The Death of Me Yet (1971)

The Cold War. A man at that point going by the name of Edward Young (Doug McClure) is trained full-immersion style in a fake US small town to become something of a perfect infiltrator for the Soviets. He seems to be rather good at this sort of roleplay; at least, he’s the favourite of the father of the program that trains him, one Barnes (Richard Basehart).

When we meet him again, he is living in – you’ve guessed it – a US small town under the name of Paul Towers. He has become a bit of a pillar of the community in his role as newspaper owner and writer of anti-war commentaries, and is married – apparently happily - to Sibby (Rosemary Forsyth). As we will learn soon enough, Paul – let’s keep that name – has defected from the Soviet cause, using a fortunate (for him) plane accident to make his handlers believe he is dead. His love for Sibby is clearly real, though Paul hasn’t told her anything about her past, putting some strain on the marriage. Otherwise, his life seems pretty perfect.

That is, until his old masters find out he is still alive and try to murder him, repeatedly. Further complicating matters is some proper espionage that has been going on at the company of Paul’s brother in law. This puts Joe Chalk (Darren McGavin), the most fed looking fed this side of Edgar J. Hoover, rather closer to Paul than he’d like.

This John Llewellyn Moxey TV film is, despite an open ending that suggests ambitions for a sequel (or for a follow-up TV show) that never came, a nice example of the form. Casting the all-American Doug McClure as our Soviet deep cover spy on the run is certainly a nice touch, particularly since McClure (mostly known for his magic fists around here) is pretty good at projecting the character’s underlying ruthlessness without making his actual humanity unbelievable.

The plot – based on a Whit Masterson novel, apparently – is not terribly original and rather too straightforward in its clarity about Paul’s true, decent and upstanding character, but does still build a nice net of differing emotional loyalties for him to get caught in. Moxey, as was his wont, manages to pack a lot of incident and character work into a seventy minute running time, even finding time for a bit of 70s kitchen sink psychology in between the espionage shenanigans without things ever feeling too superficial or the plot too cramped.

As a McGavin fan, I got a bit of a kick of the specific kind of asshole he’s playing here, with his haircut fifteen years out of style, his unempathetic character, all squinty little eyes suggesting a man of limited intelligence who mostly gets through life by rote, a badge, ruthlessness and a total lack of belief in his fellow man. Which is a weird and interesting way to portray the US intelligence community in a film about a highly capable Soviet spy who retired himself for moral reasons.

Three Films Make A Post: A Blood Chilling-Gut Spilling Challenge To The Death

The Strange And Deadly Occurrence (1974): Totally solid mid-70s TV thriller by totally solid TV (and otherwise) director John Llewellyn Moxey. Lawyer Robert Stack (still using his Eliot Ness voice like in the old days), Vera Miles and her teenage daughter move into their dream home in the country. Strange (and later deadly) things occur that suggest the family's house may be haunted. Or is human interference behind everything?

Despite using one of my least favourite tropes in all of cinema as if it were an Old Dark House movie made in the late 30s, Moxey's film is still pretty entertaining, if not particularly exciting. You can see how it could have been much more effective if it hadn't gone all Scooby Doo on its audience, for the seemingly supernatural moments are clearly playing to Moxey's strength the most, but it's a nice enough way to waste 70 minutes of one's life.

I, Desire aka Desire, the Vampire (1982): Ironically, this later attempt at being all-out supernatural by Moxey is less successful than the older movie. A female vampire working as a hooker and as a nurse (and how's that for mixed signals and/or fetishism?) collides with overly nosy law student and morgue attendant David Naughton. It might be the fact that the script is often rather clumsy and obvious where it seems to think that it's clever and subtle, or that Moxey makes more than one directorial decision that hints at self sabotage (wildcat noises for the vampire? Really?), or that the whole affair just drags a bit too much; in any case, while it's certainly not a horrible effort, the film is nothing to write home about in its inoffensive TV movie way.

The film does, however, contain a bit of choice scenery chewing by good old Brad Dourif, so Dourif completists (I know you're out there) will need to have a look anyhow.

The Attic Expeditions (2001): I can see why and how this film has gained a certain amount of cult traction over the years, what with it playing like a homemade horror film version of David Lynch adapting Philip K. Dick with eternal fan favourites like Jeffrey Combs, Ted Raimi and Wendy Robie in the cast. Unfortunately, the whole affair never really gels for me and seems to assume that being weird for weirdness' sake while pretending to be clever and profound is enough to make me overlook less than elegant direction, an atrocious lead performance by Andras Jones, and the fact that the film really isn't as clever and profound as it would like to be. Of course, even in its state of not being very good at all, The Attic Expeditions is at least trying to be different and clever instead of - say - going the ultra-generic gore route, which makes it difficult to be all that annoyed about it.

 

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Three Films Make A Post: More Startling Than Jules Verne!

The House That Would Not Die (1970): Aaron-Spelling-produced TV movie with Barbara Stanwyck as a government executive on leave because of a broken heart moving into an old dark house with her niece. The usual strange occurrences and possessions by ghosts hint at some terrible evil that was done there in the past. It's an exceedingly dependably made film by the exceedingly dependable John Llewellyn Moxey that makes for a decent 70 minutes of old-fashioned spookery, but lacks any spark of ambition or real excitement. The most interesting aspect of the movie is that Stanwyck's love interest is about twenty years younger than her in a clear demonstration that not only elderly male actors were once allowed younger romantic leads. Even though poor Stanwyck's Richard Egan here is neither pretty nor charismatic, I still approve of this exciting demonstration of equality.

 

Tron: Legacy (2010): Remember Tron? Well, Disney didn't, so they made this thing. The only parts of the film (and I use the word "film" loosely, given that this is mostly a check-list-like wandering through iconic elements of the original, but with a darker colour scheme - colours are evil!, as we all know - and more hippie babble than you can shake a stick at) worth mentioning are the fine music by Daft Punk, the performances of Jeff Bridges (now as the Dude in your computer) whenever he's showing his actual face and not the digital uncanny valley version of it and Olivia Wilde. Incidentally, these are also the only aspects of the film that seem to be alive and not constructed by PR people thinking about focus groups with only a vague idea of what the original film was about, and no interest at all in making an actual movie. It's not that Tron was a brilliant intellectual effort, but it was a film with a heart, its very own (and at the same time very timely) aesthetics and a sense of wonder about the world it created where its supposed sequel has nothing but the greedy eyes of a Disney executive.

 

Golgo 13: Queen Bee (1998): Also not very good is this OVA based on the long-running manga by Saito Productions about the super-assassin and all-around tough guy Duke Togo and his inherent awesomeness and sexual prowess. It's directed by Osamu Dezaki, pioneer and veteran of more than one type of anime, as well as one of the three directors responsible for an earlier Golgo anime, but is still lackluster, slightly incoherent and more than just a bit distracted, as if nobody involved were all that interested in making the tits and violence it contains exciting in any way or form.

 

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