Kidnapped (1971)

You know the Robert Louis Stevenson tale: Scotland, shortly after the Battle of Culloden. Young David Balfour (Lawrence Douglas), after the death of both of his parents now without a family, introduces himself to his miserly uncle Ebenezer (Donald Pleasence), only to get sold into slavery by the sad old man unwilling to share a fortune that belongs by rights completely to David. Before his way to the indentured farming life in the colonies can get on its way, David falls in with Alan Breck (Michael Caine), a Bonnie Prince Charlie loyalist (the film never really uses the term “Jacobite”) on the run. Apart from a bit of a murderous disposition and the inability to understand his cause as lost, Alan’s a stand-up guy. He also really needs to get out of Scotland and get to France, where he plans on regrouping with whoever still wants another round of getting smashed by the English. Obviously, complications lie on the way for both men. The younger one will find true love in the form of Alan’s cousin Catriona Stewart (Vivian Heilbron), while the older man will find his conscience.

There’s quite a bit to like about Delbert Mann’s combined adaptation of Stevenson’s “Kidnapped” and its sequel “David Balfour/Catriona”. For one, the landscape photography is often genuinely striking. It not just looks pretty, it actually manages to add to the emotional weight of quite a few scenes in a pleasantly subtle manner. Also rather a joy is the bunch of great actors and character actors on screen, from Donald Pleasence to Gordon Jackson to Freddie Jones to Trevor Howard; most of them make a muddle of their Scottish accents, obviously, but that’s part of the fun of traditional adventure movies like this one. Speaking of accents, Michael Caine barely bothers with one, which seems to be the right decision, since his handful of pathos-filled speeches about bonnie Scotland are already melodramatic enough, and would become absurd with too much bad accent work. Of course, Caine’s most convincing here when he is either brutal or companionable – the big speeches do tend to be a bit too much, in part because Jack Pulman’s script can’t quite hit the right tone for them, so that they sound pompous rather than dramatic and moving.

Which is a curious thing in a script whose main strength otherwise is tone. Not just in its ability to get the brightly colourful and imaginative tone of the film’s more action-heavy and adventurous first half just right but also in its willingness to be fair-minded to both sides of the political conflict here, avoiding to declare one side as the good guys and the other as the baddies, as would be rather more typical for an adventure movie. Kidnapped shows very little love for the oppression of the Scottish through the English, and demonstrates this in very 70s ways. Yet it is just as sceptical about the Jacobite side, who, after all, wasn’t simply fighting for Scottish independence but working hard to get yet another civil war on the British Isles going, with the end goal to exchange one inbred fool on a throne for another, with the population of the countries having to pay the price. Which is a rather 70s way of looking at the situation as well, come to think of it.

At the same time, the script shows a lot of respect for people like Alan who live so strongly by their principles and beliefs, even when it disagrees with them. Alas, this very interesting and complex view on questions of peace, war, independence and personal and political loyalty does suffer a bit from the film’s need to squeeze two novels into a running time of less than two hours, so that rather a lot of emotional and thematic work that would be better expressed via action has to be simply talked out. Particularly Alan’s final decision doesn’t quite work treated this way.

This talkiness results in Kidnapped being front-loaded with practically all of its – finely realized – action set pieces taking place in its first half, and most of its talky bits in the final one. It’s not a fatal flaw in this particular case because of the whole affair’s general interest, yet it is one that’s clear and obvious enough even the best will can’t ignore it.

Spectre (1977)

(This is based on the film’s longer UK cut with a bit of nudity and more sleaze that never made it to NBC at the time, for obvious reasons)

Former top criminologist turned occult detective William Sebastian (Robert Culp) calls his estranged former friend and associate, alcoholic sleazebag and medical doctor “Ham” Hamilton (Gig Young) for help in his newest case. He really needs a doctor, too, for somebody is regularly using magic to pierce his heart, leaving him not in ideal fighting shape. Ham doesn’t really believe in anything occult, and the men’s parting of ways some time ago might have had something to do with their difference in opinion. Ham is beginning to change his mind when Sebastian’s witch assistant Lilith (Majel Barrett) gives him a draught that causes an instant aversion to alcohol, and even more so when an oversexed succubus version of Sebastian’s client, one Anitra Cyon (Ann Bell) appears and tries to seduce our hero into what looks a lot like an erection based heart attack to me, or as much as a TV movie from 1977 can suggest that. But don’t worry, hitting her with the right page in an occult tome does get rid of her nicely.

After that business is through, we finally learn what the real Anitry Cyon wants from Sebastian and Ham: find out if she’s assuming right and her decadent brother Geoffrey (James Villiers) has indeed been possessed by EVIL, and when necessary, kill him. So off to Great Britain our heroes jet, piloted by Anitra’s other brother Mitri (John Hurt) who may or may not already be under a malevolent influence himself. There are further attempts on our heroes’ lives and virtue (such as it is), of course, action archaeology happens, and exposition tells of the time when druids and Christian priests teamed up to imprison Asmodeus.

This pretty incredible artefact directed by Clive Donner is another of the many attempts of Gene Roddenberry to make a successful non-Star Trek TV show, this time around with British money. I’m not surprised Spectre never made it to series, because it is absolutely bonkers. What we have here is a mix of a Dennis Wheatley style occult thriller minus Wheatley’s actual ideas about occultism (though fortunately also minus his unpleasant politics) with the toned down “sexy” fantasies of a middle-aged guy with very peculiar interests who never left the swinger party mindset behind, paired with the sort of random crap you put in your movie not because it is a good idea to use it, but because you think it is absolutely awesome.

As a serious horror film the result is of course pretty terrible, but it’s also ridiculously fun to watch, having given up all restraint that could turn it into a proper movie and replaced it with the mandate to just make as much absurd fun, and quite a bit embarrassing stuff, up as possible. So of course Sir Geoffrey proves his decadence by only employing young, female servants who try way too hard to be sexy; of course his sister dresses like the old maid in a 30s comedy; of course one of the main characters turns out to be Asmodeus and looks a lot like a bluish Klingon when uncovered. Of course there’s a particularly awkwardly staged satanic orgy with dancing bad and half-hearted even by the standards of bad movie satanic orgies (one hopes real-life ones are a bit more enthusiastic, because this really doesn’t cut it as a seduction to evil). There’s an evil sort of ape person costume; things feel evil to the touch; Asmodeus lives by rather complicated rules; Gordon Jackson wears demon make-up; more “how we get rid of demons” nonsense that makes not a lick of sense than one could possibly hope for is expounded upon, and so much more.

The film’s tone wavers between embarrassing – just cringe through the unbelievable scene with Ham and the three maids trying to “seduce” him and ask yourself how many people must have thought this was an idea that needed to be put to film – and utterly hysterical, Culp, Young, Hurt and Villiers hamming it up in each and every way possible. I am usually not much of a fan of Culp and find him rather bland and affectless, but clearly, if he wanted, he could take bites out of scenery so large, Vincent Price must have been jealous; it’s the only correct acting decision to take in this particular movie, too, for playing any of this straight would simply ruin the film by dragging it back to Earth from whichever planet Roddenberry was on at the time.

In short: Danger Route (1967)

Jonas Wilde (Richard Johnson) is working as a killer for one of the British secret services; as it goes with jobs like this, he’s gotten sick and tired of it, particularly since he’s acquired Jocelyn (Carol Lynley) as the kind of girlfriend that makes a man think of retiring. Also, not killing people for money anymore.

However, shortly after his latest job and before he can do anything about his retirement plans, Wilde is called in for an emergency assassination on British soil. The Americans have gotten hold of an Eastern defector, but Wilde’s superiors are convinced the man is in fact a double agent who will do incalculable damage if he’s not “gotten rid of”. The job doesn’t sit quite right with Wilde, particularly when curious things start to happen around the new job. His contact Ravenspur (Maurice Denham) suddenly grows a niece (Barbara Bouchet) who just happens to be in the game too, and Wilde can’t shake the idea the defector isn’t the only one who is to be gotten rid of.

He’s quite right, too, and that’s not even the worst thing Wilde will learn in the next few days. Well, at least he’s tough and unpleasant enough to have a chance for survival.

Most of us know Amicus as purveyors of horror anthology pictures, but of course the company did work in other genres too, like the mid-level realist spy movie Danger Route. The film is neither as kooky as your typical Eurospy movie or James Bond film nor as complex and dark as Le Carré style espionage films but moves on that middle ground where the spy work is relatively down to Earth yet not quite enough so to be believable as naturalistic.

On a philosophical level, the film prefers a somewhat tired bitterness and a very general feeling of disgust, a disgust that is in large part shared by its hero, who is disgusted by the things he does for a living (and once for Queen and Country), disgusted by how good he is at them, clearly disgusted too at the way he uses people like Diana Dors’s (fittingly sadly played) lonely alcoholic housekeeper, and certainly disgusted by the duplicity of everyone around him. Johnson expresses this disgust with deeply tired look and the facial expression of a man who really can’t smile at himself in the mirror anymore. The way Johnson plays him, it’s quite clear that Wilde expects the betrayals he is going to suffer during the course of the movie as the logical consequence of all the betrayals he has committed – and continues to commit - himself. In what feels like a twist of bitter irony, the only times Wilde really seems to be without doubts is when he commits the violent acts he has begun to abhor.

Seth Holt (a director with a bit of spy experience via the TV show Danger Man) films this bitter little piece without any grand gestures, concentrating on the performances of his lead and a bunch of fine supporting actors, giving everything the appropriate leanness as well as providing moments of effectively unpleasant violence that turn Danger Route into something of a lost gem of the espionage genre.

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