The Animator

It occurred to me, watching THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD at the Glasgow Film Theatre yesterday, that the sorcerer Koura (Tom Baker) is a self-portrait by filmmaker/animator/VFX wizard Ray Harryhausen. All Koura’s proper magic tricks, the stuff that isn’t just pyrotechnics, involves breathing life into inanimate matter — a couple of mandrake roots, a ship’s figurehead, and a big-ass statue of Kali. But every time he does it, he gets older. Such is the life of the stop-motion animator.

(In SEVENTH VOYAGE the sorcerer is called Sakura, in GOLDEN VOYAGE he’s shrunk to Koura, and by this logic in EYE OF THE TIGER ought to be called KOO or RA, instead of Zenobia, but logic is not the predetermining factor here.)

Enjoyed the film more than before, partly a function of the big screen experience. When I was a kid it was something of a Holy Grail, because it never seemed to show up on TV, unlike 7TH, which scared the crap out of me at an early age — switching the channel to escape the Cyclops’ gaze was perilous, because in those pre-remote-control days at our house, you had to approach the TV to turn it off. And the TV had a giant Cyclops on it. The last thing I wanted to do was approach it. Talos in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS had a similar effect.

Harryhausen had obviously been pleased by the result of Talos, a statue who comes to life, mimicking the creative process of the filmmaker, and so he repeats it three times in this movie — late Harryhausen tends to repeat and sometimes refine earlier hits. This procedure allows Ray to reverse the death scenes that he’s so good at — the slow pangs by which the Homunculus comes alive are extremely striking and had me transfixed (great chirruping sound effects too, “squawking like a pink monkey bird”). The ship’s figurehead waking up and tearing itself free of the prow is a great, uncanny moment, and I love the thing’s doltish, uncomprehending stare as it scans the strange new world it finds itself in.

The only really big death in this one is reserved for the cyclopean Centaur (Ray always decorates his creatures with stray horns and features from rival myths), and that’s bloody and agonising — WAY too much for a kids’ film, and I bet kids love it, the vicious little bastards. Or are terrified and daren’t approach the TV, falling back on the modern Hey, Presto! of the remote.

The actors are mostly second-choice material but do well. John Philip Law is adept at the same WTF expression sported by the Figurehead. Caroline Munro, who was in attendance and ruefully admitted to being second choice after Raquel Welch, is sultry and manages to look like she’s thinking even when the script suggests few thoughts. There’s practically no love story — Brian Clemens’ script invents a single moment where Munro expresses gratitude that Law pursued her and not the treasure — but in fact, he never had any choice, so it’s not the emotional clue she thinks it is.

The warmest relationship is between Achmed the flunky (Takis Emmanuel) and his master, Koura (Tom Baker). Achmed’s like a stereotypical Jewish mother to his boss. As a kid, the fact that Baker was in this was a great enticement, and then when I saw it I was disappointed. But on the big screen, Baker is pretty great. I think Gordon Hessler’s so-so shooting and cutting is to some extent mitigated by the larger screen. And then the greater intimacy of the TV allowed Baker to triumph as the Doctor in Doctor Who — the only time the part’s been played by an actual alien.

Best performance is by Martin Shaw, in a meaningless sidekick role, just with his eyes. Bad hair as always, but good eyes.

Orson Welles turned down the role of the Oracle, so they hired Robert Shaw, the guy who burned down Orson’s house. Gordon Hessler was maybe the weakest director Ray ever hired, though Sam Wanamaker could give him a run for his lack of money. Miklos Rosza is trying to do his usual epic thing with a decimated orchestra. Despite all this, at its high points the film bestowed at least one of the gifts of the mythic Fountain of Destiny, restoring its greying Glasgow audience to youth.

THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD stars Pygar; Victoria Regina Phibes; Rasputin; Nayland Smith; Banquo; King Brob; Rafi; Goof, Zachary Shot; and Quint.

Bulging

WHYYYYYYYYY did I watch BATTLE OF THE BULGE? OK, I’m swearing off wartime epics for the rest of the year.

Ken Annakin’s “vision” of Germany’s last big offensive of WWII is expensive-looking, even if the miniature work recalls designer Eugene Lourie’s work on GORGO. Since it’s a Cinerama/Super Panavision widescreen pageant, there are lots of views from the front of tanks and aircraft to give us a rollercoaster effect, and it did actually inflict mild motion sickness on me, even viewed on a DVD on my puny 27-inch Toshiba, so I have to give them that. It’s the only reason I can think of for George Lucas to have paid such prominent tribute to this minor director…Following Annakin’s THE LONGEST DAY, this De Laurentiis spectacle/ride shows the battle — it seemed like a whole lot more than one battle — from both the German and American sides. But the Germans are definitely the baddies.

There are a few moments of cinematic interest, mainly match cuts connecting scenes: nice to see Fritz Lang’s visual language in play. Robert Shaw with Aryan dye-job and ludicrous accent, pulls on a jackboot and stamps his foot to finish the job — CUT TO a whole line of soldiers stamping their little feet in salute in the next scene. That kind of thing.

Yeah, the characters have been generalized alright. And not just the generals.

The silly way the same eight or so characters keep turning up at every stage of the campaign makes the thing seem underpopulated, even with its cast of thousands. It has little imagination but nor is it realistic in any intelligent way. It wastes some good actors. It’s not entertaining. Why did they make these things? Why have I watched most of them?

“You’re obsessed,” explains Fiona, flatly.

BATTLE OF THE BULGE stars Tom Joad; Quint; Captain Nemo; Fred Derry; Philip Marlowe; Sacramento: Teresa; Harmonica; Donkeyman; Inspektor Vulpius; David Balfour; and the voices of Dudley Do-Right and Emilio Largo.“Exemplifies the error.” Yes. This.

Oh, then I watched MIDWAY — the original, Jack Smight version, from The Mirisch Company, who specialised in war pics when they weren’t doing Billy Wilders and PINK PANTHERS. It actually makes a boast about its use of stock footage in the opening crawl, so that we end up watching a great deal of real death in grainy long shot. A grisly piece of work. The only fun in it is Hal Holbrook’s wacky Mark Twain impression, and the line “These people are no more a threat to national security than your pet Airedale!” spoken by Charlton Heston with granite intensity.

The line concerns a Japanese family who have been arrested on suspicion. NOT, we note, interned, since movies, even the well-intentioned BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, were not copping to the mass detention of Japanese-Americans. Not for decades yet.The tagline ought to have been “MIDWAY — makes BATTLE OF THE BULGE look like LA GRANDE ILLUSION.”

MIDWAY stars Judah Ben-Hur; Juror 8; Pat Garrett; Deep Throat; Sanjuro Kuwabatake; Max Cady; Joe Cantwell; Prince Valiant; Juror 12; President Harry S. Truman; Det. Joe Kojaku: Det. Bobby Crocker; Nelse McLeod; another Pat Garrett; Jeff Trent; Mr. Miyagi; Emperor Hirohito; Franklin Hart, Jr.; Officer Frank Poncherello; Magnum, PI; Professor Hikita; ‘Painless’ Kumagai: Capt. ‘Painless’ Waldowski; and the voice of Colossus.

If  war is a continuation of politics by other means, war movies seem to be just a continuation of themselves, of one another, of Henry Fonda’s retirement plan.

Jeez, the miniatures department are really lying down on the job.

Film Flung in Canal

Sean Connery’s James Bond ends FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE by unspooling a film and slinging it in the waters of Venice, which an act of auto-criticism I’m not going to be able to top. Is it just me or is this movie not very interesting?

It’s built on DR. NO by giving John Barry more sway over the music, and they’ve hired the great Freddie Young Ted Moore to photograph it, which results in some wonderful location stuff in Turkey. Daniela Bianchi is a warm and somehow geeky heroine, wrong for the role but all the better for it, and Lotte Lenya is a memorable villainess. Robert Shaw is kind of wasted as the muscle.

 Filmed on location in the Mines of Moria!

Other than that, I was frequently bored. I remember GOLDFINGER being great fun, and that’s maybe the point where everything finally clicks. And doesn’t actually fire on all cylinders again (I’m sure that’s NOT a mixed metaphor — many things that click also have cylinders, and why shouldn’t James Bond be one of them?) until ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. Which suggests I’m not a big Terence Young fan (he didn’t do those too), outside of CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS. I mean, BLACK TIGHTS is amazing in small doses. But the later work is dreadful, isn’t it? THE KLANSMAN?

Still, of course I’d love to see his Saddam Hussein biopic, or hagiopic. How is that not a massive cult film? Total unavailability may have something to do with it.