I'm one of those people that, if a movie is still bad after twenty minutes,  I will shut it off,  walk away,  and never look back.  Once it passes that point, having managed to hold my interest, a movie is generally pretty safe;   I'll watch to the end. 

NEVER will I shut off or walk out on a good movie without a life-or-death reason.

Well,  the saying "never say never" is applicable here.  There was a scene in the first third of THE TRAP that made me shut it off,  in spite of the fact that I was completely captivated. I won't say what it was,  of course,  but suffice it to say it made me miserable;  it took me a couple of months to come back to it. 


The movie is set in the early wilderness of Canadian British Columbia.  It begins at a small settlement,  and French Canadian Fur trapper Jean La Bête, played by the rugged Oliver Reed, has come from his cabin in the wilderness in his canoe to sell furs and buy supplies.  La Bête is in no way the type of man for this kind of (relatively)polite setting;  having spent much of his life in solitude,  he hasn't been socialised in the ways of people.  He's loud,  aggressive,  physically rough,  and his sense of personal boundaries is completely nonexistent. I liked him from the first frame.  Besides selling his goods, he's come to collect the money that the settlement's main trader has been keeping for him from their past business.  This is something that the trader's wife does not like.  She's had her eye on that money as a way to escape to 'civilisation' (which at that time and place meant San Fransisco),  where a genteel lady could live 'properly'.  In a cruel and selfish move,  she offers her mute foster child(named Eve...appropriate for the Eden-like world  in which they live) to the mate-less wild man,  in exchange for the money.   Against the girl's wishes,  La Bête accepts,  and he drags her kicking and flailing onto his canoe...

...off into the vast wilderness they go...

THE TRAP features Oliver Reed in his prime,   the perfect guy for the part of a wild, uncivilised,  Quebecois trapper.  I've been nudged toward Reed's movies for years, so when I found out that he had done a Mountain-man type picture (a fave genre of mine),  I was all over it!  I was blown away here;  Reed's size and masculinity really brought this rough brute to life,  and he made a sympathetic person out of what could have been simply a character...if that makes any sense at all.  Rita Tushingham,  who plays the mute Eve, is wonderful;  she brings a dignity as big as the wild land she lives in,  and her character is brave and tough without trying to out-macho Reed (something so common in today's terrible actresses).

The relationship that these two people have is complicated.  It has it's foundations in cruelty and injustice,  but the deep humanity they have as individuals brings something cautiously beautiful from the situation.  Frankly, I think many of our more prissy 'modern' people would be deeply offended by the whole movie.  Life isn't pretty,  but beautiful things do come from it.   THE TRAP is the same way.

You have to hunt it down...it's amazing.

Relatively hot on the tail of the shockingly fantastic 1953 James Craig 'North-Western' FORT VENGEANCE (got from the Warner Archive),  I wanted to both see and review another of his Mountie movies, NORTHWEST RANGERS (one of the many not in my already sizable collection).  No luck.  I looked for it wildly, even with some of the grey market bootleggers on line,  but I couldn't find it. It was a tad depressing. So, having heard a fellow film scribbler's call of distress, fab fellow movie bloggist and all-around interesting gal-type lady Kristina Dijan, who is one of the stalwart duo responsible for this very blogathon, came to my rescue.  Having received it in the mail,  I watched it quite pronto-ish.

What a fantastic picture.

The plot is a fusion of a few different themes,  one particularly Mountie oriented,  and a couple familiar from many a lovely classic western...in this case I'm thinking back to the spotless and inarguably wonderful 1954 Audie Murphy western,  DESTRY.  It begins with two young boys,  Frank "Blackie" Marshall,  and James "Jim" Gardiner;  good pals across the board (like brothers, in their own words),  but in nature and temperament entirely different.  Blackie is the wild one.  The defiant one.  Jim is calm and measured.  

It begins with an arrow embedded into a tree,  transfixing a notice about illegal whiskey.  There are many empty liquor bottles on the ground...the boys suspect them to have been left by a group of "drunken Indians" (which is, in spite of a bit of soft racism here, a very real and tragic problem,  even to this day).  A very short time later they find this to be a prophetic observation;  when they arrive at their homestead,  they see that those same Indians have raided the houses, have killed their parents, and have set things ablaze.  

Their lives will never be the same.  

They are taken in by a kind Mountie Sergeant named Duncan Frazier (played with a calmly paternal grace by Jack Holt,  star of one of my favourite serials, HOLT OF THE SECRET SERVICE).  Skip ahead to adulthood,  and Blackie (played charismatically by James Craig) and Jim (given a cheerfully confident vibe by William Lundigan) have followed their natural inclinations in very likely fashion.  Blackie has become  a bit of a dapper cardsharp with an eye for the ladies and the main chance,  and Jim has become the very pride of the Royal Canadian Mounted police (at that time called the Northwest Mounted Police).  As adults in a very real world,  those natures are set to collide,  and they do...in spectacular fashion.

Toss in the luminescent Patricia Dane as sparky and intelligent love triangle fodder, with John Carradine as an evil-yet-charming owner of a gambler's saloon, and a great spot for Keenan Wynn for good measure,  and you have the stuff that makes for a supremely fulfilling movie watching session!

NORTHWEST RANGERS, as you may guess,  is a rollickin' good time,  and in that spirit I highly recommend it.  As I mentioned, James Craig,  who I've reviewed previously in FORT VENGEANCE (HERE),  is really one of my 'watch pocket' actors these days;  guys that aren't really famous but should be,  that I keep in a special little category of personal favourites.  Although it's really Craig's movie, William Lundigan is also quite good,  and he brings across the feeling of those Mountie ideals that I admire so much.  The direction, typically tight in true Mountie picture fashion, is well done by Joe Newman,  director of the amazing 1952 Tyrone Power Mountie film PONY SOLDIER and THE BRUTAL 1958 Joel McCrea western FORT MASSACRE,  and the script is the same, written by Gordon Kahn and David Lang, from a story by Arthur Caesar.

This is about as good a film that one could pick for a Canada Blogathon, as it makes me want to go north and breathe the fresh air and hike a mountain!  I'd like to again thank Kristina Dijan of SPEAKEASY for the opportunity to see this great Mountie film.

This is a part of the 2016 O' CANADA blogathon,  put on by SPEAKEASY and SILVER SCREENINGS!  I'm happy to have the opportunity to join in on the fun once again.  Please go visit their pages HERE and HERE to give love to Canadian and Canadian-themed movies!  Two of my fave blogs,  for sure.

SEE ALSO:  A recent post of another GREAT Mountie film,  CARYL OF THE MOUNTAINS (HERE)

I watched the extra features on some western recently (I forget which),  and it featured a load of directors and actors talking about westerns (maybe..."Once Upon a Time in the West"?).  There was a lot of talk about this and that being done to death,  or this and that western "trope" was blah, blah, blah.  It seemed like they had all gone to film school and had been taught that any theme could only be used once,  then discarded like trash.  I wanted to kick each and every one of these guys in the scrotum.  Grrr... 

Even if there were only one existing theme available to use, the western,  I am 100% certain,  could tell 1,000 stories with it.  It isn't simply an opinion, I don't think,  as over 100 years of westerns on the big screen,  on the radio,  in comic books, and on television exist as proofs...the western is timeless and versatile.

I decided to pick a few favourite westerns from each decade to make my point;  some decades are sparser than others,  and other decades have too many to pick a mere three per (three is the limit, I decided).  Also, I'm not including John Wayne or Mountie movies,  because there wouldn't be room for any others...it's difficult enough to make a list as it is!  Same goes for Spaghettis.

20'S:

The Virginian (1929) Gary Cooper:  A splendid talkie in which Cooper tangles with a pretty school teacher and struggles with the fact that his pal is a no-good, consarned cattle theef!

The Iron Horse (1924)  George O'Brien:  This John Ford silent film about the journey of the railroad to the west is one of the best looking silent films ever made,  and is pretty exciting, to boot.  Definitely a showing of things to come by the young Ford.

In Old Arizona (1929) Warner Baxter:  Basically the first western to use sound and the first soundie film to be filmed outdoors,  this was an Oscar winner for Warner Baxter in his role as the Cisco Kid.  It's a very good movie,  and I reviewed it previously  HERE.

30'S:

Rawhide (1938) Lou Gehrig:  Probably the funnest western of all time!  Baseball Legend Lou Gehrig retires from Baseball,  joining his sister on the family ranch.  There's a baddie trying to get control of all the ranches...but Lou has different ideers.  Baseball is cleverly used throughout!

Destry Rides Again (1939) Jimmy Stewart:  Jimmy did piles of amazing westerns, and this is one of the best.  In a town run by a ruthless saloon owner, an aging deputy calls on the son of a legendary sheriff...only to find that he doesn't carry a gun! Bigtime fun ensues.

Frontier Marshal (1939) Randolph Scott:  Scott rips it up as Wyatt Earp opposite Cesar Romero's Doc Holliday.  Of all the versions of the Earp legend this is my fave,  and having John Carradine, Ward Bond, and Lon Chaney Jr.  Don't hurt it none!

40'S:

Yellow Sky (1948) Gregory Peck:  Peck plays the boss of a band of bank robbers on the run;  they hide on an abandoned town and meet up with an old man and his lovely granddaughter.  Weirdness ensues.

San Antonio (1945) Errol Flynn:  Because Errol Flynn, that's why.

Station West (1948) Dick Powell plays a military intelligence man investigating a gold robbery involving two dead soldiers;  it's film noir in cowboy hats,  complete with snappy patter.  It's a winner.

50'S:  

Destry (1954) Audie Murphy:  Purt' near exactly the same story as the Jimmy Stewart film,  but with Audie Murphy!  Absolutely one of my fave westerns.  If the two films were to duke it out,  this version would win by a nose.

Shane (1952) Alan Ladd:  Here Alan Ladd gives one of the legendary performances in cowboy films.  He plays a drifting gunfighter who encounters a family of settlers and becomes friends with them (including their somewhat irritating progeny). When the land baron of the area tries to force them out,  Shane takes serious umbrage, and cleans house!

Big Country (1958) Gregory Peck:  In one of his many great western roles, Peck plays a retired sea captain caught in between two rival land barons in a prairie war.  Nearly everyone thinks that he's going to be useless out on the open range,  but he proves them wrong to a spectacular degree.

60's:  

The Professionals (1966) Burt Lancaster:  A rich man hires an appropriately motley crew of specialists to extract his Mexican wife (ostensibly) from the cruel grip of a wild Bandit leader.  Things don't turn out as planned for any of the above, to the entertainment benefit of any and all viewers.

The Stalking Moon (1968) Gregory Peck:  A white woman and her half-breed boy-child are rescued by the U.S. Army from an almost Ninja-like Indian warrior.  The woman asks a retiring Army tracker & guide (played by Peck) to escort them far away, before the warrior hunts them down...the boy is the warrior's son,  and he'll kill anyone in his way!

A Man Called Horse (1969) Richard Harris: A British lord is on safari in the American west,  hunting wild beasties...as British lords are often wont to do.  His guides get murder'd and he's taken captive by wild, but very human Indians,  and bit by bit, his nibs goes, if one will pardon the expression, "native". A completely fun film.

70's:  

High Plains Drifter (1973) Clint Eastwood:  A gunfighter arrives in town and makes life Hell for everyone...literally.

Chato's Land (1972) Charles Bronson:  OK...when a native (that looks surprisingly like Charles Bronson) kills a white guy in a fair fight,  just let it go...believe me.  Bronson is like an avenging spirit in this;  silent,  dogged, and without mercy.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) Robert Redford:  Though probably this should be excluded as a mountain man film,  I'm including it here because, and just because.  It's just about my favourite western-type film of all time,  with all the requisite Indian fights and wilderness.  That Redford is really quite more than a handsome chap.

80's:

Silverado (1985) Kevin Kline:  A rousing homage to the classic westerns of old,  Silverado is also a great western on it's own.  It has the rare distinction of both honouring the western as western fans love them,  while also of carrying very modern sensibilities.  Lots of in-jokes for fans of cowboy pictures.

Lonesome Dove (1989) Robert Duvall/Tommy Lee Jones: Technically a TV mini-series,  this one counts because A)  It's Lonesome Dove, dammit,  and it's one of the greatest western stories put on film,  and B)  it's the 80's, folks...there aren't too many movies to put on here that can top this prime cowboy entertainment.

The Tracker (1988) Kris Kristofferson:  A sterling made-for-TV picture,  with Kristofferson playing a skilled tracker who comes out of retirement to hunt down a gang of ruthless killers.  It's really good, sturdy western stuff.

90's:

Conagher (1991) Sam Elliott:  Sam Elliott does here what he does best;  he shoots stuff,  he looks tough as a Buffalo hoof,  and he delivers some of the best whollops a bad guy's chin ever got.  It's worth watching way more than once!

Quigley Down Under (1990) Tom Selleck:  I mostly like this fun little movie about a wild west sharpshooter in Australia.  Selleck is great in it,  and only the repulsive "acting" of the hideous Laura San Giacomo keeps it from being a total blast.

Back to the Future III (1990) Michael J. Fox:  Included in a small part to fluff up my 90's numbers,  this is a really fun cowboy movie!  I found myself shocked that it could be taken very well as a western movie,  if maybe the only one with a time-traveling automobile.

2000-on:

3:10 to Yuma (2007) Russell Crowe/Christian Bale:  A slam-bang western action film if there ever was one.  Christian Bale gets hired by the railroad to deliver the outlaw Ben Wade to the 3:10 train to Yuma prison.  Russell Crowe as Ben Wade is as fantastic a western character as there ever has been;  charismatic,  ruthless,  and complicated.

Open Range (2003) Kevin Costner/Robert Duvall:  Besides being a vehicle for virtuoso acting by Robert Duvall,  Open Range has,  in my opinion,  the honour of having the single best gunfight in western film history (feel free to disagree).  Costner did a great job with this one.

Yahşi Batı (2010) Cem Yılmaz:  The first and only foreign film on the list,  and not simply because the rest of the westerns in this era suck.  Yahşi Batı translates into English as the "Mild West", and involves the rollickin' adventures of two agents of the Ottoman sultan,  charged with delivering a valuable gift to the U.S. President. It's very entertaining from beginning to end.

(So, while there have been westerns made in the 2000's besides the above,  I consider them uniformly awful, as they are generally either straight to DVD, or existing mostly to further nonsensical social agendas.)
 
I think that most people still enjoy westerns,  in spite of commonly held post-modern attitudes and politically correct views on the all-encompassing evils of the past.   Though it's unlikely that the old west is the place that most modern people would like to be,  I think that there's a spot inside a lot of us that craves a simpler life; a life where hard work, clean air, and the wide-open wilderness occupy the bulk of each day.  There have been a few attempts these days to do westerns, for sure,  but I look at them less as actual westerns than as historical dramas set in the west.  Unlike what has become known as the 'classic' western,  these new attempts try to make them overly gritty, dirty, and, worst of all, too realistic.  The Spaghetti Western proves that a western doesn't have to be realistic to be great, in the same way as making Hercules like a regular Joe wouldn't improve upon Greco-Roman mythology.  The western has evolved a general identity that can absorb much, and can tell almost any story; here's to hoping the western fans get back to making good westerns again.

PS:   PALE RIDER and THE UNFORGIVEN weren't on my list because I consider them very loose remakes of HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER...but not nearly as good.

In honour of the sad, recent death of Dan Haggerty,  best known from his role as Grizzly Adams on the show of the same name,  I thought I'd put a marker here on Phantom Empires as a small testament to his effect on my young life.  To be honest,  Haggerty's passing was a bit of a shock.  I'd  got the DVD sets of two seasons of the show within the last couple of years, and his influence had just recently become clear to me.  I grew up in the pacific northwest, surrounded by fields and forest, on a farm between two small towns.  I very much saw Grizzly Adams as one of my own.  To me he stood tall with chaps like Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone, and with families like the Waltons, The Wilderness Family, (and especially) the Ingalls family in their little house on the prairie.  Grizzly Adams was a major friend of my imagination in the 70's.  That was the decade of my formative years, beginning at age three and ending at age thirteen, at just the time in one's life when personal values are best developed, and Haggerty's Adams was one of my many good teachers. I dreamed about his sort of life. I stalked the forests looking for bears to befriend (never found one, but my dog Smokey was just as good, and probably a bit more feral),  camped out in the wild forest (populated by fiercely docile cattle and lots of crows), and substituted a tobacco-chewing, banjo-playing neighbor for Adams' mountain man friend Mad Jack (played with the appropriate grizzle by the charismatic Denver Pyle).  

I watched the series religiously...it was cool.   

Initially I considered doing a review of the GRIZZLY ADAMS series for this occasion (I may still),  but that's not generally my style...I prefer less a direct sort of a eulogy. So,  in this spirit,  I present the fun and wholesome 1977 (or 1976, depending on whether you believe the titles or the credits) film BUFFALO RIDER.  Released under the "Starfire films" banner (of which I haven't heard),  it was directed by George Lauris and/or Dick Robinson and John Fabian (depending on whether you believe the titles or the credits).  It has a strong TV movie feel...and by that I mean a 70's TV movie feel,  which is very much a good thing in my book. At the core it's very wholesome.  That's the key here...wholesomeness. The 70's were the real beginnings of the mainstreaming of postmodernism,  and certain factions of the American public didn't (don't) like how fast (and where) this process was leading them.  I believe that shows like LITTLE HOUSE and THE WALTONS started cropping up as a refuge for those people to rest in.  GRIZZLY ADAMS was certainly one of these shows,  and no less so was BUFFALO RIDER.

Set in the late 1880's (otherwise known as the 'olden days'),  it centers around the subject of Buffalo hunters and the mass hunting of the Buffalo for hides.  As the film itself tells,  new techniques for the processing of the soft hides of Buffalo had made it more useful (as the hide of cattle had been),  which was bad news for the existence of those beautiful critters.  Before that era was finished,  herds of millions were brutally and wastefully whittled to hundreds.  

It was in this world that Jake Jones lived.  

Based on a real person,  the Jake Jones in the film was called "Buffalo Jones"  by both the Indians and the settlers.  He left a life in Texas, according to the narrator (rustically rasped by C. Lindsay Workman),  disgusted by the mass butchery of the southern Buffalo herds, and headed up north,  to live life of a wilderness hermit.  His character was known to be honest and respectful;  our wilderness hermits, as Grizzly Adams shows,  should be thus.  He wore the appropriate leather mountain man clothes,  and his long hair and bushy mustache would have been the envy of every trapper and "Griz" hunter from Colorado to Alaska.

It's exactly this sort of fellow that would tame and ride a Buffalo.

After saving a baby Buffalo from attack by hungry coyotes (which he doesn't kill, btw),  Jones takes him under his wing and keeps him safe for the winter.  During that time, the Buffalo,  by this time (appropriately) named Samson,  has grown into quite a beast...six feet at the hump,  and around two thousand pounds.  A bit bigger than Grizzly Adams' pet bear Ben,  wot?  So, Jones gets the crazy idea to put a saddle on his new critter,  and after a bit of creative negotiating,  they become a lean, mean, wilderness-hopping machine.  Cue banjo music.  Yep, banjo music.

Great fun.

The pair have some rollickin' adventures;  they fight a wolf,  chase a bear (a sort of dig at Grizzly Adams, if indirectly, I think),  get shot at by Indians (Samson is seen as 'big magic', so he's in great demand), champion a woman and her infant child, brave rough rivers, and, in much of the plot, get harassed by the evil Buff Hunter Frank Nesbitt (John Freeman), and his shaggy, mean, (and quite ugly) hide-skinners Ralph Pierce and Ted Clayborn (played by Rich Scheeland and George Sager, respectively). The climax is a gunfight in a saloon, and if you haven't seen a bar fight including a Buffalo,  I think you must. Shot in various wild locales,  it made me want to pack up and head right up into the wild country (if, in fact, that still exists anywhere).  This simple and relatively innocent story was, relative to what one sees these days,  quite refreshing and jolly (if a tad silly...and probably BECAUSE it was a tad silly),  and it was interesting enough for me to track down the historical Jake Jones...which is exactly what I did for the historical Grizzly Adams.

Full Circle.

I live in North Dakota,  and last year I visited a place where Buffaloes are kept (they have a white one there,  and a giant Buffalo statue...they're serious), and also was fortunate enough to go to South Dakota and experience a small herd of the big, beautiful, beasts.  In my imagination I tied these experiences together with this film,  which made for great memories of both. I recommend THE BUFFALO RIDER for that lazy Sunday morning (or afternoon, if you're church-folk) in which you crave something light and frisky to spend the time between breakfast and later plans.  I predict you'll want to go hiking afterward,  or maybe you'll try to find a way to pet a Buffalo.

...which is exactly what I did after I saw it;  North Dakota is good like that.

Having loved the fantastic 1962 version of the Nikolai Gogol novel TARAS BULBA,  I thought it would be fun to present the more recent version, in spite of my usual moratorium on reviews of modern productions.  Made by a Russian of Ukrainian descent and financed by the Russian ministry of culture,  it apparently caused a bit of a stir amongst Ukrainian nationalists for it's pro-Russian nationalist message.

This version, unlike the Hollywood version,  was actually filmed in Ukraine, much of it in Zaporizhia, the homeland of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, of which the title character belongs.  It was exciting to see these characters and events depicted in the genuine lands of the Cossacks...it really added a bit of extra historical paint to a wonderful picture.  TARAS BULBA was wonderful.  It was a brutal war film;  the battle scenes were exceptionally violent,  and where torture was shown,  it was as violent and cruel as I've ever seen in a film.  That was refreshing(if one can say that about torture, hehehe).  This version followed the second, rewritten version of the novel(a forced re-write by the Russian government of the time), so the fate of Taras Bulba himself is quite gruesome,  if wonderfully noble. It doesn't shy away from it as the Hollywood version did.

Bulba was played by the famous Ukrainian actor Bogdan Stupka, who was also in the great Cossack action movie WITH FIRE AND SWORD (Ogniem i mieczem).  He has a great older-man's charisma and sense of authority,  and the grizzled quality he brought fit the character perfectly.  Bogdan Stupka,  physically,  was chosen very well;  the typical depiction of Taras Bulba in paintings and illustrations is of a hardened,  stocky,  elder man,  with a personal fire and a jaunty appearance.  Stupka's Taras Bulba is so evocative of the character as written...after a bit I forgot that he wasn't actually  Bulba himself,  which was ideal.

The rest of the casting was very good, if a tad bland in some cases;  fortunately,  as can be seen below,   great attention was made in choosing the Cossacks.  These are men who look like hardened veterans of many battles,  and they give the impression of having witnessed the worst that humankind has to offer.  I was greatly impressed by all of them.  The fight scenes were amazingly wild,  and the rough life of the Cossack was given very little of the romantic, "happy peasant" vibe that the Yul Brynner version had so much of.

               This TARAS BULBA is well worth looking for;  if you like your action hardcore, be prepared for a feast!

See also my review of the Russian film THE COSSACKS - HERE

Anthony Hopkins,  over his long and varied career, has greatly earned my respect.  I am, of course, a fan of his gleefully mad Hannibal Lecter in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but from a Phantom Empires point of view, that's a fundamentally assumed opinion applied to most of the free world.  That said, it's the other stuff,  much of it gone unnoticed, that really sparks me. I'm a big fan of his film bits in HOWARD'S END, in THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, and also in the charmingly sentimental  SPOTSWOOD (from 1992, otherwise known as THE EFFICIENCY EXPERT).  On the smaller screen, the UK TV universe has been wonderful for him and his acting chops. His version of UNCLE VANYA is amazing, he was hypnotic in THE EDWARDIANS,  and the mini-series WAR AND PEACE is wonderful as well.  He tore up the telly in the 1975 film version of James Herriot's ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (alongside Simon Ward), and also in what may be his most interesting role, as the apostle Paul in the network mini-series PETER AND PAUL (backed by a great cast: Eddie Albert, Robert Foxworth, Raymond Burr, Jose Ferrer and Herbert Lom).  In my book, other than his more recent late-career work (the apocalyptically awful  Zorro thing, the nearly zombie-like stint in the 'Silence' sequel and other such mishaps),  he's always worth a watch.

In this context,  the 1971 film WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL is a bit of an oddball curio.  Based on a book by Scottish adventure writer Alistair MacLean,  it's a bit of a spy/action/suspense/adventure along the lines of  Jason Bourne, with a hint of James Bond here and there.  I had watched a bit of the beginning on Youtube, with Hopkins sneaking around an enemy ship in a wetsuit, and I digitally nabbed it right away.  Based on what these elements conjured up,  I was pretty excited.  

Sadly, though not too bad as a colourful minor effort, it falls flat in most ways.

Hopkins plays Navy man/treasury agent Phillip Calvert,  an apparently capable and qualified chap,  called to an office somewhere in "the government".  He's a bit of a lower class bloke,  especially in the toffee-nosed opinion of Whitehall nob Sir Arthur Arnford-Jones (played with google-eyed pizazz by the [more than usually] rotund Robert Morley).  It seems that there have been robberies of gold shipments recently (apparently the government ships gold bars without commando guards in this universe),  and Calvert MUST get to the bottom of it.  Bring on the fights,  castles,  some lovely rustic scenery (the story is set in Scotland),  lovelier ladies,  snobbery,  lots of  yummy gold bars,  and, wait for it,  a helicopter!

Sound good?  Well,  it's not bad.  Not all that particularly good,  but not too bad either.  

I was going to include this in a post titled THREE FAN-TASTIC 70'S FILMS THAT YOU'VE NOT HEARD OF,  but it wasn't fantastic enough.  The pacing is strange,  the plot wanders about like old people in a shopping mall,   and after a bit I wasn't sure I remembered what was happening and why.  It is worth it's own review spot,  though,  if only as such an obscure Hopkins attempt at the spy genre.  He's the vastly most appealing part of the story, even with his characteristic emotionalism and soft-spoken intensity slowed down to a stroll.  I'm not sure, but aside from Hannibal the Cannibal, I don't think that I've ever seen Hopkins kill someone in a movie before.  Well, in WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL he kills quite a few.  He spends half the film running around offing baddies with machine guns, pistols, grenades, hand to hand combat,  and if I remember correctly,  a drowning!  All done with the customary restrained Anthony Hopkins gusto.  I do think that it should be seen,  if only for the sake of a fuller experience of the Hopkins canon.

One thing is pretty clear;  James Bond and Jason Bourne's spots in spy film history were never under any sort of serious threat.

When I was a kid,  forty-or-so  years ago,  Rin-Tin-Tin was a name that popped up in my universe quite a bit.  Along with the likes of Howdy Doody, Lassie and Dick Tracy,  that name seemed to represent something with some sort of kindred connection with me,  though he was clouded by the distant mists of what children call "the olden days".  I knew that Rinty (as he was sometimes known) was a dog,  I knew that he was brave,  but other than that,  he was a complete mystery.

Jump forward thirty years.

As the DVD revolution began,  I started having access to so much great stuff.  I gorged (am gorging) on all those things that pre-internet living had deprived  us middle-modern generations of;  serials, b-reel movies,  radio shows, and other such delights.  Now, even in my own collection,  I find it difficult to catch up.  I sometimes even have a fear of "passing on" before I see the choicest bits!  A good position to be in, to be sure.  It was in this atmosphere that I started to see Rinty films, and even a serial (THE LIGHTNING WARRIOR is, as the kids say, amazing).  I pat my inner child on the head fondly as I watch them,   knowing that I'm resolving deeply held wants developed when I was quite wee.

A few years ago, on yet another Mountie movie tear,  I found the perfectly charming sixty-minute b-reel CARYL OF THE MOUNTAINS, from 1936.  It was a perfect storm, from a Phantom Empires perspective!  Mounties and Rin-Tin-Tin?  Hot dog!  Better than a million dollars, Mr. Potter!  I nabbed it, and home I went, thinking that I'd pop it on my telly,  kick back with a Coke and a snack,  and enjoy.

Well,  I didn't.

I got back to my place and put it on my DVD shelf...you know the one with sixty-six Mountie movies on it?  Yep,  that's the one.  I had panicked in an irrational way;  something about 'if I watch the only Rinty movie with Mounties,  there may be no more!".  So dumb.  Well,  long story short,  I did watch it,  and I loved it.  Of course,  I love Mountie stuff to begin with (one of my many cinematic, audio and literary paraphilias), and I'm also predisposed to love Rin-Tin-Tin stuff,  but this really was especially enjoyable.

Apparently based on a story by James Oliver Curwood (the godfather of Mountie fiction), CARYL OF THE MOUNTAINS is a nice little romp through territory warmly familiar to fans of b-reel pictures.  Produced and directed by Bernard B. Ray (who did so for a huge number of other Rinty features and serials), it stars the luverly Lois Wilde as the titular Caryl (who I know from the excellent Kermit Maynard Mountie movie WILDCAT TROOPER ALSO FROM 1936, as well as the Ray "Crash" Corrigan classic, UNDERSEA KINGDOM), and our rugged central Mountie figure is well-played by the uniquely-named Francis X. Bushman Jr..  The canine hero here is not the original Rinty (if there ever was a single Rin-Tin-Tin...I'll have to research that),  but Rin-Tin-Tin Junior, as himself.

Caryl Foray works at an investment firm,  and as we start the picture, she's pocketing a large envelope.  She sneaks out of the office,  goes to the street,  and mails it...but not before her boss, Enos Colvin (yes, Enos) sees her do it.  He goes to the pad on the desk,  and using a mirror,  manages to read the address that she wrote on the envelope.  Jump ahead to Canada,  where Caryl's French Canadian uncle (and owner of Rinty Jr.) receives the letter,  with a wad of securities inside and a note telling him to keep them safe.  That seals his fate.    Caryl's employer makes his way up to uncle's cabin,  and in a struggle over the location of the securities,  shoots the uncle dead.  He then shoots Rinty Jr.,  and leaves the cabin without the papers.  Enter Caryl's fiance', Sergeant Brad Sheridan, a big lug of a Mountie played by the cheerful-but-serious Bushman.  She's in quite a fix.  Without the proof of the securities (which are hidden in uncle's shack),  Caryl is on the hook for the crime.  She takes off before duty forces Brad to bring her in,  which makes her a fugitive...and in spite of the saying that the Mounties "always get their man",  it certainly applies to women,  too!

It was great fun all around.  Rin-Tin-Tin Jr. is a well trained critter and full of eagerness,  and they really manage to pull off some really nice action for him.    Francis X. Bushman Jr. is a touch more big and lunk-ish than the usual film Mountie,  which I thought was a pleasant change,  especially standing next to the relatively tiny and mobile Lois Wilde.  I enjoyed his performance a lot.  Another thing that I liked was how dark the storyline was;  the uncle dies,  the dog gets shot,  the gal is threatened by prison, etc....the fun of it didn't stand in the way of some good hardcore plot stuff.  They packed quite a load of good story into a mere sixty-minute film,  but it didn't seem rushed,  and none of the plot points were shorted in any way.  It was a brisk little Mountie tale!

This picture exemplifies everything that I love about these movies. It's packed with justice,  goodness,  excitement and fun.  These qualities are often,  in this jaded,  post-modernist world,  looked on as archaic,  or at best, quaint,  but to me they uplift my insides and make me feel good about life.  That's why I like the films of the 1930's,  and I believe that's why the 1930's liked the Mountie genre.

Rinty is pretty damn cool too!

When I saw this film listed on YouTube,  it seemed as if I'd heard about it somehow in my youth.  I'm a 70's kid,  and I have billions of micro-memories bouncing around in my skull 24/7.  This one clicked a few triggers, so I decided to check it out.  The first thing that grabbed me was that it starred William Holden,  an actor that I really admire (I recently watched him in THE TOWERING INFERNO,  and I was blown away by his role in the TV cop movie THE BLUE KNIGHT),  but what really drew me, in combo with that, was that it was directed by Clint Eastwood.  A Holden movie directed by Eastwood?  Sign me up!  Well, It wasn't what I thought it might be.  In this case, that's a good thing.  I expected, considering the reputations of those two greats,  something tough and uncompromising.   What I got,  in a way,  was exactly that;  though not in the form that I had imagined.

BREEZY is about an the unlikely love affair between a divorced older man, Frank Harmon (played by Holden aged 56 at the time of release),  and a young hippy girl, Breezy (played by the lovely Kay Lenz).   After a hitchhiking incident gone wrong,  young Breezy escapes to Frank Harmon's lawn;  her youthful energy and relative innocence sparks something inside him.  As the film progresses,  so does their relationship,  in spite of both their age gap and the vast differences in temperament and maturity.

There isn't much more to the story than that,  or at least nothing that wouldn't spoil the loveliness of the experience of watching it.  I,  like Frank Harmon,  was entranced by Breezy,  and Kay Lenz really pulled off that kind of wide-eyed sexuality that especially appeals to older men.   I was a bit surprised by the nudity in the movie (though Lenz has not been averse to getting her kit off in other movies),  though perhaps not unpleasantly so,  and as it served the story very well,  it was appropriate.  Considering her earnest sexual magnetism,  it put an exclamation point on the entire experience as a viewer...it did for me, anyway.  Kay Lenz really draws the eye whenever she's on screen.  William Holden comes off as that kind of stable older man that would attract a young girl,  especially one that many would want to take advantage of.  The meat of the entire story is the tension between their ageless inner selves confronting the merciless reality of their outer lives.  It is very much a down-to-Earth fantasy about unlikely love,  and I found it refreshing.

Though I didn't really detect the hand of Clint Eastwood in play here,  I thought the direction was solid and pretty tight.  I did see a strange physical resemblance between Kay Lenz and Hilary Swank,  another lovely woman directed by Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby),  and for a moment I wondered if there was something in that.  I've not heard of any deeper connection between Clint and Kay,  but if so, I would not be surprised...stranger things happen at sea, wot?  I've seen Lenz in small parts on the TV,  and a glance at IMDB shows a long list of this type of thing, as well as some bigger features, not the least of which would be AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

I enjoyed BREEZY.  The 70's were a great time for interesting little films,  both on the big screen and the television.  I'm certainly predisposed to think well of films of that decade,  but I think that this one has the stuff to interest and satisfy fans of both love and human behaviour. 

I have to say that I don't like to review,  generally speaking,  films that have this much fame attached to them.  I figure that they've usually been beaten to death,  and what gets written is usually the same stuff that popular films usually get;  platitudes and assumed agreement.  Well,  this time I'm making an exception.  I was so patently against this film in my youth that the way I feel now is practically Born-Again"!   I look back at me thirty years ago and I wonder,  "What the heck was I thinking?".

I've been going through another of my ever-present 1970's phases,  watching all the usual suspects (THE EXCORCIST, TAXI DRIVER,  JAWS, et al.),  and have been trying to stretch my wings a bit, with the help of my FANTASTIC local library.  I saw one that I've avoided since it first came out,  the completely perfect KRAMER VS KRAMER,  and also things like the pulse-poundingly well-done ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (Dustin Hoffman incredible once more,  and Robert Redford proving that shockingly handsome actors can still be tops in the skills dept.).  So I was scraping at (what I perceived to be) the bottom of the library's collection,  and there it was.  Chinatown, from 1974.  OK...done.

hisI've never seen a post-modern "noir"-type film done with so much reality.  It was gritty,  but it also had a thoughtful sensibility and a vibrancy that most fail to provide.   I look at films like the so-so L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, where everyone is running around trying desperately to be snappy and clever,  with clothing that looks a bit like Halloween costumes,  and CHINATOWN comes off as very realistic and natural.  Oh, and the SCRIPT!  Damn.  Any private eye film named Chinatown that spends less than ten minutes of reel-time in Chinatown gets my vote!

One of the main things that originally put me off was the casting of Jack Nicholson.  I came to Jack in his later career,  After he'd sunk into the pit of self-parody,  with a very public personal life that just put me WAY off anything that he might have done.  I mean,  ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST was marginally tolerable at the time because of the subject matter and the brutally unapologetic writing (I LOVE it now),  but I had no time for his legendary snarky vibe and the ugly, over-wrought expressions.    Not here,  I'm happy so say!  Jack's "Jake" Gittes,  is dry but fiery,  a little world-weary,  but not to embarrassing excess (it's a vibe that can go so wrong, wot?),  and he seems to just sit back and observe people with a critical eye,  while rolling from one clever mess to another.  He was so good.  At a time when they were getting guys like Elliott Gould  and Wayne Rogers to do nostalgia-noir (the 70's were not generally kind to the concept of the 30's and forties in either film or music),  Jack, at that time in his career, was just the thing.  Unsentimental and jaded,  but with humanity in spades.

Faye Dunaway,  another actor who has long flown under my radar,  has become one of my new fave beauties,  while also kicking out killer performances.  In 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR she was fan-tastic,  and in a recent watching of films like THE TOWERING INFERNO and the amazing LITTLE BIG MAN,  I'm a mystified by her lack of presence in my younger movie days.  It really could be an age thing.   I'm 48, and she really is the type of classy, mature woman that a man who has lived a little life can appreciate.  She's such a looker,  and her figure is to die for;  add prodigious acting skills and smarts,  tagged onto her natural grace,  it probably isn't a wonder than my dumb young self had no clue. As sexy as any woman in the history of women. 

About John Huston I need say little...genius needs no words.

If you haven't seen it for any reason,  including those that I've mentioned,  I commend it to you with the greatest urgency.  After all,  you may die before you do,  and I promise you that that would be a tragedy!

Since watching CHINATOWN I took the opportunity to watch the later sequel,  THE TWO JAKES.  I was really hot for that vibe,  so recently had I been blown away by Nicholson's Jake Gittes,  so  I took the unlikely shot in the proverbial that this might hold some of the magic of the original.  Sadly,  it had none of it.  Not even a little.

You know how I mentioned the  stuff about the faux-noir,  with all the phony costumes, being worn by overly popular actors trying to be Jimmy Cagney?  This had all of that in spades.  Yucko.   I mean jeez...although most of the supporting cast was actually from the original,  newbies like Madeline Stowe, and even the slightly cheesy addition of the slightly cheesy Harvey Keitel (who I generally like pretty well,  if not as well as Hollywood seems to want me to),  it just didn't have the stones to pull off what the original did.  The original was uncompromising.  It threw life in your face,  and didn't care if it broke your nose....THE TWO JAKES, on the other hand,  threw up on my shoes metaphorically,  and I really should have expected that.

Another year gone by,  with another pile of killer films in the can.  I've been busier watching than writing,  with a move to a new city,  Fargo (which has proved quite boring),  a bunch of dead social weight released into the sea,  and a bunch of incredible trips under my belt.   I went to India in the spring,  all over the Punjab,  with Mughal palaces and the Sikh Golden Temple,  with sword instruction at the Sikh gatka and lots of Biryani for supper.  Then I went on a short tour of Eastern Austria, which would have been quite dull but for the mountain scenery (which, after about three years in the flatlands of North Dakota was a treeat) and medieval towns.  Then I went to London and Oxford, in England, obviously,  fishing for a future education, with several visits to the British museum.  I'm off for there again shortly,  a similar (if shorter) trip,  with the Ashmolean museum added to the agenda.  I picked up two real, quality sabres this year,  as well as a very nice sword cane with a fine carbon steel blade,  just in case one would need to defend the castle from invaders, wot? 

I'm looking forward to the upcoming possibilities.  Happy New Year!

What a stunningly good film!  Hot on the heels of the OTHER Leslie Howard version of the Pimpernel story (from 1934,  which I reviewed HERE),   this one from 1941 takes the theme into new and appropriately dangerous  territory.  The 1934 version was a wonderful vision of the original stories by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: a daring nobleman and his pals act the fop, while all the while saving the French nobility from citizen Robespierre's  Lady Guillotine.  This one,  though similar in spirit,  lifts the structure of the thing and drops it squarely into the worst part of WWII...the Nazis replace the murdering revolutionaries, the intellectuals replace the French nobility,  and, as Cambridge Archaeologist Horatio Smith,  Howard is a very interesting form of the elusive Pimpernel...

It's WWII, as I mentioned,  and the odd-yet-charming professor Smith is up to something.  Between lecturing students and chatting with fellow academics,  he's concocting secret and very subtle plans.  One day,  while teaching a class,  he asks for volunteers for a class trip,  for the purpose (ostensibly) to search for pre-modern Aryan civilisation in Germany;  the only catch is that they'll have to come into close contact with the Nazis.   Of course he gets his group together,  spunky young chaps with a taste for adventure,  and they're off to the Fatherland for a bit of sport.

While there,  Smith encounters the humourously evil Nazi General von Graum,  played brilliantly by Francis Sullivan (who was also wonderful in the 1948 version of Oliver Twist with Alec Guiness).  Von Graum has been given the thankless task of catching the mysterious character that has been freeing these prisoners from captivity. The good professor immediately gets on von Graum's radar,  and the verbal battles begin...with great wit and subtle ferocity:

To say much more would really spoil much of the considerable fun;  suffice it to say that there is a lady involved,  and our intrepid students learn about our daring Pimpernel and get into the fun.

I thought it was a charming idea to cross-pollinate the two universes together;  it was a time when suchlike characters were badly needed,  and to make a movie like this at that time was just the sort of thing to inspire that kind of action.  Apparently this film was part inspiration for the brave acts of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg,  who helped free thousands of Jews from Nazi atrocities,  apparently telling a relative after watching it that this was the kind of thing he would like to do.   What better testament, wot?   I myself was very inspired by the general atmosphere of the thing,  as I,  like most of us,  grew up with the deadly gravitas of the second world war echoing about from every corner of world culture.

All in all it's a great classic film,  made somehow greater by the freshness of it's relative obscurity.  I wonder why more people haven't mentioned it;  it has everything that classic films are made of,  with in-jokes for the fans of the Pimpernel tales, and snappy dialogue in spades.  I hope that someday it'll get more of it's due...it really deserves the attention.

                                 I generally try not to post this many screenshots,  but it's a good looking picture!

I'd also like to point out that the race roles in the film, while possibly not passing the Malcolm X test,  were seriously sympathetic for the time;  the black cook was actually quite strong (his little Caucasian buddy was the clown here),  and the Chinese were (excepting Wing Toy) mostly played by (gasp!) actual Asians!  Imagine the most powerful character in a 1927 film being Chinese, and being played by a Chinese actor...that's pretty great.

To me, this was the perfect choice with which to celebrate William Boyd's birthday.

I was told a quote once by a friend, and I'm paraphrasing here, "if the Western myth- ologised the west, then the Spaghetti Western mythologised the Western".  I was never going to quote that on this blog;  it seemed too "film buff"-ish and trite, however cool and accurate a statement it is.  After I saw MASSACRE TIME,  I felt that it was a needed bone in the skeleton of this article.

MASSACRE TIME was made immediately after it's star, Franco Nero, had finished the hit DJANGO with Sergio Corbucci.  DJANGO was such an intense experience for me that I actually avoided this one; how could something be very good in the stark shadow of a legendary film like that?

I needn't have worried.  Here, director Lucio Fulci avoids the surreal apocalytic energy of DJANGO completely...this is a totally different beast.  MASSACRE TIME,  more than any other Spaghetti that I've seen, is a stunning catalogue of western archetypes.  Read differently, one could say that it's full of stereotypes, but in this case I don't believe that to be true.  Each character,  each plot stroke, is pure western...distilled into a strong whiskey that goes down smooth.

Nero plays Tom Corbett, a man far away from home.  He's given a message that he needs to return to his family...something is not right.  When he arrives,  he finds that the ancestral land has been taken by a ruthless land baron,  his mother is poor,  and his brother, Jeffrey Corbett(played excellently by George Hilton), has become a lazy, worthless drunk(in spite of the fact that he still kicks serious ass), doing side work for the town blacksmith.  The town is brutalised by the sociopathic son of the land baron, who hunts humans for sport, and kills unarmed men in the street; his depravity is further displayed in a near-blatant display of father/son incestuous lust...

...something has to be done, and the Corbett brothers are going to have to do it.
 
Ha!  We've seen this movie,  right?  Well,  in a certain way, yes,  but in many other ways,  no.  The real-time experience is far beyond the familiar sum of it's parts. Each of these characters seem like a potent concentrate of every other character like them in every western ever made,  but pounded into a hard, raspy,  grit that keeps you staring at it.  It's that larger-than-life energy that pours across the screen. Where DJANGO took the essence of the western and burned it alive, screaming, begging for eternity,  MASSACRE TIME is like an ancient slab of rock, with the history of the cowboy picture chiseled into it like jagged Hittite cuneiform.

My favourite character, other than Franco Nero's,  is the Chinese blacksmith,  played by the highly amusing Tchang Yu.  Typical for his character,  he's the town blacksmith,  the barber,  the undertaker,  and in a fun barfight scene,  the saloon piano player(a mighty fine Ragtime player he is too, apparently...long before ragtime was invented!).  He totes out the sayings of Confucius at key moments,  but then contradicts them, using the realities of the town as the counter, "Confucius say, if you want to live a long life, try to be ignorant, and know nothing...but in this town, you have to know a lot of things to live a long life".  Very amusing.  Add to that a hilariously crass love of money, and you have one of my top secondary characters in Spaghetti Westerns.

Honestly,  many people give Clint Eastwood the title "king of the Spaghetti Western",  but I think it really belongs to Franco Nero.  What Clint does to a role is amazing,  a burned-hard gunfighter that commands every scene he's in.  There's something of the outsider to him as well.  He has too much of the DNA of the American western woven into his genome to be a full denizen of this unique, almost surreal universe.  Nero is the Spaghetti Western universe incarnate;  harsh,  intense, and brutal, without those delicate subtleties that make him like us.  He isn't like us.  He's the glaring orange of the sun-tortured mesa,  the deafening crack of a rifle shot, and the static coldness of a man left to die in the mud.  I'm always possessed by his cold gravitas, and the things that he lacks as a finely-drawn human make everything he does more of a simple, hard statement. That's what the Spaghetti Western is to me;  a series of simple, barbaric, almost  mythological statements.

MASSACRE TIME is an excellent Western movie experience.

Recently I was digging though my discs looking for something to watch.  I have tons of great stuff,  but the mood monster being what it is, my eyes rolled over the titles,  nonplussed.  They were glazing over as I passed through the genres.  Fortunately I passed by one of the best films in my collection,  if not one of the best ever made...Gunga Din! 

I snapped it up and gobbled it down like seasoned curly fries.

Sadly,  and I mean SADLY,  it was over far too soon for my movie craving.  It strikes so many chords for me;  adventure, history,  the British Empire,  Rudyard Kipling (I'm a big fan),  and more importantly,  one of the best casts of any move ever made.  The 30's, right?  Such an era...so many fantastic pictures.  I really wanted more of the same,  but really,  are there more like that?  Well,  actually there are,  and lots of them.  I went back to my shelves for another look.

Well,  I dug up a Hammer Films collection I'd picked up last year,  the "Icons of Adventure".  I'm not one who would normally buy Hammer films (too many hipsters into them for postmodernist kitsch),  but with titles like The Pirates of Blood River, and The Terror of the Tongs,  what self-respecting pulp fiction fiend could resist?  I took it out for the British Empire actioner Stranglers of Bombay.  It was perfect for my mood, according to its description;  The British East India Company of the 1830s is being assailed by wealthy landowners for the lack of protection for their convoys.  Entire convoys are disappearing,  and in fact,  so are thousands of individuals all over India.  Could the mysterious killer cult of Kali be behind it?

Uh,  there probably isn't anything in my collection closer to Gunga Din content-wise than that.

So I did my usual thing and watched the trailer clip on Youtube.  "It's true!",  the narrator exclaimed.  "It really happened!",  he said. There were lots of sharp cuts to a statue of Kali,  and to wild-eyed cultists in loincloths.  This obsession with shocking acts that we're supposed to (on some level) be titillated by, was pretty off-putting.  What can I say,  I'm old fashioned in many ways.  It seemed pretty bad...exploitation cinema at its cheesiest.  In the end, obviously,  I decided to give it a shot. I was hungry for the vibe,  and beside that,  I had actually forked out the cash for the set, right?  I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Stranglers of Bombay is 100% traditional Cliffhanger serial/B-reel in feel.  The production is very much that of the later serials,  with all the same choices that have come to embody that style.  The costuming,  the filming,  the plot,  the script,  all were just as any pulp magazine-type critter would wish them to be;  full of action,  mystery,  and exotic, far-off locales.  There were honestly moments when I expected The Phantom to burst out of the jungle,  or to see Commando Cody duking it out with a herd of Thuggee cultists! 

The cast was shockingly good, as well.  When I read that famed film baddie Guy Rolfe was our hero, I was surprised.  He's a great actor,  and some of his villains are among the best in classic film.  Was he hero material though?  As it turns out,  yes he is,  and very much so.  It shouldn't have amazed me.  He's been in some of my fave movies of all time.  Ivanhoe (1952),  King of Kings (1961),  Taras Bulba (1962),  Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, reviewed by me HERE),  were all amazing films,  and the list really does go on and on.  He brings a special kind of arrogance and class which make his villains something special, and after watching Stranglers of Bombay it seems that he had so much more in this toolbox.

His character, Captain Harry Lewis,  is very serious in this one.  He's the kind of man that thinks,  and feels,  who observes and takes part in equal measure.  It's this empathetic approach,  especially in political matters between the East India Company and the Indian people, that has him marginalised in his position.  His penchant for mixing with the people,  for treating them as fellow humans,  has created such a bond with them that, when so many go missing, he is possessed by the need to know why.  He presses his superior officer to form a team to investigate the disappearances.  It backfires when his commanding officer brings in the son of an old school chum, the mildly stalwart but priggish Captain Christopher Connaught-Smith (played perfectly by Aussie/Brit actor Allan Cuthbertson) to do the job.  Of course,  the new guy has no understanding of the indigenous culture, and on top of that,  he believes that Captain Lewis is imagining things.

He quickly found out the ghastly truth!

Ghastly it was,  indeed.  The goggle-eyed villain relished in the cutting off of hands, and the gouging out of eyes, as well as the ubiquitous stranglings that the Thuggee dacoits were so famous for.  I really did like this a whole lot,  and frankly,  I have no idea why I hadn't heard about it.  It has so much of everything that I enjoy about that genre (if stiff-upper-lip British adventuring is a genre),  and true to all such excellent things,  it left me howling for more.  It had lots surprises,  and lots of things to keep a diehard pulp addict occupied.  Speaking of addicts,  the Doctor Who fans out there will be thrilled by Roger Delgado (who played the ever-so-evil Master, of course) in the cast,  who plays the evil Hindu priest's main henchman!

I was very impressed all around.  Of course there were a few quibbles to be had if one decided to look for them,  but the fun I had made overlooking them a pleasure.  Well,  perhaps not the scene depicted here with the three Indians playing the Dholak drums.  The first guy is quite excellent,  but the other two are literally wiggling their hands anti-rhythmically over the drums.  I studied Indian and near/central Asian percussion for many years, so probably nobody will notice but me;  it's my tiny little cross to bear in regards to this film.  

I would certainly recommend it to anyone who loves this sort of thing.  I promise that it will be a pleasantly adventurous romp through Gunga Din territory,  and while lacking the epic scope and thespic virtuosity of that most revered classic, it certainly makes up for it with pulpy goodness!

It's worth mentioning here the very good 1988 Pierce Brosnan film The Deceivers, which follows a similar path. A British officer encounters the Thuggee, and in infiltrating their ranks, begins to become one of them.  It's a sort of British Raj Donnie Brasco.  It's based on the book of the same name,  published in 1952, and written by the incredible Lt. Colonel John Masters.  Masters, besides being one of my favourite writers,  was at the front lines in the enforcement of the Empire in India.  His books are unabashed in their frankness in regards to the subject,  and are incredibly well written.