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The only exception would maybe be 'A Serious Man', which I didn't like!
'The Ladykillers' was indeed awful, it was a disastrous idea to even contemplate a remake of the Ealing classic!
Jaws was suggested to me on Netflix, it was for free, and it's still the masterpiece that it always was.
Then, in some sort of cinematic OCD frenzy, I watched Jaws 2, Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge. Each of which cost me 4 euros. That's 12 euros in total if my mathematically defunct brain isn't cheating me. For 12 euros I can get 10 terrific espressos in Italy. Instead I watched the Jaws sequels.
The second one isn't half bad, but rehashes the first one and doesn't do it as well, obviously. The third one is only interesting for a few beautiful women and hilarious "3D" effects. The fourth one has a laughable premise, but I admittedly had a fairly good time with it.
Now none of those were worth the 4 euros, though luckily I am going to Rome in the autumn, I will think of the Jaws sequels when I have my first espresso there.
Funny post, @GoldenGun! :-) I rewatched the four Jaws films recently, too. And like you, I adore the first one, am kinda okay-ish on the second one, and only watch the third one because of a certain Lea Thompson. The fourth one, however, is only on my list because of the score and my completism.
Gosh, there's a film I've long forgotten about! The only thing I remember is the nod to 'Kiss Me Deadly' at the end. Directed by the unique Alex Cox. Memories are flooding back of his wonderful Moviedrome series, great double bills of cult films I used to watch with my younger brother. I used to have some of the magazines that accompanied it. Such a pity there's nothing like that on T.V. now!
Thanks @DarthDimi! :) I must say I did enjoy all of them, even though the third and fourth are pretty bad. Still, both of them are much more enjoyable than many other shark films I've seen over the years.
Jaws 3 and 4 are kinda pointless. They don't even have the main actor.
I saw this adventure film when I was still a young boy, barely 10 years old. It left quite an impact on me. Today, I can still appreciate this delicious science fantasy starring James Mason, Pat Boone and a ton of awesome sets. The score adds an air of mystery that continues to fascinate me. This is a film I revisit regularly.
A longtime favorite since its release. Bud. Otto. The dialogue and crazy situations. All those crazy characters, love it.
Is there a colourized version?
Trailer:
In the film, agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (played by Kerwin Mathews) travels to Bonifacio, Corsica, in order to investigate the disappearance of an American agent who has been investigating a series of underwater caves – which happen to be the perfect location, as we learn, for a sub detector.
The film, shot in black and white, is a solid eurospy film with scenic locations and a decent plot. It feels a bit more noir like with the lack of colours and big action sequences. This is both a strength and weakness, because even though the film works really well in B&W, some of the scenes, such as the scenes featuring underwater footage, would have greatly benefitted from colour photography.
As with so many eurospy films, it doesn't manage to stay away from quirky aspects. For some reason, the film ends with Kerwin Mathews, on board a boat with Brigitta, one of the characters central to the plot, breaking the fourth wall by saying goodbye to the audience. Imagine Sean Connery doing the same at the end of Dr. No when he and Honey Ryder are in the middle of the ocean on the boat, or when Bond and Tatiana Romanova are on board the gondola at the end of FRWL!
If I find the time to do so, I will try and watch more of these films in the next week or so.
____
Interestingly, Jean Bruce's character Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath predated James Bond both as a literary character and a movie character. I haven't been able to track down the very first OSS 117 film OSS 117 n'est pas mort (OSS 117 Is Not Dead) yet, but I hope I'll be able to at some point. Last year I was able to find some of the novels that were published in the 60's here in Norway. I've yet to find out exactly how many of these novels were published here, but I doubt the number is anywhere near the number of novels that were originally published in French. According to Wikipedia, Bruce wrote 88 OSS 117 novels, his wife wrote 143 novels after his death, and Bruce's daughter Martine and her husband François wrote 23 more novels, with the final one being published in 1992.
What still baffles me the most is why the character is an "OSS" agent while being French. The OSS, as I understand it, was a precursor of the CIA, namely the Office of Strategic Services. It's a stretch, I guess, that a French agent still carries that abbreviation. But hey, who cares if it's a spoof.
I really like all the three Dujardin films too, but the first two are definitely better. Even though it doesn't reach the heights of the first two, the third film does have its moments. For me, one of the highlights is the cameo in which Bruno Paviot, Karim Barras, and Jean-Édouard Bodziak reprise their roles as Roger Moulinier, Jacky Jacquard, and Jean-René Calot from Au service de la France, a Netflix series much in the same vein as the OSS 117 films – which places the OSS 117 films and this series within the same universe!
Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath being a French agent is something that they introduced in the Dujardin films. In the novels and the early films, the character is actually an American Colonel from Louisiana of French descent, working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and later CIA and the National Security Council (NSC).
______
Speaking of spy comedies. I recently covered the Danish 1965 spy spoof Slå først Frede! (Strike First Freddy) on the 007 references in popular culture thread – a film where we see prank items salesman Frede Hansen getting mixed up in a spy plot after he is mistaken for a secret service agent on a ferry and gets kidnapped by enemy agents. He manages to escape and is persuaded by the Danish secret service to act as a bait, assisted by top agent, David Smith.
As far as early spy spoofs go, this is one of the better I've seen, and I mentioned in the same thread that I had been unable to find a copy of the 1966 sequel, Slap af, Frede! (Relax Freddie). The same evening I made a comment about the first film, I randomly searched the sequel, and was able to find a Danish double disc release of both films, which arrived today.
Watching the sequel tonight, I was happy to see that it wasn't only as good as the first film, but actually a bit better. In Slap af, Frede, a Chinese diplomat is kidnapped in Genève, after arriving for an international peace conference. The trail leads to Denmark, where the secret service brings agent David Smith back into action, who is deemed fit after suffering a nervous breakdown after the events in Slå først Frede!. However, secret agents are liquidated all over the world, and behind every kill there are beautiful women involved. To get closer to the enemy, it is decided that they need to use a secret, secret agent, which means that Frede is again thrown into the world of international espionage.
Trailer:
Slap af, Frede! gives us more of the same as Slå først Frede!, but I feel that a bigger cast, more locations, more…everything really (especially girls, which agent David Smith will have to bring out his best to handle!), makes this an enjoyable watch. Obviously, as with most spy spoofs, the plot and many of the characters are quite thin, but I can't be too bothered about that with a film that is only for laughs anyway.
I have no idea if any of these films have been released on DVD dubbed /or with subtitles in other languages. If they have, they are worth checking out for those with a particular interest in spy spoofs.
Yes! On DVD...https://www.ebay.com/itm/143402434347?epid=49231488&itmmeta=01J3P89SWKBG082BAE21TK59KM&hash=item2163737f2b:g:qHQAAOSwfopeLyAl&itmprp=enc:AQAJAAAA4MUTABAF96N2RUKI8UQWEg6jA9YuGi7Abx/9DBoqhV7hFWnE9PvfyN1Tg/oKXWS6sW/f8oURMCV2N4jwg0yimoCdqCJM4ejiskCHXQtCRVlBrZPHGvsnzxE59g4/RrQL2gWjibCDt1Q7LYIL/vmgs/7U6aW44V1SVVGmam1OreLlf8UMLu4X95VS52mPtbSfOm29d+b8oU1C65mREnZ0ZA2+HZDFrvXYXATw2lw8x8Sd3BlU8HCuw91PeJHjPdYFZaZuqtw7O/NQK3VB5pDCsHPrOdcoy/++vZyEhG0MneLa|tkp:Bk9SR66ep8idZA
Okay, I need this now :)) Thanks @chrisisall !
So right, this is an incredible film.
@Torgeirtrap As for the OSS 117 films, I have only seen the first two Dujardin ones which I absolutely love, the third one is still in my watchlist, together with all the older Europsy ones. I suppose some of those might be on YT somewhere?
Yesterday I watched,
Suffice to say I loved every bit of it and today I caught myself saying / singing: "Do you wanna partaaaay?" :p
@GoldenGun I think a few of the older OSS 117 films have been on Youtube at some point. I managed to find them… ahem… online a long time ago, as they weren't available anywhere. However, I did see just the other day that KL Studio Classics have released all the five 1960's films on Blu-ray. I would be tempted to get that set, but since it's a Region 1 release, I have no way to play them anyway. I also think Gaumont have released them in French, but the titles I had a look at only had French subtitles.
Trailer:
The film follows Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (again played by Kerwin Mathews) who is sent to Thailand after CIA agent Christopher Lemon is gunned down in Bangkok. Lemon had been investigating a possible correlation between anti-cholera vaccines produced by Bangkok’s Hogby Laboratories to an outbreak of a deadly plague in India, and OSS 117 must pick up the trail.
In Bangkok, he is introduced to a certain Dr. Sinn – a doctor, hypnotist, and a mystic – and his beautiful sister Lilla. Of course with a name like Dr. Sinn, you just know that he must be involved somehow!
in Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117, the series steps away from black and white into glorious Eastmancolor. The film feels significantly bigger, presenting som nice Thailand location shots. The production value is certainly bigger here than in many other Eurospy productions.
As for the film itself, it steps away from a smaller plot, into an evil supervillain plot very much in the style of what we see in so many Bond films. You imagine they took a good look at the first two Bond films and what worked in them, because this film picks up several elements of the Bond formula, including the friendly local ally.
Does it work? Yes and no. Trying to stay somewhat close to the Bond films in style makes it an interesting watch, but the film is never quite good enough to come close to the Bond films. The film is a bit too unevenly paced for a film of this length (118 minutes). I do think I prefer it to OSS 117 se déchaîne, mostly because of how good this film looks in comparison.
Ranking so far:
Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 (Panic in Bangkok)
OSS 117 se déchaîne (OSS 117 Is Unleashed)
Trailer
Like Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 did the year before, Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 would emulate the globetrotter aspects of the Bond films, making the most out of the exotic locations. Although the film mostly takes place in sunny Brazil, The film starts on an Alpine ski slope. This isn't a big pre-title sequence like in the Bond films, but it serves as a nice contrast to the locations the bulk of the film takes place. It is here Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is called off his vacation, and is briefed about his upcoming mission.
Trouble is brewing in South America. There's been a series of suicide attacks of political figures. Two of the assassins have been identified as completely ordinary people, who is believed to have been conditioned by a drug, effectively making them automated assassins. Hubert travels to Brazil to investigate, under guise as a journalist.
In Rio he is to meet up with his contact, Thomas Ellis, but Ellis has been in a serious car accident and is hospitalised. In the hospital, Hubert is unsuccessful in preventing Ellis getting killed by an assassin dressed as a doctor, and must try to pick up the trail of the drug's origins.
We eventually learn that the trail leads to unique plants from the Brazilian rain forest, where Hubert comes up against a group that are working to rise a new Reich, making the South Americas the cradle of a new world.
Disappointingly, we only see the leader (and a pretty forgettable one at that) very late in the movie, and he only gets minutes of screen time. Unlike in Dr. No, where we can feel Dr. No's presence throughout the film, we don't get something similar here. Here, what carries the film is the situations Hubert finds himself getting into – and they work really well. The last 25 minutes are therefore a bit disappointing compared to a well executed film up until that point. Luckily, we get a more than decent final battle to make up for a forgettable villain.
It's worth to highlight Frederick Stafford as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. From what I've been able to find online, Kerwin Mathews apparently had a falling out with director André Hunebelle after Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117, which left the director having to find a replacement. How he ended up with a regional manager of pharmaceutical industry in Hong Kong, who happened to be married to a German film actress, is one of those stories you find incredible to believe. According to Wikipedia this is how it came about:
This is quite a George Lazenby like story, isn't it!
Frederick Stafford might not display a panther like movement on screen like Sean Connery did as Bond at the same time, but it doesn't show that this is a guy without any prior screen experience. In fact, he is quite good, and his physicality makes him more than good enough in the fights he has to get through on screen. He manages the more lighthearted moments well too, with one of the highlights being this hotel room sequence.
Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 was an enjoyable watch, and it's great to see a Eurospy film on a "Bond budget". There couldn't have been many of them. It's competently made (much more so than many other Eurospy films), and well worth checking out for fans of the genre. Compared to the first two 1960's OSS 117 films, this takes what worked there, just making it bigger, and for the most part, better.
Ranking so far:
Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 (OSS 117 – Mission for a Killer)
Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 (Panic in Bangkok)
OSS 117 se déchaîne (OSS 117 Is Unleashed)
Trailer:
The film throws us straight into a pre-title car chase in a desert area, where Hubert and his companions are chased by two cars. The pursuers chase them to a waiting helicopter, but Hubert manages to deal with the bad guys by shooting holes in some oil drums that just happens to be there, hurling his lit cigarette lighter at the barrels. A wall om fire emerges, which the first car manages to avoid driving into. But the second car runs straight into the car ahead, sending them both into the flames. Not Bond level pre-title sequence action this, but it's fun that they even managed to emulate this too from it's more famous counterpart.
Cut to a briefing room where Hubert's superior briefs him about his next mission. A few months prior the State Department had been contacted by "a mysterious organisation" (called "The Organisation") that has created “a new missile which can be neither detected or destroyed". They want a 100 million dollars for the invention, and have destroyed an American navy base to show that they mean business.
In a briefing with several generals and his superior, Hubert sees images of the attack, which also shows that an American F-107 in the vicinity might have launched the missile that hit the base. The military brass are perplexed as to how a missile could hit their base so quickly if fired from a plane that far away, in which Hubert theorises "if it really was an F-107, but a very small F-107, he could be close to the base and still very small in the photo.” – a theory Hubert's superior backs up by a report by Rolston, their agent in Tokyo, in which i he mentions the possibility of miniature sized fighters.
In Japan, Hubert learns from the recident CIA manager that Rolston is missing. Rolston had informed that if anything prevented him from getting in contact, they were to protect and watch over Eva Wilson, a woman who works in the code section of the embassy – and who we learn has been blackmailed about an indiscretion to provide information about the base that was destroyed. Posing as her husband, Hubert tries to figure out who's behind the extortion. Already suspicious of Eva Wilson, Hubert will learn that she is not trustworthy.
As Hubert tries to unravel the plot of the mysterious figures behind it all, he is thrown into the Tokyo nightlife keeping up with Eva and her blackmailers, and even joining forces with the Japanese Secret Service; they way in which this unfolds shares some similarities with You Only Live Twice.
Like with Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117, we only learn the identities of the main villains very late, but I didn't feel that it was that much of an issue in Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117. The final act also acts as a little nod to Thunderball (there's even a character named Vargas!), and there's a few camera shots that feels similar to some shots of Bond aboard the Wavekrest in Licence to Kill. They also manages to prefigure the Bond films with certain things – and not just the Tokyo setting.
Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 is another great ride with Frederick Stafford as Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. For someone who isn't necessarily the biggest fan of You Only Live Twice, I might actually prefer this film. There's a lot to love, and Frederick Stafford looks far from bored as he fights his way through this spy flick. I actually made a note that in certain shots, he looks so Bond like, almost like how you'd imagine a generic looking Bond (as in not looking like one of the actors), on an old paperback cover. I see that Stafford in 1970 claimed that Harry Saltzman wanted him to play James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, but he was unable to due to his commitment with Topaz. It's been a long time since I read Charles Helfenstein's The Making of on Her Majesty's Secret Service, so I can't remember if this is mentioned there, but it makes you wonder how close he would have been to getting the role if he had the chance. I think he could had done a good job.
If there's not enough Bond connections already, Terence Young is credited as one of the writers. Looking online though, it's mentioned in a booklet included with the French DVD box set, that Young's involvement was little more than a marquee-value name recognition. It's a fun connection nonetheless.
I think Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 is as close to a Bond movie you can get without being the real deal. It's fun, entertaining and got all the elements to make a great viewing experience. I place this one above Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117, placing it first in my ranking so far.
Next up is Niente rose per OSS 117, in which we get another (and quite significant at that) Bond connection.
Ranking so far:
Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 (OSS 117 Mission to Tokyo (aka Terror in Tokyo))
Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 (OSS 117 – Mission for a Killer)
Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 (Panic in Bangkok)
OSS 117 se déchaîne (OSS 117 Is Unleashed)
Didn't pick up that Frederick Stafford had an Austrian citizenship, which obviously makes his marriage to a German actress less unusual. It was interesting to read about his background leading up to accidentally becoming an actor. A story, which unfortunately had a sad ending with his dramatic death.
I've yet to watch Topaz, but I will definitely give that a watch now that I have enjoyed watching his two OSS 117 films. I have seen these 1960's OSS 117 films once before, but that was several years ago, and I needed to give them another go.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare - really enjoyed this one, shame it went straight to prime. Features one of the worst Churchill performances however, from our own Rory Kinnear.
Migration - Fine as a kids film but not much going for the adults. 82 minutes felt like 182 minutes.
I would like to know your opinion on John Gavin's movie.
If I find the time, I'll watch it tonight!