange for her traitorous hubbie…

Needless to say there’s a few twists and turns before the rather contrived ending but it’s light-hearted fun overall.

I watched this film along time ago in the family sitting room and it’s nostalgic on many levels. Structurally it’s not much different from many comedic takes on the spy genre and the only certainty is that there’s no certainty: betrayal is a matter of course.

Drinking in his every word...

Jobert is an excellent and largely under-rated actress outside of France. She made films with Godard, Chabrol and Pialat and enjoyed a highly successful career before becoming a writer (as well as the mother of Eva Green).  I think she plays well with Kirk Douglas and it’s no stretch to imagine a middle age member of the Douglas clan as attractive to younger women is it? Incidentally, Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in… Russia.

The rest of the cast do their bit with Trevor Howard and Tom Courtney the stand outs amongst a host of top-notch character actors.

That is a hat

Catch Me a Spy is available with a so-so transfer on cheapo DVD and there’s a newer edition from Osiris Entertainment which may or may not have a crisper image.

Dusty verdict: Ignore the lower-ranking Amazon reviews, this is a bit of fun and well worth keeping the VHS (or renting from Netflix) for unchallenging entertainment and some totally gratuitous, swinging 70s dresses.

Angharad Rees defends her dress sense...

Fabienne looks out for spies...

Kirk presses the button

Baxter follows Fabienne at the RAH

What are the 39 Steps?

Timecapsule... The Squeeze (1977)

When I bunked off school to go watch The Squeeze in the Liverpool Odeon, it seemed like there were very few decent films being made in the UK.

There was plenty on television but the Brits seemed to have given up on cinema apart from a steady stream of sex comedies, farces and the odd James Bond. Indeed, 1977 saw the release of such classics as Come Play With Me, Confessions from a Holiday Camp and erm, Wombling Free.

Stephen Boyd and David Hemmings

But the year also saw a handful of more serious dramas of which The Squeeze was one of the more entertaining. I still don’t know quite where this film came from: sandwiched between Get Carter and The Long Good Friday it’s not at their level but it has style and substance that the slew of noughties flat-pack crime-capers mostly lack.

Directed by Michael Apted, who later in his distinguished career went on to mix Bond with Narnia, it features Stacy Keach as Jim Naboth, an alcoholic former policeman who, life in a mess, gets sucked into the kidnapping of his ex-wife Jill (Carol White).

Carol White

Keach’s performance is particularly committed and actually uncomfortable to watch in parts. You keep on anticipating the moment when the drunk sobers up and resolves to recover but – perhaps realistically – the character is not that cut and dried (out).

At the film’s start he is drunk and incapable, falling head first down a long wooden tube escalator. He ends up in hospital where they try to dry him out and to use aversion therapy to help keep him off the sauce: the NHS eh?

He returns home to find his two boys being looked after by the social services… better sober up surely?

Edward Fox and Stacy Keach

His ex’s new husband Forman (Edward Fox) crashes into his house and reveals that Jill has been taken along with their daughter. Forman runs a security firm and the kidnappers, are intent on blackmailing him to help them in stealing from his own firm. Nowhere left to turn – he can’t go to the Police – Jim’s the only person left who he can trust. The longest of long shots.

David Hemmings – just over a decade on from Blow Up – plays Keith, the gang’s amoral and mercurial leader: easy-going familiarity hiding a ruthless commitment.  His backer is the more overtly aggressive Vic played with menace by Stephen Boyd.

Stacy Keach and Hilary Gasson

As in so many similar tales of lawmen on the edge, Jim is irresistible to women and pursues a relationship with the lovely nurse who helped him recover (Hilary Gasson). They are constantly being interrupted by Jim’s mate Teddy (a decent turn from comedian Freddie Starr) who wants to look after him after the former cop helped keep him on the straight and narrow...the odd bit of shoplifting excluded.

Hilary Gasson

Whilst these are all so easily clichéd characters, Apted keeps The Squeeze rough, ready and unpredictable. The kidnappers kill the Forman’s dog and for anxious seconds he thinks that it’s their daughter. It’s clear that there will be blood… but we don’t know who or how much until the very end.

There are tense moments as Jim and Teddy search an abandoned factory for the daughter whilst Jill is forced into an humiliating strip for the gang. White is typically brave here and this sequence is hard to watch – she’s a great improvisational actor here forced into a desperate act of self-preservation.

Whilst Jill is in hell, the suspense is ramped up by Jim’s seeming inability to straighten himself out. He bounces around from inspiration to frustration and invariably ends up with a drink in his hand.

Stephen Boyd

Caught breaking into Vic’s house he spins a quick line about working with the tax office before being made to drink a bottle of scotch and being kicked out with no clothes or dignity.  Keach doesn’t hold back even if his diction is occasionally challenging.

Keith blackmails Forman into killing Jim but he can’t go through with it. Jim works out a plan and tells Forman to spin the lie that he followed through. This allows Jim to go undercover… he’s got a plan or is he just going to get drunk yet again?

The Squeeze is fast-paced and realistically restrained – it doesn’t step over the mark of believability with its characters acting in flawed and believable ways throughout.

The Ford Zodiac 

It also offers some lovely, grimy views of unkempt late 70s London especially as Teddy’s gently rusted, grey Ford Zodiac prowls the streets. There’s a short section in the Notting Hill Carnival and some precious glimpses of posters advertising gigs for the Ohio Players and Uriah Heep. Then there’s the pubs… when did our public houses stop looking so shabbily welcoming?!

Freddie Starr and Stacy Keach in a proper pub

The hard-edged synthesised soundtrack from Genesis’ producer, David Henschel, impressed us all as schoolboys and impresses now… a precursor to Francis Monkman’s superb score for The Long Good Friday. It’s also supplemented by some period colour from the likes of the Doobie Brothers and – bizarrely – Jon Anderson, who’s Olias of Sunhillow plays on in the background of a massage parlour… not quite what the singer had in mind for his space-faring solo album.

Dusty verdict: well worth watching on DVD and if you want to remember just a bit about what the 1970s actually looked and felt like.

Commer van meets Morris Minor: 70s car porn

Some of these bands are still touring...

70s skyline

Clowning around… Requiem for a Vampire (1971)

Mireille Dargen and Marie-Pierre Castel

This is one of those films I hesitate to write about… there are a couple of sections of unpleasant sexual violence that are beyond a joke. But there’s also a good deal of craft in the film which I would say rescues it from the sleaze-fest dump-bin.

The first half hour of the film passes with virtually no dialogue as we follow a couple of girls dressed as clowns, on the run from unknown assailants. They fire bullets from a car driven by a male accomplice, at their nameless pursuers and, when their driver is fatally wounded, they manage to evade their enemies and drive into a forest. They say farewell to their friend then torch both him and the car before starting a relentless run through the woods.

The women are Michelle (Mireille Dargent) and her un-named blonde friend (Marie-Pierre Castel) who it later transpires have run away from school – whether this is a reform school is not specified although the two certainly know how to handle guns.

Marie tricks an off-road vendor into following her for “favours” so that Michelle can steal them some food. Then they take a motorbike and head off further into the country. Ditching the bike they head into a cemetery for rest. Here, bizarrely, Michelle almost gets buried by two grave diggers… you wonder why she doesn’t resist or even get noticed?

This is all part of Director Jean Rollin’s intent to disorientate, and he certainly succeeds in creating a strange atmosphere that persists as the two find their way to a ruined chateau. They explore the walls of this mysterious edifice and eventually lie down on a conveniently well-made bed to demonstrate that they are more than just friends.

Disturbed by a noise elsewhere in the castle they go off to investigate, finding a group of skeletons amongst which a gaunt woman (Fiona) is playing the organ… she turns around to reveal a pair of long and unconvincing canine extensions…

It is at this point that the film descends into straight-ahead “horrotica” and euro-trashy exploitation.

The first section is mysterious with the clown costumes, the ceaseless movement and with nothing really revealed...

Now the girls are assailed not only by the lady vampire but a couple of uncouth, sex-starved acolytes who paw at them repeatedly. The girls managed to escape but only get as far as the cemetery where their way is barred by a tall greying man who, barely smiling, reveals another set of vampiric chompers.

They are taken into the crypt where the big fella bites them and renders them both in a trance whilst the men ravage two young women chained to the walls… it’s an unpleasant scene and one that goes on far too long to have any real purpose other than to titillate the lazy minded cine-perve. Any-way… turns out that this is all part of the process of degradation and transformation of the innocent into vampires.

Yet, confusingly, the old Vampire later claims that as his powers are on their final waning; only Fiona can make the ultimate transition. Never-the-less, he tries to initiate the girls and sends them off to be instructed. They are to tempt two young men into the crypt as food for the vampires and set off to entrap the young men. Michelle succeeds but Marie decides on rebellion, the vampire requires virgins for his mojo to work and so she deliberately relieves herself of this status with the help of a handsome passer-by called Frederic.

Insert "hanging around" joke here...

Now it gets confusing as Michelle’s “interview” with the vampire goes to plan but he soon realises that Marie has betrayed him. He orders Michelle to torture her into telling them where the young man is… there follows a gratuitous scene of girl-on-girl whipping which culminates in Michelle fending off Fiona and helping Marie to escape…

Frederic is captured in the crypt, the girls get their guns and set off to finish things, they gun down the animalistic men – who seem to be multiplying - but no matter, the guns have many rounds! Finally, the old vampire has had enough and orders his last remaining acolytes to let them go… the game is up and there has been too much blood-shed.

Scarier in shadow

He takes Fiona with him into the crypt and will there remain until they have both perished, at which point his legacy and enduring power over his followers will be ended… Hmm, maybe he needed some better henchmen who were given to more constructive pursuits than  puerile degradation? Just a thought…

Requiem for a Vampire is worth watching for Rollin’s stylish first half hour but it never really gets going and the story feels convoluted and very thin. The running girls are good and the atmosphere well maintained but the motivations of the vampire are hard to credit…

Dusty verdict: if it’s on late night TV give it a go… or video and FFWD through the OTT bits like I did.