Shatter

Kicking, shooting and beating aplenty in this Hammer/Shaw Brothers co-production starring Whitman as a hitman with a conscience. Not much here you haven't seen before, but Whitman is OK, the music is kinda funky and, while he doesn't have much screen time, it's always great to see Peter Cushing.

Hammer helped define the gothic vampire genre, for which we should be thankful, but they also found need to dabble in other fields with mixed results. Shatter did not have the most inspired mixture and doesn't stand the test of time very well. Perpetually grouchy killer for hire Stuart Whitman fails goes to Hong Kong where he fails to collect from disreputable banker Anton Diffring. Corrupt government official Peter Cushing has his men beat the pulp out of Whitman, who stumbles off to a massage parlor where kung fu master Lung Ti treats him to a freebie from adorable Li-Li Li (whose name sounds like the refrain to a doo-wop song). Whitman finds his apartment blown up so he takes refuge at his new friends' dojo. He slips underground for a while but gets attacked at a martial arts invitational won by understated Ti. Without questioning the moral validity of his instincts, they help him in his quest to extort a mil from Diffring. International affairs gets somewhat sticky from here, and the bullets fly freely until the predictable climax. Carreras tries his best to present Whitman as a then-prevalent philosopher killer, but the weak introspective sequences that show Whitman roaming around his apartment fail to do the trick. The apparently sensitive regret he feels for his victims comes off as a brooding doom with little real emotion backing it up. Shatter's intolerance for international culture makes a few unexpected peeps from its veneer of acceptance. Snooty references to eating snakes evidence a discomfort with the behavior of a foreign country. The background story sets this attitude in stone: Whitman's being tracked down for getting involved with political affairs in Badawi, a corrupt puppet country in Africa in which brothers contentedly murder brothers for money and power. Such situations may perhaps at time truly occur, but the same can be found in Shakespeare with less disapproval asked of the audience. The degree of acceptance present can be seen as a sense of tragedy, completely disconnected with the random slaying of evil black or Asian characters. I don't mean to push the point, but I found it odd that both major black characters were played no-name Yemi Ajibade in an otherwise internationally well-known cast. Cult director Monte Hellman apparently assisted Carreras, far more experienced as a producer, but did not receive credit. Writer Don Houghton produced the other Shaw/Hammer co-production, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and also takes credit for the awful but amusing Dracula AD 1972. Scenes allegedly shot in Badawi, a country that does not exist, were probably done in Hong Kong.

Stuart Whitman was a good choice to play the burly and rough-edged hitman of the movie, but it's a pity that he doesn't get much of substance to do. The main fault is a slow-moving screenplay; after the first 20 minutes, it takes about half an hour before things really start to move again, and even after that point things don't really move that much faster. The various action scenes are only okay at best. Though the behind-the-scenes problems the movie suffered from don't make for any real glaring problems, there are still some notable holes here and there. However, the movie does give us a really scenic tour of early 1970s Hong Kong; if you are curious about what it was like to live there back then, the movie may be worth a look.

Long unavailable on home vid, this was just one of the many projects that cult maestro Monte Hellman ghost-directed. So when the good folks at Roan decided to release this on LD, I jumped at the chance to get a copy. At forty bucks, it was worth it. But I had to order off the Dollar Menu for the rest of the week.

It was a long-held belief that Hellman only directed a small portion of the film before being sacked and replaced by producer Michael Carreras. But in the running commentary, Hellman, upon seeing the movie for the very first time, was surprised to see that at least 80% of the final cut is his.

Though no "Background to Danger," this is a very passable B-adventure, with Whitman a fine hero/foil. Whitman's Shatter is another in the long line of Hellman loner-man-on-the-outside-looking-in protagonists. The film also bears striking similarities with the long forgotten "Karate-the Hand of Death" (1961)about an American Karate expert returning to Japan after the war and runs afoul of some mob types. "Shatter" is a decent way to spend an hour and a half on a rainy afternoon, and a find for Monte Hellman completeists.

I have a long association with SHATTER going back to the mid 1970s when it was one of those films that instead of going straight to DVD, went straight to cable. In the early days of HBO where it was known as CALL HIM MR SHATTER, the movie was a late night fixture airing after more respectable viewers had gone to bed. I remember thinking at the time what an oddball cinematic exercise it was to mix a film noir plot (doublecrossed hit man seeks revenge) with martial arts (or kung-fu as Americans used to say) activity.

And what were stalwarts Peter Cushing and Anton Diffring doing in this East-West hodgepodge? Surely this wasn't a Hammer production? Indeed it was. In fact it was Cushing's last role for the company where he had been a mainstay since starring in CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN 17 years earlier and he makes the most of his brief appearances as an amoral police official.

SHATTER was the second and last collaboration of Hammer with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers after the notorious but hard to dislike LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES. Both movies were made in 1974 and while LEGEND proceeded fairly smoothly and wound up making money, SHATTER was a troubled production and didn't recoup its meager budget which is why it went to cable so fast.

Cult American director Monte Hellman (TWO LANE BLACKTOP) started the film but was replaced halfway through after complaining about nearly everything (just listen to his commentary). Michael Carreras found himself directing another film where the director was unable to complete his assignment. World weary Stuart Whitman looks as if he'd rather be anywhere else but at least it's not THE MONSTER CLUB or DEMONOID. Not a good movie but it's not without some merit. The ending sums SHATTER up perfectly. For true Hammer aficionados only.