Quote:
Originally Posted by jshaide
Thinking of picking up:
STONE KILLER
EDGE OF ETERNITY
How is the PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER?
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"You've got five minutes, Christians."
From that curious period when 70s films still looked a bit like they were shot in
the 60s and when some cops still wore hats,
The Stone Killer is a pretty decent pre-
Death Wish Michael Winner-Charles Bronson film that doesn't do anything new but does it more than well enough for an hour-and-a-half to make for an enjoyable Saturday Night Special. Bronson's
the New York cop whose trigger-happy reputation gets him transferred to LA, where he stumbles across a big case when a prisoner he was escorting to his old stamping ground gets hit before spilling
the beans about a hit he was going to be involved in himself. And not just any old hit - Martin Balsam's mobster is taking a leaf out of Lucky Luciano's book and recruiting `an army without faces,' Vietnam veterans with no connection to organised crime, to take his long-brewing revenge for
the 1931 `Night of
the Sicilian Vespers' murders that ended
the Castellammarese gang war 42 years earlier (
the film gets
the date wrong, citing 10th April 1931 rather than 10th September 1931, but hey, it's a Michael Winner film, you expect fact-checking?).
It's a decent enough hook for a cop movie, and it moves fast enough to keep you from thinking too much about
the odd plothole. Bronson's on good form while Winner's direction hadn't yet got as lazy as it would by
the end of
the decade, though
the shadow of
the boom mike does have a recurring cameo even in
the widescreen version. (Winner also includes a nod to film critic Gordon Gow, who worked on Films and Filming when Winner was a fledgling film critic there, in a PA announcement in a hospital scene.)
The odd interesting face pops up in
the supporting cast - Stuart Margolin and Paul Koslo as mercenaries,
The Waltons' Ralph Waite as a racist cop who's waiting for hats to come back in fashion, Norman Fell and a young John Ritter as cops a few years before they co-starred in Three's Company and regular character actors like Walter Burke and Charles Tyner - while Gerald Wilson's script gives most of them enough to do to make an impression even if no-one's on award-winning form here. Throw in a great car/motorbike chase, some decent action scenes, a funky Roy Budd score that is treated to an isolated score track and
the odd bit of obligatory post-Dirty Harry society's going to
the dogs and
the criminals are winning speachifying and
the result is one of
the better disposable cop movies of
the 70s.
Sony's European DVD was completely extras-free (it only got an MOD DVD-R release in
the US), but this is another major upgrade, with a strong widescreen transfer, an obsessively detailed audio commentary by veritable walking Charles Bronson encyclopaedia Paul Talbot, that aforementioned isolated track for Roy Budd's score, original trailer and booklet.
At first glance 1959’s
Edge of Eternity looks more like one of 20th Century Fox’s middle-tier CinemaScope films of
the mid-Fifties than a Columbia B-movie (it was quickly relegated to
the supporting feature to
The Gene Krupa Story). With its then-modern day mining ghost town setting it wouldn’t be out of place as a companion piece to Violent Saturday, but it’s a lot less ambitious and, it has to be said, Don Siegel’s direction makes less of
the material than Richard Fleischer did of his. Where Fleischer’s film used a heist to rip open a town’s secrets and expose its dirty laundry, this has a much smaller cast of characters and a less expansive reach as Cornel Wilde’s easygoing small town cop finds
the bodies mounting up in and around
the Grand Canyon, with
the trail leading to either
the local gold mine that’s been closed down since
the war waiting for
the price of gold to rise again or a nearby guano mine accessible only by a cable car. Castigated by Wendell Holmes’ up-for-re-election County Attorney for his failure to solve
the case as – naturally - Wilde has a skeleton in his closet, albeit one he seems pretty laid back about, it’s hard not to agree with him because after a striking opening that sees two men fighting on
the rim of
the canyon, Wilde seems to spend more time running into Victoria Shaw’s flighty mine heiress and romancing her than he does trying to establish
the identity of
the initial victim and solve
the murders.
Shaw is capable enough but doesn’t make much of an impression as
the romantic lead, seeming to be there more to drip feed exposition and clues than strike sparks, but there are good supporting turns from Jack Elam (for whom
the script was originally written!), Edgar Buchanan and Mickey Shaunghnessy. If
the script leaves a lot to be desired as it ambles along for much of its 79-minute running time, it has two aces up its sleeve:
the first is its striking location – ‘Filmed at one of
the Wonders of
the World,
The Grand Canyon, in CinemaScope,’ as
the opening credits inform us, and quite gloriously so by cinematographer Burnett Guffey – and
the second is a terrific finale in
the cable car where stunt doubles risk life and limb to ensure
the film ends on a highpoint while not doing
the same themselves.
The backprojected studio inserts of
the key players may be less than convincing, but
the trio of daredevils clinging to and flailing around
the violently rocking ‘dancing bucket’ are
the real McCoy and will leave you gasping in amazement at
the sheer recklessness on display (did I mention there’s a helicopter flying dangerously close as well?). It’s well worth waiting for.
As we’ve come to expect from Sony’s restoration team,
the picture quality on Twilight Time’s widescreen Blu-ray is excellent aside from
the obligatory extra graininess whenever an optical shot or lap dissolve comes up. Extras are limited to an isolated score, booklet and historical audio commentary.
Despite their modern reputation hinging on their horror output, Hammer always had a lot more strings to their bow. Starting out in
the Thirties making British quota quickies and graduating to making film versions of popular radio and early TV shows, they also made thrillers, war movies, comedies and adventure films aimed at
the family audience – albeit not without some family-friendly sadism - featuring
the likes of Robin Hood, cavegirls, rebellious Kandahar brigands, roundheads and cavaliers… and pirates.
1962’s
The Pirates of Blood River is infamous as
the pirate movie that takes place entirely on land (well, you do at least see a ship at sea from
the shore). Kerwin Matthews is
the rebellious youth trying to bring moderation to
the fiercely religious island community of exiles who finds an even bigger problem when Christopher Lee and his band of pirates land on
the island in search of
the founding fathers’ hidden treasure, and aren’t too bothered by how many villagers have to die finding it. Gifted with some excellent dialogue that sets him apart from his unruly crew, sporting an eye patch, a good accent that strangely makes him sound like a French Max Von Sydow and a henchman called Hench, Lee is a villain so cool he doesn't even sweat, and if
the movie isn’t a great high adventure it's a highly entertaining programmer that punches well above its weight and packs in plenty of action.
Although often overlooked, notoriously temperamental director and co-writer John Gilling was one of Hammer’s best directors despite his at times troubled relationship with
the studio and here, thanks to
the studio’s inspired production designer Bernard Robinson, he manages to give
the film a surprising sense of scale that makes it look much more expensive than it was and does a fair job of passing off
the British locations and for once unrecognisable standing backlot sets at Bray Studios as
the Caribbean. There are plenty of familiar faces in
the supporting cast, from Hammer regulars Andrew Keir, Michael Ripper and Oliver Reed (
the latter two along with Lee all suffering badly for real from having to ford
the polluted Black Park Lake in one sequence) to Glenn Corbett, Peter Arne, David Lodge, a young Dennis Waterman and a pre-Q Desmond Llewelyn.
Released in
the UK in a hugely successful double-bill with Mysterious Island (contrary to some reports
the Harryhausen film was
the supporting feature) it was initially something of a problem picture for Hammer, who couldn’t decide whether to go for a restrictive X or a general U certificate, going back and forth with
the censors several times (
the main casualty was
the amount of blood in
the water after
the piranhas lunch on one character). Along with
the piranha sequence, most of
the censor trims that saw it’s UK rating lowered from an A certificate to a U remained intact in
the US version that’s presented here, though considering
the film was originally submitted to
the UK censors in a version reportedly running 94 minutes that was provisionally granted an X certificate it appears that some of
the contentious footage may have been lost to
the ages.
Twilight Time’s Blu-ray boasts a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer that preserves cinematographer Arthur Grant’s vivid colour palette and carries over
the audio commentary from Sony’s Icons of adventure US DVD edition moderated by Hammer expert Marcus Hearn with writer Jimmy Sangster and Don Mingaye (generally covering their entire careers at
the studio rather than being specific to this film),
the original theatrical trailer and adds an isolated track for Gary Hughes’ swashbuckling score and
the obligatory booklet which offers Julie Kirgo a chance to swoon over Lee’s melancholy villain.
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