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DVD Review: George Lazenby In The Man From Hong Kong (1975)
While his fighting skills are impressive (and seen to better effect in period epics like the Zatoichi films and the classic Master of the Flying Guillotine), Wang Yu simply isn’t as exciting to watch in action as Bruce Lee is, especially in contemporary settings. He’s also nowhere near as charming a leading man. It’s unfortunate that the film centers on such a charisma vacuum, but The Man From Hong Kong has enough delirious, gonzo fun going for it (thanks to ubiquitous Aussie action director Brian Trenchard-Smith) that it manages to overcome that handicap. It also affords Lazenby the opportunity to steal the show. Oozing with a confidence not seen in his 007 outing (my theory is that it comes from his impressive mustache, which could easily go toe-to-toe with Timothy Dalton’s Flash Gordon ‘stache), Lazenby relishes his villainous role and chews up all the scenery he can get his mouth on. He’s got swagger to spare (presumably the same swagger that did him few favors off screen amongst the Bond crew) and that comes through both in his fight scenes and his scenes of shouting orders at minions while modeling the best in wide-collared Seventies sleazebag fashions. His character’s arrogance when fighting Wang Yu’s Inspector Fang Sing Leng may come from the steel rods hidden in the wrappings on his fists or the army of henchmen ready to leap to his aid, but the fact is Lazenby stands his ground well against the trained martial artist, and doesn’t appear at all mismatched, as untrained Western villains sometimes do in kung fu movies. (Lazenby did have some martial arts training, and it shows.) 
Lazenby’s drug kingpin, Jack Wilton, is introduced a half hour into the film wearing white karate garb with a musical sting very deliberately reminiscent of the James Bond Theme. (This isn’t the sort of film to shy away from in-jokes.) He’s the sort of guy who entertains his guests by shooting apples off of women’s heads with his crossbow. But he’s not one to leave all the fighting to his underlings. "I understand your culture," he says to Fang. "And your language. And your martial arts. Especially those." He goads Wang Yu into a fight at a garden party (under the guise of a "kung fu exhibition") by taunting, "I’ve never met a Chinese yet that didn’t have a... yellow streak." Of course, as soon as the tables turn against him, in rush his goons armed with rakes and hoes! 
The ensuing melee is one of many highly entertaining action sequences in The Man From Hong Kong. I was grinning from ear to ear from the very beginning, a drug deal gone sour that leads to a chase and fight atop Australia’s famous landmark Ayers Rock. In his never dull audio commentary (with phoned-in contributions from others), director Brian Trenchard-Smith calls that opening "the most improbable drug deal that you could ever wish to concoct" and says that’s probably why he chose it because "much of the conventions of this film were to reflect the improbable and unlikely stereotypes of action movies at the time." I’m not sure "reflect" is the right word. The movie downright embraces all of the improbable and unlikely stereotypes of action movies at the time (with less intentional parody, I suspect, than Trenchard-Smith now takes credit for), and that’s what makes it so damn enjoyable!
Subsequent setpieces include more melees as well as closed-quarters fighting, a pretty spectacular (and lengthy) car chase, a short-lived foot/motorcycle chase (Wang Yu curtails the bad guy’s getaway plans by knocking him off his bike with a flying kick to the chest), George Lazenby on fire and enough hang-gliding to justify its prominent display in the film’s marketing. The scene where Lazenby (or rather, his jacket) catches on fire, by the way, it the subject of an amusing anecdote in Not Quite Hollywood. After the director demonstrated how safe it was to wear the specially treated, burning coat, the macho George certainly couldn’t turn it down. But when the cameras rolled, he couldn’t get the jacket off! The take used in the movie shows him desperately flailing about trying to get his arm out of the fiery sleeve, and the panic in his eyes isn’t acting. All subjects concerned recall that Lazenby was (justifiably) furious, and Trenchard-Smith claims the actor punched him following the take! Perhaps with the benefit of a selective memory, Lazenby himself denies hitting him, but a stunt man corroborates the story. 
Fang is a cop so spectacularly unheeding of rules and regulations that he makes Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer look like champions of due process. To get an idea of just how flagrantly Fang violates the rules of his profession, consider that the Aussie man-bear who sports a remarkable afro/mullet combo and wears his belt around an untucked shirt or tunic, is by comparison the by-the-book cop! (He's the one on the left.) 
While cutting his unchecked swathe of violence and destruction across Sydney, Wang Chu spends much of the movie in a blue and white version of Bruce Lee’s famous yellow and black jumpsuit. (It looks kind of like an Emmapeeler, in fact, but he doesn’t wear it nearly as well as Diana Rigg!) The forced comparison doesn’t do Wang Yu any favors, but his impressive fighting skills easily carry him through all the scenes where he doesn’t have to talk. When he does, he’s dubbed (by Roy Chiao, the actor who played Lao Che in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, according to Smith) in an inexplicable John Wayne drawl. I suppose the idea was to emphasize his rule-breaking, lone wolf personal, but it kind of makes him seem like a real jerk (Eurospy hero-style!) in exchanges like this one: 
The R4 PAL Madman DVD presents a very nice widescreen transfer (certainly much better than the grey market versions that circulated in America for a while). It’s a two-disc affair with good extras–but not quite as good as you might be led to believe by the box. The box states that the second disc includes two bonus films by Brian Trenchard-Smith. What it doesn’t share is that one of those, Hospitals Don’t Burn Down, is an industrial short, made to promote fire safety in hospitals, while the other, Kung Fu Killers, is a documentary on Seventies kung fu and its practitioners. The documentary is actually very good, both on its subject and as a time capsule of the period. But the battered print is not restored or remastered, and it certainly isn’t a feature dramatic film as the omissions on the box might lead one to believe! Other extras are more what you’re expecting. The Australian and Hong Kong trailers are both top-notch. They’re well-cut trailers each with a distinct sort of Seventies voice-over, and they do a great job of conveying the tone of the film. If you don’t have time to show your friends the whole movie, both trailers will give them a nice taste. (And the Hong Kong one even throws in some nudity.) The twenty plus minutes of "never before seen behind-the-scenes footage" contain both alternate takes and some legitimate behind-the-scenes footage, but it’s all MOS (without sound). It would have been great B-roll edited into a whole making-of featurette, cut together with interview subjects, but lacking the sort of budget necessary for such a documentary, it might have livened things up had we at least gotten Brian Trenchard-Smith’s commentary on this material. His commentary on the feature film is clearly the highlight of the disc, special features-wise. He’s self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing at once, a great combination that makes for an audio commentary every bit as engaging as the film itself. And he’s got a great memory, easily recalling stories from the set and doling out fascinating facts about the people involved. As previously mentioned, other contributors to the film occasionally contribute their recollections over a staticky telephone connection. 
If you’re a George Lazenby fan, you can’t miss The Man From Hong Kong. And if you have the option of playing PAL discs from different regions, the Madhouse release is definitely the version to get. 
Upcoming Los Angeles Spy Screenings: On Her Majesty's Secret Service And From Russia With Love
Spy Screenings In Los Angeles This Weekend
Also playing this weekend in Los Angeles and New York is Not Quite Hollywood, that documentary about Australian grindhouse (or "Ozploitation") movies that features one-time James Bond George Lazenby. I first reported on this when Aintitcool linked the trailer last fall. The movie covers a ton of insane Aussie exploitation films from the 70s and 80s and the insane people who made them. Included on the roster is Lazenby's The Man From Hong Kong (1975); I wouldn't be surprised if Stoner (1974) and maybe some of his other action films of the era turned up as well. Lazenby appears in the trailer in some amazingly-remastered clips, as well as in a brief snippet from a new, on-camera interview, but Quentin Tarantino dominates the proceedings in the trailer, as he does most things related in any way to cult cinema. Boasting the tagline, "Finally a documentary full of gratuitous nudity, senseless violence, car crashes... and a bit of kung fu," this looks quite entertaining, and I'm definitely hoping to check it out! Not Quite Hollywood opens in Los Angeles (at the Nuart) and New York (at the Village East) tonight; it expands the following week to the E Street Cinema in Washington, DC, and then to Berkeley, San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Seattle on August 14. Then it opens in Cambridge and Philadelphia the week after that, and presumably other markets will depend on how it performs in the first stages of its platform release. So check your local listings, as they say! It's already on DVD in Australia.
DVD Review: Return Of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair (1983)
None of the major writers, directors or producers the original Man From U.N.C.L.E. series worked on this CBS TV movie (although Avengers vet Ray Austin directed), and it certainly shows. Instead of some of the more original plotlines the series delivered, we’re treated to a recycled Thunderball nuclear blackmail plot–which must have seemed particularly tired in 1983, the year that Thunderball itself was remade as Never Say Never Again! THRUSH, after apparently being dormant for a decade and a half, has emerged anew to steal an A-Bomb. (They do it over desert instead of water.) Now they want to hold U.N.C.L.E. and the United States at ransom. Actually, the Bond plot (hackneyed though it may be by this point) seems kind of appropriate, as the show’s producers treat this reunion movie as more of a general celebration of Sixties secret agents than U.N.C.L.E. in particular. And, as an avowed admirer of many Sixties secret agents, that’s fine by me.
Patrick Macnee shows up not as John Steed, but as new U.N.C.L.E. boss Sir John Raleigh, just taking the reins from the recently deceased Mr. Waverly. And the producers make the most of what was probably just a single day’s shooting with George Lazenby as James Bond. Oh, I’m sorry! I suppose I should say "JB." That’s how he’s credited (prominently)–and that’s what his license plate says. (Smooth, 007!) But from the moment his character shows up to aid Napoleon Solo in his familiar Silverbirch Aston Martin DB5, the movie forgets about Solo altogether and becomes a low-budget James Bond movie for a few minutes. Lazenby gets all the iconic Bond moments he was denied in his single official outing. He gets to drive a fully equipped DB5, participate in a gadget-laden chase (front-mounted rockets; rear-mounted water sprayers) and wear a white dinner jacket. He even gets to awkwardly cram in the line, "Shaken, not stirred" without ever leaving his car. And just in case we don’t get the reference, Gayle Hunnicutt (riding shotgun in Solo’s car) utters the words "On Her Majesty’s Secret Service." So there’s more to celebrate here than just The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (One suspects that writer Michael Sloan may have been more familiar with Bond than U.N.C.L.E. anyway, and just assumed they were exactly the same.) In what I like to think is another clever reference–but might in fact be just a happy accident–Lazenby drives past an orange Mach 1 Mustang fastback on the Vegas strip–the same car that Connery drove in that location in Diamonds Are Forever.
Anyway, getting back to the story, the first U.N.C.L.E. man on hand when the bomb goes missing is young 1980s hotshot Benjamin Kowalski. (See what happens when you don’t have Ian Fleming on hand to name your main characters, as he was for U.N.C.L.E. producers back in the 1960s?) Kowalski is rather transparent as a potential lead in a new U.N.C.L.E. series–and it’s just as well that didn’t happen because he lacks all the charm and charisma of the original series’ leads–as the villain of the piece is quick to point out! Kowalski shows initiative by interrogating former THRUSH agent Anthony Zerbe in a prison, and Zerbe takes him to task for his lack of style. He doesn’t like the new breed of U.N.C.L.E. agent, and tells him that Napoleon Solo would have asked the same questions, but with more panache–and Illya Kuryakin would have chilled his blood without saying a word. One can’t help but agree–and hunger for the movie to move on to their promised return!
"Care to raise your bet, Mr....?" inquires his opponent. Of course, we know who it is: Solo. Napoleon Solo. In a frilly tux. I know it’s supposed to be cool, but I kind of hate the notion that a retired Napoleon Solo would hang out in Vegas like every other retiree! It would have been classier to put him in Monte Carlo. Oh well. The movie makes up for that with a great nod to the original series, the sort that I imagine brought tears to the eyes of men who’d grown up on U.N.C.L.E. when it originally aired. When all attempts to reach Solo have failed, Macnee gets a thoughtful look and says, "I wonder... try Channel D" as he handles some familiar old technology. The message goes through, and Napoleon (who’s apparently hung onto his pen radio for sentimental reasons) gets it in the back room at Caesar’s Palace where he excuses the alarm as being a new battery in his pacemaker. (Come on; he’s not that old!) It’s great to see Napoleon Solo talking on the old communicator again–and just as awesome to see John Steed using U.N.C.L.E. technology!
Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. works best when alluding directly to the classic series, and there’s a humorous (if overlong) scene where Solo tries to enter U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters through the old entrance from Del Floria’s Tailor Shop. Needless to say, the new owner thinks he’s crazy.
But where’s Illya Kuryakin? For some reason, Napoleon and Ilya haven’t kept in touch since leaving U.N.C.L.E. as soon as the show ended, fifteen years prior. This seems odd to me. Raleigh informs Napoleon that Illya left under a cloud: he was betrayed, and a woman died. None of that seems very U.N.C.L.E., but it doesn’t matter too much because Napoleon tracks him down soon enough anyway. Illya’s become a fashion designer. Napoleon catches up with him in a restaurant, but the KGB catch up with Napoleon at the same time, mad about a ballerina he helped defect (Hunnicutt, familiar from multiple incarnations of The Saint, among other things). Ilya helps out his old partner in a predictable fight punctuated by some lame comedy. It then takes Napoleon a surprising amount of coaxing to lure Illya back into the fray, but he succeeds eventually. "For the sake of the world."
"Constantly, as I recall," says Napoleon. And it needs saving again, so the pair reunite long enough for a quick tour of headquarters ("What happened to all the beautiful women who used to work at U.N.C.L.E.?" wonders Illya) and a trip to Q Branch. (I did mention that Return owes more to Bond than U.N.C.L.E., didn’t I?) A bespectacled female Q named Z runs this low-rent lab, and she owes a lot to John Gardner’s slightly embarrassing "Q’ute" character from his Bond continuation novels of the time. She gives them grenade bullets and new guns (the old ones are in the Smithsonian now, much to Napoleon’s regret) and sends them on their way. Halfway through the running time of their reunion movie, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakan are finally reunited on a mission... only to split up for the remainder of the movie. In the script’s biggest mistake, each of them is paired with a potential new lead (for the new series that never materialized out of this backdoor pilot) instead of with each other.
It seems strange that the original men from U.N.C.L.E. have been retired all this time, when they’re still perfectly capable agents. It’s also strange, and not very much in keeping with the original show, that Illya left the service in utter disillusionment. But those conceits allow for the expected reunion, however brief it turns out to be. David McCallum still looks great, but the years have been less kind to Robert Vaughn. Somehow, he manages to have aged more than all the other Sixties spies surrounding him, including Lazenby and Macnee–and also including Sean Connery and Roger Moore, both of whom were still capering around on the big screen as 007 at roughly the same age as him! Luckily, age suits Vaughn (he looks his career best in the current UK series Hustle), who remains as dignified as ever. Whatever age they are, and whatever contrivances it took to get them reunited, it’s definitely a treat to see Vaughn and McCallum back together. But The Fifteen Years Later Affair still amounts to a sub-par U.N.C.L.E. outing. It works much better as a tribute to all the spies of the Sixties, complete with a shoestring Bondian finale with U.N.C.L.E. commandos versus THRUSH henchmen, each in their own color-coordinated jumpsuits. As such, it's undeniably enjoyable. While it’s a must for U.N.C.L.E. fans, Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. also belongs on the shelves of James Bond fans, Avengers fans and spy fans in general. It’s a fascinating curiosity, and a portrait of a unique time in spy media history–the first pangs of nostalgia for the heyday of the 1960s. 
George Lazenby In New Documentary
The Humanist Spy To coincide with the U.S. roll-out of Tomas Alfredson’s fantastic new feature film adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinke...
