Romancing the Stone (1984)

“Wilder? Joan Wilder?!” What must it be like to meet your Number One fan and they don’t want to hobble you like in Misery but to help you out in the middle of the jungle in South America?! Ah, just perfect this, a romantic action adventure that brought Kathleen Turner to megastardom for a short spell, playing the unmarried romantic novelist who’s allergic to everything. After completing her latest magnum opus she rushes to Colombia when her sister Elaine (!) (Mary Ellen Trainor) calls for help. She brings with her a treasure map sent by her late brother in law who’s been hacked to death:  the map is the ransom for her sister’s freedom. Antiquities hunters Ira (Zack Norman) and Ralph (Danny De Vito) are holding her but Joan gets the wrong bus at the airport on the helpful advice of Zolo (her brother in law’s killer) and when she realises, causes it to crash.and is rescued by exotic bird smuggler Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) promising to repay him for his wrecked Jeep with travellers’ cheques. A love-hate relationship ensues as they spend the night in a crashed aeroplane, dance the hell out of each other, get help from a drug lord who’s her biggest fan (I love that scene!), and find the enormous emerald that’s the cause of all the trouble in the first place. “Aw man, the Doobie Brothers broke up!” moans Jack on finding an old issue of Rolling Stone. Witty, fast-moving, scintillating actioner (written in 1978) with great performances from all concerned. Turner is just great in one of the best movies of the Eighties. The horrible coda to all this is that the brilliant first-time writer, Diane Thomas, was killed in the Porsche Carrera gifted her by Michael Douglas when her boyfriend was driving her home after she’d had a few. The novelisation of this and its sequel, which she was unable to write because of being contracted to doing a draft of Always for Spielberg, is credited to one Joan Wilder. Tremendous, timeless entertainment. Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Sahara (1983)

One of those films that never made it to my small town when I was a kid, I’ve finally seen the motor racing movie with Brooke Shields, the It Girl of the Eighties. From jeans to beauty, she had it made. Those eyes – those eyebrows – that mane of hair  … it didn’t really surprise to learn from Who Do You Think You Are? that the fabulous cover girl and controversial star of my childhood was descended through her paternal grandmother, an Italian aristocrat, from the Holy Roman Emperor, several Popes and Louis XVI. There seems to be a lot of cross dressing in my current viewing slate and this is no different. When Brooke arrives in the desert in 1927 for the international car race her late father dreamed of winning in his own design she needs to pass for male in this Arab world so she dresses in a linen suit, fedora and a moustache. It works, for a bit. Challenged by German driver Horst Buchholz,  she is conveniently abducted by John Rhys-Davies (back in the desert after Raiders of the Lost Ark) and falls in love with his nephew the sheik Lambert Wilson – and why not? Though it takes a while for the penny to drop with Brooke that his claim on her is physical in more ways than one. High jinks ensue as she wants to escape during a tribal war involving machine guns and cool improvised tanks and her team is being held hostage, while John Mills turns up as the sheik’s secretary, a university professor…  and there’s still a race to be won! I’m a petrol head and don’t care who knows it so I love the machines and all the high drama surrounding this landscape-driven piece and the photography by David Gurfinkel and Armando Nannuzzi is lovely. Nor do I object to this inadvertently being my third Perry Lang film in ten days! Brooke was too young to legally drive in Israel where this was shot by production team Golan-Globus (the Go Go Boys as they were known) so the Government had to give special permission. Written by the ultra-fascinating personage of James R.Silke, illustrator extraordinaire (including for Capitol Records), Grammy winner for best album cover (Judy at Carnegie Hall), novelist, the man who started up Cinema magazine in LA, producer and even a role on The Wild Bunch as an uncredited costume designer for friend Sam Peckinpah. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, son of Victor and all-round Hollywood action and western expert, who learned his trade with Johns Ford and Wayne starting as assistant director on The Quiet Man. There’s a jaunty score by Ennio Morricone to liven things up even more.  The tagline for this was: “She challenged the desert, its men, their passions and ignited a bold adventure.” I can confirm the veracity of this claim. However Shields’ performance earned her the record-breaking score of two Razzies for the same role – Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actor – harsh! I thought she was pretty great as a Blue-Eyed Demon! Pretty baby indeed. Ironically Shields’ aristocrat grandmother died in a car crash in Italy travelling home from her nephew’s wedding to director Luchino Visconti’s niece. Royal in so many, many ways.

Niagara (1953)

Let’s visit Niagara Falls. Marilyn Monroe’s makeup man, Whitey Snyder, never did get to learn the secret to her glossy lips – that she kept to herself. And they’re the first natural attraction you admire here – as she feigns sleep in the motel room while her psychologically disturbed Army vet husband Joseph Cotten prowls around, convinced she’s cheating on him. She lies in a tangle of bedsheets, clearly nude, teasing him. Another couple is due to take over their cabin but Monroe says her husband is too disturbed right now. And Jean Peters, the wife, sees her in a clinch with a hot young hunk at the Falls. She reports the sighting to hubby Max Showalter who can appreciate Monroe’s derriere. She does an awful lot of walking in constrained costume, always photographed from the rear. And what about that pink dress inhabited by a human hieroglyph moving like an insinuating corkscrew! Monroe insists that a certain record is played by the youngsters at the night-time dance and sings along, lost in a lust-filled reverie. Her plan to off hubby is signalled by another sound, the bells from a nearby tower. Listen. For a dress like that, you’ve got to start laying plans when you’re about thirteen. In a nod to Strangers on a Train, there is a clue to the crime in the men’s shoes. And Monroe doesn’t last the whole film through, foreshadowing another Hitchcock outing, but not before she’s in hospital, entirely free of sexuality, frightened, in rougher sheets, the lipgloss gone. And when Cotten returns, he holds her bejewelled lipstick case, opening it to reveal the ruby red stain that should be on her lips. The screenplay by producer Charles Brackett & Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen and t makes me think about Theresa Russell’s bustier when Art Garfunkel first sees her in Bad Timing and it has all those psychosexual connotations too. Monroe’s femme fatale in this Technicolor noir is as great a natural phenomenon as the Niagara Falls. Sexy, sultry, sulky, sullen,  scornful, scheming. Staggeringly beautiful. Directed by Henry Hathaway. I met her in a big beer hall. She was the most popular waitress they had. I guess it was the way she put the beer on the tables