Raw Deal (1986)

 "You should not drink and bake."

…Or, indeed, shoot and drive. Please, any drivers reading this: keep your eyes on the road (or quarry). Engaging in a gun battle with the goons of an entire Mafia family can impair your driving concentration, even if, like Mark here, you also come armed with prodigious quantities of plot armour.

I must be close as dammit to having blogged all the '80s Arnie action movies, so here's another one. And it's good, it's fun, like all movies of this ilk. It isn't the greatest action film of all time, but it doesn't have to be. The action set pieces are great. Sam Wanamaker is also great as a Chicago Mafia boss, and Robert Davi is exceptionally good, as ever, as Max. But Arnie, in his first real role with lots of proper dialogue, just oozes so much charisma.

The film really showcases Chicago as a city, too, as all the suspense and action takes place. Admittedly the final scene is very Saturday morning cartoon, and the film nicely reminds us that two bottles of champagne in one sitting is perhaps not great for one's sex life. But then, of course, the plot mustn't allow Mark to sleep with the rather lovely Monique, lest he commit adultery with his rather unpleasant, cake throwing wife.

Still, the flaws of this film are all partr of the fun. Highly recommended if you just want to switch off your brain and watch some '80s action with car chases and shooting galore.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

“What happened to them?"

"They became too civilised and destroyed each other."

I suppose I should start by noting the recycling of plot elements from previous Sinbad films produced by Charles H. Schneer and with effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen- the malevolent spell cast on a Caliph (let us not pry as the historical accuracy of the use of that title) whose kinswomen is a love interest for Sinbad; the two stop motion monsters at the end; pretty much the entire plot. But I don't care. This film is wonderful.

Nor do I insist on po-faced criticism of Muslims drinking wine (the history of that religion is not so uniformly Puritan as commonly supposed; I'm happy to raise a glass with any Muslim, as did the Ottomnn Sultans to Hajj pilgrims), or on the historical absurditu of Melanthius, a Greek pagan who was supposedly friendly with Archimedes interacting with Muslims from several centuries afterwards.

No; what matters is the sheer fun of the film. It may run to a time-honoured formula, but it works. One would have thought that, in that Star Wars watershed year of 1977, this kind of stop motion film would be thought old fashioned. Yet this is still the age of Doug McClure, and not yet the age of computer effects... much.

Most effusively, beyond the wonderful Harryhausen himself, the cast is superb.John Wayne's lad is perfectly fine but he is, I'm afraid, utterly blown away and usurped by the wily alchemist played by the great Patrick Troughton, patron saint of character actors. Troughton, in Doctor Who, is compelling whole being deliberately restrained, playing an intelligent but modest hero who allows others to shine. Here, Troughton utterly owns his every scene, showing that this was an acting choice.

This is, quite blatantly, the best of these three Sinbad films.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)

"She offered me free love. At the time it was all I could afford.”

Wow. That was bleak. More so, in fact, than the BBC’s superb version of Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I am certain to blog at some point. And that Richard Burton is awfully good at this acting lark.

I was twelve when the Wall came down; I remember the Cold War. But the world of half a century ago seems a strange place in many ways. The leading man can sneeringly refer to a “queer”, labour exchanges advertise “jobs for men” and even a bibulous fellow like myself raises an eyebrow at the sheer amount of alcohol consumed. And Nan refers to her Hungarian goulash with Portuguese wine as a “Communist dish with a totalitarian wine”; no one seems to regard the tyrannies of the Eastern Bloc and Salazar’s fascist state as equally vile. It’s all a game and, as Control says, while one side supports freedom and the other does not, the methods used by both sides are equally abhorrent. No wonder it’s so easy to become burnt out and turn to drink.

(“Control”- I now get certain sketches from A Bit of Fry and Laurie more than I did...)

This is a thriller, of sorts, but one uniquely suffused with a profound sense of moral disillusionment and ennui. Leamas is younger than I am now but certainly doesn’t feel it. The final twist is clever but morally bankrupt and the unhappy ending, when it comes, is not unexpected. An excellently downbeat counterweight to the sort of spy film we usually see and a real acting triumph from Richard Burton.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

"No pain, no gain..."

 You know those "bad" films that are actually fun to watch and sort of entertain you in spite of everything? Well...

I mean, I can see why this was the last Superman film of its series. The special effects are endearingly crap. The script is cartoonish. The whole thing is very silly. And yet the whole thing remains eminently watchable.

It helps that the characters are well-established, and that Reeve,
Kidder and Hackman are as excellent as always; this film isn’t big, it isn’t clever, it isn’t particularly well made. But it’s fun. So let’s ignore the silliness and the plot holes, including the one where the superpowers don’t seem to resent Superman for throwing billions worth of expensive nukes into the Sun in a scene which harms back to the left-wing wish fulfilment scenes of the early comic books. Let’s not study the political message of the film too closely, though; this is not exactly a detailed philosophical examination of nuclear disarmament.

So, yes. The film is silly, shoddily made and killed the franchise. But it’s also perfect light viewing after a two hundred mile round trip.