THRILLER Thursday: The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk.

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 2, Episode: 13.
Airdate: December 18, 1961

Director: John Brahm.
Writer: Donald S. Sanford from the story by Margaret St. Clair.
Cast: Jo Van Fleet, John Carradine, Paul Newlan, Hal Baylor.
Music: Morton Stevens.
Cinematography: Ray Flin.
Producer: William Frye.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “Imagine a woman with such poise, such calm, in the presence of... whatever happened to young Johnny. Remarkable. The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk, that’s the title of our excursion into the impossible, tonight. Or is what happened to Johnny impossible in this day? He was a thief. Whatever he got he deserved, you say. Well, my friend, how can you judge until you know the full horror that overtook him out there in the farmland? That’s a puzzle I invite you to solve in company with our cast. Jason Longfellow played by John Carradine, Sheriff Tom Willetts played by Paul Newlan, Peter Gogan played by Hal Baylor, the remarkable Mrs. Hawk portrayed by Jo Van Fleet. If you’ve ever yearned for a small farm, a few chickens, a cow, and a pig or two... or three... I particularly recommend this story, because as sure as my name is Boris Karloff, you’ll learn some animal husbandry that even the experts never dreamed of.”

Synopsis: A pair of hobos / day laborers, Jason (John Carradine) and Peter (Hal Baylor), put out their campfire and prepare to leave, wondering where their pal is. Across the field is an old country house with a big sign in front “Isle Of Aiaie” Home Of The Pampered Pig. Visitors Welcome. Mrs. C. Hawk proprietor.”

Inside the house, their pal Johnny (Bruce Dern) (with a tattoo of an arrow through a heart on his arm) is having a meal served by Mrs Hawk (Jo Van Fleet) - he did a day’s work at the pig farm and is quitting. Mrs. Hawk doesn’t want him to quit... and touches him in a way you usually don’t touch employees... and Johnny takes a step back. She says she will give him his pay, but first a goodbye drink of her blackberry brandy. Okay, anything to get his money and get out of here. He downs it, and when she goes to get his pay, grabs the empty brandy decanter and follows her into the little home office. He’s going to hit her and rob her of *all* her money. A really good creep up suspense moment... will she hear him and turn around? When he gets ready to hit her she spins around... and tells him that he can have all of the money if he wants, she won’t even call the cops. He takes her strong box and runs!

Then she hears him scream: “Help me!” from the yard... and she smiles. He keeps screaming!
Then hogs begin snorting and squeeling!
And the screaming stops.

Peter wants to help Johnny, but Jason thinks it’s too late. Peter mentions that hungry hogs are dangerous - they will eat a human... and blames Jason for sending Johnny in to steal, knowing he might end up a meal. The two fight a little, and then Jason explains his real plan. A personals advert from Mrs Hawk in a magazine, “Attractive widow, owner of prosperous farm, desires lonely young man to share her work and future.” Jason believes she requested “lonely" young men because they are less likely to have families who will question their disappearance. She’s a serial killer. Jason plans to blackmail her... using Peter as bait.

At the County Fair, Sheriff Tom Willetts (Paul Newlan from M SQUAD) makes his rounds, while Mrs Hawk displays her prize pig Nammon... which has won all of the awards at the fair. The pig also has a tattoo with an arrow through a heart on it’s front leg... just like Johnny did. WTF? She chases down the Sheriff and does some heavy flirting with him... but he politely rejects her. He's a middle aged man who is nervous around women... and she's a woman who is several steps past "aggressive". A maneater.

When she drives home with the prized pig in the back of her truck, Peter and Jonathan are waiting for her... answering her personals advert in the magazine. Peter is the potential husband, Jason is his uncle. She serves them tea and cookies, and then Jason leaves... and Peter stays in the guest room of the house. So they can get to know each other better. Peter is a little nervous about what that might entail.

That night, Peter sleeps fully clothed.
Something wakes him up in the middle of the night, and he looks out the window. Spots Mrs. Hawk in her nightgown walking into the pig barn with a bowl of... grapes. She feeds the big hogs, calling them all by name. Creepy! One of the hogs seems angry, so she tells it that it can come back for a little while... The pig with the same tattoo as Johnny had. And we get a cool moving shot where she follows the pig to the house, and when it walks behind a cart for a moment she points her wooden pig prodder at it and Johnny comes out on the other side of the cart. Johnny is the pig! Mrs Hawk takes Johnny-pig in to her bedroom... for reasons not fully explained in the story, but we wonder about corkscrew personal parts. Peter sees Mrs. Hawk and Johnny entering the bedroom and sneaks out of the house.

Next morning she notices Peter missing.... and then there is a knock at the door: the Sheriff. Official business. It seems that her day laborer Johnny and his partner Peter are both wanted by the police for robbing a man. She turns away so that he doesn’t see her expression when she learns that Johnny and Peter know each other. Sheriff Willetts mentions that both are traveling with an old hobo - Jason. She shifts gears and pours on the flirting, which makes Sheriff Willetts nervous, so he leaves.

Jason finds Peter back at their camp and asks why he isn’t in the house with Mrs. Hawk? Peter tells him what he saw, and Jason believes all of it. He wants to poke around the house... but that means that Peter has to go back.

Peter returns and tells Mrs. Hawk that he saw one of her pigs escape so he tried to chase it down, failed to grab it. “He’ll come home when he’s hungry,” she says. And she has breakfast waiting for him - pancakes... with blackberry syrup. As Peter eats she says she feels bad about running his uncle Jason off and wonders if he’s available to come to dinner tonight? Peter fumbles a bit, because he was supposed to ask her if uncle Jason could come by for dinner. She keeps pouring on the blackberry syrup... and there’s a nice shot where Peter eats a fork-full of syrupy pancakes and makes a sound halfway between a belch and a pig’s snort and the camera moves to Mrs. Hawk as the sounds become all pig snorts. Peter has become a pig.

That night, Jason comes by for dinner... and while waiting, studies a painting on the wall of a young woman with a wooden pig prodder surrounded by adoring pigs. They have a nice verbal battle - a chess game - where Jason talks about the painting, and she tries to normalize it. He seems to know everything about her. She tries to deflect him and charm him away from these subjects. He grabs a photo from a table and asks who this is - needs to know the family his nephew is marrying into, right? Mrs Hawk says it’s her niece Meddy. “Would that be a pet name for Medea?” He asks where Peter is... and she answers “tamed”. She offers him a glass of blackberry wine. He accepts the glass, but doesn’t drink it... and says he knows all about her. The “C” stands for Circe - she is the Greek Goddess of magic and witchcraft. Through the use of her magic wand she can turn her enemies into pigs and other beasts. She asks what he wants? Jason smiles: Every cent she has and the farm. This won’t be the first time she has been forced to move, right?

Jason will need a pen and paper to draw up a contract for sale of the farm - and Mrs. Hawk attempts to trick him several times. She dips the top of the pen in a bottle when he isn’t looking. He draws up the contract, putting the top of the pen in his mouth at one point. She signs the contract... then flirts with him, and asks if he would like to see the pigs.

At the barn, Jason fears a trap... so he takes the flashlight and goes in alone. The barn is dark and spooky.

In one pen, a big hog wears Peter’s suit!
From outside the barn she asks, “Do you see him?”
“Yes... I see him.”
“You’re lucky, Most of my friends don’t have the opportunity to see what’s going to happen to them.”

She tells him it was on the tip of the pen, and when he screams and tries to escape from the barn, she locks the door.... locking him in the barn with Peter and Johnny and all of the others... and then he begins snorting like a pig!

Meanwhile: Sheriff Willetts and a kid are searching their camp on the field across from the house, and find Jason’s library of mythology... and finds his notes on Mrs. Hawk. Weird notes. Does he believe them?

Sheriff Willetts goes to visit Mrs Hawk, and she starts in on the flirting to make him uncomfortable. He says he is here on official business... and wants her to go in the house while he searches. She waves the pig pusher at the pigs and they are all suddenly silent, then she leaves and lets him search.

Sheriff Willetts does a search of the barn, fairly suspenseful. He finds nothing.

In the house, he studies the painting of the young woman surrounded by adoring pigs. Finds a stash of watches and cigarette lighters and other things from her victims. That’s when she comes in with a pot of coffee and cups on a serving tray. “Tom, you know something about me, don’t you?” He says he knows what happened to all of the missing men, he knows who she really is. She does the flirting thing again. He will have nothing to do with it... and she says she is willing to give her confession. Has he told anyone else her secret? “If I told anybody a thing like that they’d lock me up!” She smiles... and then touches his lips with her fingers... giving him a taste of that blackberry potion. She points the pig prodder at him and... the Sheriff turns into a pig!

Later, she sells all of her pigs to the slaughterhouse and watches as they are loaded into the back of the truck, saying goodbye to each of them by name. The Sheriff pig has a star shaped marking on its chest. As the two slaughterhouse drivers prepare to leave, they talk about what a great woman Mrs Hawk is - she cared so much about those pigs of hers.

Mrs. Hawk goes back to the house... and a young man shows up, answering her personals advert in the magazine. She smiles at him.

Review: This is a great episode, that hits on all cylinders. The writing is witty, the story is dark and twisted, and the direction (lighting, camera moves) milk it for every creepy moment.

The acting is also superb, especially Jo Van Fleet (from Oakland) who you may know from EAST OF EDEN or COOL HAND LUKE or Polanski’s THE TENANT or the TV movie SATAN’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. She is an unconventionally attractive woman, and vamps the hell out of it this episode. She is sex incarnate. Were the TV censors asleep at the switch? Her hands are all over every male character in the story and she dresses like the farmer’s daughter from all of those dirty jokes. I had a still I was going to pull for this of her bending down in front of John Carradine to offer him a drink that is offering him her cleavage as well - but it was kind of pervy. She just oozes sex whenever she’s on screen, to the point that it feels like a trap (which is what she was going for). This isn’t just a sexually aggressive woman, there is a danger vibe here. Even before Bruce Dern is turned into a pig, you know she has some sort of evil plan for him. This is a great performance in an episode filled with them.

John Carradine is also great as the hobo/conman, and the scenes with him and Van Fleet are two masters at the top of their game battling it out. Carradine playing a conman is a great casting - he can ham it up and it fits his character. Did I say: Ham it up?

You may not be familiar with Paul Newlan who plays the Sheriff, but he was usually working across the lot on Lee Marvin’s M SQUAD show as the Chief Of Detectives - and is great here as the shy, lonely, Sheriff in this episode - when Van Fleet comes on to him, he gets so flustered that the audience feels uncomfortable. Another great performance by an old pro character actor.

Hal Baylor is another one of those character actors with well over 100 credits - he was on every Western show ever made and pops up in John Wayne movies, too. He’s also in A BOY AND HIS DOG.

Director John Brahm did 12 episodes of THRILLER, including CHEATERS, DARK LEGACY, THE PREDICTION and GOOD IMAGINATION. He was also one of the main directors on TWILIGHT ZONE and HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and MAN FROM UNCLE. On this show his episodes range from competent to great - and this is one of the great ones. The single shot where the pig turns into Bruce Dern would be a mind blower today, and a scene where Carradine is poking around in the spooky pig barn with a flashlight builds all kinds of dread. The payoff - a pig in Peter’s suit - doesn’t work as well as a shock moment, but farm animals in clothes tend to be funny... and that’s the problem, here. But still a great moment in a twisted episode.

The story itself, and screenplay by Donald Sanford, is creepy and shocking. I think Kevin Smith should have watched this episode before making TUSK. Smith’s movie is a bunch of talking heads scenes, this episode has creepy scenes and shock moments and the talking heads scenes are battles between clever characters trying to outsmart each other. Oddly, due to the Sheriff character, this episode is also reminiscent of PSYCHO. Various characters disappear in a spooky old house, and the plodding Sheriff puts the pieces together and realizes that something is really wrong, here. I love the early bit of leading the audience / misdirection when Peter mentions that hungry hogs will eat people - that adds so much dread to every scene. You are waiting for the secret to be that Mrs. Hawk feeds people to her pigs... so when it is revealed that her pigs are people, it’s a great moment.

Another great element in this episode is Karloff's introduction - most of them are kind of blandly written, but this one is witty and fun (and brief).

A great episode after a slightly boring one... and next up is another episode directed by the fellow who directed the boring one. Will it be better than his last episode? Stay tuned!



- Bill

Zombie Projects!

RERUN AUGUST: From fifteen years ago...

So, today I want to talk about Zombie Projects. No... not projects about zombies like my super-cool zom-com JUST BEFORE DAWN about a guy afraid to commit to his girlfriend and then a weird outbreak of “space herpes” makes everyone ultra-horny... after it kills them... and now our relationship-phobic hero is forced to live with his girlfriend forever or deal with the horny dead.

I mean those dead projects that unexpectedly come back to life.

Last week I had two long dead projects suddenly come back to life. One was a script I wrote a few years ago that was shelved... I thought forever... then the producer called to set up a meeting. Seems he bumped into a distrib looking for a specific type of genre film - and danged if my old script doesn’t more or less fit what they are looking for. I suspect at the meeting he will want to see if I will make it more like what they want, and I did a quick re-read of the script, and I think a couple of cosmetic changes will do the trick. I had completely written this one off as dead back when they shelved it.

The other project is something I’ve been pushing. Three years ago I had a meeting with a producer on a studio sequel project. I worked out a detailed pitch - which basically means I did an outline for the script and figured out characters and scenes and all kinds of stuff. I put a great deal of work into it behind the scenes... and then the whole project crashed and burned. Well, a producer who has never bought anything from me but has read a couple of my scripts just landed at that studio after leaving Fox, so I thought I’d e-mail them and pitch this 3 year old project to them. They liked it, and are taking it to the studio. If the studio likes it, maybe they’ll hire me to write it. It’s a sequel to a hit movie that spawned a TV show - but couldn’t star the original star (unless he became a zombie). So it’s kind of a sequel/reboot kind of thing. Two projects I thought were dead have come back to life.

Now, both may be dead by the end of this week - or the end of May. There are a bunch of people who can say “no” - and that’s even their job: to make sure the studio doesn’t waste money. But if they always said no there would be no movies playing in the multiplex, so they have to say “yes” sometimes. Usually when Will Smith or some other movie star is attached. I don’t have any movie stars attached to either project.

But the lesson in all of this - even if both are dead again by the end of May - is that nothing is ever dead for sure in Hollywood. Though Quentin Tarantino is famous for resurrecting stars with dead careers in his movies, there are plenty of stars whose careers came back even without being in a QT movie. One of my favorite directors, John Frankenheimer, had his career dry up by the mid 60s after making a bunch of great films. Cannon Pictures, makers of those AMERICAN NINJA movies and Chuck Norris movies hired him to direct 52 PICKUP, based on an Elmore Leonard novel that Cannon had already made once with Rock Hudson in the lead. This time around, they put Roy Schieder in the lead... and Frankenheimer hit it out of the park. Though the film wasn’t a big financial hit, critics loved it and people began hiring Frankenheimer again. His second life. That was when he made this little film called RONIN which you may have seen. Writers also drop off the face of the earth and then return - my friend John Hill who wrote QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER and is one of a handful of pro writers I know who do consulting, says that every once in a while a writer needs to reinvent themselves. In a way, we have it the easiest of everyone in Hollywood - an actor has to be cast, a director has to be hired, but we can just write ourselves a job. If our careers die for some reason, we can write a bunch of new spec scripts and go from “What ever happened to that guy?” to “Have you read the new script by that guy? It rocks!”

And our old scripts - sitting on their shelves or sitting on ours - always have a chance at coming back from the dead. If you have an old script that doesn’t work, you can always rewrite it so that it does work. I’m always looking for the solutions to scripts that didn’t work, and when I figure out some way to make them work - they get a rewrite. Sometimes it’s an easy fix, sometimes it’s a complete overhaul where everything changes. But no script is completely dead - you become a better writer as time goes on, and even those first couple of stinky scripts can be rewritten to remove the smell. In that out of print book of mine I tell the story of DIE HARD... which began as the shelved sequel to a film from 1968. Back in 1968 the star didn’t want to make the sequel... and Fox shelved the project. Over a dozen years later, Joel Silver was looking for a property the studio already owned to make into a film... and found DIE HARD (called NOTHING LASTS FOREVER at the time). A dead script is resurrected!

So, you don’t just have one chance - you have millions of them. That script that may not work today may be the perfect script for 5 years from now. Sometimes timing is the problem. Sometimes finding the right star is the problem. Sometimes that script that nobody likes in 2010 is just ahead of its time and needs the world to catch up with it. And sometimes we can’t figure out how to make the story work until a couple of years after we’ve finished it. But no script is even really dead.

Recently someone on a message board was celebrating being read and rejected by a big producer at Warner Bros - and that is totally the right attitude. Because we do not have crystal balls and can not read minds, so we have no idea whether that script will be the one that the development executive can’t get out of her head... and a couple of years later she’s working for some other company and tries to get them interested in that script. Things like that happen all of the time.

Just as these two projects of mine have seem to come back to life, your dead projects may come back, too. So here’s to your zombie projects! Hope they come back!

- Bill


2025 UPDATE: Nothing happened with either zombie project, but I had meetings that ended up helping my career. So nothng is ever really dead in Hollywood! I hope all of your dead scripts come back to life and lead to sales or assignments! IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: They Gave It Away! - they are going to show all of the good parts of your script in the trailer... so you need even more good parts!
Dinner: Some storefront Teriyaki place - Salmon and brown rice.
Bicycle: Did a bike/bus combo on Thursday to Westwood to have lunch with a fellow writer and complain about the biz, did a medium ride on Friday, Saturday took the subway to the Convention Center for Showbiz Expo - more on that later.

Movies: THE LOSERS... okay, but either the direction or the script was downright unemotional. I suspect the direction, because there were some okay twists in the script that seemed like they might have been designed to make us feel something - yet the direction distanced everything in a shaky cam / Michael Bay "people are products and this is a commercial" camera placement. When shots should have been some form of POV or over the shoulder to put us in the character's shoes we get these quick cut externals that are outside of the action instead of inside the action. Jason Patric plays a psycho ultra-evil villain from some 1980s movie who kills people for making simple mistakes - but doesn't seem to be smart enough to realize that now no one is doing that task. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a freakin' movie star - the American Jason Statham - he kicks ass and *is* tough without having to act it. Zoe Saldana is hot and kicks ass - there's a cool shot in the film where she is on a rooftop with a rocket launcher that is ultra sexy. Chris Evans plays a geek... who can run faster than anyone else in the film - great semi-parkour scenes. Columbus Short is the soul and heart of the team - he worries that he will miss the birth of his first child. Oscar Jaenada is the cool, quiet, sniper who never says anything... unless you touch his hat. Idris Elba is the effing badass of the group - when he's not beating the crap out of bad guys, he's beating the crap out of team members. The characters are well defined, which is why I suspect the direction was the problem. Lots of big action scenes, some good humor... but it just feels flat. The plot is kind of stupid. This ends up being the studio version of a B movie - grab a six pack go in with low expectations and enjoy it on DVD.

Trailer Tuesday: OHMSS (1969)

Should have run this in July 20!...

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969)

Directed by: Peter Hunt.
Written by: Richard Maibaum based on the novel by Ian Fleming.
Starring: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas.
Produced by: Broccoli & Saltzman.
Music by: John Barry, maybe his best Bond score.
Cinematography by: Michael Reed.


If you ask real James Bond fans what the best Bond film is, the answer you will usually get is: ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.

"Huh? Never heard of it? Was it a Roger Moore or a Sean Connery?"
Neither.
"Then it had to be the Timothy Dalton one I didn't see."
Not Dalton either.
"I was sure I saw all of the Brosnan movies, even the silly ones where Denise Richards was a scientific genius and the one where the car ice skates on its roof. And I saw all of the recent ones with Daniel Craig, even the terrible one that came after CASINO ROYALE."
It was the one that starred George Lazenby.
"Who?"



Lazenby played Bond in one film, between Connery and... Connery. After YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE Connery walked away from the series to do something else... and they did one of those worldwide searches for the next James Bond and came up with this guy Lazenby... from Australia! Compared to Connery, Lazenby was... a little light. He was a male model, not an actor, and where Connery could deliver a quip with an underlying threat, Lazenby’s delivery of quips was a little more like Moore. Audiences rejected him, and his agents screwed things up so that he wouldn’t be in a second film - even though this film was originally made to set up the next film in the series.

So he ends up the only one film Bond, with Connery returning two years later for DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, and then Moore takes over... except for the parallel universe Bond movie NEVER SAY NEVER. So he had this one Bond film (and he’s really not bad) and it’s what is probably the best of all Bond films. After Connery’s films were getting too gadget filled and beginning to creep into that over-the-top tone that the Moore films would thrive in, the decision was made to tone this one down and be more faithful to the Fleming novel... which was more of a straight forward spy film, even though it was written post THUNDERBALL and included the mega-villain Blofeld and SPECTRE instead of the Russians and SMERSH, as the books before McClory came along did. This was more like FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE in tone - even with the mega-villain. And Connery almost starred. Originally this was going to come right after McClory’s THUNDERBALL to kind of correct course, but the problem was - there was no snow! This story involves epic ski chases, and for that you need a snowy winter. So the Japan based YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE was made instead... and Connery decided that would be his last Bond film. So they scrambled to find a replacement, and ended up with this Lazenby fellow.

The reason why this is often considered the best in the series by fans is due to that course correction back to the FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE tone - it’s a great mix of amazing action and exotic locations and real suspense scenes along with great characters and real emotions. This is the movie where James Bond gets married, where James Bond cries. You may think that both of those are out of character, but that is what makes this film special - we get to see a different side of Bond as well as the usual stuff. And Lazenby knows how to throw a punch! He did most of his own stunts (broke his arm doing a skiing stunt, so in some scenes he has his coat over his arm to hide the cast) and broke a stuntman’s nose in a fight scene. Australia!

BOND MEETS HIS MATCH

The story opens without showing Bond’s face as he speeds down a winding ocean side road in the latest model Aston-Martin, and is passed by a beautiful woman - Tracy (Diana Rigg) in a red Mercury Cougar convertible. When he lights a cigarette we can see his face for the first time - a new Bond (George Lazenby). He pulls off the road when he spots Tracy’s parked car and watches as she attempts to commit suicide by walking into the sea - and speeds down to rescue her. After setting her down on the sand, he is suddenly attacked by two men - and we get a vicious fight scene that uses boat anchors and oars and everything else as weapons - the thing that I loved about the Connery fight scenes was that they were brutal and inventive and it always seemed like stunt men might have actually been hurt in the process. This is one of those fight scenes. Great way to start a movie. After Bond beats both of the much larger guys, Tracy gets into her car and speeds off... and Bond races to his car and tries to speed after her...

Spotting her car parked in front of a luxury hotel and casino.

Bond and Tracy hook up after some gambling.

The next morning, she is gone... and so is his gun.

Hey, I have just left out another freaking brutal fight scene between Bond and a HUGE guy in Tracy’s hotel room - she gave him the key, and instead of being greeted by her he almost gets his ass whipped, then goes back to his own room and finds her in bed waiting for him - and a suspense scene where that HUGE guy goes to Bond’s room while he and Tracy are screwing and almost breaks in... then decides not to. There are too many fight scenes and suspense scenes in this movie to mention all of them, so just assume that there are a couple between every scene that I do mention. (That’s why this is a fan favorite - no shortage of action and suspense).

When Bond leaves the hotel, that HUGE guy and another guy are waiting for him in the parking area... with Bond’s gun. They kidnap him (after a fight) and take him in a suspense filled scene to the docks where he meets...

Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) who is the head of the Corsican mob - but like all mobsters he has a front in construction. He is Tracy’s father, and tries to convince Bond to be Tracy’s Bodyguard/Lover/Role Model because she is wild and needs to be tamed. He offers Bond a bunch of money... but Bond explains that he’s an agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and what he really wants is information of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas this time around) and his cat. Draco says that might be possible...

TWO FILMS IN ONE!

When Bond shows up at M’s office and throws his hat and flirts with Moneypenny and gets chewed out and taken off the Blofeld case and hands in his resignation, he goes back to Draco and accepts the deal - he will date and maybe even marry Tracy in exchange for information on Blofeld. The film does a great job of balancing these two storylines - Bond & Tracy and Bond vs. Blofeld with many overlapping scenes. We get a personal story about a side of Bond that we don’t normally see, and probably the most exciting Bond story... which includes a virus designed to spread throughout the world.

We get a great suspense scene where Bond breaks into Blofeld’s lawyer’s office while the lawyer is away for lunch and cracks his safe using a computerized safe cracking machine that has been “airlifted” by crane into the upper floor office from one of Draco’s construction sites across the street. Bond has to get the safe open, photocopy all of the Blofeld documents, close the safe and get the safe cracking computer back on the crane and leave the office in an hour... and the lawyer comes back a little early. This is a cool scene and works really well - with the added bonus of having Bond reading Playboy while the safe cracking computer is trying every possible combination. He steals the Playboy magazine and passes the lawyer on the way out... still reading it.

Bond discovers that Blofeld is in the Swiss Alps doing some kind of allergy research and trying to assume the fortune and royal title of Count Bleauchamp by hiring noted genealogist Sir Hillary Bray to prove his lineage...

CONNECTIONS

Which brings us to a great story element - everything is connected in this story. The title is about *royalty* (Her Majesty) and that connects all kinds of things in the story and film. The color *purple* - a royal color - is present in the decor of the casino and some other locations. Tracy is actually a Contessa - Corsican royalty. Blofeld has a two pronged plan, one of the major elements is to prove that he is the Baron Bleauchamp (royalty) so that he can have access to that family’s money and throne and respect. The way Bond gets into Blofeld’s stronghold is by pretending to be Sir Hillary Bray - an expert on royal families and genealogy. Every danged thing in this film is about *royalty* (even the curtains and wallpaper) - and echoes back to the film’s title. The title sequence features a crown!

As I have said in some of my books and a bunch of articles in Script Magazine, *everything* in a film is connected. Everything. That is a basic of storytelling - Unity. A good film has it...

When Bond shows up at Draco’s birthday extravaganza to start his relationship with Tracy, as per his deal with Draco, she bolts. This woman is Bond’s equal, and has figured out there’s a deal and doesn’t want any damned man who is bought for her by daddy. Bond chases after her, finds her crying, and tells her that his emotions can’t be bought... and they begin an actual romance. Which includes lots of horse riding montages. But just when it looks like there may be an actual love connection here...

Bond has to go to Blofeld’s stronghold, disguised as Sir Hillary Bray, and do a version of that PBS show FINDING YOUR ROOTS with Ernst Stravro Blofeld. And Tracy breaks up with him forever.

VILLAIN’S FORTRESS

Blofeld’s stronghold is a mystery, and when Bond (as Bray) gets off the train in Switzerland he is met by Rosa Kleb clone Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) - Blofeld’s henchperson... Blofeld likes to promote evil women with German accents. They are followed by a suspicious man in a Volkswagen Bug named Campbell (Bernard Horsfall) who ends up the Felix Lieter clone in this story... but at this point we don’t know if he is a good guy or a bad guy, which creates some suspense. Bunt is in a horse drawn sleigh which can cover terrain that the Volkswagen can not - and Campbell loses them when they get into a helicopter and fly away. All of this is a great build up to the reveal of the villain’s fortress...

The helicopter lands on the roof of a mountain top stronghold right out of a James Bond film... that was actually a restaurant in real life. But this place is crazy megavillain hide out looking. Inside, Bunt introduces Bond to a group of super hot young women in their 20s from all over the world who are there for allergy treatments. We will later learn that these are Blofeld’s “Angels Of Death”, so I am just going to call them that. These women have been at the mountaintop stronghold for a long time without any male companionship, so you can guess what is going to happen. I mean, Bond and Tracy have broken up, he’s kind of on the rebound, and in a room full of hot and horny women of every race and country?

One of them - the English Girl - is played by an impossible young Joanna Lumley from AB-FAB... and there’s a great scene where Bond is in a formal kilt at dinner and she writes her room number in lipstick on his upper thigh. Bond breaks out of his room at night, sleeps with her and another girl and does some general sneaking around. He verbally spars with Blofeld a bit about his claims of royalty - trying to get him to leave the stronghold and go someplace where he can be arrested, but that doesn’t work.

One night while sneaking into rooms to have some more sex with all of these hot young women, Bond discovers that they girls aren’t here for allergy treatment. Producer Harry Saltzman, who made IPCRESS FILE, uses the (real CIA MKULTRA) mind control methods again, but this time it’s Blofeld saying “Listen to me”. He is brainwashing the girls to become his agents - and he has created viruses that will be passed by the hot babes (one from every country in the world) and destroy the world's food supply... and then a virus that will make everyone very very sick. This plan is really topical now - not just due to COVID-19, but there is also lots of concern about modified grains and animals and the health risks of eating them. GMOs? Cloned corn anyone? How about cloned cows? Or mad cow disease? (Which gets a mention in this film.) All of these things are part of Blofeld's plot to control the world. It's always the world - no one ever wants to control Canarsie, NY. Why is that?

But this 1969 evil villain’s plan seems even more relevant today. I wondered why they haven’t remade it with Daniel Craig - and the Bond quits HMSS and gets married elements fit the Craig version of Bond. I think this was a lost chance at an amazing movie. Oh, and it’s a Christmas film! It takes place in the days leading up to Christmas, and there’s even a song about Christmas Trees that will get on your nerves and the virus is in an aerosol spray given to the Angeles Of Death as Christmas gifts!

HERO & VILLAIN

As usual, Blofeld is a few steps ahead of Bond and knows that he isn’t Sir Hillary Bray, and captures him so that he can explain the details of his plan and then lock up Bond in a completely escape proof room - the mechanical room for the overhead cable cars that connect the stronghold on the top of the mountain to the ski village below. Great suspense scene as Bond tries to escape by climbing up the giant gears to the cable that leads outside, where he can maybe find some way to climb up the side of the building - but the cable cars keep going back and forth - causing the giant gears to move and almost crush him and then the cable that he is holding onto pulls him out of the building and hundreds of feel over the edge of the mountain. Feet dangling.

One of the great things about this scene and the fight scenes and all of the rest of the action is that Lazenby does many of his own stunts. Though it isn’t him dangling from the cable over nothing, it is him in some of the scary and hairy scenes with the gears. And in fight scenes - Lazenby the non-actor was famous on set for bringing his brawling past to the fights... and actually connecting every once in a while... breaking a stuntman’s nose in a scene. There are enough shots where you can see that it is Lazenby doing the stunt that it sells all of the places where a stuntman takes over. Most of the shots with him in the grinding gears is actually him.

Bond escapes the mechanical room and climbs up the side of the building like Cary Grant in NORTH BY NORTHWEST and sneaks back inside just in time to hear Blofeld’s final mind control instructions to the Angels Of Death - as they open their Christmas presents. Make up kits, where the compact is a secret radio receiver and the perfume spray is a deadly virus. Blofeld will radio the IPCRESS command phrase when they are supposed to release the virus, if his multimillion dollar demands and his royal title requirements are not met. As royalty Blofeld will be some form of above the law - so he will get away with all of this... and now we enter the non-stop action phase of the film.

AMAZING CHASES

Bond is discovered, the Angels Of Death are sent by cable car down to the village to be dispersed to all of the corners of the world, and Bond must stop them... which requires that he ski down the mountain chased by Blofeld’s army who have machine guns as well as skis. This is one of the greatest ski chases ever filmed - exciting and filled with insane stunts, and shot with “you are there” angles by Olympic skier Willy Bogner - who skied backwards holding the camera while doing insane moves, and some amazing moving overhead shots - thanks to a crazy basket rig under a helicopter that allowed a camera man to swing back and forth while being suspended under the chopper as they followed the action. If the ski chase seems slightly familiar to you it’s because this is Christopher Nolan’s favorite James Bond film and he swiped part of it for a dream in INCEPTION. This is one of two amazing ski chases in the film. Oh, lots of machine guns and skiing off cliffs and other fun stuff. Oh, and a skier gets ground up in a snow plow! This is one of the high points of any Bond film.

When Bond evades Blofeld and his skiing army, he ends up in the ski village which is packed with tourists celebrating the holidays, and we have a great suspense hide and go seek version of the Junkanoo chase in THUNDERBALL with Bond trying to blend into the crowd as he is hunted by Blofeld’s army. There’s a great fight scene in a shed filled with giant bells in here, where Bond is trying to be quiet so as not to attract the other bad guys as he fights one of them - and the danged bells keep ringing! Again, the imagination involved in these fight scenes is great - it’s not just a fight scene, it’s in a room filled with bells of all sizes which clang and bring more badguys. This also is a great illustration of “Hitchcock’s Chocolates” - the idea of using all of the things that we associate with a location into the story. Make a list of things that you might find in an Alpine ski resort and it ends up in this chase and fight scene.

He eventually hides out at a skating rink- trying to blend in - while Bunt leads the search for him... and a pair of sexy women’s legs skate right up to him! Caught? He looks up to see... Tracy. How did she find him? She asked her father where Bond was. Does she have a car? This is another example of how the two plots, personal and action, logically connect throughout the story. Because Bond has quit HMSS and is using Draco’s criminal and business connections to infiltrate Blofeld’s stronghold - from using Draco’s construction company to get the safe cracking equipment hoisted to Blofeld’s lawyer’s office, to a later use of Draco’s helicopters and criminal army, to things like this - not a coincidence that those sexy skater legs belong to Tracy... that love story element is logically connected.

BOND & TRACY

Now we get an epic car chase as Bunt chases Bond and Tracy in her Cougar down very icy roads and narrow snow plowed roads that seem more like bobsled slaloms. There is some "drifting" before that was even a word - which is really cool on icy roads! Lots of machine gun fire, here, too! They end up crashing into a stock car race - part of the festivities - and now we have a car chase in a circle with a bunch of other cars that are just part of the race and don’t have machine guns. This is one of those silly Roger Moore things that were beginning to intrude on the series... but maybe the only one in this film. I always call YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE the “Indiana Jones James Bond Film” because it’s out of the fry pan into the fire - one bad situation creating the next, and sometimes without much logic. Though this film minimizes that, it pops up in the stock car race in the snow in an Alpine skiing village.

They end up winning the race, evading Bunt and her machine guns, and hiding themselves and the car in an old barn for the night... where Bond proposes marriage to Tracy. She is the perfect match for him. The strong woman who compliments him. She’s wild, but so is he. They make love, and he tells her that he will have to quit Her Majesty’s Secret Service because it is too dangerous for a married man. This is a great scene - human and romantic and shows us a side of Bond that we have never seen before. It’s also funny and playful - there’s almost a call-back to GOLDFINGER when Bond insists that Tracy sleep in a haycart so that she will be a virgin on their wedding night (too late!) and then topples the haycart so that she rolls into his arms. They’ll practice safe distancing after they are officially engaged.

The next morning Blofeld and Bunt storm the old barn!

And find it empty - except for Tracy’s Mercury Cougar.

Bond and Tracy heard them coming and skied away...

Another exciting epic ski chase, but this time Blofeld uses a mini rocket launcher to cause an avalanche! Bond and Tracy must out-ski the avalanche! Really exciting scene as they almost succeed in outrunning the massive avalanche... They almost make it, but are buried in the snow. Blofeld and his army come after them, and capture Tracy... but Bond manages to escape.

Leaving behind the woman he loves.

LEAVING HMSS

Bond asks M for help rescuing Tracy, but is refused - Blofeld holds all of the cards. He is threatening the world with his killer virus, and everyone has decided to pay him. The threat of the virus is something that no government is really equipped to deal with. It’s a war from inside. Even if they know who all of the Angels Of Death are, there is no way to find them and isolate them before Blofeld’s deadline. Easier to pay his demands. Too bad about Tracy...

Tracy, as Blofeld’s captive, is trying to outsmart him and get as much information about his plan as she can... maybe she will be able to hep stop the spread of the virus if she can escape? This is a great Diana Rigg scene - she verbally spars with Blofeld and shows that she really is Bond’s equal. This is the scene that is usually *Bond* verbally sparring with the villain, where we learn some details of his plan, but instead of Bond being captured and watching the end of the world on television, it’s Tracy.

Telly Savalas is not as good a fit as Blofeld as Donald Plesance in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, but a bigger star. Pleasance had that weird accent and those strange mannerisms, and Savalas plays it completely American - no accent. I think that Pleasance was the best Blofeld, mostly because he was so strange. Savalas always seems like a guy you might have a beer with after work, maybe play a game of poker with (though I guess that’s a bad idea - Lazenby lost a bunch of money playing poker with Savalas at night after filming). The weird feeling helps a villain seem unpredictable and threatening. I never get that from Savalas in this film. They recast Blofeld because they wanted him to ski and fight - but there really isn’t that much of either in the film that isn’t done by Savalas’ stunt man.

CRIMINAL COMMANDO RAID

Once again Bond resigns his job and goes to Draco for help.

They storm the stronghold in a trio of helicopters with a bunch of mercenaries and rescue Tracy (who does a pretty good job of rescuing herself in a great fight scene with a HUGE badguy - that Mrs. Peel martial arts training comes in handy in the film), and set charges to destroy the stronghold and the radio used to contact the Angels Of Death - ending Blofeld’s plan. This is a smart resolution - they can’t find all of the Angels Of Death scattered all over the world in time to prevent Blofeld from triggering them into weapons - and unleashing the virus - but they can find and destroy the method that Blofeld needs to use to trigger them: the radio set up in the stronghold.

But after the charges have been set and Tracy has been rescued and the helicopters fly away, Bond isn’t on them - he is chasing Blofeld! More ski chase action, plus a great *bobsled chase* and a fight on a bobsled. The Bobsled chase and fight are exciting - and the stuntmen who did some of the more crazy things... actually did them. Stuff that no sane person would do. The fight on the bobsled ends with Blofeld’s head slamming into a tree... and “branching off” as Bond quips

And then Bond and Tracy get married and live happily ever after....

The emotional element is one of the things that makes this Bond film work even without Connery. The other things that make it one of the best (if not the best) are the amazing action scenes - those amazing ski chases, and all of the other action scenes are balls-to-the wall great stuff! The tone is less jokey, more gritty, in this film (with one exception). The score by John Barry is probably the best Bond score ever - some of it gets reused in later films.

Seriously - this is the film they should have remade as the next Bond film. It has everything going for it, and very few people have seen it... plus that virus plot that is probably too topical, now.

Something to watch while this virus has you shut in...

- Bill

Fridays With Hitchcock: Masters Of Cinema Interview.

Trying to keep the blog slightly fresh, I have been scouring YouTube for newly uploaded interviews with Hitch or with people who worked with Hitch, and discovered this Masters Of Cinema interview from 1972. Over half an hour long! "Method actors are like children." Lots of great juicy stories about actors. What is always interesting are the film critics who don't understand film. Lots of silly questions. Early on, a great breakdown on the story of NOTORIOUS. On how to create a great villain (they are charming and frather normal). Why *humor* is required.



- Bill

Of course, I have my own books focusing on Hitchcock...

HITCHCOCK: MASTERING SUSPENSE

LEARN SUSPENSE FROM THE MASTER!

Alfred Hitchcock, who directed 52 movies, was known as the “Master Of Suspense”; but what exactly is suspense and how can *we* master it? How does suspense work? How can *we* create “Hitchcockian” suspense scenes in our screenplays, novels, stories and films?

This book uses seventeen of Hitchcock’s films to show the difference between suspense and surprise, how to use “focus objects” to create suspense, the 20 iconic suspense scenes and situations, how plot twists work, using secrets for suspense, how to use Dread (the cousin of suspense) in horror stories, and dozens of other amazing storytelling lessons. From classics like “Strangers On A Train” and “The Birds” and “Vertigo” and “To Catch A Thief” to older films from the British period like “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” to his hits from the silent era like “The Lodger” (about Jack The Ripper), we’ll look at all of the techniques to create suspense!

Films Included: NOTORIOUS, SABOTAGE, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE 39 STEPS, REBECCA, TO CATCH A THIEF, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, THE LODGER, THE BIRDS, TORN CURTAIN, SABOTEUR, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955), SUSPICION, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. 17 Great Films!

Only 125,000 words!

Price: $5.99

Click here for more info!

OTHER COUNTRIES:


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And....

HITCHCOCK: EXPERIMENTS IN TERROR

USA Readers click here for more info!

HITCHCOCK DID IT FIRST!

We all know that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master Of Suspense, but did you know he was the most *experimental* filmmaker in history?

Contained Thrillers like “Buried”? Serial Protagonists like “Place Beyond The Pines”? Multiple Connecting Stories like “Pulp Fiction”? Same Story Multiple Times like “Run, Lola, Run”? This book focuses on 18 of Hitchcock’s 52 films with wild cinema and story experiments which paved the way for modern films. Almost one hundred different experiments that you may think are recent cinema or story inventions... but some date back to Hitchcock’s *silent* films! We’ll examine these experiments and how they work. Great for film makers, screenwriters, film fans, producers and directors.

Films Examined: “Rear Window”, “Psycho”, “Family Plot”, “Topaz”, “Rope”, “The Wrong Man”, “Easy Virtue”, “Lifeboat”, “Bon Voyage”, “Aventure Malgache”, “Elstree Calling”, “Dial M for Murder”, “Stage Fright”, “Champagne”, “Spellbound”, “I Confess”, and “The Trouble with Harry”, with glances at “Vertigo” and several others.

Professional screenwriter William C. Martell takes you into the world of The Master Of Suspense and shows you the daring experiments that changed cinema. Over 77,000 words.

UK Folks Click Here.

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THRILLER Thursday: THE HOLLOW WATCHER

The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!

Season: 2, Episode: 20.
Airdate: February 12, 1962


Director: William F. Claxton (NIGHT OF THE LEPUS).
Writer: Jay Simms (THE GIANT GILA MONSTER).
Cast: Warren Oates, Audrey Dalton, Sean McClory, Denver Pyle, Walter Burke, Sandy Kenyon.
Music: Sidney Fine & William Lava.
Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline.
Producer: William Frye.

Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “I wonder how many of you have had the urge to eliminate one of your tormentors. Oh, come now, chances are it has occurred to you at least once. But after a moment’s thought, you decided against becoming a murderer. Of course, I wouldn’t presume to ask if you made the right decision. But I would, however, be in your reason for refraining. Respect for human life? Fear of the law? Or terror of the unknown. The wrath of a demon such as the Hollow Watcher? For the sightless eyes of a Hollow watcher see more than you might imagine. Even now they can perceive the leading players in tonight’s story. They are: Audrey Dalton, Sean McClory, and Warren Oates. (Laughs) Well, I certainly don’t need the Hollow Watcher to tell me that you’re skeptical. But as sure as my name is Boris Karloff, the people who live in Black Hollow believe in him. The beliefs of simple country folk can create forces that will certainly surprise you. Perhaps even frighten you.... to death.”

Synopsis: The Black Hollow General Store in rural North Carolina at night... as a woman’s screams come from inside, when an older man, Ortho Wheeler (Denver Pyle), tears the blouse off of a woman, Meg O’Danagh Wheeler (Audrey Dalton), and her new husband Hugo Wheeler (Warren Oates) gives her a blanket to cover up. She tells Ortho if he lays his hands on her again she will bite his fingers off. Hugo steps up to protect his wife from her new father in law, and gets socked in the jaw by the old man. She is an Irish mail order bride, married to Hugo against his father’s wishes. Ortho is a bully who basically owns the town of Black Hollow.

The two men go to the barn to duke it out, and new wife Meg tags along to watch. When Ortho begins beating his son Hugo to a pulp, she grabs a log and clobbers him...

When Hugo wakes up, she tells him that his father left in disgrace... and now the store and is his. Hugo is worried that the Hollow Watcher will now come to punish him in the night for whipping his daddy. The Hollow Watcher is a local legend - a scarecrow that gets revenge against those that deserve it. It comes in the night, and... As they walk back to their rooms above the store, Meg looks at the old scarecrow on the hill... it’s creepy looking!

One Month Later: The gang at the general store gossip a bunch of exposition... Town character Croxton (Walter Burke) says: “The Hollow Watcher always leaves a corpse... or part of it” and Mason, the clerk behind the counter (Sandy Kenyon from AIRPLANE!) says the new Mrs. Wheeler got a letter, and everyone is curious - people don’t get letters around here... that requires the ability to read. Can they see what it says through the envelope? That’s when a wagon rolls up and Sean O’Danagh (Sean McClory) gets off with his trunk and comes into the store.

Sean is dressed in a suit amongst rural farmers, and has a thick Irish accent and is charming and chatty... and a burly manly man. He asks for Mrs. Wheeler, and Mason behind the counter says that she and her husband are not in. Sean asks if he might have a drink while waiting, and is served the local moonshine... which he practically spits out. It’s terrible! And he paid 25 cents for 2 and a half glasses of it! A muscular farmer playing checkers (Lane Bradford) says he made the moonshine and doesn’t take to strangers saying it’s terrible - and challenges him to a fight outside. We get a poorly staged fight - no cutting, all a master shot - and the muscular farmer almost wins... but Sean has boxing skills and wins the fight.

We get a little more exposition about the Hollow Watcher, and just when Sean is ordering Mason to open the door to the upstairs apartment, Hugo and Meg pull up in their wagon. Hugo watches his wife affectionately embrace her brother - too affectionately? - and then offers to let Sean sleep in the barn. Meg says that’s not hospitable - why not let him stay upstairs with them? Hugo hints that the marriage has not been consummated, and Sean is just going to get in the way of that. Sean says that he’ll earn his keep - not a problem! But when Mason mentions that one of Hugo’s rental plows needs to be retrieved, Hugo gives that job to Sean... who says he’s tired from his travels and still sad that his wife passed away and a bunch of other excuses... so Hugo leaves to retrieve the plow...

And Meg and brother Sean go upstairs and have wild sex - but we only see them afterwards lounging on a sofa. It seems that Sean and Meg are married - and both are conmen who marry wealthy people, kill them, and inherit. Supposedly Hugo’s father has $5,000 stashed somewhere and as soon as Sean and Meg find the money, Hugo will have some sort of farming accident or something and die. This is why Meg and Hugo haven’t consummated their marriage - she is faithful to her real husband Sean... who killed his last wife Bernice, who didn’t have as much money as she claimed. Meg admits to murdering Hugo’s father Otto and stuffing his corpse in the scarecrow at the top of the hill so that no one could find it.

Meg looks out the window - the scarecrow is looking at them from right outside the window! Sean grabs the shotgun, believing that it’s Hugo dressed as the scarecrow spying on them.

The scarecrow is no longer on the top of the hill. What? Sean looks at the ground and sees *footprints* leading down the hill to the window - it has to be Hugo! Sean looks around... and the scarecrow attacks! The Hollow Watcher! Sean shoots the Hollow Watcher in the arm - and the Hollow Watcher escapes... leaving behind a scarecrow arm... with a bone and the rotting flesh of Otto inside. WTF? Sean believes that he has shot Hugo, and the Hugo will return with a wounded arm...

Meg has no idea where the $5k might be hidden, so Sean begins his search - beginning with the barn. He pulls up floorboards... and Mason discovers him, and when Sean comes up with a bogus reason for tearing up the floor, Mason shoots it down... he begins to suspect that Sean is up to something.

When Hugo returns with the plow, Sean claps his hand onto Hugo’s arm... but there is no wound there. Hugo is fine. Sean looks up to the top of the hill, where the scarecrow looks down at them... missing an arm.

Sean doesn’t understand how Hugo wasn’t wounded - was the shotgun filled with blanks (????). Meg tells Sean they don’t need the $5k bad enough to deal with that animated scarecrow, they should just leave...

That’s when Otto returns from putting away the plow... and begins arguing with Meg. He would kind of like to consummate the marriage, but Meg says the customs in their country is for the husband and wife to live as brother and sister for 6 months. Otto says they aren’t living in her country, and tonight they are going to become man and wife.

Meg whispers to Sean that they have to kill him tonight.

We get a pile more exposition about the letter than Sean wrote and whether Mason read it and told Hugo about it, and even more exposition about the Hollow Watcher and whether it was just some legend that Hugo’s father made up to keep the town’s people in line, and now Otto is using it to spook Meg and Sean. But tonight, it will all be over...

That Night: Sean is setting a trap for Hugo. Hugo hears a noise in the barn, grabs his shotgun and goes to investigate and...

When Sean sneaks into the barn, Hugo is unconscious on the floor with his shotgun by his side. What? If Hugo isn’t the Hollow Watcher, who is?

That’s when the Hollow Watcher attacks Sean. He stabs it again and again - and nothing happens. The Hollow Watcher isn’t even hurt! The Hollow Watcher tears Sean to pieces!

In The Apartment: Meg waits for Sean to return after killing Hugo... and sees the Hollow Watcher staring at her though the window! The Hollow Watcher crashes through the window. Meg backs up against the wall, “I know it’s you, Hugo.” She grabs a burning log from the fireplace and slams it into the Hollow Watcher - he doesn’t slow down. But he does catch on fire! Talk about your slow burns - she stands there and watches as the Hollow Watcher burns down to a skull and bones. She laughs in hysterics as the skull keeps coming towards her....

Review: Warren Oates was a national treasure that I don’t think we fully appreciated while he was alive. I was always a big fan, because he was the stand out in a bunch of movies like THE WILD BUNCH in a small role, and he frequently stole the show in films like STRIPES as the tough drill sergeant. I think this is his second appearance on THRILLER (KNOCK THREE ONE TWO) and in both he plays a character of limited intelligence trying to navigate a complicated world... and is great at showing a character trying to figure things out. We can see him thinking. What’s strange about both episodes is that he isn’t the star of either, though he would become a star later in films like BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. For a large chunk of this episode he is offscreen retrieving that tractor...

This is one of the episodes that “remembers well” - the idea of that scarecrow that comes alive and seeks vengeance, like the crawling severed hands in TERROR IN TEAKWOOD, is something that I remember from first seeing these as a kid. But the episode itself isn’t as scary as I remembered it, mostly due to pedestrian direction. That’s a problem that plagues some of these episodes while others have amazing inventive direction... but this is a good example of how it can harm the story. Director Claxton seems to film everything in a master shot with very few close ups - so it’s all kind of bland. The fist fight is boring. In the scene where Sean is first investigating the scarecrow he looks down and sees footprints moving towards the house... but we never get to see those footprints. So they don’t deliver the scares that they should. Since the scarecrow isn’t actually shown moving until the end, those footprints were the “special effects” that tide us over until then... but it’s all done in a master shot.

There’s a scene before this where the wife says she saw the scarecrow peeking through the window... but there is no shot of that. Again, she is in a master that doesn’t include an angle on the window, so it becomes exposition instead of a scare moment.

The episode seems to have reversals and twists in the story that never make it to the screen, and I don’t know how much of that is Claxton and how much is network censors in some instances. The Brother and Sister being Husband and Wife thing is done in the blandest way possible, when that could have been an amazing twist on screen. Instead of showing them in an intimate situation and kissing, which would have been a major shock moment, and then revealed that they were husband and wife; we get them on the sofa in a situation that could easily be brother and sister... and then revealed as husband and wife. Due to the bland direction in other scenes I don’t know whether this is Claxton’s choice or a censorship issue about even hinting at brother and sister incest... but what could have been a twist ends up just a pile of exposition. There's plenty of talk about the marriage not being consumated, and Oates wanting to get to that, which didn't seem to bother the censors... but that's not quite the same as hinting at incest, even if it would not be true.

One of the things that these episodes point out is the how different directors given the same amount of time and probably the same budgets can either do amazing things or make a bland and pedestrian hour of television. Some seem to see this as a job, and others as an opportunity to strut their stuff. This episode could have been so much more frightening with a different visual approach to the story. By the time we get to that scarecrow zooming across the room to attack at the end, it shows what the earlier scenes might have been... but that’s charging scarecrow is still a frightening image that has been imprinted on my memory since I saw this as a kid.

Next up, a dark comedy episode with Edward Andrews...

- Bill

Scene Of The Week: The Wind And The Lion

One of my favorite films is John Millius's THE WIND AND THE LION, and here's a great scene with Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt on a hunting trip in Yosemite talking about a grizzly bear he's just killed...


The bear is part of the character's story thread - and shows up in several later scenes as it is stuffed and posed and eventually Teddy has his picture taken with it. Each scene with Teddy has some small bit about the bear - or maybe a large bit. He jumps up on his desk at one point to show the pose he wants for the stuffed bear.

The great thing about this "bear subplot" is that it allows the character to talk obliquely about elements of the main plot (a kidnaping in Morocco that may start a war) without being obvious or on the nose. In some ways, the dead grizzly is a "code" or a symbol that allows him to speak about the political situation without ever talking politics. I have a script tip about "symbolic dialogue" - when a character talks about one thing but is actually talking about something else.

This is a great technique to use if having your character talk about the plot situation would result in dull or obvious dialogue. Let them talk about something else... and let it have a second meaning about the plot situation.

Many people think that after the dark films of the 70s, STAR WARS came along and changed everything with its rousing story of adventure. But adventure was already a major component of 70s films, with John Huston’s epic adventure THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING and this fun swashbuckler which were released a couple of years before STAR WARS and written and directed by one of Lucas’ friends, John Milius. There are sword fights and romance and cliff hangers and fantastic stunts and it all takes place in a world far away and many years ago.

It is a great film for 12 year olds of all ages - filled with larger than life characters and all kinds of romance and adventure.

John Milius is one of my favorite directors, and when I met him this was the film I mentioned loving - even though many of his other films are also among my favorites. I start every day listening to the Basil Poledouris theme to CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and I thought PUBLIC ENEMIES paled big time in comparison to DILLINGER. They remade CONAN and RED DAWN and neither worked. His movies were usually about two strong people in combat - and the respect the combatants had for each other and the honor of a good fight. In RED DAWN the Cuban villain allows the Wolverines to remove their wounded in one scene - even though he could easily kill them and end his problems. But he is a man of honor - even though he is the villain. Even though Milius and I have completely different political beliefs, he never demonizes the other side. Though he may not agree with the opposing government’s goals (or maybe even the hero’s government’s goals - governments are usually corrupt), the warriors on the battlefield are not evil guys. His antagonists are not two dimensional mustache twirlers, they are real people.

The great thing about having two strong forces locked in battle is that you get to explore each character... and there’s no shortage of action.




Here we have a story loosely based on an actual historical event - the kidnaping of an American in the middle east and the quest to get them back unharmed. In real life it was 64 year old American citizen Ion Perdicaris and his son, kidnaped by Berber warrior Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli and his horsemen from his villa in Morocco to secure a ransom and political power from the Sultan... and President Teddy Roosevelt famously said: “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” and moved in the Marines. As a romance between a dashing Berber warrior and some 64 year old dude probably wasn’t going to play in 1975, Milius changed the 64 year old man into an attractive young woman with her two children and has the story seen through the eyes of the boy. Not accurate history, but it’s an adventure film not a documentary. Most of the other characters and even some of the dialogue remains true.

The film is a true epic - big action, big emotions, big romance, big stars and an amazing Jerry Goldsmith score. It’s like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA meets RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Sean Connery plays the Raisuli as a handsome sheik on horseback, a young Candice Bergan played Eden Perdicaris, and Brian Keith steals the show playing Teddy Rooselvelt. The film is filled with great sword fighting scenes and some of the most amazing horse stunts you will ever see - lots of horses *indoors* on stairways and rooftop chases!




When the film came out I was a teenager and movies still opened on Wednesdays and only opened in major cities... played there for a month or two, then opened in the suburbs (which used to be called “Roadshow”). So, to see the movie on opening day, my friend Dave and I drove all the way to San Francisco and saw a matinee. Not packed. But afterwards, we pretended to sword fight all the way back to the car. I saw the film one more time in San Francisco, then once when it played “roadshow” in Concord. This was one of those movies that got me excited about making movies when I grew up. I wanted to do big, exciting, swashbucklers like this!

The film was not a big hit, nor was it a flop. It did okay. What I always find strange is how people will find fault with some movie... and then ignore the same problem in some movie they like. The two big things critics disliked about this film were Sean Connery’s Middle Eastern accent (which sounded Scottish) and that they changed the kidnaped dude to a kidnaped chick. Has Connery ever had an accent in a movie that wasn’t Scottish? Did we ever care? And how many movies based on some true event stay completely true to what happened? They all dramatize things! Were there major complaints about SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE bending the facts? No - it was a movie! I think the critics thought it was *fun* when movies had been gritty and serious for the past few years. The year WIND came out was the same year ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and DOG DAY AFTERNOON and SHAMPOO came out. Nobody could see STAR WARS in the crystal ball. WIND AND THE LION wasn’t one of the top ten films that year, though a film Milius did some uncredited writing on called JAWS was #1. THE WIND AND THE LION is one of those films that people fall in love with. I still love the film and watch the DVD probably once a year.

Milius Interview:


If WIND AND THE LION pops up on TCM, check it out. It might make you feel like a 12 year old again, and you might sword fight with a broom... and break something.

I love the Goldsmith score, but also love the cinematography and direction. Just in that Grizzly clip, there are some images so beautiful they could be paintings. Millius is one of those directors who is kind of forgotten now, but made some amazing films... and needs to be rediscovered by a new generation.

- Bill