Dr. Kildare takes up a sword: The Count of Monte-Cristo

Now Playing: The Count of Monte-Cristo (1975)

Pros: Intriguing cast of familiar ‘70s faces headed up by Richard Chamberlain; Kate Nelligan makes the most of her feature film debut; Looks opulent for a TV movie
Cons: Tony Curtis seems to be phoning it in; A few clunker lines roll less than lyrically off the tongues of the actors

When I learned of the Adventure-a-thon hosted by Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharsis, I knew I wanted to get in on the action (and adventure) of their new blogathon, but couldn’t make up my mind about a title.

Then came the news of Richard Chamberlain’s passing, and I knew immediately that I wanted to pay tribute to this versatile actor who in the course of his prolific career starred in quite a few rousing adventure movies.

I remember occasionally sitting down with the family to watch broadcasts of Dr. Kildare, which was Chamberlain’s first recurring TV role (and which, along with Ben Casey, set impossibly high standards for the healthcare industry, with glamorous doctors who would do anything and everything for their suffering patients).

Who knew that a little over a decade later, Chamberlain would turn in his stethoscope for a rapier sword in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973), and thereafter become one of the great action-adventure heroes?

With his breakout success as Aramis in the Lester film, Chamberlain swashbuckled his way through three more Alexandre Dumas adaptations in the '70s: The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge (1974), The Count of Monte-Cristo (1975) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1977). (Please note: I'm going with the spelling of 'Monte-Cristo' according to the 1975 movie poster and the IMDb page.)

But the man’s action-adventure career didn’t end there. Starting in the late ‘70s, Chamberlain appeared in several high profile mini-series, including Centennial (1978-79), James Clavell’s Shogun (1980) and The Thorn Birds (1983), garnering prime-time Emmy nominations for the last two.

Dr. Kildare is ready to operate!

More screen action followed in the ‘80s when he was tapped to play H. Rider Haggard's adventure hero Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines (1985) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) -- a clear attempt to capitalize on the huge popularity of the Indiana Jones franchise.

The Alexandre Dumas adaptations were a big part of Chamberlain’s '70s workload. Sandwiched between his roles as Musketeer Aramis and the Man in the Iron Mask, Chamberlain’s turn as The Count of Monte-Cristo allowed him to travel thespically from the depths of despair to the heights of hubris and self-righteousness (not to mention, he absolutely rocks a 19th century Silver Fox look).

For those needing a refresher on The Count of Monte-Cristo (I confess I was hazy on the plot until watching this adaptation), it’s a classic story of betrayal and revenge. Chamberlain plays Edmond Dantes, first mate of a ship whose captain dies enroute back to Marseilles, but not before entrusting a secret note obtained from Elba (where Napoleon is exiled) to Dantes.

Dantes is to deliver the sealed message to a M. Noirtier, who, unknown to the sailor, is a supporter of Napoleon. Upon the ship’s arrival in Marseilles, life is looking up for Dantes, who expects to be given a ship of his own, and to marry the beautiful Mercedes (Kate Nelligan in her first movie role).

The Fickle Finger of Fate is about to tap both of these young lovers.

But Dantes’ life is soon upended by two secretive and jealous rivals: Mercedes’ cousin Fernand Mondego (Tony Curtis) covets Mercedes for himself, and a fellow merchant sailor, Danglars (Donald Pleasence), is jealous of Dantes’ rapid ascension to captaincy. The pair, in the company of another disgruntled sailor, write an anonymous note to Marseille’s crown prosecutor, De Villefort (Louis Jourdan), accusing Dantes of being a Bonapartist.

The day before Dantes is to be wed, De Villefort arrests him and demands the secret note, still unopened (and its contents unknown to Dantes). De Villefort realizes that the conspiratorial message is addressed to his own father, M. Nortier De Villefort, and in the current political climate he will be toast if word gets out that his father is a Bonapartist.

"Alexa, how do you spell 'Bonapartist'?"

De Villefort glibly assures Dantes that he is completely innocent and will only be detained overnight for administrative purposes. However, to Dantes’ dismay, he soons finds himself on a boat to the dreaded island prison of Chateau D’If, to be locked up and forgotten.

Years later, an emaciated, hairy and bedraggled Dantes, pacing his dank cell and almost beyond the point of no return with regard to his sanity, is startled when he hears a weird scraping noise, and is confounded to discover that another prisoner, Abbe Faria (Trevor Howard), has dug a tunnel straight into Dantes’ cell.

Faria, an irrepressible polymath, has spent years upon years tunneling to what he hoped was the prison’s seawall, but due to a miscalculation, has ended up at his fellow prisoner’s cell. Trevor Howard, a tough, grizzled character actor and mainstay of action adventure pictures and dramas after notable roles in Brief Encounter and The Third Man in the '40s, is nearly unrecognizable under all the hair and grime. But his appearance is a highlight of the film.

"Hey Abbe, have you got a match?"
"Yeah, your face and a donkey's behind!"

While Dantes was spending years pacing his cell, Faria was forging digging tools from bits of metal, devising an ingenious sundial on the wall of his cell, tracking the movements of the stars and planets, and contemplating questions in philosophy and theology. He hasn’t let the years of solitary confinement dull his senses -- quite the opposite. Faria is quick to note the irony of their situations: he was imprisoned because of his opposition to Napoleon, and Dantes because of his supposed support.

In addition to sanity-saving companionship, Faria imparts three invaluable gifts to Dantes: the application of cui bono? reasoning to figure out who was responsible for Dantes’ imprisonment, a map to unimaginable treasure located on the island of Monte Cristo, and, upon expiring from old age, an opportunity for Dantes to escape from Chateau D’If.

As the guards prepare to remove Faria in a body bag, Dantes takes advantage of a momentary distraction to drag his friend’s body into the tunnel and wrap himself up in the bag, which is hastily thrown into the ocean.

With the treasure map in hand, Dantes embarks on the next phase of his life -- one of fabulous wealth, which fuels a mission of revenge.

All that glitters is not gold -- precious stones and pearls do that too.

The Count of Monte-Cristo makes a grand entrance as he emerges from shadowy antechambers for his introduction to French high society. Unlimited wealth goes a long way in cleaning up a hairy, louse-ridden political prisoner, his all-white hair carefully coiffed, offsetting his trim dark beard and elegant black ensemble.

Over the years of his imprisonment, Dantes’ betrayers have risen high, representing diverse pillars of French society: Danglars is a wealthy banker, Mondego a pompous military man and presumptive war hero who has had a son with Mercedes (now grown into a young man), and De Villefort is as powerful as ever as the royal prosecutor.

Dantes masterfully exploits each man’s darkest secrets and character weaknesses in bringing them down. He lures Danglars into a risky investment in Spanish bonds, then bankrupts the greedy banker by feeding him bad insider information. Next is De Villefort, who gets his comeuppance when he prosecutes Andrea Benedetto (Carlo Puri), a confederate of the Count’s, for the death of Caderousse (another of the conspirators against Dantes, played by Alessio Orano). In court, Benedetto reveals nasty secrets about Villefort that lead to his ruination in full view of the shocked spectators.

If looks could kill, Dantes' enemies would be nothing but ash heaps.

Finally, Dantes buys a prominent newspaper, which he uses to expose Mondego’s sordid past -- the officer had betrayed and murdered an ally, Ali Pasha, stolen his fortune and sold his daughter into slavery. When Dantes shows up at the military inquiry into Mondego, the two antagonists quickly end up crossing swords, with the stiff-necked members of the military court shouting at them to desist, to no avail. (Up to this point the Count had been a behind-the-scenes manipulator. At least this climactic duel afforded Chamberlain the opportunity to show off more of the skilled swordsmanship he demonstrated in the Richard Lester films.)

Dante’s three main antagonists distinguish this version of Dumas’ tale. For a man who looked like a nondescript accountant, Donald Pleasence got very good at playing villains, often ones who hid their evil under a mask of ordinariness. Nearly a decade before Monte-Cristo, he gained huge exposure playing the very extraordinary Bond villain Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967). Not long after Monte-Cristo, Pleasence got a career boost as Dr. Loomis, psychiatrist and monster-hunter, in the original Halloween (1978), and would follow that up with four more appearances in the subsequent popular franchise.

His character Danglars combines an almost nauseating unctuousness with a quiet ruthlessness in pursuing profit (a good combination for success in our times as well as Dumas’). However, Danglar’s willingness to blindly follow the investment advice of his perceived superior, the Count, proves his fatal undoing.

Danglars likes the finer things in life, but it's all about to go bust.

The Count faces another Bond villain, Louis Jourdan, as the royal prosecutor De Villefort (although Jourdan’s turn as Roger Moore’s nemesis in Octopussy was a few years down the road). Jourdan was the epitome of suaveness and courtliness, always adding an element of class to whatever he was in. He was especially effective as a villain, distracting his marks with old-world charm and sophistication even as he was plotting his heinous acts. (As such, he turns in a great performance as the titular character in the almost forgotten TV movie Count Dracula from 1977.)

True to form, Jourdan’s De Villefort is all smiles and silken reassurances that Dantes will only have to spend a night in custody -- all a formality of course -- even as he is arranging to have the unwitting Dantes carted off to spend the rest of his life in a dank dungeon.

In the courtroom scene, De Villefort is full of arrogant self-assurance as he walks into the Count’s trap. As the tables quickly turn and his dark secrets are revealed, the man's breakdown in full public view is all the more spectacular for his former smug confidence.

"Why I oughta....!!!"

Tony Curtis as Mondego is, well, Tony Curtis. The only clue to the passage of time when Mondego meets up with Dantes as the Count is a dramatic streak of white in his hair. Curtis’ natural boyish charm (even in middle age) is on full display here, which highlights his character’s self-satisfaction -- after all, Mondego is a decorated war hero with a beautiful wife and handsome, strapping son. But the Count soon wipes the smirk off his face, as well as wiping up the floor with him in the climactic sword fight.

Feature film newcomer Kate Nelligan as Mercedes has a lesser role, but makes the most her great dramatic moment, when, realizing the real identity of the Count, she appeals to whatever humanity Dantes has left after her son, trying to uphold the dignity of the Mondego family, challenges him to a duel. Before the decade was out, Nelligan would secure the role of Lucy Westenra in the bodice-ripping, heart-throbbing Frank Langella version of Dracula (1979).

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Oops, wrong movie!

Chamberlain is impressive as the Count, wearing his cool, impassive mask over Dante’s seething thirst for revenge. He even manages ripe lines like “I shall move like the Sword of the Lord with a terrible swiftness,” without venturing into unintentional comedy. He’s at his absolute best in the late scenes with his lost love Mercedes, as it dawns on him that for all his wealth he’s still broken, and revenge has not made him whole:

Dantes: "That was simple justice, madam, and believe me it brought me no joy. But now my task's accomplished. I've no particular place in the world, no strong desire in life... but to make amends where I've hurt the innocent."
Mercedes: "Avenging angels may not ask forgiveness of their victims."

Mercedes mourns the soul-death of her dear Edmond.

This version of Dumas’ tale, produced by the UK’s ITC Entertainment, was originally envisioned as a mini-series, but ultimately it was sold to NBC as a TV movie (although it did see theatrical release in parts of Europe). As in any adaptation, some characters and scenes from the novel don’t make it to the screen, and others are given short shrift. Some details are altered, e.g., the fates of Danglars and Mondego are switched. [Wikipedia] And, the sword fight between Dantes and Mondego at the climax is not in the novel -- but it was a good call to add it.

Like its namesake sandwich the Monte Cristo, the 1975 movie serves up generous portions of acting ham and cheesy dialog, but it’s so well made and sumptuous-looking, and the veteran cast so endearing, that, even with all the other adaptations floating around out there, it’s worth gobbling up, er, looking up.

Much like the sandwich, The Count of Monte-Cristo is a sumptuous feast for the eyes with a gooey, cheesy center.

Where to find it: Streaming 1 | Streaming 2

Eurospies in Space: The Wild, Wild Planet

Now Playing: The Wild, Wild Planet (aka I criminali della galassia, 1966)

Pros: The kind of crazy, go-for-broke energy that’s characteristic of ambitious, yet low-budget filmmaking; A plethora of surreal moments requires repeat viewings to take it all in
Cons: Laughably bad SFX, especially the miniatures of futuristic cities and vehicles

It’s often said that we need the bad in order to appreciate the good. What fan hasn’t embraced at least one movie that, despite being completely inartistic, demands repeat viewings and brings a smile every time? This post is part of the seventh “So Bad They’re Good Blogathon” being hosted by Rebecca at her Taking Up Room blog. Almost every genre is represented, so after you visit The Wild, Wild Planet, wander over to Rebecca’s blog for many more guilty pleasures.

1966 was a watershed year for science fiction fans. In September, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek debuted on national television, establishing a major franchise that's still going like a dilithium crystal-powered Energizer Bunny to this very day. Pitched as a “Wagon train to the stars” by Roddenberry himself, Star Trek was far more than that -- a high concept show that embraced an unapologetically optimistic vision of the future, dealt with sophisticated themes, and attracted fans of all ages.

Around the same time that Roddenberry was launching the Enterprise to seek out new life and new civilizations, Italian director Antonio Margheriti boldly set out on his own mission to make a series of space epics on a shoestring budget and a prayer.

At the dawn of the 1960s, as the space race between the U.S. and the Soviets was heating up, Margheriti raced ahead of the competition to direct Italy’s first space opera, Assignment: Outer Space (aka Space Men, 1960). Then, in the mid-60s, as the two superpowers kept trying to upstage each other with marathon manned missions and spacewalks, Margheriti took on mission control duties for a series of four sci-fi films: The Wild, Wild Planet, The War of the Planets, War Between the Planets, and The Snow Devils.

Co-produced in Italy, Spain and the U.S., and originally intended to be shown on American TV, the films were released in rapid-fire succession in 1966 and early ‘67. Incredibly, by reusing spaceship models and props from previous films, and shooting back-to-back with the same sets and many of the same cast members, Margheriti took only three months to deliver the films.

Wild, Wild Planet was the first release in what came to be known as the Gamma One Quadrilogy. “Gamma One” is a reference to the United Democracies Space Command (UDSCO) space station that is a major set piece in each of the films. [See the blog An Echo That’s Reversing for a rundown of the quadrilogy].

Although set in a nearer future than Star Trek’s 23rd century, UDSCO is a sort of precursor to Roddenberry’s United Federation of Planets. (The space station as a major location and jumping off point for the action also prefigures such series as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon One.)

But what earns the extra “Wild” in Wild, Wild Planet is an overlay of secret agents, conspiracies and a Bond-like supervillain that would have been very much at home in the more conventional spy pictures that were wildly popular at the time. In the mid-60s, the success of the James Bond franchise unleashed swarms of imitators on TV and in theaters, from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) in the U.S., to Secret Agent (1964-1967) in the UK, to more 007 knock-offs in Italy and France than you could shake a Walther PPK at.

"Of course we're trying to be inconspicuous, why do you ask?"

One clue that the film is not your typical space opera is the opening scene in which the camera pans past various dissected organs enclosed in a group of transparent cabinets, like a futuristic cannibal butcher shop. The organs are part of a research project being conducted by Dr. Nurmi (Massimo Surrato), the weirdly intense head of Chem Bio Med (CBM), a research outfit belonging to The Corporations.

Nurmi is conducting his Frankenstein-like experiments in miniaturizing body parts (?!) on board the Gamma One space station, and station commander Mike Halstead (Tony Russel) is none too happy. Not to mention, Nurmi is putting creepy moves on Lt. Connie Gomez (Lisa Gastoni), Gamma One’s Communications and Control Officer.

Connie is not too sure about a man who's into miniatures.

But soon, Nurmi becomes the least of Halstead’s worries, as Earth is rocked by the mysterious disappearances of a number of its leading citizens, including Halstead’s old friend General Fowler (Enzo Fiermonte). Space Command is called in to investigate.

While Halstead takes charge (including investigating the attempted kidnapping of his own nephew), Nurmi somehow convinces Connie to accompany him to his home base, the planet Delphos, where he can show her his etchings, er, uh, his scientific work and the future he has in store for humanity.

Halstead and his peeps (including a young Franco Nero as Lt. Jake Jacowitz) gradually uncover a fiendish plot involving teams of field agents -- always a beautiful woman accompanied by a tall, pale goon wearing a shiny black cloak and sunglasses -- who stalk their victims and then wrap them up in the goon’s cloak, whereupon they’re reduced to the size of a Barbie doll and hauled away in an attache case (?!).

A big break comes when one of the abductions is interrupted in mid-miniaturization, reducing the intended target, a renowned scientist, to half his normal size. The scientist escapes his kidnappers, but then falls into a deep coma, leaving Halstead and the authorities to wonder who’s next on the list for this extreme weight-loss plan.

"For crying out loud, couldn't you at least have given him a longer hospital gown?"

Meanwhile, Connie is alarmed by what she sees on Delphos. She soon realizes she’s become a prisoner, and that Nurmi’s designs on her are a lot more nefarious than your garden-variety sleazeball’s.

Not being a complete dummy, Halstead traces the plot back to Nurmi, but is stymied by his superiors, who don’t want to rock the boat by confronting a powerful and influential member of the Corporations.

It’s a race against time as Halstead struggles to free himself from the bureaucratic red tape and rescue Connie before she becomes Nurmi’s latest, most diabolical experiment in bio-engineered humans.

James Bondian influences are everywhere in this mash-up of spaceships and eurospies. Nurmi is the quintessential supervillain, suave and creepy at the same time, and as megalomaniacal as they come. Plus, there’s a healthy dose of mad scientist thrown in for added entertainment value, complete with speeches that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud:

“Halstead, you better get used to it. Tissue grafts and transplants are a fact of life. They’re revolutionizing medicine, and will transform mankind. They are the key to a new people, a race of perfect men!”

Like any self-respecting supervillain, Nurmi has an army of minions, including the gorgeous femme-fatales and the bio-engineered goons. At one point, Halstead and company mix it up with Nurmi’s agents, barely prevailing over the women after a lengthy fight scene full of karate chops and judo throws.

Biff! Pow! Zap! Kapow! Wham! Klonk!

And of course, there’s Nurmi’s super-scientific lair on Delphos, which, in typical Bondian fashion, is infiltrated by the Space Command forces at the climax.

Filling in the role of Bond girl is Gastoni as Lt. Connie Gomez, who in an opening scene is shown throwing men around Pussy Galore-style in a martial arts demonstration. She quickly gets Nurmi’s attention, who wants to enlist her in his quest to perfect the human race. (I won’t spoil things by revealing exactly how Connie figures into his plans -- let’s just say he’s mad about her DNA.)

With all that wild, wild genre blending going on, author Matt Blake’s estimate that the film’s piece of the budget pie was only $30,000 (“titchy even back in 1965”) is hard to believe, even given all the recycling of cast, crew and resources. [Matt Blake, Science Fiction Italian Style, The Wildeye Press, 2019, p.31].

On the other hand, viewers might think “where did all that money go?” when they get a look at the model work depicting futuristic cities and space stations. One of the film’s first guffaw-inducing moments comes with an early establishing shot of a cityscape, complete with toy vehicles zipping along an elevated track. It’s on par with a clever 12-year-old’s honorable mention science fair diorama. (Later, a flying car dangling from wires is good for a chuckle or two.)

"And the Science Fair honorable mention goes to..."

But viewers who are undeterred by the cheap toy modelwork will be treated to some supremely surreal moments. Nurmi’s pale henchmen opening up their slick black raincoats to envelop and miniaturize their victims has a distinct exhibitionist vibe to it (or maybe an even grosser vibe, but let’s not go there). Later, when one of the goons is captured, there’s another eeewww! moment when it’s revealed he has 4 arms -- the result of Nurmi’s limb grafting experiments.

And then there’s the end product of the miniaturization. One of Wild, Wild Planet’s more uncanny moments comes with a quick but fascinating close-up of a case full of doll-sized people lying in little foam-lined compartments, their faces covered with tiny oxygen masks.

Also intriguing are all the little background details of 21st century life as imagined in the mid-20th. Prophetically, surveillance cameras and commercial advertising are everywhere. Also prophetic is the government's (i.e., Space Command’s) deference to the powerful Corporations. Less so is the futuristic slang and epithets like “helium-headed idiot!” directed at incompetent bureaucrats by the hot-headed Cmdr. Halstead.

The Wild, Wild Planet is filled with so much weirdness that it’s like watching a live action Hieronymus Bosch painting -- just as you’re wondering what the hell that was, something else comes along to flummox you. And you can’t take it all in with just one viewing.

Supervillains have a fatal flaw: they prefer to brag instead of quickly eliminating their foes.

Some time after the dust had settled on the Gamma One Quadrilogy, Margheriti reminisced, somewhat apologetically, about the experience of making it:

“Two episodes were produced by an Italian TV station, the other ones by an American one. Unfortunately, the stupid producer had the idea of releasing them to the cinema. You can imagine a TV movie from the sixties dealing with space ships and such FX on the big screen. It doesn’t make for a very good impression (laughs). I remember we had three months to shoot the entire series, including the post-production. I directed four complete movies in only three months, and believe me, it was very hard work. For everyone else involved it was a fun project without any real stories or ideas and the results look exactly like that!” [Blake, p. 29]

He needn’t have been so apologetic. Sure, The Wild, Wild Planet is no 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars, but somehow, the combination of low budget and accelerated shooting schedule resulted in a wild, crazy ride that is far more memorable than many of the slick, corporate blockbusters that followed in its wake.

"Hold still, let me get that fly that's landed on your jacket!"

Where to find it: Streaming | DVD

UFO Storage Wars: Hangar 18

Now Playing: Hangar 18 (1980)

Pros: Leverages UFO and government conspiracy lore to concoct a reasonably decent sci-fi thriller; Notable performances by Robert Vaughn and Darren McGavin
Cons: Has the look and feel of a TV movie; Woefully inept alien spacecraft exterior

There’s been a lot of interesting news on the UFO/UAP front since we last checked in on UFO cinema here at Films From Beyond. 

Following up the release of eye-opening footage of U.S. military encounters with UFOs, an honest-to-goodness government whistleblower, former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, has testified before Congress that the federal government maintains a secret alien craft recovery program, and that we’re in possession of the remains of crashed vehicles and the bodies of non-human occupants.

To make things even more interesting, at least one element of the federal bureaucracy, The Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, found Grusch’s complaints credible, which paved the way for his going public.

The mainstream media’s general disinterest in this astounding story, and the various attempts to impugn Grusch’s character, makes me think there is really something there.

Of course, ever since the incident in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, tales of crashed spaceships and recovered alien pilots have occupied the outer edges of UFO lore and challenged investigators to come up with hard evidence.

Okay, so this isn't real, but the Truth, and real preserved alien bodies, are out there... maybe.

Some researchers, citing reports from military personnel involved in the incident, maintain that pieces of the Roswell spacecraft, along with the bodies of its occupants, were transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton Ohio, where they allegedly ended up in a top secret location, Hangar 18.

Not long after Steven Spielberg turned UFOs into box office gold with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the people at Sunn Classic Pictures decided to hop aboard the interstellar gravy train with a UFO epic of their own.

Sunn Classic, known at the time for cheesy Biblical and paranormal documentaries (more on that later), wisely leveraged Hangar 18’s notoriety for their film, but instead of making another documentary, they went the dramatic route, relocating the infamous hangar to a remote Air Force Base in Texas.

Hangar 18 tries to set up a documentary feel with an opening title card, but what follows is pure B drama (don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing).

The film opens with a space shuttle mission that is preparing to launch a satellite out of the cargo bay. One astronaut is in the bay attending to last minute details, while two others, Bancroft (Gary Collins) and Price (James Hampton) are driving the spacecraft.

Right before the launch, instruments show a large, mysterious craft taking up station next to the space shuttle, and Bancroft confirms with Mission Control that they can see the strange object.

The satellite’s engines fire, sending it straight into the UFO, resulting in an enormous explosion that **GULP!** decapitates the astronaut doing the EVA. The surviving astronauts execute an emergency re-entry while Mission Control tries to figure out what happened.

In space, no one can hear you lose your head.

Mission Control tracks the mystery object, which hasn’t been destroyed in the explosion and appears to be under intelligent control, to a landing site in the Arizona desert. The Air Force sends in a team to secure the area and whisk the craft to Hangar 18, which in Sunn Classic’s universe is located on a base in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.

At this point the film alternates between two plot lines. One features a conspiracy by Washington higher-ups to blame Bancroft and Price for the satellite disaster, while the astronauts in turn try to track down the recovered alien craft in order to clear their names. The other plot line dives into the minutia of ancient astronaut theories as a team of NASA experts examines the intact craft stored in the hangar.

The first storyline seems to have been inspired by Capricorn One (1977), in which an unscrupulous NASA administrator, fearing a budget-crippling mission failure, fakes a Mars landing for public consumption, but then must deal with the astronauts who, fearing for their lives, threaten to spill the beans.

Robert Vaughn plays Gordon Cain, an assistant to the President of the United States, who, in collaboration with the Air Force, is trying to cover up the existence of the recovered UFO. The President is a known UFO skeptic, and Cain figures that if word got out, somehow his boss’ re-election chances would be damaged (as if the government had no other reason to keep something like that secret).

In the '70s, Napoleon Solo quit the spy game and got a Washington, D.C. desk job.

The Capricorn One vibe is strong in scenes where Bancroft and Price discover unaltered NASA telemetry data showing the presence of the UFO during the mission, and are shadowed by federal agents in black suits (Men in Black?) as they check out the Arizona crash site. As the astronauts get closer to discovering the recovered spacecraft’s location, the stakes get higher and they realize the fight is not only for the Truth, but for their very lives.

CAUTION: CAN YOU HANDLE THE SECRETS OF HANGAR 18?

Erich von Däniken and his best-selling book Chariots of the Gods? hover over the parallel storyline of the examination of the captured alien craft. NASA administrator Harry Forbes (Darren McGavin), is tasked by the Air Force to assemble a crack team to investigate the alien technology.

Unaware of the trouble Bancroft and Price are in, Forbes hops to it. The scene in which the scientists first set eyes on the craft is clearly meant to evoke a Close Encounters-type sense of awe and wonder, but unfortunately Hangar 18 only evokes wonderment that the filmmakers thought they could get away with such an uninspired design.

As Forbes and a couple of scientists in hazmat suits approach the thing, it looks like nothing more than a large, industrial grade HVAC unit with flashing lights at the base. Considering the force of the explosion that tore the satellite apart and took out the unlucky spacewalking astronaut, there is hardly a scratch on the alien furnace, er, spacecraft.

"Gentlemen, behold the Sunn Classic 3000, the most powerful heating and air conditioning unit in the galaxy!"

Fortunately for the team the thing opens up on its own, and they’re able to marvel at advanced alien heating and cooling, er, space technology. I won’t get into too many spoilers, except to say that at least the craft’s interior and instruments are better conceived and are a couple of grades above the usual low-budget spaceship that looks like it was outfitted by Radio Shack.

Also, the team’s linguist, Neal Kelso (Andrew Bloch) is able to decode the alien language incredibly quickly, and his discoveries are pretty much a laundry list of von Däniken’s ancient astronaut theories.

Coming at the end of the turbulent ‘70s, Hangar 18 is an encapsulation of the post-Vietnam/Watergate distrust of government and the surge of interest in UFOs, the paranormal and assorted alternate “realities.”

The company behind Hangar 18, Sunn Classic Pictures, had already established a reputation for sensationalistic documentaries such as The Mysterious Monsters (1975; a survey of a whole range of paranormal creatures and topics), The Outer Space Connection (1975; more ancient astronauts), In Search of Noah's Ark (1976), and The Bermuda Triangle (1979).

During that period, Sunn Classic interspersed the documentaries with family-friendly, rural-oriented dramas like The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (1974) and The Adventures of Frontier Fremont (1976), but after the company was bought by Taft Enterprises in 1980, the theatrical output turned almost exclusively to sci-fi and horror, with such notable releases as The Boogens (1981), Cujo (1983) and The Running Man (1987) following on the heels of Hangar 18.

Hangar 18 is the ultimate Sunn Classic picture, combining Watergate-style conspiracies, Roswell rumors, alien autopsies and speculation about ancient alien visitations into one dramatic package (although how well the parts fit together is open to debate).

Marveling at the alien viewscreen's crispness and clarity, Phil suddenly realized he would need to upgrade his TV before the Big Game.

The film’s ending is abrupt and violent, yet a radio broadcast voice over as the end credits roll strikes a note of cautious optimism. Hangar 18 seems like a pop culture bridge between the pessimism and cynicism of the ‘70s and Reagan’s Morning in America which was just dawning (and which itself turned out to be as phony as a Sunn Classic documentary, but that’s a discussion for another time).

Speaking of ‘70s signifiers, Hangar 18’s acting leads exemplify the decade as well as anyone. In the ‘60s, Robert Vaughn vaulted to fame as the suave spy Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. After that stint, he shed the action star veneer for character roles, especially authority figures. Perusing his IMDb resume for just the '70s alone, he portrayed two U.S. presidents along with a multitude of senators, military officers and corporate executives, many of them corrupt like his character in Hangar 18.

On the flip side, one of the highlights of Darren McGavin’s career came in the early to mid-’70s with his portrayal of bedraggled newshound Carl Kolchak in two Night Stalker TV movies and a short-lived series. Kolchak was the paranormal world’s answer to Woodward and Bernstein, constantly fighting to unearth stories of strange creatures and supernatural forces that the authorities preferred to keep under wraps (the X-Files’ Mulder and Scully would take up the cause in the ‘90s). Unlike Vaughn, who had a facility for portraying human snakes, McGavin was naturally cheerful and gregarious, so he was almost always cast as a reliable, if somewhat put upon, good guy.

Harry Forbes (Darren McGavin, right) channels the inquisitive spirit of Carl Kolchak in Hangar 18.

Astronauts Bancroft and Price were played by two solid character actors, both of whose career heydays were in the ‘70s. Gary Collins guested on some of the decade’s most iconic TV shows, including Hawaii 5-0, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, The Love Boat and Charlie’s Angels (he also starred as a paranormal investigator in the short-lived series The Sixth Sense).

Similarly, James Hampton was all over TV and low-budget movies, but scored a couple of memorable supporting roles in two big hits, The Longest Yard (1974, with Burt Reynolds) and The China Syndrome (1979, with Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon).

Hangar 18 tries valiantly to be a taut sci-fi thriller, but the effort is hampered by TV movie-grade chase scenes, the prosaic-looking alien craft, and some dull stretches. 

Bancroft and Price take a breather between encounters with Men in Black.

Vaughn and McGavin give it their all playing the impassioned bureaucrats (is that an oxymoron?). They each have their moments, but too much dialog and too many close-ups of furrowed brows slows down the middle part of the movie considerably. 

Perhaps the most fun to be had with Hangar 18 is counting the various homages and references to UFO lore. Additionally, it’s a great artifact of late-'70s paranoia (some would say sober realism). Maybe that’s enough to recommend it.

Where to find it: DVD | Streaming

Abandon ship all ye who enter here: The Lost Continent

Now Playing: The Lost Continent (1968)

Pros: Haunting imagery; Good, nuanced performances
Cons: Seems like two very different films spliced together; Sub-par creature effects

Thanks to Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharsis, it’s time once again for the great Amicus-Hammer Blogathon (fourth installment), wherein enthusiastic movie bloggers come together to honor the works of these two great production companies.

Since this blog is dedicated to underdog B movies and genre films that live in the shadows of their more celebrated brethren and and tend to be starved for love, I decided to write about a Hammer fantasy-adventure that over the years has gotten lost amid Hammer’s beloved Gothic horrors featuring Messrs. Cushing and Lee.

Debuting a little over a decade after Hammer launched its wildly popular horror cycle with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Lost Continent was one of a clutch of fantasy-adventure films (She, One Million Years B.C., Prehistoric Women, and The Vengeance of She among them) that Hammer produced in the mid-to-late ‘60s featuring lost and/or ancient civilizations.

Although Hammer was still committed to its technicolor Gothics -- Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and Frankenstein Must be Destroyed followed Lost Continent in quick succession -- at this point the studio realized there was plenty of money to be made in fantasy-adventure, especially featuring stars like Ursula Andress and Raquel Welch in various states of ancient/prehistoric undress. (One Million Years B.C. in particular was a hit in the U.S., where the legendary poster of Welch in a prehistoric bikini adorned untold numbers of teenage boys’ bedroom walls.)

Thank you Hammer. Thank you very much.

The Lost Continent, based on a novel, Uncharted Seas, by UK thriller writer Dennis Wheatley (more on that later), suffers from Multiple Thematic Disorder (a term that I made up exclusively for this post; ® pending). MTD is characterized by two or more distinct themes competing for control of the same movie.

In its first hour, the film effectively anticipates a 70s-style disaster movie, introducing the viewer to an assorted cast of troubled characters who sail into a perfect storm of intrigue, jaw-dropping screw-ups and nasty weather.

Eric Porter plays Captain Lansen, owner of a rust-bucket freighter, the Corita, which he is planning to run from South Africa to Caracas, Venezuela in a desperate bid to make a retirement nest-egg for himself. Desperate, because he illegally loaded the Corita’s hold with drums of Phosphor B (white phosphorus), which is highly explosive and has multiple military uses. Some shady types in Venezuela are willing to pay top dollar for the cargo, but there’s one catch -- Phosphor B has a tendency to explode spectacularly when wet, and the Corita is not the most sea-worthy of vessels. What could go wrong?

"Aye Captain, we only have impulse power, the shields are down to 30%, and I canna keep the cargo hold from flooding!"

Sitting on top of the Corita’s explosive cargo is a rogue’s gallery of passengers, each of whom have booked passage on the rust-bucket for mysterious reasons that are gradually revealed as the voyage gets underway:

• Eva Peters (Hildegard Knef), has run away from her abusive boyfriend, a former banana republic dictator, and taken millions worth of cash and bonds with her
• Dr. Webster (Nigel Stock) is a pompous blowhard who has gotten in trouble for performing illegal operations on his patients
• Webster’s attractive daughter Unity (Suzanna Leigh) resents the doctor’s attempts to control her life and the trust fund her wealthy mother left her
• Harry Tyler (Tony Beckley) is an unapologetic drunk who keeps wads of cash in the lining of his jacket
• Ricaldi (Ben Carruthers) is a lean, dangerous looking type who seems to have an unusual interest in one or more of the other passengers
• Serving this motley collection is Patrick the bartender (Jimmy Hanley), who seems a little too cheery considering the circumstances

After some desultory backstory revelations, the film gets down to the disaster you know is coming. Due to the highly illegal cargo, Lansen orders that the ship avoid busy sea lanes. Then, another metaphorical fuse to the powderkeg is lit when the crew finds out that the ship’s course is taking them straight into a hurricane.

First Officer Hemmings (Neil McCallum) and most of the crew are none too happy with the situation, and make it known to the Captain in no uncertain terms. When an accident with the ship’s anchor punches a hole in the bulkhead and water starts flooding into the compartment with the Phosphor B, it’s every man and woman for themselves.

The metaphorical powderkeg finally explodes when the panicky First Officer and many of the crew mutiny. Lifeboats are deployed, shots are fired, and one of the mutineers is killed in a freak, Rube Goldberg-esque manner involving a lifeboat pulley. Yikes!

The Captain, the passengers and the remaining loyal crew members battle to keep the cargo dry, but as the weather gets dicier the Captain finally gives up and orders everyone to abandon ship. Ironically, after a harrowing ordeal on the lifeboat with various survivors violently arguing over limited provisions and one of them becoming an appetizer for a shark, the ocean currents push the boat straight back to the freighter, which has miraculously survived.

Johnson knew he shouldn't have gone back for seconds at the ship's buffet.

At this point we’re about an hour into the film, and so far we’ve seen a pretty good action-thriller with sketchy characters trying to keep dark secrets to themselves, growing suspense involving the cargo and the hurricane, and characters behaving very badly (not to mention bravely) when the Phosphor B threatens to hit the fan.

With only a little over a half hour left in its running time, the film abruptly changes course into high fantasy-adventure territory. The freighter, its propeller and rudder fouled by sentient, blood-sucking seaweed (the Captain almost loses his hand to the unholy stuff), drifts into a graveyard of lost ships stuck in the muck somewhere in the Sargasso Sea.

As time and the movie’s limited budget run out like the sands of an hourglass, The Lost Continent throws everything and the kitchen sink at the characters and the audience:

• Not one, but two (count ‘em!) lost mini-civilizations: one, the descendants of 16th Spanish Conquistadors and members of the Inquisition attempting to sail to the New World; the other, the descendants of Europeans fleeing religious persecution (naturally!)
• Two (count ‘em if you want) extras that get fed to the carnivorous seaweed
• Ingenious lost civilization technology for walking over the killer seaweed, consisting of buoyant footpads and a harness with balloons to keep the wearer upright (?!)
• Three (if you can believe it!) giant creatures -- an octopus, a crab and a scorpion -- that scout their prey with eyes that look like colored car headlights as they prepare to munch on assorted cast members
• A bloodthirsty Spanish boy-ruler, dubbed El Supremo (Daryl Read), and his equally bloodthirsty advisor, an Inquisitor-monk dressed in a dirty cowl with only the eye-holes cut out (Eddie Powell)
• The eye-popping and bodice-stretching cleavage of Sarah (Dana Gillespie), a member of the gentle lost people, who needs the help of the ship’s crew to avoid the clutches of the evil Conquistadors

One upside of getting trapped in the Sargasso Sea is that there's plenty of free parking.

That’s a lot to cram into a paltry half-hour and some change. It’s as if the producers decided in the middle of filming that a simple action-thriller set on the high seas was not going to cut it, and they needed to spice things up with prehistoric monsters ala One Million Years B.C. and some inbred Conquistadors chasing after fair maidens with heaving bosoms. (Robert Mattey, who supervised the Oscar-winning special effects for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, created the monsters for the film, but these creatures are poor cousins to the impressive giant squid of the Disney film.)

The whiplash nature of two movies seemingly spliced together at the last minute is further accentuated by sudden character changes that seem to come out of nowhere. Harry, after spending the first two-thirds of the film staggering around dead drunk and fighting with his fellow survivors over half-empty bottles of rum, suddenly gets stone sober and wields a cutlass like Errol Flynn as he fights off the Conquistadors. (Admittedly, he becomes repentant after throwing one of his fellow lifeboat passengers over the side in a drunken fit, but still…)

And Unity, after her corrupt father becomes shark chum, celebrates by throwing herself at anything or anyone wearing pants. Yes, she’s very attractive and newly liberated, but still…

Unity did not take it well when she learned her luggage ended up on another cruise ship.

Lastly, it takes El Supremo less than half an hour to transition from a sadistic little monster who delights in seeing his subjects tortured and thrown to the carnivorous plants, to a conscience-ridden young boy who wants his new friends to take him away from the hellish prison of his wrecked Galleon.

Amidst these sorry characters, two stand out. In a potboiler like The Lost Continent, by rights Captain Lansen should be a cardboard villain (and a not very bright one at that) -- he’s shipping a highly volatile, highly illegal chemical in a leaky freighter across a stormy ocean in order to sell it to nefarious arms dealers for personal gain. To top it off, he’s sold passage to a collection of desperate characters who aren’t in a position to question the danger they’re in.

But in the hands of veteran Shakespearean actor Eric Porter, Lansen turns out to be complicated and surprisingly sympathetic. He’s determined to see his desperate plan through, and at least thinks he has the competence to make it work, but he also has enough of a conscience that he doesn’t want to see people hurt. (They hurt themselves anyway, but people are like that sometimes.)

The other stand out is Hildegard Knef as Eva. The film sets up her character as a femme-fatale who has cleverly swindled a wealthy politician out of a hefty fortune. But just as we’re ready to judge her, she reveals with a touching mixture of sadness and defiance the very human reason for stealing the money.

Later, on the lifeboat, her quick thinking saves Lansen’s life when she shoots a menacing crew member with a flare gun, but instead of exhibiting the typical movie protagonist bravado, she breaks down with shock and remorse. It’s a very moving and authentic performance.

Hildegard Knef as Eva.

There are two pretty decent movies here masquerading as one. After watching it, I couldn’t help thinking about how you might end the action-thriller that takes up the first hour without veering into lost worlds and monsters. And then there’s the fantastic, hair-raising third act that is so rushed and compressed that it plays like a highlight reel. I wanted to see much more of the mini-world of the Spanish Conquistadors stuck in time, their weird customs, and more fleshed out backstories for El Supremo and the Inquisitor. But that’s another movie.

Whatever its virtues or faults, The Lost Continent is producer-writer-director Micheal Carrera’s baby. Michael, the son of Hammer co-founder James Carreras, was instrumental in ushering in Hammer’s horror renaissance, helping to produce The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf.

He had a contentious relationship with his father, and in the early ‘60s he formed his own company, Capricorn Productions. But Michael couldn’t stay away from Hammer for long, and leading up to The Lost Continent, he found himself writing and producing One Million Years B.C. (1966), and producing and directing The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964) and Prehistoric Women (1967). 

According to an extensive article on The Lost Continent in The Dark Side magazine, despite Carreras’ heavy involvement in the Hammer horror films, his personal tastes ran more towards the “exotic, adventure and action genres,” and Wheatley’s source novel Uncharted Seas was of interest because it was in the “swashbuckling vein.” (Around the same time that Lost Continent was filming, another Wheatley adaptation, The Devil Rides Out, was underway at a nearby location.The author managed to visit both sets.)

Patrick suddenly regretted ordering the Alaskan King Crab legs.

The production did not go smoothly. Leslie Norman started out as director, but when it became apparent that he wasn’t well, Michael took over the shooting. As the film threatened to go over budget and behind schedule, studio head James put pressure on his son to make changes that would at least deliver it on time. [The Dark Side Magazine, “Monsters, Maidens & Conquistadors,” Issue 223, 2021, pp. 20-21]

The result was the most expensive Hammer production to date, but one that would be eclipsed in popularity and critical reception by that other Wheatley adaptation. It seems clear that the changes Michael was forced to make resulted in a third act that at one and the same time was overstuffed and abbreviated.

And yet, Carreras still managed to tease out of all the chaos the beginnings of a good, rip-roaring action-adventure tale, a couple of solid, nuanced performances, and the weird spectacle of Conquistadors frozen in time. It’s not The Devil Rides Out, but it’s worth a look.

Where to find it: Blu-ray

"Your excellency, I got the tickets for the next showing of The Devil Rides Out."