Cockamamie 70's

I was unaware that Bruce Lee had written a script shortly before his death but I'm pretty sure that Circle of Iron wasn't quite what the film he had in mind. The film opens with a martial arts contest with the competitors vying for the opportunity to read a book of wisdom hidden from the rest of the world. The loser of the final bout follows the victor on his travels to the books hiding place and takes on the quest when his chum carks it early on. The script and acting are painfully piss poor especially from the muscle bound lead, Jeff Cooper (who sports a 'do that scuppers any of attempts at profundity) and David Carradine's multiple turns aren't much better but worst of all the plot is a lumpy mish mash of Eastern thought that I'm sure doesn't reflect Lee's intention or ambitions. Only worth watching if you want to see something spectacularly bad.

Dr Black, Mr Hyde is a blaxploitation-era version of RLS's classic tale and despite it's obvious budget constraints manages a half decent job. Our protagonist is developing a cure for liver disease but under pressure for results takes a dose himself and finds the side effects of super strength and (amusingly unconvincing) honkeydom quite exhilarating and predictably chaos reigns as family, friends and colleagues feel the wrath of this changed man. Though the script and plot are decidedly of it's era Bernie Casey is surprisingly good and all in all I quite enjoyed it. Not exactly a classic but if you want something with a little period charm there's worse out there.

Wordsmith Protagonisms

John Cusack grumbles and stumbles around as the famous author and drunkard Edgar Allan Poe in serial killer thriller The Raven. When a couple of corpses turn up murdered in circumstances similar to Poe's stories the police reluctantly recruit him to help solve the case and he finds himself and his paramour in grave danger. Cusack is decent enough as the lead but his Poe is more convivial drunk that incurable souse and there's not much life in the script nor much ambition in the plotting so it all plays out as a fairly bog standard thriller. A shame that an author of such grisly, macabre horrors should receive such timid and unimaginative treatment.

H.G. Wells gets a shot as a hero in the romantic thriller Time After Time when one of his chums escapes to the 1970's after being exposed as Jack the Ripper. Acclimatising themselves to their new temporal surroundings both men indulge in their proclivities, ie free love and knifey slaughter, before continuing their clash of wit and will. Malcolm McDowell and David Warner add some heft to the charming script and though most of the film is spent on Wells' romancing of a bank clerk there's some genuine menace to the cold calculating Ripper which evens it all out nicely.

Kidding Mr Hitler

An eye-patched Burt Lancaster leads his weary squad to make a stand in a sumptuous, art stuffed medieval castle in the slightly surreal, almost mythical Castle Keep. With the Germans approaching their position the soldiers try to make the most of the brief hiatus by luxuriating in their new found home and the local town's well stocked brothel while their Captain finds himself in bed with the Count's young wife. There's plenty of comedy in the script but it's subsumed in a pathos, a melancholy not just from the war but a semideranged sorrow for the passage of time so when the inevitable conflict arrives the violence and death seems almost welcomed. A fine looking film with some excellent performances, presumably neglected for it's more ambitious intentions.

The Passage, on the other hand, uses it's WW2 setting & talented cast to unfurl a lurid, action packed chase film with little more ambition than popcorn entertainment. Anthony Quinn stars a grumpy Basque shepherd who agrees to escort a scientist, played by James Mason, and his family over the Pyrenees while being chased by a thoroughly insane SS officer. In fact it's Malcolm McDowell's hyperbolic, super camp portrayal of the Nazi antagonist that makes the film, the other performances are fine but with a mediocre script & formulaic plot without McDowell romping about in a swastika jockstrap or a chef's hat this wouldn't be worth a second glance.