Star Crash (1978)

 "Time for a little robot chauvinism!"

What's that you say?You suspect this hilariously low budget space opera, clearly based on the style of old movie serials, may not be entirely uninfluenced by a certain Hollywood blockbuster of the previous year? Really...?

In one sense the contrast between this film and Star Wars is hilarious. The star fields and models, while trying to evoke Star Wars, are rubbish. The script and acting are gfloriously cheesy, although Caroline Munro is genuinely charismatic and awesome. David Hasselhoff's hairstyle is not merely awful, but the most awful of all possible hairstyles.

I'll cut to the chase: this is a terrible film. But there are two types of terrible films- boringly terrible and hilariously terrible.This is a hilarious episode of the second kind, with absurd concepts, dialogue and plot twist. The emperor (played by a visibly embarrassed Christopher Plummer) at one point just stops time for plot convenience. Even better, at one point Akton seems to know things he wouldn't obviously know, and Stella immediately makes the leap of logic that he can see the future. But Akton then explains he can never tell her what's to come because she would try to change the future that's "against the law, so therefore I can tell you nothing"... all while he's merrily changing the future himself. Perhaps I ought not to be applying logic and reason here.

This is also a fascinating halfway house between Star Wars and the previous generation of space operas. This may be obviously influenced by movie serials, but there's none of the Joseph Campbell fairytale vibes. And we also have moments of stop motion animation right out of a Ray Harryhausen film. This film may be awful, but gloriously so.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

“Every voyage has its own flavour.”

It took fifteen years for a sort of sequel to be made to The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. It was well worth the wait.

Oddly enough, I’ve seen this film before, about fifteen years ago. I didn’t like it much- and yes, perhaps Gordon Hessler’s direction isn’t the most exciting. But we have a splendid stop motion Kali as the action centrepiece from the great Ray Harryhausen. We have Caroline Munro. We have a truly memorable and magnificent villain in Shura, courtesy of the truly extraordinary Tom Baker, before he was famous.

But John Philip Law is superb as a witty, likeable, worldly wise Sinbad who is not immune to greed or cynicism but is fundamentally kind, freeing the beautiful Margiana when he has the chance to enslave her. There’s a heartwarming love story between them, as well as a nice ending where the heroic yet also roguish Sinbad turns down a crown because he loves freedom, and a king can never be free.

So, while this film is of course centred around Harryhausen's magnificent creations- Kali, the cyclops centaur, and the hippogriff that turns up briefly at the end, and while the plot is more than a little similar to the previous film (which was, to be fair, some time ago), the excellent script from Brian Clements gices us wit, comedy and character alongside the adventure. A superb film.

Captain Kronos- Vampire Hunter (1974)

"What he doesn't know about vampirism wouldn't fill a flea's codpiece."

This is a film that, whatever its virtues, and notwithstanding that it isn't the last one, is as good as any to mark the end of Hammer. With Lee and Cushing pretty much gone from the scene, this film was intended to spearhead an entire new series of Hammer horror films- but it ended up having its delayed for two years and flopping at the box office. What went wrong?

Well, at first glance an awful lot went right. The script from Brian Clemens is clever, twisty-turny, full of compelling characters and nicely establishing a wider mythology about various types of vampires which behave differently- this one ages its victims- and can be killed in different ways, something explored nicely and which gives obvious sequel potential. It’s also creepily shot by Brian Clemens himself, with the vampire attack scenes creatively shot from the vampire’s POV and with plenty of suspense. There’s also a solid and effective cast of splendid British character actors, led by the superb John Cater but including Wanda Ventham, Ian Hendry and John Carson. It also features the very delightful Caroline Munro. There’s a lot going for this film.

Sadly, though, it has two big problems. The first is the casting of Horst Janson. The character of Kronos is awesome- I love his swordsmanship and how he deals with the ruffians in the pub- and Janson is pretty good, but if you have to dub all of your star’s lines because you can’t understand his German accent you have a rather big problem. There’s an awkward disjoint here that overshadows everything. And the second problem is, I think, Clemens’ direction. He can shoot certain types of scenes very well indeed, and you can’t fault his visual storytelling, but there’s a certain dull, overcast feel to the cinematography where a hint of swashbuckling fun was required. The tone doesn’t feel quite right.

It’s a real shame. There’s an excellent film inside this struggling to get out but alas it, and the continuing future of Hammer, was not to be.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

"Just keeping the British end up, Sir..."

Ah, 1977. The year of my birth. No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones. The two sevens clash. And any number of punk allusions you'd care to make. It's also the absolute nadir of men's fashions: every single bloke in this film looks absolutely awful. It's difficult to understand why men bothered to wear suits at all in 1977 because they all, without exception, look shit. You can see how punk was so very necessary, for fashion as much as music.

Still, The Spy Who Loved Me is another triumph. I'm a little puzzled as to why The Man with the Golden Gun was so no pulse with both critics and public- I rather liked it- but I'll not argue with the consensus here. The taut plot, the awesome action sequences, the wittiest script yet, all of this makes for one of the finest Bond films yet, even if Roger Moore is perhaps, in only his third film, beginning to look just a little too old for the part.

Neither Moore nor Barbara Bach )Mrs. Ringi Starr!) will ever win any Oscars, but they somehow work perfectly together. Curd Jurgens, taking a break from playing 75% of all Nazi officers in the history of cinema, is the finest Bond villain yet. He has it all; the underwater lair, the hare-brained scheme to bike the world so humanity can start a new life under the sea(!); and the sharks beneath a trapdoor to eat treacherous underlings. 

Meanwhile Caroline Munro is there to look sexy, and Richard Kiel is a splendid if mute presence as Jaws, suspiciously soon after a film after the same name, also featuring a shark. Hmm. There's also a staggering number of British characters on display- George Baker, Edward de Souza, Vernon Dobtcheff, Nadim Sawalha and Cyril Chaps. The American submarine commander is played, inevitably, by Shane Rimmer. It could never have been otherwise.

The film is full of brilliant, stylish action sequences from the opening ski chase (love the parachute) to Bond's best car yet. By this point we know all the tropes and the film can have real fun with them.

The double entendres ("Well, tell him to pull out immediately") are superb. There's even a moment of wit for the incidental music: the familiar refrain from Lawrence of Arabia is heard as Bond and Anya traverse the desert.

The locations- Cairo, the pyramids and Karnak- are the best possible. Carly Simon's theme tune is the best yet and surely unsurpassable. Can this be the best Bond yet?