Bond Back to Earth (Part II of II)

OCTOPUSSY (1983)

Negotiating on a picture-by-picture basis, Roger Moore appears in his penultimate Bond, despite screen tests by James Brolin and Michael Billington. With the announcement of an unofficial THUNDERBALL remake, Moore provided a safer pair of hands under the circumstances.

THE contrasting visuals of Berlin and India form the backdrop to the thirteenth official James Bond film, released the same year as Sean Connery's rival outing NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN. In an original screenplay only fleetingly inspired by Ian Fleming's short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights, Roger Moore returns for his sixth 007 adventure. Renegade Soviet General Orlov (outrageous Steven Berkoff) forms an allegiance with charismatic smuggler and exiled Afgan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan, a close friend of Cubby Broccoli). Orlov plans to detonate a nuclear bomb on a US military base in Germany, surmising that a subsequent withdrawal will leave Western Europe open to his loyalist forces. Khan double crosses fellow smuggler Octopussy (Maud Adams) and uses her travelling circus to unwittingly transport the bomb to the base, which Bond manages to deactivate at the last second.

Swedish model and actress Adams is perfect as the titular role; others considered included Sybil Danning, Faye Dunaway and Persis Khambatta (Barbara Carrera was actually offered the part, but chose to work on NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN instead). Reviving an ancient Octopus cult, and living in a palace guarded by an all-female team of athletic assassins, Adams effortlessly brings the character to life. Octopussy is also fleshed-out with a back-story: she is the daughter of disgraced British agent Dexter Smythe, who 007 allowed to commit suicide rather than face the scandal and humiliation of a court martial; Smythe was found responsible for the theft of Chinese gold from North Korea, and the murder of two guides. 

Maud Adams featured in three Bonds. As well as her star turn here, Adams was Scaramanga's ill-fated lover in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, and an extra in A VIEW TO A KILL.

Despite the grounded intentions of director John Glen, silly gags, crude innuendo and racist lines ("that'll keep you in curry for a few weeks") still clash with some astounding sequences. While Bond's Tarzan yell, gorilla outfit and Barbara Woodhouseesque command of "sit!" to a tiger are low points, the sequence where 009 (Andy Bradford) is stalked and murdered by knife-throwing twins Mischka and Grischka (David and Tony Meyer) is tense and sinister, as is the use of a yo-yo buzz saw which kills Bond's ally in India Vijay (tennis professional Vijay Amritraj). Also, the opening credits sequence involving the Acrostar Mini Jet and a heat-seeking missile still stands up as one of the best, beautifully executed by a seamless mix of real jet, full-scale replicas and miniatures. This is a particular relief after the Blofeld debacle of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, although completely unconnected to the main narrative.

With the "Battle of the Bonds" a non-starter as NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN suffered production delays, OCTOPUSSY posted strong numbers with its summer release. Overall it is a very odd entry, and usually included in that ever-increasing number of 'Better of the Worst' Bonds. In order to reinforce the fact that you were watching the only official 007 movie of 1983, the Bond theme is even used to break the Fourth Wall, when Vijay plays it on a snake-charming flute.

Mad Science

THE MUTATIONS (1974)

"He'll soon be neither human being nor plant, but with the characteristics and advantages of both: a plant that can move and think, a man who can set down roots." Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker plot and fester.

DIRECTED by Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff, THE MUTATIONS uses the template of Tod Browning's FREAKS and poverty row mad scientist pictures to mix with unsubtle 70's British sleaze and an avant-garde score. University Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasence, in a role originally intended for Vincent Price) is experimenting to merge human and plant life. Any unsuccessful subjects are offloaded to Nolter's kidnapping accomplice Lynch (Tom Baker) for a nearby circus "Royal Family of Strange People," which Lynch runs with dwarf Burns (Michael Dunn). The human protagonists - all students from Nolter's class (Tony (Scott Anthony), Lauren (Jill Haworth) and Hedi (Julie Ege)) - and the circus freaks are exploited by the tyrannical Lynch, who hopes that Nolter will cure his own Elephant Man-type deformity. The plan starts to unravel when Tony, after being turned into a human Venus Fly Trap, escapes and ingests a homeless man. With Hedi strapped naked to the operating table, she is saved from Nolter's burning mansion by Dr Brian Redford (Brad Harris), and the freaks take their revenge on Lynch.

Like Browning, real deformed humans are cast for the roles (including Alligator Girl Esther Blackmon and the show-stopping Willie "Popeye" Ingram). Another Browning cue sees THE MUTATIONS lift its party scene directly from FREAKS, and Cardiff must also have been influenced by Universal's 1973 SSSSSSS, which sees herpetologist Dr Carl Stoner (Strother Martin) change young men into King Cobras, whereby botched attempts are exhibited at a circus. Both Nolter and Stoner theorise that humans now need to be in some transformative state, for Nolter to create a "world without hunger," and for Stoner to survive ecological disaster. A deadpan Pleasence mostly recites dialogue from his textbooks and provides an amusing lecture aside referencing genetically recreated dinosaurs, while at home he feeds rabbits to his creations. But Baker is the star: shortly before his Time Lord appointment - and sporting a coat hat and scarf ensemble - Lynch is the Igor to Pleasance's Frankenstein/Dr Moreau. Lynch himself is a freak, but his overpowering self loathing cannot make himself accept his plight; in the film's only touching scene, he visits a prostitute and begs her to say "I love you" for an extra pound.

Scott Anthony - mutated into a Venus Fly Trap - devours his  

monster maker Pleasence in the fiery climax.

The exhibition of real biological oddities can be traced back to the 1630's, when Lazarus Colloredo and his conjoined twin Joannes Baptista toured Europe. "Freaks of nature" as a source of entertainment on film adds another voyeuristic quality, freezing their façade awkwardly in time to watch over and over. FREAKS' original cut of January 1932 was met with disgust - one woman at a test screening threatened to sue stating it caused her miscarriage - and remains the only MGM release to have been pulled from circulation before completing its engagements. The picture was also banned in Britain for thirty years, and effectively brought Browning's career to a premature end. However, FREAKS has enjoyed a positive re-evaluation over the years, unlike Michael Winner's 1977 Universal opus THE SENTINEL, which controversially featured deformed humans as denizens from hell. Amid THE MUTATIONS relentless dour atmosphere, when Lynch is killed by flying switchblades then devoured by Nolter's hounds, the "Strange People" at least have a form of closure.

Sadist and Surgeon

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)
CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960)
KONGA (1961)

Together with PEEPING TOM, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM and CIRCUS OF HORRORS complete Anglo Amalgamated's Sadian Trilogy. Here are the celebrated dispatches of Dorinda Stevens from the former, and Vanda Hudson from the latter.

WITH a background at Gainsborough, Arthur Crabtree turned to titillating gore with HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, where cigar-smoking true crime writer Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough) has a private shrine of torture devices. Bancroft provides gravitas to his work by instigating a number of ghastly murders, most of which are carried out by his young protégé Rick (Graham Curnow) after the injection of a drug that turns Rick green. Bancroft moulds the youngster in his own image, telling him that females are "...all a vicious, unreliable breed" in the hope of putting him off Angela (Shirley Anne Field), giving fatherly advice ("Someday you will go deep into the black soul of man, deeper than anyone else has gone, and you will remember it was I who sent you on that journey") and subsequently securing the Black Museum as their dirty little secret. Under the garish hues of 1950's Eastmancolor, the set pieces are too flat to be effective: Bancroft's doctor Ballan (Gerald Anderson) is disposed of in a flesh-removing vat, Gail (Dorinda Stevens) has her eyes punctured by concealed binocular skewers, and the writer's mistress Joan (June Cunningham) succumbs to a DIY guillotine.

In Sidney Hayers' CIRCUS OF HORRORS, disgraced plastic surgeon Dr Rossiter (cold as ice Anton Diffring) flees England and turns a makeshift French circus - run by drunk Vanet (Donald Pleasence) - into an international success. The performers are all criminals whose faces Rossiter has re-built, and if they get out of line "accidental" deaths are arranged. After a decade the surgeon risks bringing his famed troupe back to Blighty, but as the walls come down on his shenanigans, Rossiter survives a gorilla attack before being run over. Similar to the sadistic murders of BLACK MUSEUM, CIRCUS OF HORRORS illustrates a style of gaudy schlock that would come to the fore in British horrors of the 1970's (the most celebrated being Magda (Vanda Hudson)'s ECesque demise during a sabotaged knife-throwing act). Lambasted by the Catholic Legion of Decency for its "excessive brutality [and] suggestive costumes," Hayers' makes the most of a bevy of large-breasted beauties such as Yvonnes Monlaur and Romain; as the Catholic Legion suggests, its narrative is purely an excuse to murder females who wear revealing circus attire, and all the better for it.

Claire Gordon in the clutches of KONGA. Shot in the fictitious but grand sounding SpectraMation, the giant gorilla is a B-movie charmer.

Allegedly filmed as I WAS A TEENAGE GORILLA, John Lemont's KONGA is a preposterous man-in-a-monkey-suit horror, and a riot of abysmal miniatures and opticals. Gough basically reprises his overwrought performance as Bancroft from BLACK MUSEUM, complete with a hypnotised partner-in-crime; here he is crazed botanist Charles Decker ("in science, a human being is only a cypher"), who wills an enlarged ape to acts of violence. Presumed dead after crashing in the African jungle, Decker returns to London a year later with a rare form of plant life, plus a pet chimp named Konga. When extracts from the vegetation causes rapid growth the chimp grows to Gorilla size and the doctor uses him to murderous effect: the school Dean, a competitor and the boyfriend of the bustiest of his teenage students, Sandra (Claire Gordon), are all dispatched. Although Decker's assistant Margaret (Margo Johns) has kept his activities quiet in lieu of marriage, when she too discovers of her intended demise, she gives Konga an excessive dose of the super-serum. This results in Decker finding himself in the clutches of a now-gargantuan simian by Big Ben.

Hollywood low-rent mogel Herman Cohen co-produced and co-wrote both BLACK MUSEUM and KONGA. Famed for his queasy shock tactics and playing up to his target teen audience, there are seldom truly likable characters in any Cohen production; instead, inhabitants are usually borderline unhinged and sex-obsessed. Consequently Gough is the archetypal Cohen actor, more than at home with arrogant, lecherous over-achievers while barking out his sudden outlandish demands. With KONGA Gough is in tantrum heaven, at one point gunning down his cat after it drinks some of the formula ("We're not ready to have a cat the size of a leopard running through the streets!").

Their Satanic Majesties Request

THE HELLFIRE CLUB (1961)

TERROR (1978)

French A style poster for New World's THE HELLFIRE CLUB, more pulp adventure than demonic horror.

THE real-life Hellfire Club was famed for its debauchery and devil worship, the name given to several establishments in Britain and Ireland as meeting places for "persons of quality," who wished to take part in immoral acts. Founded in 1719 London, The Club motto Fais ce que tu voudras (Do what thou wilt) was a philosophy associated with François Rabelais' fictional abbey at Thélème, and later adopted by Aleister Crowley. Set in 18th century England, THE HELLFIRE CLUB tells of circus acrobat Jason (Keith Michell), in his attempt to reclaim the estate of his estranged father Lord Netherton (Andrew Faulds), leader of The Hellfire Club. Years earlier, Jason as a boy (Martin Stephens) is whipped by his father after walking in on an orgy, and together with his mother (Jean Lodge) flees with Timothy (David Lodge). Jason discovers that his cousin Thomas (Peter Arne) has stolen his inheritance, and together with lawyer Merryweather (Peter Cushing), plans to bring an end to the deceit and break the grip of The Club on King George II’s rule. 

Although billed as a guest star, Cushing's fussy but erudite character is pivotal to the fate of English society (the actor later adapted Merryweather's demeanor for his takes on Doctor Who and Abner Perry). Because of Cushing's presence and its lush staging, the film is often mistaken for a Hammer release; but there is no bite to the picture, limiting itself to a handful of orgies where most of the participants remain fully clothed. Directed by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman from a script by Leon Griffiths and Jimmy Sangster, it is more swashbuckling melodrama, using The Club as a pinning to hang its elaborate fight scenes and love interests (redheads Adrienne Corri and Kai Fischer). Like most cinematic heroes brandishing a sword, Jason is not only morally perfect but also irresistible to women, and Michell gives a likable performance as he gathers his circus comrades to do battle with the hierarchy.

With a running time of only 80 minutes, TERROR is a whirlwind of gore, semi-nudity and in-jokes. Amazingly, the film topped the UK box office charts for a week in early 1979.

TERROR takes a more traditional approach to the devil. Reuniting director Norman J. Warren with scriptwriter David McGillivray after SATAN'S SLAVE, TERROR is not so much an unashamed rip-off of Dario Argento's operatic gore noir SUSPIRIA but a star-struck reaction to it. The movie starts with a witch hunt and a beheading, subsequently revealed to be a "film within a film" being watched in the same house where hundreds of years before the events being portrayed on screen took place. The witch exacts her revenge on the ancestors of her persecutors, one of whom is the production's director, James Garrick (John Nolan). After a makeshift hypnosis goes awry, the curse takes on a more direct approach, including death by lighting equipment, murderous film cans (in reality nine faulty prints of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER specially supplied by Rank Laboratories) which leads to a very Argentoesque window-pane decapitation, and aspiring actress Carol (Glynis Barber) is impaled to a tree trunk.

The performances are generally competent, but James and Ann Garrick (Carolyn Courage) both have too little screen time to develop the family curse scenario. Instead, the focus is on Les Young's coloured filters to provide TERROR with a suitably garish tableau and enhance the hallucinatory disregard for logic. The opening "film within a film" acts both as a Hammer Gothic pastiche and a expostulation of it, but this is not the only nod to a cinematic heritage; the viewer is also treated to a fictitious softcore film called BATHTIME WITH BRENDA, scenes heavily indebted to experiences not necessarily enjoyed by Warren and McGillivray in their careers. Other points of interest are a nightclub act you won't forget in a hurry, and a red herring sequence culminating in a Peter Mayhew cameo.

The Circus of Nights

VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1971)

Bald, naked and coated in body paint, Serena is the Tiger Woman.

AS Hammer entered its wilderness years, Robert Young's VAMPIRE CIRCUS rediscovers the studio's vigour. Picking up the gauntlet thrown down by TWINS OF EVIL, this offering pushes Hammer further into the softcore sex and copious bloodletting required to maintain interest amongst pictures made outside of Elstree. Despite the film being Young's first picture, and the inevitable delays resulting from the extensive use of animals, Michael Carreras pulled the plug on the unfinished production when it had reached the end of its six-week shoot. The footage was subsequently spliced together, creating a Euro-horroresque charm of its own.

Opening with a twelve minute prologue which plays like a featurette, in 1810, vampire Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman) and his mistress Anna Mueller (Domini Blythe) are apparently destroyed by the villagers of Schtettel. Fifteen years later the village is riven with plague and quarantined, and The Circus of Nights, led by an enigmatic gypsy woman (Adrienne Corri), arrive to entertain the villagers nightly with a Tiger Woman (Serena), a Panther Man (Anthony Corlan), twin acrobats Heinrich (Robin Sachs) and Helga (Lalla Ward), and a clown dwarf (Skip Martin). In fact the troupe are undead, shape-shifting relatives of Mitterhaus, who seduce and procure the blood of the local young to resurrect him.

Written by Steve Parkhouse and illustrated by Brian Bolland, VAMPIRE CIRCUS was adapted into comics for The House of Hammer #17 (Feb 1978).

The Circus of Nights ("A hundred delights!") is one of the most subversive takes on the essential innocence of the carnival ethos. The villagers gasp in amazement at the antics of the troupe, and even though the performers change into bats and black panthers before their eyes, they take a remarkably long time to react to their visitors true nature. The villagers are portrayed as generally deserving of the various fates that the vengeful vampires see fit to bestow upon them. The undead are predominantly young, talented and sexy, whereas the town folk are sexually repressed, middle-aged, unattractive and riddled with fears and prejudices. When Anna watches her lover feed from the throat of a young girl in the prologue, watching in voyeuristic ecstasy in a prelude to making love with Mitterhaus, there is no question that she is truly liberated.

VAMPIRE CIRCUS is one of the few British horror films to understand the difference between nudity and eroticism. Not only does it break the taboo of unleashing violence to young children - a scene where two boys are lured to The Mirror of Life is particularly uncomfortable - it dares to be homoerotic, suggestively bestial and incestuous. Because of such lurid material the film has gone unappreciated, but this may be underscored by the lack of a name horror star. Laurence Payne's world-weary schoolmaster, the central heroic figure, only receives sixth billing in a large cast which includes David Prowse unsurprisingly as the circus strongman, Thorley Walters as the bumbling Burgomeister, John Moulder-Brown as the most unconvincing romantic lead in the whole Hammer canon, and Lynne Frederick as Dora.

The Stones on TV

THE ROLLING STONES ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS (1968)
THE STONES IN THE PARK (1969)

An attractive French DVD cover of THE STONES IN THE PARK.

IN December 1968, The Rolling Stones turned the Wembley Intertel studios into a real live circus for a BBC special never to be broadcast. Shelved and only released on video in 1996, then on DVD in 2004, THE ROLLING STONES ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS is a masquerade of dwarves, trapeze artists, fire-eaters and headlining musical talent, with Mick Jagger as the Ringmaster. Set on a tiny stage just barely sufficient to accommodate the bands, the show nevertheless captures the spontaneity and communal spirit of swinging London in the late 1960s, as well as a project that delightfully ridicules the variety show conventions to which the stars so obediently adhered to when they were rising young turks. The appearance of Jagger’s then muse Marianne Faithfull - sitting mannequin-like in a floor length evening gown - is the only conventional moment in an otherwise glowing piece of entertainment.

The Who’s alleged up-staging of The Stones with A Quick One While He’s Away is often cited as the main reason Jagger pulled the plug. Even though the song is hardly one of The Who’s best - a patchwork telling a puerile but strangely resonant tale of adultery and absolution – it gives the CIRCUS its most primal moment. It is evident that the group is perfectly in tune with themselves and their surroundings, especially Keith Moon, tossing drums over his shoulder once they’ve outlived their usefulness, his eyes forever embroiled in mischief. The other stand-out, in his first public musical performance outside The Beatles, is John Lennon, who triumphantly tackles Yer Blues with rock’s initial supergroup The Dirty Mac - Eric Clapton on guitar, Keith Richards on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Yoko Ono caterwauling her way into some private apocalypse on Whole Lotta Yoko.

‘Dirty’ Keith Richards introduces The Who and Lovely Luna and the Fire Eater for THE ROLLING STONES ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS.

Today, one watches The Stones set and reflects that Jagger has been harsh on himself. Unlike the televised Beatles, Jagger has always acknowledged the camera, often stalking it like a cobra that might strike if the lens-eye pulled back or looked away, his grins and stares are both inviting and seductive – qualities of a great performer. But the appearance of Brian Jones is another story. Jones once gave The Stones glamour and their music texture; it was he, remember, who added sitar on Paint It Black and slide guitar on Little Red Rooster, but his failing was to be born without the steely ambition of Jagger and Richards. Consequently, the CIRCUS shows the Stones early leader reduced to an insignificant other; puffy-faced and looking totally defeated, it is only once – during a fine No Expectations - that he returns to the living.

When German actress, fashion model and alledged mistress of the black arts, Anita Pallenberg, left Jones for Richards, it created a mental shift within the Stones of which Brian never recovered. This also created musical changes, from the instrumental dandiness which epitomised Jones’ tenure, towards the rock and roll of the band’s first truly great album ‘Beggars’ Banquet’ and Richards' sulphurous brew of hard rock, pagan rhythms and badass writing. The Stones had been planning the free concert in Hyde Park to unveil Mick Taylor as Jones’ replacement, but Brian’s death only two days before overshadowed the event. Captured by a Granada Television documentary crew for THE STONES IN THE PARK, the gig is not a good one. In front of over 200,000 fans, Jagger takes to the stage in a white smock and releases hundreds of butterflies in honour of Jones, most of which are already dead through improper storage. The Hyde Park performance shows the group as woefully underpowered, under-rehearsed, and still in shock. It is obvious that Jones could not have survived within the Stones structure, but, as this film shows, perhaps they weren't quite ready for life without him.