Chronological Bond: From Russia With Love

Year: 1963
Series Number: 2
Director: Terence Young
James Bond: Sean Connery

After just short of two months, it’s time to return to the James Bond series with the second film, From Russia With Love. I hadn’t intended for it to take so long to get back to “Chronological Bond”, but I honestly just lost track of it for a bit. But delays or not, the series will saunter onward.

As I enjoyed Dr. No, I was glad to see that director Terence Young was still at the helm for the second film. I already knew Connery would remain as Bond for a while, of course, but the Bond directors aren’t talked about quite as much as the Bond actors. It’s a shame because there are definite signs of growth in From Russia With Love in terms of the action and the story.

Chronological Bond: Dr. No

Year: 1962
Series Number: 1
Director: Terence Young
James Bond: Sean Connery

After starting off with a non-canonical entry, it’s finally time to start with the official entries in the James Bond series, with Dr. No. The film didn’t just start off the James Bond series, it started an entire genre of spy films and spy spoofs… some series, such as Matt Helm or Harry Palmer went on for a few entries themselves though none were anywhere near as successful or notable as James Bond (in fact, if we want to look for a movie series that has more entries, we have to include shorts, and even then it’s pretty much only Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges.)

La Jetée

La Jetée is a film that is often cited as influential among science fiction movies, time travel movies in particular. Released in 1962, it tops Time‘s list of time-travel films, and it is cited as having an impact on several later films, most particularly 12 Monkeys. And yet, as influential as it is, it’s not surprising that the average film-goer is unfamiliar with it. It’s a bit on the old side, at least as modern viewers count such things, and is a foreign film, and a short one at that; these are all things which contribute to obscurity. There’s also the fact that Chris Marker’s 28-minute film is, by any reckoning, a rather unusual film, lacking virtually all of the hallmarks of a typical film save narrative. It not only lacks a large cast, but the three major cast members don’t even have names: they are simply the man (Davos Hanich), the woman (Hélène Chatelain), and the Experimenter (Jacques Ledoux). None of them have any dialogue; the story is told through narration given in voice over. I was watching an English translation courtesy of the Criterion collection, so I do not know who was providing this voice-over.

Favorite Films: A Charlie Brown Christmas

“Christmastime is here… happiness and cheer…
Fun for all that children call their favorite time of year…”

Debuting in 1950 as “Lil Folks”, and subsequently dubbed Peanuts by the syndicate (a name its creator was never happy with), Charles Schulz’s comic featuring “Good ol’” Charlie Brown was an unparalleled success on the newspaper page. The strip lasted 50 years, until Schulz’s retirement and death (the night before the final strip ran), and until its original run ended was one of the most popular. Even several years after it went into reruns, it was considered noteworthy for a newspaper to drop the strip. There’s something eminently relatable about the group of kids — and Charlie Brown in particular. He constantly fails, and it’s often his own fault, but he keeps trying anyway.

The animated specials have been as popular in their own right as the comic strip, and it’s likely as many people recognize the characters from television as from the newspaper. So perhaps it’s appropriate that the first of those specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas had a very “Charlie Brown” genesis.

Morbid Curiosity Files: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Note: Due to time constraints and a spotty internet connection, I wasn’t able to get a new review written today. So I dug up a review I wrote in 2009 on another site. I apologize for the recycled content, but as less than 1% of my regular readers have seen it before, I figure it’s better than missing an update. It doesn’t feel as “polished” as my current reviews, which considering I’m aware I still have room for improvement makes it a little strange for me to read. Nevertheless, aside from a few minor corrections, I have left the text unaltered.

Strangely, this film is not quite as gloriously bad as it sounds. Oh, it’s bad all right. But you won’t see Santa Claus strapping on an AK-47 and laying waste to Martian phalanxes. The conquering is, sadly, more metaphorical than that.

Made in 1964, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is obviously meant more for kids than for adults. It opens and closes with a song, “Hooray for Santa Claus”, which spells out Santa Claus’s name, emphasizes that this is the proper spelling, and then consistently fails to call him anything but “Santy Claus” throughout the whole song. And it’s not just my ears hearing it a particular way, as the closing credits show the words so you can warble along, and it’s definitely “Santy Claus” everywhere except where the song tells you how it’s spelled.

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol

I have Michael at It Rains, You Get Wet to thank for this one; he brought it up in discussion of my Top 10 Christmas Specials, and mentioned it was the first animated Christmas special made for television. I had never seen this before, so I decided to track it down and watch it.

I did wonder a bit how this adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol would work. After all, if it’s Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, then obviously Mister Magoo must be playing Mister Scrooge, as he’s the only character in the right age bracket. But aside from a few early theatrical shorts while his character was still a little in flux, Quincy Magoo is ultimately a benign and friendly character, virtually the polar opposite of Ebenezer Scrooge (though a pretty good fit for how Scrooge ends up in the story.) The special solves this in a simple manner by having it be one of Magoo’s Broadway plays.

Dementia 13

Producer Roger Corman is primarily known for two things. What most people know him for is a lot of B-grade and occasionally C- or D-grade movies, often in the horror and suspense genre. But inside Hollywood, as shown in some featurettes on the producer, he’s known for being very generous when it comes to giving people a chance in film making. In the case of Dementia 13, a production assistant who had done some uncredited directorial work on a couple of “nudie cuties” — low budget softcore porn works — wanted a chance at directing a real film. Corman was working on The Young Races, and allowed the young man to use the same set and filming crew, and a few of the actors to film a script the man had written.

The young man was Francis Ford Coppola, and the film was Dementia 13, his first official director credit. From that beginning, Coppola went on to other films, which immediately began attracting critical attention. (His very next film, You’re a Big Boy Now, nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Geraldine Page.) It’s possible that without Corman letting Coppola make Dementia 13, his later works including The Godfather may not have happened.

Mothra

There are several ways to make monsters. One of the oldest is to take an existing animal and simply scale it up. It’s present in several mythologies with giant humans, Persians had the giant bird called a roc, and it’s speculated that it might be how the legends of dragons came about — simply take a lizard, make it several stories high, and you have a dragon. Makers of monster movies applied the same techniques, and the Japanese company Toho, responsible for the creation of Godzilla, naturally became known for it. One such film — arguably the best known other than Godzilla itself — is the 1961 monster movie Mothra, directed by Ishirô Honda.

Lawrence of Arabia

David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia is one of several films labeled as historical epics, and is arguably the most celebrated. But what does it mean, exactly, for a film to be epic? The American Heritage dictionary provides three adjectival definitions for epic. The first is that it is suggestive of a literary epic, a narrative celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero. Focusing on the real-life T.E. Lawrence, the film is certainly that. The second definition is that it surpasses the ordinary in size and scope. At nearly four hours in length, the film is most assuredly epic by that definition.

The third definition, and the one most popular on the internet today, is that it is heroic and impressive in quality. And Lawrence of Arabia is most assuredly epic by that definition as well.

The Quiller Memorandum

The 1960s had more spies than just James Bond, though none were as notable, and most were just an attempt to cash in on the franchise. One attempt that the filmmakers were probably hoping to turn into a series was The Quiller Memorandum, released in 1966 and based on the novel The Berlin Memorandum published just a year previously, one of many Quiller novels by Adam Hall. Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate the possibility of an underground movement to bring the Nazis back into power. Michael Anderson directs.

It’s easy to wonder if any spy other than James Bond could have become a successful franchise. In the case of The Quiller Memorandum, it’s easy to see the strengths of the film while at the same time seeing why it never received a sequel.