New Spy DVDs Out This Week: The Unknown Saint of Monte Carlo

I was going to lead this week's new DVD roundup with Warner Bros.' Unknown, but then the studio trumped themselves at the last minute by announcing a new collection of long-awaited Saint movies via The Warner Archive!  The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection includes all five of the RKO Saint films Sanders starred in between 1939 and '41: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint in Palm Springs.  The trouble with collecting Sanders' Saint outings is that it means omitting the four films starring Luis Hayward (my favorite of the RKO Saints) and Hugh Sinclair. And Hayward starred in the first of the Leslie Charteris adaptations, The Saint in New York. But hopefully those films will see release in a future collection. There's plenty of good news here to focus on!  Warner representatives promised way back in 2007 that all of the RKO Saint films would see release in 2008. That didn't happen, and it was about that time that the bottom fell out of the catalog DVD market entirely, so it seemed as if it would never happen.  Then the studio began its Warner Archive MOD program, producing DVD-Rs of classic films on demand, which started a trend and salvaged the catalog business.  It seemed inevitable that the Saint movies would pop up eventually as MODs, but even then the studio dragged its feet.  And now that these five have arrived, it seems like fans are actually better off for the delay. Instead of releasing each title individually for twenty bucks apiece, as they did with the Tarzan series, Warner are bundling five movies together for just $29.95.  That's a much better bargain!  (Very reasonable, actually.) I really hope that we see the remaining Saint titles (including the elusive final film in the RKO cycle, The Saint's Girl Friday, which was co-produced by Britain's Hammer Studios and saw Hayward return to the role he originated more than a decade later) soon in another such collection.  But for now, I'm very content to have these ones at long last!  So far The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection is available only directly through The Warner Archive, but it will assuredly pop up on Amazon and Deep Discount in a couple of months.

Also out from Warner Home Video today, in much wider release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo, is this year's Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy romp, Unknown. I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool thriller in its own right, though!  The wintery Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) Extras, unfortunately, are pretty scarce on both releases. The BD includes the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film; to the undoubted ire of those without Blu-ray players, the DVD includes only the first featurette.  DVD buyers shouldn't worry, though.  They're really not missing out on anything.  Both EPK featurettes are extremely brief, and despite that brevity still manage to cover some of the same ground. Still, this movie is worthwhile even without good bonus material. If you missed Unknown in theaters, definitely give it a try on disc. I'll be posting a full review shortly. Own it on Blu-ray for $35.99 (or just $22.99 currently from Amazon) or DVD for $28.99 (or just $14.99 from Amazon right now).

Finally, Olive Films, who have licensed a lot of cool catalog titles from Paramount, bring us the 1986 WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD today. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be had for slightly less on Amazon.

In addition to Monte Carlo, Olive has one more Joan Collins miniseries out today that might interest spy fans, though it's not itself a spy story. Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is notable here because it co-stars Timothy Dalton (immediately prior to becoming Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP of $39.99.

Upcoming Spy (And Dalton) DVDs: Eighties Miniseries Madness

TV Shows On DVD reports that Olive Films will release the Joan Collins WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD this June. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be pre-ordered for less on Amazon.

Monte Carlo isn't the only Joan Collins miniseries coming from Olive on June 21. That same day, the company will also put out another miniseries of the same vintage which might also interest spy fans. 1986's Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is not a spy story, but it does co-star Timothy Dalton (immediately pre-Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP.

Persuaders News Bites

The October issue of Total Film Magazine (on newsstands now in the US and featuring a reversible poster of both Quantum of Solace teasers on pack; Britain's already got the November issue with Daniel Craig on the cover) features an interview with Steve Coogan ("The Confessions of Steve Coogan") in which they ask him about the status of film version of The Persuaders, set to star Coogan and Ben Stiller in the roles originated by Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. Coogan first says it's in development hell, then, when they follow up and ask if that means the project is dead, he says no. The actor seems confident that The Persuaders will still find its time; that time just hasn't come yet. He says you've always got to have lots of different projects in development. I'm glad Total Film asked about that, because there's been very little news on The Persuaders movie of late. Last we heard, it was rumored to star Hugh Grant and George Clooney, but from what Coogan says it seems pretty clear that the movie is still in development with himself and Stiller as Lord Brett Sinclair and Danny Wild.

The original Wilde, meanwhile, has just written a new book (as has the original Sinclair, of course). Tony Curtis's brand new autobiography, American Prince: A Memoir, devotes just a few pages to The Persuaders, but does pack a few good stories into those pages. Among them are the oft-told tale of how he was detained at Heathrow for having marijuana and a handgun in his luggage (funny to hear from the actor's own perspective) and an amusing anecdote about filming the episode "Five Miles To Midnight" in which Curtis himself doesn't come out in the best light. Apparently while filming a scene with guest star Joan Collins, Curtis became frustrated with her and called her an extremely unkind word that starts with a "C." (Which, by his account, she was being.) When they finally did the shot, instead of playing her part Collins jumped out of the truck they were in and announced to everyone what he had called her, then ran off to her trailer. Curtis had to apologize in order to get the temperamental actress back on set. He still had to get the last word in, of course, and it's worth picking up the book to see what that last word was...

DVD Review: The Road To Hong Kong (1962)

The Road To Hong Kong, recently reissued in MGM’s Bob Hope MGM Movie Legends Collection, was the final Hope and Crosby "Road" movie, trailing its predecessor by nearly a decade. It’s a strange film, because it straddles two film genres that I tend to think of as being of entirely different eras: "Road" pictures and Sixties spy spoofs. Obviously it comes very late in the game for the former, but also finds itself (strangely) on the cutting edge of the latter. Whereas the vast majority of spy parodies rode on Bond’s coattails, The Road To Hong Kong slipped in before the pack (and even just before Dr. No), actually anticipating the genre it was sending up! And it really does a surprisingly good job, right down to a pre-title bit (a vaudeville routine, representing that one foot squarely in the past) and even a title sequence designed by Maurice Binder. With its mixture of Oriental imagery and rockets, it oddly prefigures his work on You Only Live Twice five years later.

Speaking of You Only Live Twice, The Road To Hong Kong begins pretty much the same way: with a group of American technicians (in Hong Kong) monitoring space transmissions and detecting the presence of a spacecraft neither the Americans nor the Russians can account for. I sincerely doubt that Roald Dahl had this movie in mind when penning the screenplay for the 1967 Bond movie, but the number of plot similarities is astonishing, from the villain declaring his organization "a third world power" down to the heroes donning space suits as a means of disguise to escape by rocket from the villain’s underground headquarters. It’s easy to watch The Road To Hong Kong as a parody of You Only Live Twice–until you remember when it was made!

Bob Hope and Bing Crosby play their usual Road sorts: traveling hucksters trying to con their way through India with an act about a rocket harness that doesn’t really work. Crosby talks Hope into flying the contraption, a predictable disaster that results in Hope losing his memory.

Just when you’re settled in for the same old (ever enjoyable) Road movie routine (lulled by the black and white photography into thinking it’s nineteen-forty-something), Sixties icon Peter Sellers turns up doing his hilarious Indian accent (maybe it’s not P.C. to admit it, but every time I hear Sellers use that voice, I crack up) as the Hindu physician who first assesses Hope’s condition. Unsurprisingly, Sellers’ doctor is far from competent, so the duo end up seeking the help of a mystical herb, said to restore memory, found only in a remote Tibetan lamastery.

At the airport, Crosby tries to coach the hopeless Hope (who’s forgotten everything, even the word "bosom") on how to pick up women. Thanks to Hope’s grabbing the wrong bag (a signal), his charmless, innuendo-laden routine actually nets a catch that turns his partner’s head: Joan Collins. Collins plays an agent of the nefarious Third Echelon (that power I mentioned that rivals the US and the Soviet Union), and, believing Hope to be such as well, mistakenly saddles him with stolen space secrets.

The lama-stery does, in fact, yield a miracle cure (as well as an extremely brief David Niven cameo and Bing Crosby in a Lotus position singing "Sip a little Oolong tea" in a hilarious baritone), not only restoring Hope’s memory, but also making it temporarily photographic. Therefore, once the rocket secrets have been accidentally destroyed, he still retains them in his generally useless noggin. (Just like Chuck!) Now, of course, he’s valuable to the Third Echelon.

After some stock footage of Hong Kong, our hapless duo end up on a couch that plunges through a secret passage and slides them into an underground lair. (Seri-ously! Maybe Dahl did have this movie in mind after all when penning You Only Live Twice!) The lair in question belongs to Robert Morley (in a Dr. No-ish getup), leader of the Third Echelon, and is eerily similar to that of the good doctor’s, complete with magnifying porthole windows into an ocean teeming with sharks. Morley’s Number 2 is played by spy regular Walter Gotell (the future General Golgol), two years before his role as the commandant of SPECTRE Island in From Russia With Love. Morley relishes a choice monologue ("I’ll deal with humanity as I please and I’ll do with humanity as I choose and I’ll do it from the moon with my radial lunar bombs!") before vowing to "rebuild the world according to my own image after my own specifications!" In a wild parody of comic book villainy, he unwittingly becomes the very blueprint for the breed of spy villains to come.

The heroes’ space-suited escape plays hilariously, because the suits happen to be made for chimps (thus contorting Bing and Bob into apelike crouches). After some side-splitting business wherein Hope has his outfit stuffed with live fish (oh, there’s a perfectly good reason) and a cameo by Road queen Dorothy Lamour, the pair are launched into space, a location it would take 007 eleven movies to reach!

The finale on the moon (The Road to the Moon probably would have been a better title for this one) would be forgettable were it not for the incongruous appearance of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, another pair I wouldn’t expect to pop up in a Road movie. Yes, the Chairman of the Board turns up in a wacky space suit. I forget why, exactly, but that’s not the point, is it? Ultimately, with this cameo the movie goes out with a final reminder that the whole affair is weirdly unstuck in time. It’s a relic of a bygone era that somehow manages to foreshadow the Swinging Sixties and the entire Bond canon at once. (Did I mention Morley escapes in a mini-sub, ala Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever? There are really too many 007 coincidences to list them all.) It’s not a great Road movie, and it’s not a great spy movie, but it contains plenty of inspired bits (the fish and the oolong tea stand out) and fans of both genres are sure to find something to like.

DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season

DVD Review: Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season

Somewhere, there is a whole junkyard full of busted tape recorders like that field of duplicated hats at the beginning of The Prestige. Jim Phelps and his Impossible Missions Force went through one a week for twenty-five weeks, for eight seasons, and this was in the days before disposable electronics! But each smoking cassette player meant another taut, thrilling mission, and CBS/Paramount’s new Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season offers up twenty-five more fine examples of such from the 1968-69 season.

Phelps was played by Peter Graves, and Graves mastered the furrowed brow while listening to those recorded mission briefings. (It must have resulted in a lot of premature wrinkles.) And when I say "mastered," I mean it! He’s not just crinkling up his forehead to have a bit of stage business to do while the tape recording does the talking; he’s acting. As he listens to the scant details with which he’s provided, we can see him already formulating his ingenious plan. Each furrow of the brow is a crucial step in an elaborate heist, another layer to the big con. Once I caught onto what he was doing here, Jim became a much more proactive character than he seemed at first. Later on in the episode, it’s electronics wiz Barney (Greg Morris), seductress Cinnamon (Barbara Bain), and (especially) master of disguise Rollin (Martin Landau) who will have the showiest roles, but Graves makes it clear that Jim is the man with the plan, the architect of the entire dazzling operation to follow.

The formula remains essentially the same this season (although the repetitive "team selection" sequence has been mercifully omitted, except for missions on which Jim requires a guest agent), but producer Bruce Gellar and his writers have still somehow managed to outdo themselves and come up with what is probably the show’s strongest season yet. Sure, there’s more of the same (more phony psychic powers, more doctored playing cards, more gullible foreign dictators, and more masks than ever), but there’s also a new, hitherto unseen personal layer to the proceedings. This season, the characters become more than just highly capable cogs in a masterful scheme; they’re humanized. This is thanks to a few episodes that drastically shirk the formula and give us more insight into Phelps and his team.

The best example of this is "The Exchange." Right away, the viewer is aware that he or she is in for something different. It doesn’t begin with the typical "your mission, Mr. Phelps, should you decide to accept it" taped briefing, and there’s no exploding player. Instead, it plunges us into the final moments of an unseen mission, like a Bond pre-credits sequence, or the opening of Brian DePalma’s Mission: Impossible film, for that matter. The team is in the Eastern Sector of an unnamed foreign city, an obvious stand-in for East Berlin. Cinnamon is in the military dress of this communist power. She photographs some documents, but suddenly alarms start to blare. She’s trapped! She has just enough time to heroically toss the camera out the window to Jim and strongman Willie Armitage (Peter Lupus, also in uniform) before she’s captured.

Back in the safety of the Western Sector, we see a very different Jim Phelps than we’re used to. His tie is off; his collar’s unbuttoned. And he’s worried. For once, events have not gone according to his precise plan. He’s sweating it. Clearly, the famous words we didn’t hear in this episode are weighing heavily on him: "Should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions."

"We let her down," laments a distraught Jim, clearly feeling the full responsibility of his role as team leader. "They can break anyone. She may not be the same Cinnamon we knew once they’re finished with her... but they’ll break her. Then they’ll kill her." Thus different stakes are set for this episode than those we’re used to. Instead of discrediting some unknown foreign dictator, the team must devise a plan to rescue one of their own.

That plan, too, goes against the grain of the show. Without the resources of the United States government behind them, the team goes rogue and breaks a captured Eastern agent out of his (presumably West German) prison in order to exchange him for Cinnamon! But in order for their plan to work, they need to break him first. Cinnamon proves remarkably adept at resisting torture and interrogation (especially for a fashion model, if we’re still meant to buy into the show’s initial conceit!), but once her captors pinpoint her fear of claustrophobia, things get a lot worse for her. Meanwhile, her IMF colleagues use their own tactics on their prisoner, staging an elaborate scenario in order to trick him. (Both sides seem to have been watching lots of Prisoner episodes!)

This tense episode leads up to a good old fashioned border-crossing prisoner exchange, a scene familiar to any fan of Cold War spy movies. The IMF gang even get to wear trench coats! Of course, in keeping with the genre there’s still one twist yet to come... "The Exchange" takes a number of surprising risks for a show of this era, especially one so entrenched in its regular, successful formula. The result is an espionage classic, and one of the very best episodes ever of Mission: Impossible. And it’s not the only episode this season to eschew the formula.

"Nicole" gives us another more personal story, focusing on Jim Phelps, and the result is good, though not equal to the success of "The Exchange." "Nicole" is a decidedly uncharacteristic Mission: Impossible episode. It feels a lot more like a Danger Man or a Saint. Most of the team sit this one out as Jim and Rollin infiltrate a swanky party in disguise (as Sidney Bristow would do so often several decades later) to steal the same MacGuffin that would fuel DePalma’s 1996 film, a NOC list. (This one identifies American agents who have been turned by the other side.) Rollin has a lot of fun playing a lecherous old general, perpetually hitting on the glam Sixties dollybirds (atypical for the show) who populate this surprisingly swinging Commie shindig. Jim, passing himself off as his aid, also finds himself flirting... with no less a femme fatale than Joan Collins as the titular agent Nicole. She sizes Jim up as "unmarried, but not un-scarred," leading to some James Bond-style banter.

It’s very strange to see Jim flirting. It’s not a side of him we’ve seen before, and he doesn’t seem that comfortable at it. I suppose that’s because he doesn’t often let his guard down as much as Nicole inspires him to do, but her allure proves great enough to cause this usually thoroughly professional spy to make some mistakes. A pressurized floor alarm (again, shades of the film) gets the best of Rollin, and the pair end up forced into some atypical but exciting gunplay. Rollin escapes with the list, but Jim is shot and captured. Nicole aids his recovery and his escape, but which side is she on? We’re treated to such spy tropes as double crosses, double agents (even one code-named "Sparrow!"), disfigured villains and arty shots through wine glasses as Jim flees for his life and tries to figure out whom he can trust. And by the time all is said and done, one IMF agent will have very uncharacteristically shot and killed a man himself, and another will have shed some equally uncharacteristic tears. The whole affair feels like one of those Prisoner episodes that feel like Danger Man episodes ("A, B & C" or "The Girl Who Was Death"); it’s one spy show masquerading as another. But it’s thrilling, different and highly entertaining. Its undoing, however, is that it’s also fairly predictable. It may not play by the standard M:I playbook, but it follows a formula nonetheless, and one with which spy fans will be familiar.

"The Mind of Stefan Miklos" proves that the show doesn’t have to break with its formula in order to excel. This one is by the book, but sublime in its execution. The Ameri-cans are feeding a known double agent, Townsend, misinformation. His assistant, Simpson (Ed Asner), suspects, and reports his boss to their controllers, who send their most brilliant strategist, Miklos (Steve Ihnat, looking as if he just stepped out of a Yaroslav Horak illustration), to investigate. For once, Jim must compete with an opposite number every bit his equal. The regular heist and con routine isn’t enough (although the episode features both); he needs to create a double bluff. He needs to let Miklos uncover one IMF plot in order to legitimize another. "His ego demands that he use his own brilliance to assemble the pieces of the puzzle," Jim informs his colleagues. But the game isn’t played mano a mano; the whole team chips in.

Martin Landau (pictured here in his leering general guise from "Nicole") really shines this episode when Rollin must play two different roles (without masks, for once) to trick two different people. One moment he’s excellently impersonating the assertive Miklos; the next the jittery, nervous Simpson. The sudden transformation is remarkable.

It spoils nothing for the astute Mission viewer to reveal that Jim and his team come out on top, but watching how they get there is particularly rewarding this time around, and demands close attention. At the end, Miklos, tricked into thinking that he has won, says, "I wish I could meet the man that masterminded their operation. He was brilliant. I feel sorry for him. He played the game well. But he lost. It’ll destroy him." Phelps is listening through a bug, fully aware of the irony and clearly feeling the same way.

"The Cardinal" is another of the many first-rate episodes in this collection, if slightly more run-of-the-mill. Theodore Bikel plays a delicious villain who plans to substitute an actor for a popular pro-Western Cardinal who opposes his bid for leadership of a progressive Eastern Bloc nation. Unfortunately for him, the IMF is onto his scheme, and sends Rollin in to double the double, making for three identical Cardinals running around at one point! Jim’s means of getting him inside is once more ingenious and fun to watch, as it involves a vacuum full of infected mosquitoes and a Maltese Cross that doubles as a tire jack good up to 3000 pounds of pressure! (Although it seems impossible to have foreseen that the bad guys would dump Rollin in a stone sarcophagus that required such a tool to escape from.) On top of that, we get to see Rollin make up a mask on the spot from his do-it-yourself face kit (which is neat), we get creepy skeleton-filled catacombs and ancient traps, and we get a henchwoman dressed as a nun. We also get an Orthodox monastery that looks suspiciously like the main Paramount business offices on their lot. (Though that's nothing compared to the Iron Curtain capitol with its own clearly visible, giant soundstage in "The Play!")

As fun as the show is, and as superb as this season is, Mission: Impossible is not without its shortcomings. Besides the obvious backlot sets, we get some of the same gimmicks we’ve seen before, and we get an annoying tendency for the agents to freeze up (practically giving themselves away) when it looks like some guard has caught onto their scheme just before a commercial break, only to learn when the show returns that they’d actually planned for this exact eventuality, so that display was purely for the benefit of the audience. We also get occasional episodes that collapse under their own convoluted intricacy, like "The Freeze." (The IMF spends millions and millions of dollars setting up a fake cryogenic laboratory and fake future of the faraway year 1980, complete with flatscreen TVs, 8-tracks that behave like DVDs, plastic shrinkwrap dresses, and bubble-topped future cars, just to convince a bank robber he’s been asleep eleven years for... well, it turns out there was really no reason at all to do it.) But perhaps hardest of all for a modern viewer to swallow are the heavy Cold War politics.

While Mission: Impossible doesn’t use actual countries or governments, they do use a Cold War shorthand relying on audiences to instantly identify certain buzzwords ("dictator," "anti-democratic," "anti-Western") as automatically evil. (Hm, sounds like a certain administration I can think of!) The writers often don’t bother to paint the various foreign leaders who fall at the hands of the IMF as evil beyond that shorthand, so in some cases the heroes come off looking like a bunch of jerks, often hurting people who don’t really seem like they should deserve what they get. In "The Elixir," for example, Riva, an Evita Peron-like would-be ruler of a South American country (whose only vice we witness is vanity, though we’re told she’d make a cruel dictator), ends up the victim of some very cruel plastic surgery, robbed of her face and, as a result, hauled off to an insane asylum. (Duped into having the procedure, if you can believe it, because of 37- year old Barbara Bain’s, ahem, "youthful" good looks!) And in "The Play," the IMF dutifully subverts the artistic freedom of playwrights and actors to further their pro-Western cause. It plays like The Lives of Others in reverse! In the course of this particular operation, they also claim a completely innocent victim, duping a sympathetic Eastern European actor into leaving behind his country and his life for a bogus offer of Broadway stardom! "The Bargain" is a great episode that actually affords Barney the chance to spy through a cracked doorway while disguised as a Cajun chef and Cinnamon the opportunity to dress like a French maid, but ultimately spells doom for an exiled Central American leader whose only crime we’re let in on is a passing similarity to Fidel Castro. In 1968, I suppose that was enough.

None of that should be enough to dissuade a spy fan (of any creed) from snatching up this fantastic DVD set, though. It’s easy to see past the dated Cold War politics (though it’s curious that the American Cold War spy shows have dated more poorly than their British equivalents) to some very tight writing, taut directing and splendid acting. Furthermore, any show that can consistently pull off so simple a trick as switching actors and saying it’s another person "wearing a mask" deserves a lot of respect. I’ll be honest; they get me every time with that. Even though it’s no longer Martin Landau on screen as soon as he pulls on that latex face, I remain convinced that I’m watching Rollin. And I don’t suspend disbelief so easily for just any show! There’s a reason why Mission: Impossible is one of the most famous spy series of all time, and it’s all on screen in The Third TV Season.

Unfortunately, there’s one piece of bad news to accompany this review. This set bears the same warning as Season 2 of Hawaii Five-O: "Some episodes may be edited from their original network versions." I suppose that means that Paramount was only able to find syndication masters for some of the episodes, and not original broadcast masters. I am not familiar enough with the series to identify which episodes this affects. On the upside, however, the picture and sound quality are phenomenal this time around, easily beating the previous seasons’ presentation. Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season is one of the must-buy spy DVDs of the season.

Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Seventh TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Sixth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fifth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Fourth TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The Second TV Season here.
Read my review of Mission: Impossible: The First TV Season here.

DVD Review: Stopover Tokyo (1957)

Last year Fox began releasing box sets of some of their classic 1930s pulp fiction-inspired B features, the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto series. The Mr. Moto movies feature Peter Lorre as a Japanese secret agent/detective character, and they’re as much fun as they are politically incorrect. Moto is more of an action hero than Chan, a judo expert and crack shot who isn’t afraid to kill his enemies. The films manage to keep Moto in constant peril with ingenious traps, outrageous assassination attempts and general B movie mayhem. Fox finished off the cycle earlier this year with Volume 2, but there was still one movie based on a Mr. Moto book by author John P. Marquand that hadn’t been released. Stopover Tokyo (made much later, in 1957) wasn’t included in either box set because it didn’t actually feature Mr. Moto. As I understood it, he had been written out and replaced by an American agent played by Robert Wagner. (The commentary on this disc, however, dispels that notion. The Moto part was reduced and assigned to a random Japanese detective character; Wagner played another role which was expanded from the book.) So when Fox announced earlier this year that Stopover Tokyo would be released as part of their Joan Collins promotion this summer, I was excited. Whether it actually had the Moto character or not, it came from the same source material, so it was bound to be fun, right? Unfortunately, no.

I’m sorry to report that Stopover Tokyo is a slow-moving melodrama that retains none of the thrill-a-minute spirit of the 30s Moto movies. The adaptation may have gained some A-picture prestige with top young studio stars and exotic location photography in Japan, but it lost nearly all of the action and excitement. Still, it’s an interesting curiosity for spy buffs because it came at an odd time, well after the black and white wartime movies about intrepid G-men and reporters cracking nefarious spy rings, but just before James Bond defined the genre for the Cold War, technicolor era.

Robert Wagner plays American Counter-Intelligence agent Mark Fannon, sent to Tokyo to prevent the assassination of the U.S. High Commissioner in Japan. He quickly becomes involved with airline ticket agent Tina (a young and beautiful pre-Dynasty, pre-Hieronymus Merkin, pre-Bitch goddess Collins), who just happens to also be involved with his colleague, fellow Counter-Intelligence man Tony Barrett. Yes, just happens. I kept waiting for one of them to be a double agent, for her to be revealed as a spy, anything like that, but they don’t even dangle the possibility as a red herring. This is essentially a love-triangle melodrama in which two of the participants happen to be spies, and not a story driven by espionage.

Fannon’s investigation proceeds slowly (it’s not even clear what he’s investigating until one of his Japanese contacts is shot dead in a phone booth in one of the film’s better scenes) and hits a lot of stumbling blocks. Unlike Mr. Moto, who found himself in danger at every turn, the only moment of any real jeopardy Fannon finds himself in comes when someone locks him in a steam room and nearly kills him. He doesn’t get out of it through any ingenuity; he just happens to be saved by a spa employee before the scene has even managed to generate any real suspense. Instead of thrills, our hero gets saddled with a young Japanese orphan girl named Koko who constantly refers to herself in the third person and speaks appalling pigeon English. Even though the actress is actually Japanese and the intentions of the American filmmakers are noble, this character comes off as far more racist than Lorre’s respectful portrayal of Moto! The movie hits a low point when Koko performs a long Japanese folk song about a snowflake. (A really long Japanese folk song about a snowflake!)

Wagner doesn’t help matters either. In fact, he’s awful. It’s amazing he ever got the chance to become a real star after this picture. If I didn’t know that he were capable of much better work, I probably would have written him off entirely based on this performance. His delivery is monotonous and mumbled. Perhaps he was attempting a Jack Webb-like, Joe Friday tone, since his character is similarly straight-edged and dedicated to his work, but he just comes off like a jerk. Not a fun-to-watch, hit-on-all-the-ladies Eurospy kind of jerk, the kind you’d do anything to get out of having a drink with. His partner isn’t much better, and it’s impossible to see why Collins falls for either of them, let alone both!

The moral of the story is that spies can’t have relationships; they must sacrifice that luxury for dedication to country. "Even if you ever found a girl and really fell in love," Collins tells her two disappointed suitors, "you’d cheat on her. With your job." It’s not a bad theme, but one that would be explored to much better effect in countless spy movies yet to come.

Stopover Tokyo’s only real asset is its scenery. I’ve always been a sucker for the travelogue element of the Bond films (and miss it in some of the recent, more relentless entries that don’t take the time to revel in their locations) and it’s cool to see technicolor footage of Japan at that time. But the movie is so stodgily directed that even the most exotic locations lack any majesty as presented. As excited as I was to finally see this movie, I’m sorry not to be able to give it a recommendation, but it’s not even worth it for Mr. Moto completists.

Still, no matter how mediocre the film, Fox does another outstanding job with its Cinema Classics line of DVDs. The now-standard restoration comparison proves how much work they put into the picture quality, and they even throw in some nice extras.

The commentary track by film historian Aubrey Solomon is only a partial commentary, and that proves a really good choice. Apparently Solomon didn’t have a whole movie’s worth of comments to share about Stopover Tokyo (and who can blame him?) so he only talks about select scenes. Fortunately, you’re able to skip directly from one bit of talking to the next with the chapter button, so it’s easy to hear the entirety of his discussion fairly quickly. And everything he does say is interesting and apropos. In my opinion, this is vastly preferable to sitting through a meandering feature-length track and hearing a lot of rubbish only to get the same amount of worthwhile information!

Other features include a trailer, an animated stills and poster gallery and an "interactive vintage press book," which re-presents the original press notes in their entirety. You can highlight a certain part of the page and enlarge it to read the blurbs or see the art up close. It’s a neat feature, and one wonders why we don’t see more of this. There’s also a "Hollywood Highlights" segment, featuring newsreel coverage of Collins at the time. Stopover Tokyo is a bad movie, but a pretty good DVD, thanks to these features. Still not one I can heartily recommend, though.