Code
7... Victim 5/Mozambique
(1964/Blue Underground Blu-ray)/The
Hawaiians (1970/United
Artists/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/Underground
(1995/BFI Limited Edition Region B Import Blu-ray w/Bonus PAL
DVDs)/Watusi
(1958/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)
Picture:
B/B/B & C+/C Sound: B-/B-/B & C+/C Extras: C-/C/B/C-
Films: C+/C+/C+/B/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Underground
Import Blu-ray/DVD Set is now only available from our friends at BFI,
can only play on Blu-ray players that can handle the Region B format
with PAL DVDs, while the Watusi
DVD is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and The
Hawaiians
Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time and
is limited to only 3,000 copies. All can be ordered from the links
below.
The
next five films are about people taking journeys to exotic places
with adventurous and even profound results. They also mostly
represent colonialism, but that takes some twists and turns itself as
the films had to come up with new ways to soften that angle...
Robert
Lynn directed both Code
7... Victim 5
and Mozambique
(both 1964) and were written by Producer Harry Alan Towers with Peter
Yeldham (both have one too many similarities) and had limited
budgets, but the makers were trying to capitalize on the sudden
success of the early James Bond films Dr.
No
(1962) and From
Russia With Love
(1963, both reviewed elsewhere on this site) from the look and feel
imitated well enough, but then Bond co-producers Albert ''Cubby''
Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were a few steps ahead of all imitators
and looking at Thunderball
(1965) and You
Only Live Twice
(1967), definitely saw these films as sort of address both in the
process.
Code
has Lex Baxter (who became a major Tarzan
of the era) as a private detective named Steve Martin! No joke, but
retitled, the poster suggests he is a spy of some sort though that is
totally untrue in the film. He still knows Judo, et al, but we don't
have enough action sequences. Still, this is a pleasant little
mystery where Martin flies to South Africa (where you cannot possibly
see the Apartheid) to help a rich man find out how a friend was
killed. But he is being watched upon arrival in Cape Town and things
will only get worse.
The
late, great Ronald Frazier (Wild
Geese,
Too
Late The Hero,
The
Whisperers,
original Flight
Of The Phoenix)
is a plus as the Inspector who keeps contacting Martin as the case
unfolds, but might not be totally trustworthy. It makes you wonder
if a franchise series of some kind was in mind, but it never
developed as such and they did as much as they could here. Ann
Smyrner (House
Of 1,000 Dolls,
Reptilicus)
and Veronique Vendell (Becket,
Barbarella,
Night
Of The Generals,
Cross
Of Iron)
are the female interests and Walter Rilla (Day
Of Anger,
Face
Of Fu Manchu)
round out a good cast.
Mozambique
was made at the same time and has a somewhat-known cast as a pilot
(Steve Cochran of Il
Grido,
I
Mobster,
The
Best Years Of Our Lives
and White
Heat,
in his final film!) is brought to 'East Africa' (which is in the
south!) to fly some planes and take a job with little knowledge since
he's been blacklisted after a plane crash. The film opens with a
murder and it is a murderous world he will soon enter. This is not
bad, if not quite as memorable as Code
but worth watching and seems to have been made back-to-back just
before Code.
Thus, the two make an interesting double feature, push the colonial
adventure slowly into the spy genre and make up a part of the spy
genre (along with small productions in Italy and the U.S.) that is
the least discussed, where the action is raw, comedy incidental and
stories a little rougher.
The
locations are not bad again and the supporting cast is also good with
Hildegard Knef (The
Murderers Are Among Us,
Snows
Of Kilimanjaro,
Fedora),
Paul Hubschmid (Mission
To Hell,
Funeral
in Berlin,
Beast
From 20,000 Fathoms),
Vic Perry (Julius
Caesar
with Charlton Heston, The
Atomic Man;
this was his last film too), Martin Benson (Goldfinger,
The
King & I
(1956), The
Sea Wolves,
Exodus,
The
Omen
(1976), Cleopatra
(1963), Gorgo)
and uncredited Maria Rohm, the wife of Mr. Towers who appeared in
other films in lead roles. Not bad, making this more fun than just
money could. Hard to believe these films have never been issued on
home video in the U.S., but Blue Underground delivers once again and
they are definitely worth your time.
Trailers
for each are sadly the only extras.
Tom
Gries' The Hawaiians
(1970) is the epic sequel to the surprising hit Hawaii,
both now issued by Twilight Time as part of their Limited Edition
Blu-ray series and both form the same book, Hawaii.
You can read about the first film at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14026/From+The+Terrace+(1960/Fox)/The+Happy+Endin
Trying
to match the cast of the first film, Charlton Heston is Whip Hoxworth
(what a name) 4 decades after the last film ended (that is one decade
a year between the releases) introducing pineapples to the island,
running a plantation his way and dealing with arrivals from all over
the world. Running 134 minutes, the film is yet another soap opera
in the style of author's James A. Michnener's writing and the
potboiler elements keep surfacing, but the way the film deals with
the non-white characters ('oriental music' for their scenes
endlessly, for instance) that stretches the film out to be longer
than the actual running time.
Heston
is still heston often and there are amusing moments, plus supporting
performances by Mako, Geraldine Chaplin, John Phillip Law, Tina Chen
and Alec McCowen are a plus, but the film sticks with what amounts to
a formula and the form that made the first film a hit.
Unfortunately, lightning did not strike twice, but it is still worth
a good look and reminds us of how ambitious feature films for adults
used to be. The melodrama also distracts from the colonialism.
Extras
in another of the company's illustrated booklets on the film
including informative text & essay by film scholar Julie Kirgo,
while the Blu-ray adds an Isolated Music Score and the Original
Theatrical Trailer.
Emir
Kusturica's Underground
(1995) is back is a new, upgraded and expanded Region B Import
Blu-ray w/Bonus DVDs from BFI. We first reviewed the film in its
basic U.S. DVD release at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/600/Underground+(1995
My
problems with some pacing and consistency now makes sense knowing
about and seeing the TV mini-series version included here. Nice to
have both versions, but this is a limited edition too, so you'll want
to pick this one up ASAP before BFI runs out. Otherwise, this is as
solid a film as it was when I first reviewed it and deserves to be
rediscovered or a whole new generation.
Extras
include an illustrated booklet featuring essays and film credits,
Once Upon a Time There Was
a Country (1995, 315
mins): Kusturica's six-part TV version of Underground,
Shooting Days
(Aleksandar Manic, 1996, 73 mins): a documentary charting the making
of Underground
shot whilst the film was in production, EPK
items (29 mins):
Behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the director, cast and
production designer and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
Kurt
Neumann's Watusi
(1958) is not about the infamous 1960s dance craze to come, but a
tribe who protects King Solomon's Mines (and all that legendary
wealth) in Africa, so this is a sort of action film about the quest
to get that wealth form the director of the original The
Fly.
Harry Quartermain (George Montgomery) is on the hunt for the locale
and wants to grab and take home all he can carry, helped by a guide
names Rick Cobb (David Farrar) and picking up a sole survivor of a
mission that was attacked and genocide was committed named Erica
Neuler (Taina Elg, who becomes 'the girl' here). Based on a book by
James Clavell, who could compete with James A. Michnener for long
books that disguise their melodrama as historical, 'realistic' and
the like, this film only lasts 85 minutes, is also a British
production and also has an obvious low budget. Still, a few moments
worked and considering the director and how this story has been
remade a few times, will remain a curio. Nice to have it in print,
even if it only offers so much.
An
Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on both Code
and Mozambique
have been very nicely restored by Blue Underground from their
original 35mm camera negatives. Originally, the films were released
by Columbia (Code)
and Seven Arts (Mozambique)
respectively, but it looks like dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor 35mm versions of the film may have only been
issued in the U.K. or other markets. Still, you can see in many
places how good that color must have looked in such copies, though
they both have beige and sand color palates when in isolated outdoor
situations. Code
however, is a step ahead because its Director of Photography was
future directing genius Nicolas Roeg (The
Man Who Fell To Earth)
with the amazing Alex Thompson (Year
Of The Dragon,
Alien
3) as
his camera operator before he became a major DP himself. Thus, the
use of the widescreen frame is better than the low-budget films of
the time trying to look more expensive by using any kind of
widescreen format the producers could afford, even cheaper. These
are also 2-perf Techniscope films, now two of the better on Blu-ray
anywhere.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Hawaiians
was shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision and looks slightly better
than Hawaii, but cannot outdo the restoration work on Code
and Mozambique, with a few parts showing the age of the
materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous
releases of the film and helps get one through the flatter moments.
The Deluxe color holds up well enough throughout as well and I expect
you won't see this film looking much better.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Underground
has also been restores as much as possible and like Das
Boot,
comes from a TV production, so the print can obviously still show the
age of the materials used, but this is much better than the old U.S.
DVD or full-length PAL U.K. DVD of the original TV series, so fans
can enjoy the film with fidelity that will even sometimes surprise.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Watusi has good
moments and phony shots from bad stock footage or other bad matte
work, but still has some nice shots. Unfortunately, the transfer is
on the soft side throughout and the film could use some work,
especially because this was also a dye-transfer, three-strip
Technicolor film and deserves the work. You can see some hints of
that even here in some scenes.
Because
Code,
Mozambique
and Hawaiians
are theatrical monophonic films, they are all here in DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes that sound pretty good for
their age and are as clean as they are going to get. The surprise is
that the Underground
upgrade has actually gone for a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
upgrade mix that is not awful and being made 26 to 30 years later,
just manages to be the sonic winner here. You can tell it was not
originally designed as such since
age gives away some of the elements, but this is just fine otherwise
and BFI have even included a
PCM 2.0 Stereo version. The DVD version is lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo only at 192Kbps.
That
leaves Watusi
with a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is good at best, but too soft, so
be careful of volume switching and high volume levels. Again, some
work needs to be done and this is likely second generation like the
film print itself.
You
can order the upgraded, expanded Underground import set from
BFI at...
http://shop.bfi.org.uk/dvd-blu-ray.html
…to
order The
Hawaiians
limited edition Blu-ray, buy it, its predecessor Hawaii
and other great exclusive while supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
… and
to order either of the Watusi
Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
