From the Orient with Fury represents the middle bits of the Ken Clark 077 Italian EuroSpy trilogy. It’s kooky, poorly edited but all brawny Ken Clark fists and fury, cardigans and $10 whiskey. If you’re missing out on Ken Clark, you’re really missing out.
INITIATE THE FROM THE ORIENT WITH FURY LIVE TWEET DIGEST
FROM THE ORIENT WITH FURY is the second of three Italian Eurospy films featuring Ken Clark and directed by Sergio Grieco. #Bond_age_
Hold onto your butts. It’s time for Ken Clark. INITIATE MISSION FROM THE ORIENT WITH FURY! #Bond_age_ — The #Bond_age_ Guy (@007hertzrumble) September 3, 2015
I bet Ken Clark’s going to punch some peeps in the movie. I’ll put a fiver on it. #Bond_age_
Well, the writing had indeed been on the wall for some time now so to speak. My fears about this very event were well documented on multiple #Bond_age_Pods. Yesterday my fears were all but confirmed.
Millennial crooner du jour, Sam Smith, has been confirmed by our #Bond_age_ overlords as the singer of the SPECTRE theme song with this damning piece of evidence.
Now I may seem like a crotchety curmudgeon regarding this news, standing out on my porch, yelling at whippersnappers to get off my lawn. A baseball bat resting against my porch swing if one of them gets too close to my property with their gluten-free beer. I’m not just a movie and Bond fan, I’m a mass consumer of music as well. I’ve documented my favorite songs of the year for each of the last so many years on my bl-g at thirtyhertzrumble.com. I’ve been doing a Top 100 each year for the last 10. I’m often the oldest dude at the concerts I attend. My point here is that I’m not the guy that stopped listening to modern music after college. My tastes do not remain in cryostasis from the year 2001. The thought of being stuck forever with the music of the late 90’s and early 00’s makes me break out in cold sweats. If Bond has been my “thing” for the last few years, obsessive music consumption has always been “a” thing.
Some Twitter acquaintances have suggested that I would have hated any artist chosen for the SPECTRE theme. I disagree. I’ve not disagreed with a choice of the Bond song since Sheryl Crow did the Tomorrow Never Dies theme. (And, for the record, I believed Madonna could come up with a cracking theme for Die Another Day.) For the most part I believe that given the right material, just about anyone can do the gig. But you must have the right material. There’s also a “type” of singer that does Bond right.
The questions I ask here are this:
1. Do you believe this artist is a natural fit for Bond?
(No. I do not.)
2. Do you tolerate/listen to this artist?
(I find his critical and commercial success baffling.)
Everyone will have different answers to these questions that will lead them to different conclusions about the viability of an artist to “do Bond.” If, ultimately, your answer takes the form of “He’ll probably be better than Madonna,” that’s not a ringing endorsement! The Twatterverse has offered that notion a few times as solace to my grief. As Kyle Turner (@TyleKurner) mentioned to me on Twitter – the Bond sound is malleable. And I agree completely; the songs that have become Bond standards comprise a wide variety of genre styles. Assessing “Bond worthiness” is gut reaction, a swift subjective analysis whether or not an artist can kick it with 007. Think about Elaine and “Spongeworthy.”
Now… is Sam Smith “Bondworthy?”
Many of you have confessed to not knowing anything about Sam Smith. For you, I embed his hugely, immensely, insanely popular single that probably won him the gig:
Sam Smith was picked to sell records. Sam Smith has sold many records. He will sell many more. I do not, for one instant believe, that music industry awards or record sales are an accurate measure of value. The Bond franchise has a history of picking hugely popular artists to perform theme songs rather than choosing artists that would fit the mold. Some of these have turned out well (see: Duran Duran). Some have not (See: Madonna, Sheryl Crow). Most fall into a middle ground between widespread approval and dislike. In the end, we’re only arguing subjective value and/or overarching popular opinion.
9:52 edit: I was probed further on Twitter (the comments were appreciated @JoeWatchesTV) with a specific question about WHY EXACTLY Sam wasn’t Spongeworthy. Fair question that I didn’t discuss at all. Generally the performers that create lasting Bond themes are dramatic performers. Male vocalists tend to be less precise, off-key, bombastic pop vocalists. I’m thinking of Duran Duran, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones. The femmes have huge vocal ranges. Shirley Bassey even called out Tina Turner for her lack of range in the GoldenEye theme. Chanteusey cat fight! Sam Smith meanwhile sings with a “sweet, tender vocal style.” He’s highly produced and been called “honey-toned.” Lyrically, I’ve found his songs full of lazy throwaway pop lyrics. People hear depth, I think, because of his wispy warble, but there’s really a lack of substance. (If you want to hear a wispy warble with some substance to the music, listen to Perfume Genius and then tell me how Mr. Smith holds a candle to that man’s musical and lyrical ability.) Can you name the last great Bond theme that came from anyone labeled “sweet” or “tender”? Rita Coolidge maybe? So the best we’re hoping for here is “All Time High” stripped of whimsy and saddled with some 21st century malaise?
Here’s why I’m troubled, beyond my lack of affection for his music. I feel that Sam Smith was only picked to sell records. Sam Smith was picked to sell records like Adele sold records. In no world is Sam Smith the same dynamic singer. In no world does Sam Smith’s slimy tentacles of appeal reach into Bond fans as he has popular culture. That means that this choice was made with only the latter in mind.
Consider the journey the Craig era has taken. Casino Royale reinvigorated the franchise with a bold new take on the James Bond character. The commercial appeal of the song artist wasn’t a huge consideration because the commercial viability had yet to be dertermined. They chose Chris Cornell. They chose an artist that they thought was right for the picture. Cornell was 9 years removed from the last Soundgarden record. 7 years removed from his first solo record. Audioslave’s debut record in 2002 had gone 3x platinum, but the sales of each subsequent album had dropped by 50%. Could you imagine a hard rock artist getting the nod today? Choosing Cornell was bold. I knew a lot of fans that balked at that selection too. Many people answered “No” to Question No. 1 regarding Chris Cornell. That might have been a fair assessment. But you couldn’t have accused Bond producers of pandering or playing it safe by choosing a pop-culture zeitgeist just to sell records.
1. Do you believe this artist is a natural fit for Bond?
(No. I don’t believe I did.)
2. Do you tolerate/listen to this artist?
(Yes. Soundgarden and Audioslave kicked out some jams.)
For Quantum of Solace, Bond went with a mismatched duet of Jack White and Alicia Keys. A bold choice that ultimately resulted in some fan backlash. Jack White, as the leader of the garage rock movement of the 2000’s, continued the harder edge that Cornell had begun. White was a critical darling with a fervent following outside the Top 40 landscape. Adding Alicia Keys always seemed confused (perhaps a nod to the more populist following that White eschewed). Two great artists, either of which could have turned out a great theme by themselves, with an uncertain center. I like the song despite some odd production decisions (“Shoot ’em up / bang bang!). I don’t think it’s a great Bond intro, however. The broader fan base dislikes the song with the same furor with which they (wrongly, perhaps) reserve for the film itself.
1. Do you believe this artist is a natural fit for Bond?
(Yes for White. After Cornell, I believed White’s guitar would do a theme justice. Yes for Keys. Killer pipes.)
2. Do you tolerate/listen to this artist?
(HELL YES for Jack White. Yes for Alicia Keys.)
In 2012, Adele was the biggest artist on the planet. A British chanteuse with a bold vocal range. Not only was she the obvious choice, she was the right choice. From a certain perspective the only choice. I don’t even remember any other names being bantered about at the time (though I’m sure that’s revisionist memory). Her theme for Skyfall offered the closest thing to Shirley Bassey (the I Ching of Bond themes) since maybe Tina Turner’s GoldenEye, but more likely since Bassey’s own “Diamonds Are Forever.” Question No. 1 and Question No. 2: YES. She also happened to win a metric ton of Grammy awards.
1. Do you believe this artist is a natural fit for Bond?
(YES. A 1000x YES.)
2. Do you tolerate/listen to this artist?
(Yes. I owned both Adele records.)
Welcome to today. Welcome to a world in which Sam Smith won a similar metric ton of Grammy awards and Bond producers seem to think they can catch lightning twice. Sam Smith is not the same artist as Adele. He just doesn’t have the same cross-generational appeal. I’m trying to compare him to any single recording artist that’s provided Bond theme. I first thought Matt Munro for uncertain reasons, but Munro had a bit of swing in his repertoire, more swagger. I’ve been staring at the list for a few minutes. I’ve come up empty… except for Sheryl Crow, the hugely popular artist of the hour that just didn’t fit the bill.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope it’s everything the Sam Smith fans and Positive Pollys say it could be. Now that the deal’s done and the song’s in the can, it’s time to get my head right and go into SPECTRE with an open mind, despite all the reservations that keep accumulating daily.
Another day, another lackluster SPECTRE teaser poster. Let’s trace this back to the roots.
Teaser #1:
The first teaser poster was unveiled at the Bond 24 presser. The name, cast and this beautifully simple recall to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service laced with the SPECTRE octopus logo were shown to fans for the first time. I can’t speak for everyone, but I was smitten with this design. The perfect “teaser” for the upcoming Bond film. A mix of old and new. And despite my reservations about bringing SPECTRE and Blofeld back into the fold, I found myself thinking that just maybe…. maaaaaybeeeee…. they could pull off this resurrection.
Teaser #2:
The second poster appears in a couple of different color variations. White background, color with a gray background. The general synthesis, however, is that Craigers is channeling Roger Moore in Live and Let Die (great!) but reminds heartily of Archer’s tactleneck obsession. It led #Bond_age_Pod to do an entire episode devoted to the Tactlenecks. (Also, you’re welcome for that, by the way.) While there’s little imagination at play here, the nostalgia works. I’ll give it a passing grade because this SPECTRE teaser just recalled the Roger Moore years, and a metric ton of general movie fans who’d sooner spit than admit Roger Moore was Bond ate it up.
Teaser #3:
This bring us to the reveal of this little ditty today. Hello, Craigers. Nice to see they have you just standing there admiring yourself in the mirror (Travis Bickle style) while a Day of the Dead skeleton looms behind you. Did it take your graphic artists all of 12 minutes to create that design? Two pictures. Fade one nicely into a hazy blue. Slap a sun-bleached Craigers on top. Done! Print! Send! While I support the use of imagery from the highly publicized Dia de los muertos scenes from the upcoming film, I abhor lazy movie poster design. Movies posters died in the 90’s when computer and photo-editing software rendered commissioned artists a frivolous expense. I ranted about this very subject a bit on Twitter and boasted that I could do better with 20 minutes and a little bit of Photoshopping. So I gave myself 20 minutes and came up with this:
click for the larger image
Truth time. This took me 27 minutes. If I was doing this for anything other than for funsies, I’d make Daniel Craig fade more seamlessly into the background and I’d use the skeleton mask from the SPECTRE image. But I don’t have that original image. I’m not working for crazy dollars at some graphic design firm that MGM’s paying thousands of dollars to do… well… very little. I don’t blame the designers at all. They’re working on MGM’s dime and delivering a product according to specifications, very boring specifications.
Let’s go even further back, shall we?
@ThatNeilGuy reminded me during my movie poster rampage today that Bond also phoned in most of the Skyfall posters too. So I went back and reminded myself. The only Skyfall poster I truly remembered was the Advance.
Advance Skyfall:
Which, I consider pretty slick and rather iconic due to its minimalist simplicity. Then I realized why this was the only Skyfall poster I remembered vividly.
Oh look! It’s Craigers. Front and center. Same. Damn. Setup. Instead of a Day of the Dead skeleton or a blank background, it’s a slight variation on the gun barrel with a wee bit o’ London (is that MI-6?) slapped in, which you probably just overlooked until now.
By comparison, this poster’s balls to the wall. Craigers appears to be walking toward the camera! SLOW DOWN, CRAIGERS, YOU’LL WALK INTO THE CAMERA! Yet it’s another gun barrel backdrop. At least this one’s a little more visually appealing. If we’re being critical, however, there’s very little difference in overall technique and it appears that Bond’s Skyfall estate is being smeared around inside a gun barrel/subway tube. An allusion to the subway chase, perhaps. Maybe I should give this image a little bit more credit for including more than one element from the film. Even if those elements are largely unintelligible and wholly fail to catch the eye.
To me, Skyfall deserved a Saul Bass-variety treatment. I designed this as a Custom DVD cover for the #Bond_age_ Collection. (Not that this could be used as a movie poster for a major motion picture, of course.)
Overall, the takeaway from this post is not groundbreaking. The art of movie poster design is dead. It is; let’s not try to pretend otherwise. It lives on, however, in the aspiring artists and Photoshop masters that reside on the Interwebs. Search for any Bond movie and “fan art” and you’ll come up with dozens of inspired pieces of design. Digital art by people far more skilled than I, which just further begs the question… with all this skill and digital tools at our disposal why do studios fear visual innovation? There are dozens of online shops selling the work of amateur designers (mostly on t-shirts). The success of companies like Threadless and RedBubble is a testament to the fact that people recognize and appreciate quality design. Is this poster malaise happening for the same reasons that American Runs on Dunkin’ and the movie business runs on franchises, sequels and known commodities? Do the studios have hard evidence that stale, familiar movie posters sell more tickets? Or is it part of a greater underlying malaise of the patrons of film, that the general moviegoing public just doesn’t care anymore? That all we want to see are floating heads and the stars of the film front and center, recognizable instantly at 40 paces… or across a 20-screen multiplex.
I can’t be alone here. There must be a heavy wave of nostalgia for those old Bond posters, the too-busy design, the commissioned artwork, the action highlights laced throughout a gripping montage of baddies and babes. Share your favorite Bond posters in the comments. I’ll slap a few of my favorites below as a tribute to days, not so long ago, when poster design remained an art form instead of a mindlessly basic Photoshop exercise. (more…)
This week: Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966) – Wednesday @ 9pmET.
Now a measure of backstory. You know I love me some backstory.
About a year or so ago I picked up the Eurospy Guide by Matt Blake and David Deal. This tome is an exhaustive, comprehensive, obsessive guide to all things Eurospy. Eurospy being the broad name for the rampant Bond knockoffs that proliferated throughout Europe during the 1960’s. These films were parodies and comedies, straight rip offs, and genuine attempts to mold the spy genre. But most all of them were cheaply made to cash in on the spy craze. There were, of course, a few exceptions to the rule. But those aren’t necessarily any more interesting than these cheeseball hackjobs. We’ve live tweeted a few of the most prominent Eurospy films. Deadlier Than the Male and Kommissar X come to mind immediately. These are well known and well-regarded entries in the genre. Before I started reading Blake and Deal’s Eurospy Guide, I thought I had a good collection of these films and a serviceable working knowledge of the worthwhile *and* available Eurospy films. After a week with the Guide, I learned that I knew nothing. I was a sham. I con-artist serving up my Eurospy knowledge as expertise.
I’ve come to set matters right… because somehow I’d not seen or heard of the Ken Clark spy trilogy.
A few entries in the Guide stood out. Blake and Deal do a good job of describing the relative availability of the films as well and how some of them might be found. I came across the listing for Mission Bloody Mary. Here’s a selection:
“Add to this a gang of incompetent Russians, a number of double-crosses, and an assortment of unbelievable gadgetry and you have a highly entertaining example of the genre.”
That sounded like something I needed to earmark. HOWEVER. I went on to learn that this was the first of three spy films starring Ken Clark (who I knew only from Attack of the Giant Leeches), and the third film in the series co-starred Daniela Bianchi. Daniela Bianchi, you say? Only Daniela Bianchi of From Russia With Love fame, the #Bond_age_ muse if #Bond_age_ had a muse… (On second thought let’s just declare her the official muse and move on.)
Without further adieu I set about tracking these films down. I learned that a small DVD distributor called Dorado Films had released the trilogy in 2009. Though you could find the individual out-of-print films for about $50 per, I wanted the whole trilogy. I needed this set. $150 dollars for three low-quality DVDs I’d never seen seemed pretty damn steep. What was a guy to do? I sent emails and Facebook messages to Dorado imploring them for answers (but mostly any way they thought I could get my hands on the DVDs). After some further Interweb searching I found that Dorado Films had a Roku channel. And that Roku channel one could potentially watch the films distributed by Dorado Films. There I found that second Ken Clark film, co-starring Daniela Bianchi and that night endured the jaggies, the jitters and the commercial-interrupted stream of Special Mission Lady Chaplain. Slight spoiler, but Daniela gets to vamp it up and it is glorious. This was well and good for my own personal satisfaction of having seen the film, but how could I share my discovery with the #Bond_age_ masses? I couldn’t make anyone else endure the Dorado stream. (They did eventually get back to me, by the way, with a tremendous shoulder shrug.)
After months of intermittent searches on Ebay and Amazon, I finally found a copy of the Ken Clark trilogy on Amazon UK for $50 shipped. SOLD. Some of you may have been on Twitter when I finally located the set. I must have sent out a dozen celebratory tweets. I guarantee you thought I’d lost my marbles. Since my acquisition I’ve been waiting for a good moment to begin the live tweet of the trilogy. The time is now. Beginning next week, on August 19th, we live tweet episode one: Mission Bloody Mary. Fans of rare and underseen 60’s cinema would do themselves a favor to join us at the beginning of this journey.
Mission Bloody Mary opens on a rainy night. A police officer stops to aid a woman stranded on the side of the road. Of course she’s beautiful. Of course she’s exotic. Of course she’s sopping wet. And of course she stabs him with a flashlight dagger. Thus sets into motion the scheme to be foiled: a nuclear weapon’s on the loose and only a most cunning superspycan infiltrate the mysterious Black Lily crime syndicate to prevent a global meltdown.
This is the first of three spy outings with Ken Clark starring as Dick Malloy, American Agent 077. Clark plays James Bond filtered through the American ideal. He’s taller and physically more imposing than Sean Connery. Clark, he of the chiseled jaw, worked briefly in the Hollywood B-movie system (starring insuch films asAttack of the Giant Leeches) and made a few failed TV pilots before casting away to make spaghetti westerns, sword and sandal epics, and Eurospy movies in Italy during the 1960’s.
Though Mission Bloody Mary’s entrenched as a sincere budget Bond knockoff, it knows precisely which buttons to push. Beautiful women (in rose-petal pasties), despicable villains (though a little on the bland side) and exotic international locales. There’s a brutal fisticuffs sequence on a train (recalling From Russia With Love) that ends with an impromptu window guillotine. Though Ken Clark is a largely humorless actor, the script allows him bits of natural comedy that plays off his wooden persona. For example, Malloy starts a bar brawl with a few sailors as a distraction and all the while fights with a lit cigar (James Bond meets Hannibal Smith). At one point a henchman makes a crack about 077’s cardigan sweater andsubsequently pays the ultimate price.
As with almost all of these mid-60’s cheap Bond knockoffs, there’s bad acting and poor dubbing, vague motivation and few logical narrative threads. This first Ken Clark outing features all of that… but Mission Bloody Mary manages to offer its own brand of whimsical, half-baked cardigan-clad thrills with panache.
I really hope that sells you. These films are super low-budget Bond knockoffs, but they’re great fun. This is why we live tweet. This is why we’re fans of spy films… the incestuous references to Bond, the 60’s aesthetic, the hamfisted dialogue and cheesy one-liners. They’re all here.
The schedule for the Ken Clark live tweets: (all will appear as embeds right here on the website)
Mission Bloody Mary: August 19th @ 9pm (#Bond_age_ hashtag)
From the Orient with Fury: September 2nd @ 9pm (#Bond_age_ hashtag)
Special Mission Lady Chaplin: September 16th @ 9pm (#Bond_age_ hashtag)
