House of Cards (1968)

These last few years, American Reno Davis (George Peppard) has made his living as a middling boxer on the European circuit. He’s coming to the end of his rope here, though. So it’s an ironically nice twist of fate when a little boy (Barnaby Shaw) we will soon enough learn to be called Paul de Villemont nearly shoots Davis by accident. Well, perhaps the nearly dying bit’s not that nice, but Paul’s mother likes the cut of Davis’s jib, and certainly his American manliness, and decides he’s just the kind of man who should be her son’s new tutor, and rock of sanity against the family of her late husband.

Turns out the family is the core of an international fascist conspiracy out to create a new world order of particular shittiness; whereas Davis is pretty good at punching Nazis.

John Guillermin’s House of Cards never gets quite as crazy as the spy movies his Italian colleagues made in the wake of James Bond Mania, and its hipness and fashion sense is more on the down to Earth side of the late 60s, so I wouldn’t exactly compare this to a Eurospy movie, though the film certainly is part of the family. Nominally, this is a US production, but directed by a Brit and shot in France and Italy with a cast mostly consisting of Europeans, the vibe isn’t exactly Hollywood.

After a somewhat slow start, the film becomes increasingly fun. Guillermin first makes an enjoyable time out of Peppard acting like the proverbial hammer in search of a nail in any situation where subtlety would be called for, pretending horrible male chauvinist nonsense is charm in so drastic a manner I couldn’t help but see the film making fun of it when nobody’s looking, only to then turn up the paranoia. Why, for twenty minutes or so, this even seems to prefigure the paranoia of 70s conspiracy thrillers, to surprisingly gripping effect. After which, because this certainly isn’t a film made to bore anyone by staying too constant in tone and mood, our hero finds himself captured and encounters a parade of dysfunctional fascists, whose portrayal is about as sardonic as possible. The bad guy actors do milk their scenery chewing opportunities with excellence, so Davis eventually getting the better of them is very satisfying indeed, particularly since Peppard manages to make his somewhat thuggish and pretty misogynistic character likeable beyond the “everybody is better than a Nazi” rule. I’m still not quite sure how he does it, but it certainly works.

The only one looking a bit bored on screen is Orson Welles, who clearly only pops in for a couple of scenes to collect a pay check for alimonies or doomed film projects, but at least he’s trying to convince George Peppard’s little tutee to gun our hero down for real this time, while being all hypnotic and malevolently low-angled.

House of Cards’ production values are higher than you’d get from the more cardboard oriented Italian Eurospy arm, so Guillermin has quite a few opportunities to impress the audience with very pretty shots of France and Italy. Particularly the castle our hero finds himself trapped in for quite a stretch looks rather impressive. But as an old veteran of these things, I’m already delighted when doors at least look as if they were made of wood, and the same shot of a car isn’t repeated ad nauseam throughout a chase, so sane viewers’ mileage may vary.

Speaking of chases, while this wasn’t made with the set piece loving heart of even the early Bond movies, the action sequences generally flow very well and have a nice sense of physicality to them, even though all Nazi goons do have glass chins. The last point only adds to the fun, of course, for what is more entertaining than seeing a Nazi getting punched by George Peppard in action hero mode?

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Evil space overlord Sador (John Saxon) and his gang of mutants pop in at a tiny, pacifist farming community on an otherwise empty planet to announce the place, or rather its harvest, now belongs to him. He’ll get back once harvesting time has come; to prove his commitment to being evil, he lasers down some random farmer with his ship. After some discussion, the community decides to attempt and hire some mercenaries to protect them.

Spirited young Shad (Richard Thomas) sets out in the old ship of Zed (Jeff Corey) the only of his people who ever went out on space adventures to find help. During his own space adventures Shad manages to get together a team of seven (plus some additions that don’t count for my calculation) – shall we call them magnificent seven? There’s space trucker Space Cowboy (George Peppard), computer expert and professional love interest Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel), space Valkyrie and wearer of very little clothing St. Exmin (Sybil Danning), hive-minded psi clones Nestor (Earl Boen, John Gowans and others), reptilian space whaler, opportunist slaver and Sador-hater Cayman (Morgan Woodward), and last but not least professional (space) killer Gelt (Robert Vaughan, pretty much reprising his role from The Magnificent Seven). Together, they just might beat Sador. Perhaps, there’ll even be some of them left to tell the tale afterwards.

Revisiting childhood favourites can become a bit of a drag, but I can happily report that the Corman-produced Battle Beyond the Stars is even more fun than I remembered it to be. As a grown-up (so-called), I can now understand quite a few more of the jokes and imaginative asides of John Sayles’s wonderful script which only improves the sense of fun, wonder and adventure of the film.

On paper, an attempt to get at some of that sweet, sweet, Star Wars money while also ripping off the structure and plot of Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven might sound like a dreary exercise. In practice, however, the film perfectly hits the tone, the bizarre imagination and the general craziness of classic space opera, working from a script that is perfectly conscious of the utter silliness of the whole proceedings but it also wallowing in it with great delight. Sayles’s script isn’t just funny but also packs in so many ideas ripped right from the SF pulps of the space opera persuasion it at times, particularly in the film’s first hour, feels as if he got paid by the idea, turning the film’s outer space into exactly the kind of weird and wacky wonderland it should be in this sort of film.

The rest of the people involved under director Jimmy T. Murakami certainly got into the same spirit. The space ship miniatures (art design in part by a young James Cameron) and other effects designs certainly suggest that Corman told his people to get as close to the Star Wars (and sometimes Westworld and so on) style as possible without getting sued, but the designs are also genuinely wonderful, putting all the strange beauty of 70s SF paperback covers right on screen, and that in often surprisingly – given the budget - accomplished effect sequences. The matte paintings are incredibly gorgeous, the costume design looks as if the clothes from all old SF movies and shows had gotten together and made babies, and the creature design is high pulp. There’s a good reason beyond his legendary stinginess why Corman would go on to use effects shots from the film in quite a few other productions during the next ten years or so.

Add to this box of the delights the inspired cast (John Boy Walton as Luke Skywalker! Sybil Danning’s breasts as Sybil Danning’s breasts! Robert Vaughan, the killer in space! And so on!), giving just the right kinds of performances – with John Saxon then eating them, the scenery, and probably our mothers, all up – and Sayles’s incredibly fun script, and you have yourself a film with all the feverish ideas of classic pulps, more subversive intelligence than the pulps ever dreamed of having, and just a whole load of beauty to satisfy everybody’s inner child, while keeping the outer grown-up at peace.

In short: Damnation Alley (1977)

It's the end of the world (again). After World War III (don't worry, Americans, the evil commies have shot first) has left most of the planet a radioactive (don't worry about that either, it's the kind of radioactivity that does not touch movie protagonists at all) wasteland, tilted the Earth's axis, and changed the surviving fauna in new and exciting ways.

After a porn-induced accident (seriously) has destroyed most of their base and killed all but four men (two of them the drop-outs of the facility), the survivors decide to pack their bags, throw them into an awesome ATV, and make their way to Albany in the hope of finding the source of some taped radio messages. Soon enough, the four are three, namely Major Denton (George Peppard), the kind of military hard-ass that doesn't even leave the service after the third World War, Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), who is some kind of rebel (but don't worry, not the kind of rebel who actually rebels), and Keegan (Paul Winfield), who is a) much too good for his role, and b) as the mandatory black character not long for this world. On their tour across the continent, the boring trio has to cope with all the vagaries of post-apocalyptic life like really bad weather, big damn scorpions, irradiated hillbillies and killer cockroaches (I repeat: killer cockroaches); but at least they also pick up a French woman named Janice (Dominique Sanda) and later on a stone-throwing teenager (Jackie Earle Haley quite some time before this city was afraid of him).

Director without a personality Jack Smight's Damnation Alley is based on one of the least loved books of US SF/F writer Roger Zelazny, and generally does not have much of a reputation either.

However, Damnation Alley is a film that can be quite a fun time when watched by a viewer with adequately adjusted expectations. If you go into the film expecting even halfway poignant scene of post-apocalyptic distress, or interest in the causes of all the destruction beyond thirty seconds of vague yet dignified sloganeering by Paul Winfield, or even just some character development and dramatic escalation, you will be sorely disappointed, for this is a film where even the death of a man's best friend isn't worth an emotional scene.

If, on the other hand, you are in for a one-damn-thing-after-the-other tale about people in a silly yet awesome ATV having stupid yet entertaining adventures while saying stuff like "Tanner, this is Denton! This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches! I repeat: killer cockroaches!", you might have stumbled upon a new favourite movie.

Beyond many moments of earnest silliness - which is always the best sort of silliness - the film also features a some excellent post-psychedelic skies and a use of colour-filters to intensify colours until the film's world really looks as strange and changed as it is supposed to be and which looks nearly hypnotic to eyes used to the desaturated look of all contemporary movies. Why, I might even say the sky and weather effects are the film's biggest selling point - even better than the irradiated hillbillies. Well, I would say that if not for Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic score that mixes typical Goldsmith-isms with bits of classic Hollywood scoring and weird noises that fit the films skies much better than its rather standard post-apocalyptic adventure plot does.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,jack smight,post-apocalypse,adventure,george peppard,jan-michael vincent,dominique sanda