Escapism

It’s true that Netflix has a lousy classic film selection, except that there are some oddities like EROTIKON and some commedia al’Italia you would expect to find, which we should be thankful for.

But I clicked on THE GREAT ESCAPE because I was in the mood for the smooth and unchallenging. I intended just to watch a little bit, but it’s been ages since I ran it and of course I ended up watching the whole thing. It’s kind of perfect. Of course, it shows war as being schoolboy fun, but escaping from a German POW camp — unlike suffering in a Japanese one — probably had aspects of being at school. Plotting to defeat the system was likely to be fun, with an undercurrent of terror.

We had to pause it at what felt like twenty minutes in, but turned out to be forty-nine minutes in. That’s how smoothly and efficiently and entertainingly it goes.

Elmer Bernstein’s theme is great, but all his scoring is great — when he’s not doing the march or the snare-drum suspense, he does oddly beautiful and tender things for Steve McQueen and Angus Lennie, or James Garner and Donald Pleasence. Harp arpeggios — well, we know he was a Bernard Herrmann fan. Did John Sturges temp-track these bits with tracks from Herrmann’s score for his own UNDERWATER? Probably not. (NB DEFINITELY not: see comments.) The only thing I’d question is the sudden happy music introducing fresh scenes right after tragic ones — but I bet they thought about that very seriously, and decided they couldn’t smooth things over, they had to make hard transitions to let everything play out with its full value.

Lots of Scots in this — four of them, to be precise, meaning that you rarely get a scene without some Scottish presence. James Donald and David McCallum have suppressed it, of course, but Angus Lennie and Gordon Jackson let it all hang out, and do a song and dance about it. Weird that Lennie, who’s magnificent, and John Leyton, who’s blander but very sympathetic, didn’t capitalize on this to find fame and fortune.

I like to think Leyton and McCallum meet up for regular cast reunions, the only ones left.

Time Travails

Chris Schneider returns, with a look at a particularly evocative episode of The Outer Limits.

There’s talk in “The Forms of Things Unknown,” a gorgeous and atmospheric OUTER LIMITS episode which has stuck with me through the years, of overlapping strands of time, of the past intermingling with the present. Which is appropriate, since “Forms” itself is filled with overlapping imagery from different familiar stories.

First “Forms” reminds us of LES DIABOLIQUES, since we’re shown two women (Vera Miles, Barbara Rush) plotting to kill a demonic man (Scott Marlowe). Then, what with the corpse stuffed in a car, it’s PSYCHO — a resemblance accented by the involvement of PSYCHO’s Joseph Stefano as writer. Then, since there’s talk of parallel time tracks accompanied by the sight of Miles looking beauteously vicious, it’s that TWILIGHT ZONE episode with scary Miles entitled “Mirror Image.” Finally, once Miles and Rush have taken shelter from the rain in the rural home of blind Sir Cedric Hardwicke and odd young David McCallum, it’s COLD COMFORT FARM-style tales of “I saw something *nasty* in the attic room!”

Stefano, as we say, wrote it. The director is Gerd Oswald of A KISS BEFORE DYING. The first-rate cinematography is by Conrad Hall — including one of the earliest (1964) examples to come to mind of a freeze-frame in commercial tv storytelling. An additional bonus is the first use by composer Dominic Frontiere of his famous theme for THE INVADERS (“Dah-dah DAAHH!”).

“Forms” has, as one 1930s character once phrased it, “stacks of style” — even though that might mean more atmosphere than, um, clarity. It functions as an “old dark house” story, with distraught Rush seeing flashes of seemingly-dead Marlowe and the possibility left open that this is a product of her hysteria. The uncertainty of it all extends to Hardwicke and McCallum. Hardwicke appears to be the enigmatic butler for McCallum, but it’s Hardwicke who’s the host and McCallum the guest.

To the extent that there’s a coherent plot, it’s this: once upon a time McCallum, while working on his odd clocks-and-strings time-travel device, accidentally killed himself, but … something in the device *worked*, and he was revived. At present, his device has revived Marlowe, but the conclusion is reached that Marlowe is thoroughly objectionable— and Something Must Be Done. We learn, as an afternote, that McCallum began this fiddling with mortality as a child when his mother died and he determined not to return to school until he found a way of bringing her back.

Lots of atmosphere here, be it repeated. The initial murder, which involves Miles and Rush wading fully-dressed in a lagoon — ah, the pervy game-playing! —in order to bring Marlowe his (poisoned) drink looks like it takes place in a debauched Eden. There’s a lot of hypnotized staring, later on, at the mechanical figure of a tightrope walker, accompanied by a Frontiere waltz. And did we mention the WILD STRAWBERRIES-style funeral apparition?

Vera Miles is always more appealing being “evil” than when she’s earnest, and she’s wonderful here. Hardwicke, who’s unsettling, comes within a hair’s-breadth of the camp of Noel Coward in BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING. Rush is ever shrieking and holding up her hands, while running, as if to avoid ruining her nails. Surely some of the comedy of this not-so-young (infantalized?) ingenue and her voluptuous distress is deliberate. Marlowe laughs and looks good semi-undressed. McCallum has a wide-eyed, slightly inbred quality which is not mad and not *not* mad.

The style of “The Forms of Things Unseen” is definitely mid-‘60s — camera zooms included — but style there is, and plenty of it. To be cherished, for the most part.

My urge was to cherish, certainly, the moment I heard Miles mutter “Nobody ever helps a grave-digger …”

*

The cast, as David Cairns would say, includes Lila Crane; Jehan Frollo; Vito Pellegrino; Joyce Phillips; and Ducky.

More McCallum

Over at The Chiseler I look upon the wonders of Sapphire and Steel, with the great Aryan double-act of David McCallum and Joanna Lumley.