Reviews

A surprisingly good little Western under Phil Karlson's capable direction. The Robert Louis Stevenson twist is original and works nicely. Gloria Henry never looked as pretty although Forrest Tucker is so over-the-top that he makes Irving Bacon come across as subtle. I speculate that one reason this Western may not have been readily packaged for TV distribution is its lead, William Bishop. Although a capable actor, he doesn't have it in him to be personally engaging. His smirk signals the untrustworthiness of a used car dealer and, for that reason, in this lead role he's miscast. Had the movie been made a few years later with Audie Murphy in the lead, it would have achieved more longevity.

This show, as enjoyable as it is, has a problem with women's legs. Here we have an episode with a title suggesting a line-up of leggy models and it winds up only as a toss-away line that the daughter-in-law had modeled in a dress shop in Vegas. This weirdness continued with The Case of the Lucky Legs in which a contest scam is held to determine the nicest pair of women's legs. The only problem is that none of the women---especially the winner of that contest---has nice legs! It's not a time-period perception. Look at pin-ups from the 1940s and 1950s and you'll see that nice legs are nice legs regardless of the decade.

Even for a show this good and with the length of its run, it had to have a few clunkers. This episode is one of them. Diane Keaton (just like Sally Kellerman in another episode) is so annoying that Mannix should have done the villains (and the viewers) a favor and shot his client for everyone's benefit. I only give it three stars for the appearance of the underrated John Lupton.

The premise: Two goobers wander aimlessly and pointlessly throughout Minnesota looking for Viking runestones connected to the Kensington Stone. Of course, there are already countless books by real historians which argue both sides of the Kensington Stone's authenticity. Apparently, this show's producers never cracked open any of those books for research. That could have made for an interesting examination but, instead, this is precisely the type of television "investigation" which is an embarrassing joke. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. paints a more realistic portrayal of the Marine Corps than this show does to archaeology. I've listened in on more intellectual conversations between inebriants in a bar than the discussions on this program. Secrets of the Viking Stone has all the earmarks of the usual hackneyed programs of this ilk: 1) The commercial breaks are longer than the segments, which repeat half of the previous segment when they return from those commercial breaks. 2) Scott "I See Templars Behind Every Bush and Under Every Rock" Wolter is one of the talking heads trying to make sense of this mess.

This is standard Mason fare and based on one of the original novels which had been done as a film in the 1930's. I've no gripes with any of that BUT for a situation revolving around a beauty pageant concerned with beauteous legs, NONE---NOT ONE of the actresses has particularly nice legs (something not dictated differently by the style or the view of beauty during the time period 1950's). Where was Mitzi Gaynor when she was needed?

Maybe it's the passing of years but 36 Hours isn't as taunt and thrilling as it was once held to be. James Garner and Rod Taylor give their usual sterling performances. Eva Marie Saint is, as usual, miscast and bland (personally, I've never understood why she was considered overly talented or good-looking). There's also the usual 1960's flaw is that all actresses in World War II movies have 1960's hairdos and wardrobes. The nicest touch is by John Banner in the last fifteen minutes of the film. Banner gives a charming performance which obviously influenced his casting the next year as Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes although in 36 Hours, he is hardly bumbling but every bit as winning.

I always find David Janssen interesting to watch, even when he's delivering lines in an annoying hesitance only suited to his Richard Kimble on-the-run in The Fugitive (1963). But poor David can't save this mess. Granted, it predates made-for-TV movies but it has all the earmarks of one in its threadbare budget and trying to pass off the San Fernando Valley as one of the Dakotas!

Jacques Aubuchon is on hand to make sure this doesn't get elevated above television quality. Dina Merrill is lovely but too old for the part and lacking the real acting chops required for the role. Jeanne Crain has no chemistry with Janssen and she continues to cause wonderment as to why she ever had a career (like Joanne Dru, with whom she is interchangeable, her looks aren't quite movie-star enough and her acting talent is quite lacking).

As muddled as the story is, without a satisfactory denouement, the most puzzling thing is the movie's title. It's all based on producer/screenwriter Frank Gruber's novel of the same name (they even make sure to add that credit directly under the main title). But as has been explained in another review, because Janssen was younger than the novel's hero, the storyline shifted his background from a WWII vet to a Korean War vet. In doing so, it lost the relevance of the title, that referred to a crime which took place in 1938 and was resolved twenty-two years later in 1960. Why no production meeting was ever held to rename the movie while keeping the based on credit with the novel's title is totally incomprehensible.

Yes, this is yet another episode in which the Kelly Robinson character falls hopelessly in love with a beautiful woman but if all those other storylines were scrapped, this one would still outshine them. The "I am Chinese" line is a killer and the closing scene between Robinson and Scott (usually a throw-away of improv) is priceless.

Lorne Greene once quipped (and I paraphrase) that in all of Bonanza's fourteen years, he was proud of the number of very good episodes they did and then he added that in order to full a season there were, of course, scripts which should never have been filmed.

That's the case with this Mannix two-parter. One reviewer previously mentioned that he felt both the original Hawaii Five-0 and Mannix ran out of story concepts. I realize that it may seem so but (I'm a member of the Writers Guild) the real reason for these long-running detective shows losing story impact was the network trimming them to fit in more commercials and also trimming budgets. The format and storytelling style established in these programs suffered tremendously when CBS insisted on the reduction in their running time. Mannix, without it's pre-credit teaser doesn't have time to adequately establish a premise and resolutions are forced to be rushed---quite unsatisfactorily so. Even the end title music and credits are faster! It seems that five to ten pages of what would have comprised earlier scripts are chopped out of later scripts. It causes stories in the style of that day to suffer. If this had been the first or second season, this ridiculous premise would have fit into just one dreadful episode; instead we got two stinkers in a row.

I love Mannix but the problem the show ran into (most blatantly in its seventh season) was the time allotted by CBS. Once the teaser was eliminated before the opening titles, the stories suffered from a time crunch. Stories never entirely wrapped up in any safisfactory sense and budgets even seemed to be trimmed. Early Mannix episodes had quite a "lush" (for lack of a better word) look about them while later episodes seem to have been dictated by bean-counters. Once Mannix's dark green Barracuda convertible was replaced with an uncharacteristic hardtop, so was the rich look of the series along with fully fleshed-out plots. The series deserved much better.

This movie is a perfect example of what can go wrong when you elevate someone to "national treasure" status. People have suggested that Horton Foote would be embarrassed by this last effort of his. I maintain that he is the primary cause for that embarrassment. I'm from a small town. I understand the value of this type of subject matter and how it should be undertaken. I completely comprehend "character studies" and "place studies". This movie is a very poor example of all the above. Simply put, Horton Foote has written a very bad screenplay. What's worse, director John Doyle not only doesn't seem to realize it but he has no sense of pace let alone story---hence this is his only big screen credit. This screenplay is so bad, it is reminiscent of a high school student effort right down to the embarrassing overused bad last line. A gifted cast (although Colin Firth is totally miscast) is wasted. Orlando Bloom and Patricia Clarkson seem the only ones trying to navigate without benefit of a road map. The so-called moral of the story is so defeated by the vagueness and dreary boredom of the storyline that there winds up being no moral at all.

It had been years since I first watched this show on its original run but it recently popped up on a few "on demand" channels. Back in the mid-1980s, the networks are what doomed this show with a constant moving of time slots (I believe it began on NBC then it was picked up for late night on CBS). The final nail in its coffin was switching production to Vancouver. Weather and amateurish Canadian actors along with equally amateurish Canadian production values (witness the current Hallmark Channel movies) hurt the show's initial quality. Yes, I know the lead, Nick Mancuso, is an Italian-born Canadian but he has undeniable acting talent even though he was quite noticeably stunt-doubled more than most leads in action shows. Had Cannell hooked up earlier with Stu Segall, this show would have benefitted from San Diego shooting.

As much as I hate reboots, this one deserves one BUT only by keeping the original premise: a quiet, sometimes menacing 35-year-old Caucasian male who drives a black Stingray and takes on troubleshooting in exchange only for one future favor. It doesn't need the character's race, ethnicity, or gender changed. It doesn't need a squad of minority team members. The character is a mysterious loner. Keep the scripts literate and not the current trend of mishmashing clipped dialogue and quick cuts as though the writers aren't capable of pounding out complete sentences of dialogue.

Don't tinker with any of the original and it would work once again-as long as you keep it out of Canada.

I understand all about film budgets and how the costs of locations play a large part in getting a film off the ground. That said, I've also spent a great deal of time on Lindisfarne (Holy Island, as it is now called) and I know its history as I've placed a story, a screenplay, and a magazine article there. The Lindisfarne raid by Vikings in 793 was a smash and grab affair sacking whatever riches were in place on the altar of the church. The Vikings' knowing anything about the illuminated book called the Lindisfarne Gospels is far-fetched to say the least and attaching the Vikings' concept of magical significance to that work of art is idiotic.

The opening sequence on the beach at Lindisfarne looks nothing at all like Lindisfarne. In fact, no filmed setting---especially those used by the History Channel for re-enactments or for their Vikings television program---has ever looked like the real Linsdisfarne.

In this film, for the two monks to have escaped the Viking raid on foot to the mainland of Northumberland from the island of Lindisfarne, they would have had to cross a treacherous stretch of mud flats and quicksand at low tide. The same would be true of Vikings following them. It couldn't have and wouldn't have taken place. What's more, the landscape of Northumberland is hardly grey as portrayed in this film but exceedingly green. Even if two monks were seeking refuge for their holy book, they would hardly try to cross the width of Britain to get to Iona but instead head down the coast to Bamburgh, scant miles from Lindisfarne and both a fortress and seat of power during and long before 793. The film's discussion of signal fires having been lit in order to seek the protection of guides for a journey across Britain never would have happened since there was no time for such nonsense because the raid most likely took place at dawn awakening the sleeping monastery.

The whole premise simply doesn't hold in this long-winded draggy mess in which even the local saint being discussed as associated with Northumberland is all wrong. Lindisfarne is strongly associated with Saints Aidan and Cuthbert. It would have been either or both of those who would have been talked about by the film's characters. The writer-director apparently did no homework at all for this project other than to cull the same old historical passages used at the beginning of this film and used ad nauseam (and without understanding) whenever Lindisfarne is mentioned in movies and television programs. The writer-director would have been much better off fictionalizing the places and the whole story, making it all much more visually interesting, and speeding up the storytelling. None of that would have impacted his budget in the least. And what's with that awful horned-helmet artwork on the poster?

I have worked as a writer in film and television and I was a fan of Highlander. Having just re-watched the entire series, the whole thing comes stumbling down beginning with the Archangel episode and that brings about some thoughts.

Highlander was one of the few television shows derived from a film which was far better than its origins (M*A*S*H also falls into that category) and one of the few Canadian-based shows with intelligent and complex storylines as opposed to embarrassingly simple scripts.

What always bothered me during Highlander's run and now all these years later is that Adrian Paul never received proper credit for the series' success. Yes, women and magazine editors swooned over him but I never read anyone giving credit to his acting and presence for the show's strong center which was crucial. A weak central character can only be propped up for so long. Mr. Paul had staying power. Yet everyone ooed and awed over the sword fight choreography and the music and the guest stars but Mr. Paul always seemed overlooked. (Yes, he really should have been cast as James Bond when the role opened at that time. He even resembles a younger Sean Connery and would have had the most athletic chops of anyone playing the part). So when Mr. Paul started wearing down from his Duncan MacLeod character, the producers didn't seem to listen. Here was an actor who was in practically every scene; had to rehearse intricate swordplay every week; and shuttle between France and British Columbia halfway through every season. That's a much heavier workload than most series leads. Anyone would be exhausted and, in fact, all the possible storylines had been very well explored by the end of the fifth season so his bowing out at that time would have been perfect timing.

The Archangel episode and the three following it were so ponderously bad and confusing that they served as the death-knell for the series and the producers just didn't know when to quit. Scripts are written well ahead of time. The best way would have presented itself in this way: The fifth season ran short with only nineteen episodes. Filming Unusual Suspects should have been moved to this season (it runs a little too long for its material but Roger Daltrey and Adrian Paul were always quite winning playing off one another), Then the two-parter at the end of season six (To Be and Not to Be) should have been the end of season five giving season five twenty-two episodes. The producers stumbled with wanting to continue the premise. If they wanted a sixth season, they should have done it without Duncan and tackled the revolving number of immortals they seemed to be setting up and having those stories held together by Joe Dawson, Amanda, and Methos---and if they hadn't filmed this episode, even Richie. Packaging the series' DVD's as such would be a better way to go about this. (The producers have tinkered with re-editing Endgame). As everyone agrees, Highlander: The Raven was just a dud which never worked and mystifies how it ever got green-lighted.