Movie Review: Shout At The Devil (1976)

A sprawling Africa-set adventure, Shout At The Devil is an uneven mix of comedy, light-hearted adventure, romance, and deadly serious - and sometimes gory - war action.

The setting is Zanzibar in 1913. Gin-loving American adventurer and illegal tusk trader Flynn Patrick O'Flynn (Lee Marvin) is plotting his next illegal elephant hunt. In need of a British citizen to help navigate the patchwork of colonial territories in the region, he dupes traveling Englishman Sebastian Oldsmith (Roger Moore) into joining him. 

Flynn and Oldsmith quickly run afoul of German commander Fleischer (Rene Kolldehoff), who resents the intrusion into his fiefdom. A series of retaliatory raids ensue, and Fleischer calls upon the warship Blücher to ram and sink Flynn's dhow. Meanwhile, Oldsmith falls in love with Flynn's daughter Rosa (Barbara Parkins). When news arrives that the Great War has erupted in Europe, the confrontations with Fleischer take a deadly turn.

Shout At The Devil is a stellar half of a film. Once Flynn, Oldsmith, and Fleischer learn a real war has erupted in Europe, director Peter Hunt finally gains focus, secures a grip on the material, and orients the characters towards a purpose. The final hour is gritty, serious, and expertly filmed, and the actors are allowed to act rather than react. Highlights include a profound personal loss, an ambush of a military convoy, a hair-raising aerial reconnaissance flight, and then the plot's centrepiece consisting of a clear-eyed and deftly executed sabotage mission inspired by The African Queen.

The problem is that preceding all this good material is a fiasco of an opening half. The screenplay by Stanley Price and Alastair Reid, adapting the Wilbur Smith book, opts for a languid and prolonged introduction resembling a silly mash-up of The Man Who Would Be King and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Marvin and Moore ham it up only to be upstaged by Kolldehoff, the plot meanders aimlessly from place to place, and the attempts at humour are drawn from the bottom drawer labeled condescending slapstick.

It's difficult to imagine the same audience enjoying the two different halves, but the combined outcome of the split personality is a decent enough adventure, with an expansive scope and beautiful cinematography by Michael Reed. Lee Marvin is over-animated and constantly over-lubricated as a scrappy and resourceful rogue, while a reserved Roger Moore grows into the movie and provides a good counterbalance. 

At 147 minutes Shout At The Devil is a long and radically uneven journey, but at least the best is saved for last.



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Movie Review: Puppet On A Chain (1970)

A hard-hitting thriller, Puppet On A Chain investigates the illegal drug trade with an impressive combination of action, conspiracy, and cold-blooded murder.

After three drug traffickers are murdered near Los Angeles, US Special Agent Paul Sherman (Sven-Bertil Taube) heads to Amsterdam, the European hub of drug activity. The Interpol's Jimmy Duclos is murdered while awaiting Sherman at the airport. Amsterdam's Chief of Police De Graaf (Alexander Knox) is not too pleased to have an American agent on his turf, but Inspector Van Gelder (Patrick Allen) is more welcoming.

Sherman connects with undercover agent Maggie (Barbara Parkins), and they start exposing a heroin cartel centred on businessman Morgenstern's warehouse and a local church run by the priest Meegeren. Sherman also encounters the murdered Duclos' acquaintance Astrid Lemay (Ania Marson) and her addicted brother, as well as Van Gelder's child-like niece Trudi, whose brain was severely damaged by drugs. With Sherman's investigation triggering gruesome murders, he still has to uncover the shipment methods and criminal masterminds.

An intriguing gimmick-free variation on Bond-type escapades, Puppet On A Chain adapts an Alistair MacLean novel with the author contributing to the script. The film is directed by Geoffrey Reeve with an eye for dour efficiency mixed with scenic Dutch locations. But Don Sharp is the credited director for a quite magnificent boat chase sequence on the Amsterdam canal system, a stunningly executed eight minute highlight setting new standards for breathtaking aquatic action.

Leading up to that climax is a dense but coherent plot propelled by a muscular synth-dominated Piero Piccioni music score. The drug trafficking business is exposed as a labyrinth of criminals and insiders hiding behind facades of respectability, using elaborate open-sea drops for import then everyday items to export heroin far and wide. The details are imaginative, and include drug couriers disguised as nuns and heroin hidden in innocuous items for ease of transportation.

Also impressive is a streak of no-nonsense violence bordering on brief moments of terror. The bad guys convey threats through creepy means, and when it's time to eliminate nosy intruders, death is swift and at times horrifying. 

Swedish leading man Sven-Bertil Taube, better known as a singer, melds Roger Moore looks and George Lazenby stiffness into a serviceable contribution. The Paul Sherman character is more purposefully intense than charismatic, and Taube cuts through the action with a grim businesslike demeanour but also absorbs his fair share of punishment.

Puppet On A Chain remains impressively unpredictable and serves up a couple of late and decent twists. With immense profits at stake, holy smoke is just one way to conceal criminality.



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Movie Review: Valley Of The Dolls (1967)

A show business drama, Valley Of The Dolls is a soap opera with overclocked emotions bursting forth at every turn.

The elegantly sophisticated Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins) leaver her small New England town to seek her fortune in New York City. She finds a job at an agency specializing in show business contracts, and meets Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke), the understudy for stage megastar Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward). Helen spots Neely's talent and fearful of being upstaged, fires her. Jennifer North (Sharon Tate) is an admittedly talentless chorus girl surviving on her seductive physical attributes.

Neely works hard, achieves stardom as a singer and an actress, and marries Mel (Martin Milner). Jennifer marries singer Tony Polar (Tony Scotti), whose career is managed by his sister Miriam (Lee Grant). Anne embarks on a relationship with her boss Lyon (Paul Burke), although he never wants to settle. She then achieves some fame as a model for a cosmetics firm. Although Anne, Neely and Jennifer all appear to be on the fast-track to happiness, plenty of unexpected surprises await, including increasing dependencies on "dolls", the pills that boost energy or induce sleep.

Jacqueline Susann's salaciously trashy book, one of the biggest bestsellers of all time, is turned into a salaciously trashy movie. Directed by Mark Robson, Valley Of The Dolls is undercast with mediocre talent, and overburdened with melodrama. The claws are out, the daggers are drawn, the pills are gulped, and three women (four, counting Helen Lawson) have their careers clouded by negativity, addiction, and backstabbing.

Stuck somewhere in the twilight zone between a really warped take on All About Eve and an early model for the primetime television soap operas of the 1980s, the film is filled with naked ambition, hysterical ups and downs, some brief but at the time scandalous nudity, and an entrenched attitude that for one woman to succeed, another has to fail. Of course all the men are also either manipulative or susceptible to manipulation, or both.

As social commentary, the film has some value in marking the sexual revolution of the 1960s and feminism merging into the mainstream. Anne, Neely and Jennifer are sexually independent, free to pursue both careers and husbands, easily drop the men who disappoint them, and never question their strength as women. Unfortunately, in Valley Of The Dolls independence and meanness are often conjoined in both genders.

Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate were never more than middling talents, yet here they land as the three stars of a much-anticipated film adaptation. Parkins does little other than look chic, Duke devours most of the scenery with a wildly over-the-top performance, and Tate appears unfortunately perfectly cast as the expressionless and talentless actress surviving on her physical attributes.

Susan Hayward and Lee Grant add some class and bite, but are consigned to supporting roles. The men fare worse: television non-entities Martin Milner, Tony Scotti, Paul Burke and Alexander Davion as Ted Casablanca are all plastic, interchangeable and disposable.

Valley Of The Dolls scores some points as bad enough to be good and a guilty pleasure to suit the right mood, but otherwise just registers as annoyingly overwrought.

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