The Mummy (1999)

Death is only the beginning. Egypt, between the wars. When an English archaeologist’s son Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah) finds the Bracelet of Anubis, it locks onto his wrist. His linguist and librarian sister Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) understands its significance and decides they must dig at the ancient city of Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, but needs the help of an American treasure hunter Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) who’s serving in the French Foreign Legion and whom she rescues from hanging. They have competition from another team of explorers led by Dr Allen Chamberlain (Jonathan Hyde). They accidentally unleash a curse and awaken the mummy of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) an evil Egyptian high priest who was buried alive and needs the bracelet to defeat the Scorpion King and he begins to wreck havoc as he searches for the reincarnation of his long-lost love, the Pharaoh’s mistress Anck (Patricia Velasquez) … What have we done? Non-stop high jinks drive this comic horror remake from writer/director Stephen Sommers who has the advantage of a location shoot and extraordinary special effects to inject new life into this resurrection of the Universal  classic. Gorgeous klutz Weisz, her dim brother Hannah and handsome heroic hunk Fraser are an ideal trio, the locals are suitably treacherous and the villain is appropriately horrifying:  he’s juicy, to begin with and then gets his body back. Quite the bloodcurdling transformation. The tone of swashbuckling hokum is sustained throughout, with Fraser giving his best Errol Flynn impression. It looks stupendous courtesy of Adrian Biddle’s cinematography and Allan Cameron’s production design, all the more impressive when you consider the shoot was dogged by sand storms, dehydration and snakes, making it a triumph of endurance for all concerned. Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre’s story is based on the original screenplay by John L. Balderston, Nina Wilcox Putnam and Richard Schayer. Daffy, dazzling fun enlivened by Jerry Goldsmith’s classical score. No harm can ever come from reading a book

Time Bandits (1981)

Why didn’t you leave me where I was happy? Bored young suburban boy and history buff Kevin (Craig Warnock) can scarcely believe it when six dwarfs led by Randall (David Rappoport) jump out of his wardrobe one night. Former employees of the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they’ve stolen a map charting all of the holes in the fabric of time and are using it to steal treasures from different historical eras. They kidnap Kevin and variously drop in on Napoleon (Ian Holm) who employs them as his new generals, the Middle Ages where they encounter a rather dim Robin Hood (John Cleese) and back to ancient times where King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) kills a Centaur before the Supreme Being catches up with them after a rather difficult trip on the Titanic and a voyage with an ogre just as they have to deal with the Evil Genius (David Warner) in the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness … The time of legends? There’s no such thing! A little boy called Kevin, a gang of renegade dwarves, a very chill – even chipper! -Supreme Being, an egotistical Evil Genius and a Napoleon totally consumed with height: Alexander the Great? One inch shorter than me! Charlemagne? Squat little chap! Hilarious sendup of historical epics with a sneaky undertow of Oedipus – King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) wants to adopt Kevin and then makes a rather brilliant reappearance in the ‘burbs in the nick of time. Why do we have to have Evil?/I think it’s something to do with free will. An utterly beguiling piece of fantasy that educates as well as entertains, from the brains of two Monty Pythons, Michael Palin (who co-stars as romantic Vincent wooing Shelley Duvall) and director Terry Gilliam. This is for every child who wanted to escape their dreary parents:  dreams can come true. Practically fizzing with invention. I thought you were international criminals!

Tickle Me (1965)

He handles himself very well. Unemployed rodeo rider Lonnie Beale (Elvis Presley) arrives in the desert town of Zuni Wells looking for work on the recommendation of a friend who is nowhere to be found so he starts singing at a club where Vera Radford (Julie Adams) offers him a job handling horses at her Circle-Z ranch. It’s actually a fitness spa filled with young women shaping up and Lonnie follows one of the girls, Pam Merritt (Jocelyn Lane), to a ghost town called Silverado where one of her relatives allegedly buried a treasure. At the Circle-Z she suffers repeated attempted kidnappings when word of her inheritance gets out. She, Lonnie and ranch hand Stanley Potter (Jack Mullaney) re-enact western characters in a parody sequence and Lonnie goes back on the road but his phone calls to Pam go unanswered and his letter is Returned to Sender. Stanley locates Lonnie and they follow Pam to Silverado and a storm ensues and they are pursued by supposed ghosts who really want the treasure … I can see it now:  cowboy marries millionaire divorcee. An unusually playful Elvis comedy thanks to Three Stooges scribes Edward Bernds and Elwood Ulman who apply the rule of slapstick to half the scenes in a film that feels like it’s a year long instead of its sprightly 91 minute running time. Luckily the last third strays into amusing haunted house territory at least making an attempt at a genre workout in a story that suffers from a plethora of studio-bound outdoor scenes which is a pity because when they get into those Jeeps and cut a swathe through the desert it’s quite tolerable fun. Otherwise it’s refreshing in the #MeToo era to see The King being sexually harassed by his lady boss Adams.  The songs are all old recordings and the film saved Allied Artists from bankruptcy. Directed by Norman Taurog. I’ve heard of this happening to secretaries before but this is ridiculous

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Nobody is flying the plane!  During a massive traffic jam in California caused by reckless  ex-convict (following a tuna factory robbery 15 years earlier) Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), he crashes his car off twisting, mountainous State Highway 74 near Palm Desert. Five motorists stop to help him: dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and his wife Monica (Edie Adams); furniture mover Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters); two guys on their way to Las Vegas, Ding Bell (Mickey Rooney) and Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett); and Fresno entrepreneur J. Russell Finch (Milton Berle), his wife Emmeline (Dorothy Provine) and his loud mother-in-law Mrs Marcus (Ethel Merman). Just before he dies kicking a bucket, Grogan tells the men about $350,000 buried in Santa Rosita State Park near the border with Mexico under “… a big W”. The motorists set out across California to find the fortune, unaware that Captain T.G. Culpeper, Chief of Detectives of the Santa Rosita Police Department, has been patiently working on the Smiler Grogan case for years, hoping to someday solve it and retire. When he learns of the crash, he suspects Grogan may have tipped off the passersby, so he has them tracked by various police units. His suspicions are confirmed by their nutty behaviour but he may have ulterior motives for retrieving the loot  …  It’s a nice dream.  Lasted almost five minutes.  Earnest producer/director Stanley Kramer’s film may not in fact be the comedy to end all comedies as it was billed but it has most of the mid-century movie world’s best comic performers (and more besides) involved in incredibly engineered slapstick sequences, marvellously sustained as a lengthy madcap satirical farce, with some of the best colour cinematography you will ever see:  those reds and yellows and blues pop perfectly off the screen in staggering synchrony thanks to astonishing work by Ernest Laszlo. Written by William Rose and Tania Rose, it’s an epic ensemble endeavour with support and guest bits from a vast variety of mostly TV stars like Phil Silvers, Peter Falk, Jerry Lewis, Dick Shawn, Andy Devine, The Three Stooges, Edward Everett Horton and the great Buster Keaton, with Zasu Pitts in her final film,  and some lively dancing by Barrie Chase (screenwriter Borden Chase’s daughter and Robert Towne’s onetime girlfriend, previously married to Hollywood hairdresser Gene Shacove and therefore the inspiration for Shampoo!). We love Terry-Thomas (in a role intended for Peter Sellers, who asked for too much money – ironically) and his comments here about American obsessions provide the caustic witticisms that balance the narrative and characters’ unstoppable drive for money.  Sid Caesar inherited the role intended for the fabulous Ernie Kovacs following his death in a car crash driving home from Milton Berle’s baby shower (again, the irony…). A beautifully constructed gem that shows off California in precisely the way you would wish and after commencing with someone kicking the bucket in a cliffhanger opening, ends on an entirely apposite banana skin. Watching these legendary performers trying to steal scenes is a kick:  make America funny again! Beautifully restored.  Don’t call me baby

 

 

The Goonies (1985)

Kids suck.  A band of adventurous kids from the Goon Docks in Astoria Oregon take on the might of a property developing company which plans to destroy their home to build a country club. When the children discover an old pirate map in the attic of Mikey (Sean Astin) and Brandon (Josh Brolin) Walsh, the brothers and their friends Mouth (Corey Feldman), Data (Ke Huy Quan) and Chunk (Josh Cohen) follow it into an underground cavern in search of lost treasure but come up against plenty of dangerous obstacles along the way as a dangerous gang of criminals, the Fratellis, Mama (Anne Ramsay) and her sons (Robert Davi and Joey Pantoliano) have the treasure in their sights … You’re in the clouds – we are in a basement.  Steven Spielberg wrote the story and produced, Chris Columbus did the screenplay and Richard (Superman) Donner directed. You want pirates? Treasure? Storytelling? And kids trying to save their home? Here it is. The classic 80s kiddie film gets a re-release and if it has all these great things it also has flaws, principally the screamfest style that irritated me in the first place. Will they ever just … shut up?! There are too many kids too but if there were any fewer we wouldn’t have the girls and no awkward and possibly inappropriate romantic moments. Ramsay is her hatchet-faced best as the crooked mama and there is even a guy who looks like Stephen King (Keith Walker) cast as the father of Brolin and Astin because if there’s something this resembles in an homage assemblage it’s It – but also the Our Gang movies, Ealing comedy and Spielberg’s own oeuvre, particularly the Indiana Jones films (and Quan is a veteran of Temple of Doom) and kids on bikes, single moms and absent dads. The score by the prolific Dave Grusin (whom I more or less just about tolerate by and large) actually manages Steineresque heights in the piratey last sequences (there’s a clip from Captain Blood on the TV) and there is terrific production design by J. Michael Riva, the late grandson of screen goddess Marlene Dietrich. When Astin finally meets One-Eyed Willy – well, it works for me. It’s notable for a performance by NFL star John Matuszak as the Fratelli’s deformed brother who Cohen befriends. All well and good  – but does everyone absolutely positively have to be so loud?! I mean you, Josh Cohen! He’s just like his father

Fathom (1967)

Freddie Arthur Tom Harry Oscar Milton.  While touring in Europe, beautiful American skydiver Fathom Harvill (Raquel Welch) gets wrapped up in international intrigue when Scottish spy and HADES chief Douglas Campbell (Ronald Fraser) recruits her to help him on a secret mission to retrieve a failsafe nuclear device. Before long, Fathom realises that no one around her, including the mysterious Korean War deserter Peter Merriweather (Tony Franciosa), can be trusted and that’s before she encounters the dastardly Col. Serapkin (Clive Revill) and finds that perhaps the device is not what she’s looking for at all … I’m a hundred years older than the day I met you. Trains and boats and planes and… skydiving. With tongue planted firmly in cheek this slick Bond parody is great fun, loaded with spectacular beauty, not just the spirited Welch but the lovely location work shot by Douglas Slocombe and some nice one-liners which you’d expect from Batman scribe Lorenzo Semple Jr., adapting an unpublished novel (Fathom Heavensent) by Larry Forrester.  Revill makes a great baddie, Franciosa an agreeable hero/villain and Fraser and Richard Briers as Timothy a surprising double act. There’s a great aeroplane chase to conclude everything and a very funky Sixties score by Johnny Dankworth. Welch is really impressive in the light-hearted Mata Hari role. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson who did probably every American TV series in the era as well as the disappointing feature Mrs Pollifax – Spy. My temperature is ten degrees lower than normal. In the presence of great beauty it drops even further

Anne of the Indies (1951)

Have no fear – you’re under my protection! After Captain Anne Providence (Jean Peters), notorious female pirate captain of the Caribbean, picks up Pierre (Louis Jourdan), he claims he can find a treasure map in Jamaica. Some of her associates think he’s a traitor, but Anne has fallen in love with him. When she sails the Sheba Queen to Jamaica, Pierre goes inland to locate the map but secretly meets with British Navy officers, who have forced him to spy on the infamous Edward Teach better known as Blackbeard (Thomas Gomez ) and Anne.  He is really Captain LaRochelle, a former pirate captain.  When Anne finds out she swears revenge by kidnapping Pierre’s wife  Molly (Debra Paget) and planning to sell her into slavery ...  Blackbeard never forgets an insult. It’s not the best looking pirate film as the colour’s a little clogged and the darkness overwhelms the costuming and tone but it’s a fast-moving, lively affair, with plenty of opportunity for scenery-chewing.  On that front, Gomez takes the cake with Herbert Marshall running a close second as Dr Jameson. There are good sea battles and even a bit of bear wrestling. You’ll fetch one hundred English pounds, at least 99 more than you’re worth! The female rivalry is something to behold, redeemed by a great sacrifice at the fiery conclusion. Fun stuff that could have been a lot longer, given the real-life antecedents. Written by Philip Dunne, Arthur Caesar and Cyril Hume from a story by Herbert Ravenel Sass. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. No man sails with me who no longer respects me

 

Underwater! (1955)

Excitement’s like getting drunk. It hits you before you know it. And I was being hit. Scuba divers Johnny Gray (Richard Egan) and Dominic Queseda (Gilbert Roland) are a pair of treasure hunters in the Caribbean who discover a sunken 17th century galleon containing a gold-encrusted Madonna. But it’s in treacherous waters. Is it worth the risk? Johnny’s sharp-talking wife Theresa (Jane Russell) thinks it’s just another one of their crazy schemes and besides, they need financing. Mercenary Dominic meets Gloria (Lori Nelson) who has a yacht left to her by an ex so they can use that. Father Cannon (Robert Keith) is a university professor and archaeologist with knowledge of these old ships who may be able to help out. Shark hunters and scavengers Rico Herrera (Joseph Calleia) and  Miguel Vega (Eugene Iglesias) become suspicious that the team are doing more than searching for rocks and the four also have to deal with the wreck’s location – on the edge of a 300 foot cliff not to mention the circling sharks … Not one out of a hundred turns out to be worth salvaging. With an ensemble of attractive characters and a plethora of smart lines, you’d bet this was a Walter Brown Newman script (rewriting from a story by Hugh King and Robert B. Bailey and unknown work by Niven Busch) and you’d be right. Despite their fruitful working relationship he would fall out with director John Sturges over future collaborations – and two of everyone’s favourite movies – The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, due to alterations to his work. Here, however, they conform to the action-adventure template and they’re in their element with stunning marine photography by Harry J. Wild complementing the above-water antics. Calleia and Iglesias make amusing villains while Russell is great as the sceptical missus. This must have been really something on the big screen never mind the premiere at the bottom of a small lake in Florida! It’s still a lot of fun. The film’s instrumental theme Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White was a big hit for Pérez ‘Prez’ Prado with words by Mack David.

 

Shark (1969)

Aka Man-Eater. Some of my best friends are Americans. Caine (Burt Reynolds) is an arms dealer who finds himself stranded in a Sudanese port after seeing his latest stash of weaponry blown to smithereens during an unfortunate encounter on a dangerous mountain road. He gets hired to help Professor Dan Mallare (Barry Sullivan) and his assistant and daughter Anna (Silvia Pinal) to hunt for some treasure lying somewhere onboard a sunken vessel and sees a way to recoup his losses but they’re not telling him the entire truth about their project … Can you handle a witch?/Honey, I was delivered by one. With some smart lines, great underwater photography and Burt Reynolds in a film directed by Sam Fuller, what’s not to like? Fuller wanted his name taken off this Victor Canning adaptation (by John T. Dugan and an uncredited Ken Hughes) because the producers exploited the terrible on-set death of a stuntman (he was attacked by a white shark). The film was taken off his hands but his name was left under the title. It’s nice to see Sullivan reunited with his director from Forty Guns and Reynolds is more than adequate in an underwritten role as the guy who literally gets out of his depth. Burt and Sylvia get to recreate Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr’s romance in a beach scene straight out of From Here to Eternity and Arthur Kennedy drinks his way to the acting honours as the alkie doctor who has to perform surgery in the middle of a bad case of the DTs. That boy dies, you’ve caught your last fish There are some underdeveloped plot threads (like Caine’s friendship with the kid, played by Charles Berriochoa) in this hijacked film, with melodrama corrupting the intended cynicism and iconoclasm but there are good bits with Enrique Lucero as Barok, a crooked cop. It turns into a shaggy dog story with sharks and treasure and Burt in one great chase at the start and some mesmerising marine scenes. You ain’t seen nothin’ until you see Burt wrestle a shark. It was shot in Mexico in 1968 (and it’s good to see Pinal in an American film) but mostly withheld for years until it was briefly released on a double bill with a biker movie. An interesting glimpse into maverick Fuller’s clashes with producers, one is left to ponder what might have been especially with the changed ending but there is still wit, style and machismo. You can dive any time you feel like it and as far as I’m concerned you can stay down there

The Mummy (2017)

People don’t realize that London is a giant graveland. A modern city built on centuries of death. Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) is a soldier of fortune who plunders ancient sites for timeless artifacts and sells them to the highest bidder. When Nick and his partner Chris (Jake Johnson) come under attack in the Middle East, the ensuing battle accidentally unearths Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) a betrayed Egyptian princess who was entombed under the desert for thousands of years. As her powers constantly evolve Morton has tostop the resurrected monster as she embarks on a furious rampage through the streets of London …  Hell hath no fury like an ancient princess scorned! This remake of the old Universe horror movie owes little to its origins (more’s the pity) and much to the contemporary taste for drained grayscale mindless action visuals (whose taste is the question – I want colour! Colour! Colour!) Beyond that there’s a bit of fun. Russell Crowe is the antagonist/expert Dr Henry Jekyll (get the name… this Dark Universe is crossing the protagonists and characters from film to film, literally making a monster mash) joining another heroic franchise (if it comes to pass); and Cruise is paired with another in a long line of terrifically feisty females, Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) this being a welcome staple character in his M: I series – not to mention a screeching harpie villainess who wants to get with him and rule the world. There ain’t a lot of chemistry here but it moves fairly quickly through some shonky sequences so you don’t care too much. This is not entirely the mess some reviews would have you believe but then I’m a sucker for all things archaeological and groovy destructive women!  The universe I’m concerned with is the previous remake  – the wonderful 1999 iteration starring Brendan Fraser which was tonally perfect (the other two, not so much) but like the subject matter here that’s a thing of the past. Screenplay by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie and Dylan Kussman from a story by Jon Spaihts, director Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet.