REPOST: DVD Review: Fantastic Argoman (1967)

Yeah, Man vs. Machine "Week" is still going on around here. This is probably the last repost, but there are still several new reviews to come. Anyway, this one's a pretty recent review, originally posted as part of Costumed Adventurer Week. But the movie features one of my favorite Eurospy robots (or "RO-buts"), so I couldn't resist reposting it as part of the COBRAS Man vs. Machine event. If you didn't read it the first time or want a refresher, read on for the original review. And if you did, I still recommend at least scrolling down and looking at those robot pictures! But remember: "It's not a pleasant fate to suffer at the hands of a robot!"

Argoman is a superhero very much of the Sixties Euro variety. Clearly, Argoman never had an Uncle Ben who died and taught him any lessons about great power and great responsibility. Argoman is gifted with great powers, but he uses them primarily to make his enemies kill each other and to force beautiful women to come to his island and have sex with him! (Exactly what most Eurospy heroes would do were they imbued with superpowers.) And when he uses them for good, he charges people (and governments) for his services! Examples of fees include Peter the Great’s snuff box (which he recognizes on sight), the Mona Lisa and other priceless treasures, all of which he uses to decorate his own impossibly mod pad.

Argoman’s powers allow him to make people do his bidding via psychic suggestion and to levitate objects (up to a certain size). His weakness (recounted in unapologetically blatant expositional conversation with his turban-wearing Indian manservant, Chandra–who looks a tad like Boris Karlof in The Wild Wild West) is that he loses his powers for six hours following any "rendezvous with a woman." And, being a Swinging Sixties sort of bachelor, Argoman likes rendevousing with women!

Argoman is, in reality, pipe-smoking playboy Sir Reginald Hoover (Eurospy star Roger Browne), a man of science and practitioner of PK, or psychokinesis. (Very trendy for 1967.) He’s seen by Scotland Yard (personified by the perpetually flustered Inspector Lawrence) as a "feather-brained fop," yet called on for his advice on any major crime. Lawrence explains to his constable assistant (who has a very strange cockney accent) that Sir Reginald was brought up in America, and therefore "lacks a British sense of duty." (And a British accent.)

As Argoman, Sir Reginald wears a rather silly (and, frankly, quite unflattering) getup of yellow and black spandex with a red cape, a black ski mask and red Geordi La Forge glasses. When he uses his psychic powers, his eyes glow from within the glasses. (It’s possible this image is inspired by Cyclops in the X-Men comics published by Marvel.) Without the ability to fly or swing from webs, Argoman is prone to leaping, prancing and flouncing about in his costume. And he runs like a girl. It’s quite a sight. I’m not quite sure why Browne decided to wave his arms about whilst running, but perhaps he felt it the only natural thing to do when one is wearing tights. Or perhaps he thought it looked more heroic. Whatever the reason, it reminded me of Misty Mundae as Spiderbabe in the low budget Skinimax parody of Spider-man. (Come on, you know you’ve seen it!) Like Miss Mundae, Browne certainly displays an unbridled enthusiasm for running around in such a manner.

Batman may be a caped crusader who masquerades as a wealthy playboy to protect his alter ego, but Argoman is the opposite. He is a wealthy playboy (and an unapologetic one at that!) who enjoys being a wealthy playboy and who dons a mask and costume for a lark. He spends the better part of the first half of the movie in his Sir Reginald persona rather than his Argoman one. As Sir Reginald, Browne is indistinguishable from any other cad of a Eurospy hero. Bored, he selects a woman from his virtual "little black book" (it’s a video screen!) and invites her over to his private island. But then he gets tired of waiting, so he goes out to the beach and uses his super-vision to scan for a nearer chick. He sees a beautiful woman (Secret Agent Fireball’s Dominique Boschero) out for a ride in her hovercraft (a frequent sight in the Sixties, no doubt) and psychically commands her to "come to the beach." After reeling her in like a fish, he challenges her to a fixed game involving bows and arrows. If she wins, she "gets to leave!" (And she gets a Rolls Royce and some emeralds.) If he wins... he pushes a button and a door opens revealing a swinging bed. (And I don’t mean "swinging" in the typical Sixties sense–although that does apply; I mean it in the very literal sense in that it is suspended from the ceiling by four cables. That's the way Argoman rolls.)

Meanwhile, the Crown Jewels have been stolen. Inspector Lawrence assures the Home Secretary that they’ll get another crown in time for the next coronation, and immediately suspects Argoman of the crime. Not that unfairly, really, because stealing the Crown Jewels does seem to be the sort of thing Argoman would get up to. Before Argoman can be arrested, however, the crown is suddenly returned with a note signed by Jenabelle, the Queen of the World. (Yes, that’s how she signs her notes.) The theft was merely a demonstration of her power. Now she wants the mysterious "Mordof R4" (or Marduf R4 or Morudof R4 or Mordoof R4 depending on who’s pronouncing it) in exchange for... something. For not doing something worse, I guess. What, exactly, the Mordof R4 is is anyone’s guess, though we’re treated to one of those great Eurospy demonstrations of power in which it is apparently shown to have the ability to turn a Franc coin chewy. Who knew?

Even a note from the Queen of the World herself isn’t quite enough to convince Inspector Lawrence of Argoman’s innocence in the Crown Jewels affair; he briefly mulls the idea that Argoman and Jenabelle are one and the same. (Now that would be an interesting twist!) Even while suspecting Argoman, Lawrence turns to his alter ego (oh, the irony!) for advice. When Sir Reginald is sent on a mission meant for a Scotland Yard man or "man of action" (something Inspector Lawrence can’t comprehend this layabout being), he’s instructed to make himself recognizable by wearing a black bowler with a tweed checked suit. Mindful of this foppish aristocrat’s safety, the police ask if there’s anything he objects to. He says yes: "having to wear a tweed suit with a black bowler hat!" He might wear a yellow jumpsuit that makes him look like he’s got a paunch as Argoman, but as Sir Reginald he’s just as much of a sartorial snob as any of his better off secret agent counterparts.

Anyway, Sir Reginald is captured and the self-proclaimed Queen of the World, who turns out to be none other than the beautiful woman he picked up on her hovercraft earlier! If only he’d bothered to ask for her name amidst their lovemaking, he might have realized that there probably aren’t too many Jenabelles in the phonebook... or the world. Oh well. She quickly deduces his secret identity, so he tears off his checked suit revealing his Argoman costume underneath. Easier to operate that way, I suppose.

Jenabelle is quite the dedicated follower of fashion herself. She wears a different outfit in every scene of the movie, each one more outlandish than the last. She’s also prone to wearing rather ridiculous hats! (My favorite one looks like a potted plant sitting on her head.)

Argoman’s clearly had enough of her and her hats, so he naturally refuses when she makes the inevitable offer for him to join her as her consort. Prepared for this rejection, Jenabelle reveals that she’s captured his other girlfriend, Samantha. (The one he called and got tired of waiting for.) She reveals a video screen showing Samantha being tormented by a monstrous robot. It’s not quite clear what the metal brute is doing to her, but Jenabelle assures us that "it’s not a pleasant fate to suffer at the hands of a robot." Best of all, she pronounces it "RO-but," like Dr. Zoidberg on Futurama.

"Your instincts are diabolic!" snarls Argoman.

Jenabelle leaves Argoman in a fiendish trap and goes off to talk to her giant ray. I’m not really sure what variety of ray it is, but I’ll assume that its purpose is destructive, and it probably depends on the Marduf to operate. Whatever the case, Jenabelle loves her ray machine. "You alone make it possible that I accomplish all I dreamt I would do," she coos to it, stroking its metal plating. "You, with your mysterious absorption of cosmic light. We’ll produce... what no ruler in the world has ever had! As many loyal automatons to manipulate as I please. I’m ready to proceed!" So that’s what it does! (I guess.)

"Start the ray compressor!" commands a henchman.

Argoman does get to perform some everyday superheroics while on the track of the Marduf, like saving a runaway train by flouncing atop it and using his psychic powers to change a switch. Detracting just a little from the derring-do, Argoman always looks vaguely confused when flouncing about in his costume.

By the time he catches up to Jenabelle, she’s dressed like some sort of Techno-Medusa in a silver lame tunic and matching headgear with metallic snaky bits protruding from it. She’s also got a three-barreled pistol that looks like something Samuel L. Jackson would wield in The Spirit.
Will Argoman manage to save the world, and defeat its ill-meaning Queen? I won’t say, but you can probably guess. Once all the dust has settled, Argoman’s at least cleared of all wrongdoing, but immediately steals a government motorcycle, claiming it as his prize. Is he a hero or is he a criminal? "Half and half," decides Inspector Lawrence, as he orders his men to give chase. It’s a very apropos conclusion on the Inspector’s part. All European costumed adventurers from the Sixties appear to be half and half, and that’s what makes them interesting. (I suppose the same could be said for all the deeply flawed Eurospy heroes, ostensibly on the side of good but always being total jerks about it.) A general rule of thumb in case you come across a masked man while traversing Europe in the Sixties: if he’s wearing bright yellow or red spandex–or any sort of cape–then the hero half probably prevails. If he’s dressed all in black, however, or looks remotely like Diabolik, then he’s probably slightly more criminal than hero.

Fantastic Argoman is a deliriously entertaining movie, powered by game performances, an enthusiastic effects department and a terrific score by the great Piero Umiliani. The Region 1 DVD, courtesy of a company called Substance, is probably marginal in its legality and definitely marginal in its print quality. Despite the scratchiness of the print and the iffyness of the transfer, however, it does appear to be anamorphic... though you may have to alter the settings on your player to achieve the correct aspect ratio. On regular TVs, it will show up as slightly letterboxed and somewhat squished. Who cares. The movie is so much fun that I’m just glad to have it at all. And there's good news for fans: Dorado Films (every bit as fantastic as the Fantastic Argoman himself) plans to release a legitimate, widescreen version later this spring! (But they need some help with it.) Based on their Eurospy titles, I'm betting this will be much higher quality, so hold out for this one. I can't wait!

Tradecraft: Cohen Passes On XXX Threequel

Variety reports that Rob Cohen, director of the original extreme sports spy movie xXx (remember that one?), has passed on helming the third entry in the franchise, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage in favor of directing a medieval epic. The Return of Xander Cage would have reteamed him with Vin Diesel, who opted out of the second film. "It was a tough decision about XXX," Cohen told the trade. "I talked to Vin over the weekend and said I hoped they would wait, but that if they find another director who's right for the sequel, I certainly wouldn't be angry. But I could not let something like this go."

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: International, Smart

Today sees the release of Tom Tykwer's The International on DVD and Blu-Ray courtesy of Sony. The International is a very different sort of entry in the current neo-Eurospy wave than Taken and The Transporter. Rather than focusing on wall-to-wall action or sexy Russian party girls, it instead plays up another side of the genre: the fabulous locations. By limiting the action, Tykwer is also able to focus more on a complex plot and character. Ultimately, The International is a character piece about Clive Owen's disgraced Interpol agent Louis Salinger. That doesn't mean, however, that it is devoid of action. Far from it. There are several very exciting setpieces, all in fantastic international locations, but the highlight of the film is undoubtedly a ten-minute-long shootout in New York's Guggenheim Museum. It's an astonishingly orchestrated sequence, and one that will make action fans want to seek out this film even if it isn't a total action movie. The DVD also boasts a featurette about creating that sequence, which I can't wait to see. Read my full review of the movie here.

Also out today is Get Smart: Season 3 from HBO Home Video. If you haven't already gotten the deluxe Complete Series set (which comes loaded with bonus features you won't find on these individual season releases) and you don't care about those extras, then these seasons are an excellent bargain. (Amazon is offering Season 3 for just $15.99.) They're also decidedly more compact than the chunky box set, and will ultimately take up less space on your shelf. Finally, they're not completely devoid of extras. Previous seasons have included introductions by Barbara Feldon and select commentary. As the discs themselves appear to be identical to those in the Complete Series set, presumably this season will be the same.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Network Announces Hot Enough For June

One of my favorite wrongfully obscure Sixties spy movies is getting its first official DVD release courtesy of friend-to-spy-fans UK company Network. Hot Enough For June, a 1964 spy comedy from producer Betty Box and director Ralf Thomas (the prolific team behind Deadlier Than the Male), will be out on Region 2 DVD in Britain on July 20. (Why not June?) The great Dirk Bogarde (who played the scene-stealing villain Gabriel in Modesty Blaise) stars as an out-of-work writer who checks in at the unemployment office unaware that it also functions as a recruiting station for MI6. Robert Morley is the spymaster who tricks Bogarde into taking an assignment behind the Iron Curtain–without bothering to tell him the true nature of the assignment. Other spy alums Leo McKern, John Le Mesurier and Deadlier's luscious Sylva Koscina round out the cast in exactly the roles you'd expect them to be in. The Network release will be widescreen, and extras include three image galleries, (including behind the scenes and publicity shots) and PDFs of the original pressbook, poster and flyer. It may sound hackneyed, but the best word to describe this comedic Cold War romp is "delightful." It really is. This is a thoroughly enjoyable film long overdue for DVD release. If you've seen it, then you're probably just as eager as I am for this disc. If you haven't, I highly recommend seeking it out. Hot Enough For June was also released as Agent 008 3/4.

REPOST: DVD Review: The Amazing Screw-On Head

Mike Mignola's Amazing Screw-On Head is the exception in this week of looking at men versus machines. He's a robot who works for the good guys, in this case Abraham Lincoln. Screw-On Head is an absurdist steam punk sort of robot who has the ability to screw his metal head onto a variety of bodies in order to protect 1800s America from the likes of zombies and werewolves. There aren't really an regular humans to be found, so it's not really a case of "Man vs. Machine" as much as "Machine vs. Monsters." Which, when you think about it, is really so much cooler, isn't it? Read on for the original review...

How do you characterize Lionsgate’s DVD of The Amazing Screw-On Head? Is it a historical spy thing? Well, it is about a secret agent who works for Abraham Lincoln in 1862, but then there’s also the little matter of him being a robot. So is it sci-fi/spy? Yeah, kind of, but then there’s the zombie and the werewolf. So is it historical horror/sci-fi/spy? Getting closer, but you can’t really label The Amazing Screw-On Head as anything. It’s unclassifiable. But it does have a secret agent hero, so it definitely deserves a review here.

The Amazing Screw-On Head is a twenty-two minute TV pilot that failed to get a series pick-up on SciFi Channel, yet still managed a DVD release. It’s a real oddity, and a bit of a masterpiece.

Based on Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s brilliant, absurdist one-shot comic book, writer Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls) delivers a surreal cartoon that captures the spirit of its source material, expands on it, and sets it up as the basis for a series. The plot adheres fairly close to the comic, and there’s barely enough of one to fill the scant twenty-two minute runtime. But there are enough cool characters, gadgets and situations that you definitely want to spend more time with them.

Screw-On Head, voiced by Paul Giamatti, is a robotic secret agent whose head can be screwed onto any number of strange, Victorian mechanical bodies. When the evil Emperor Zombie (David Hyde Pierce) steals a tome from the Museum of Dangerous Books and Paper–and kidnaps the only man capable of translating it–President Lincoln sends Screw-On Head to investigate. The strange trail takes him to Marrakesh (by rocket) to the Mississippi, and brings him into contact with an old lover (Molly Shannon), whom Emperor Zombie has turned into a vampire. Emperor Zombie’s dastardly plot involves freeing a demonic demi-god from a turnip, and then using it to take over the world. Needless to say, Screw-On head foils the plot (with the aid of his trusty valet, Mr. Groin, voiced by Patton Oswalt), but that’s almost inconsequential to the zaniness transpiring onscreen.

Where Fuller has fleshed out the story from the comic, it’s barely noticeable. Everything still feels very Mike Mignola, and it was a good idea to flesh out some characters Mignola only mentioned ("two horrible old ladies and a monkey with a gun") and turn them into additional villains. Where he stumbles slightly is in adding backstory to Screw-On Head and Emperor Zombie, and creating a love triangle between them and the vampire woman. From a character standpoint it works, but in providing any sort of explanation, it diminishes some of the comic’s utter absurdity slightly. Still, it makes for exciting and rewarding viewing.

The animation itself is based directly on Mignola’s artwork, and does a great job of translating his unique, shadowy style. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to make me really want to see a Hellboy cartoon done like this, even though Tad Stones & Co. recently pulled off an amazing Hellboy animated movie in their own style. (Mignola contractually forbade them to use his look.)

For such a short running time, The Amazing Screw-On Head provides a surprising amount of bonus content. There’s a short storyboard/animatic/finished product comparison, and a behind the scenes documentary that’s as long as the show itself. The featurette covers all aspects of creating the show, and does it really well, even if it misrepresents a few participants’ viewpoints. There’s also an informative commentary track by Brian Fuller and director Chris Prynoski.

Most interesting of all, there’s a sixteen page booklet of production art by Mignola and Concept Artist Guy Davis. There are some great designs here, wonderful additions to Screw-On Head’s world that really make me with the series had continued. In addition to several intriguing alternate bodies for the title character (like "unicycle body" and "cannon body" and "suit of many hands"), there is an enigmatic villain with a potted flower for a face. Only Mignola can pull that off and have it be as spooky as it is funny. He says in his notes that this character would have been a Moriarty-like smooth-talking criminal genius. Ah, what might have been! Perhaps if the DVD sells well enough, there's still a chance of the series being picked up by Cartoon Network or Comedy Central or something...

At the bargain price of $9.99, The Amazing Screw-On Head is a great value. The additional materials ensure that you really get your money’s worth despite the brevity of the main attraction. Fans of the more surreal side of spying, like The Avengers or, particularly, Wild Wild West (or Lucifer Box!) would be well-served to check this out.

Retro Secret Agent Yuki 7 In A Kiss From Tokyo

David from Spy Bop Royale alerted me to this awesome piece of retro spy animation. It's a newly-created trailer for an unfortunately non-existent 1964 spy movie called A Kiss From Tokyo featuring slinky secret agent Yuki 7. It looks equal parts You Only Live Twice and Deadlier Than the Male–with healthy dollops of Flint, Fathom, Steranko and just about everything else thrown in for good measure. (Just go watch it now, then come back and read more.) It's also part of a much larger graphic design concept by artist Kevin Dart based on Sixties spy style. Dart and animator Stephane Coedel directed the movie trailer; Dart has created all the artwork and merchandise tie-ins you'd expect from an actual Sixties spy feature. In fact, he's created artwork for a whole series of Yuki 7 films with wonderfully spot-on titles like Roman Rendezvous, To Catch A Temptress and Danger Is a Female (I love that he references the obscure Death Is a Woman, which featured similar bikini-and-speargun poster imagery to Deadlier Than the Male). There are Yuki 7 paper fashion dolls, posters, T-shirts... you name it. But the centerpiece of this massive art project (which also includes a gallery show) is an art book called Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7, due out this July from publisher Fleet Street Scandal and available for preorder now. Dart explains the concept on his blog:

Just a few days later [collaborator Ada Cole] sent me some brilliant articles [she'd written for the book] which included an interview with Kimiko Suzuki (the [fake] actress who plays Yuki 7) in the made-up fashion magazine Elan, and a story about Yuki’s meticulously crafted costumes for Danger is a Female. I was sold. Ada and I had some more conversations about how to break the book apart into articles that would tell a behind-the-scenes story in bits and pieces without explicitly spelling it out for the audience. We also delved into the character and motivations of all the big players in the film franchise’s history.

So it's not a real movie or a comic book (too bad, because watching that trailer really made me want to see such a movie!), but the art book will still tell a story: the behind-the-scenes story of a Sixties spy franchise that never was! I think that's an awesome idea, and I can't wait to get a peek at it. Read more about the genesis of Dart's idea, and his influences, in this blog post. And poke around his blog and the publisher's website for more glimpses of the artwork you'll see inside!

Watch the trailer here.

Men Versus Steam-Powered Machines: Technology In The Wild Wild West

One of the many traits that separates The Wild Wild West from the TV Western genre at large is its love of gadgetry. Jim West’s spy gadgets (courtesy of Q-like inventor sidekick Artemus Gordon) go a long way towards keeping at least one spur-heeled foot distinctly in the realm of espionage. He’s always outfitted with a quick-loading rig up his sleeve that surreptitiously delivers a Derringer into his hand at a twist of the wrist. The tiny pistol can even be modified to accommodate a Batman-like piton trailing some lightweight rope strong enough to hold Jim. That apparatus comes in handy time after time, as does Jim’s "Rosa Klebb" boot, which springs a knife from its toe. Furthermore, Jim and Arte ride around in a 19th Century version of 007's Aston Martin–a customized train car equipped with all sorts of useful spring-loaded gizmos.

The the gadgetry and gimmickry aren't limited to the heroes of the program, though. The villains are also fond of all the steampunk apparatuses they can dream up (no matter how anachronistic). Most fond of such toys is the diminutive diabolical mastermind Dr. Miguelito Loveless (Michael Dunn). Loveless's love of technology results in all sorts of sinister mechanisms, from hot air balloons designed to deliver a payload of nerve gas over a city to mechanical suits of armor (shades of The Avengers' Cybernauts there) that allow the dwarf to fight Jim on roughly equal footing to things so utterly outlandish that they leave the realm of "machine" altogether and enter that of outright fantasy, like cigars that shrink a man down to the size of a mouse.

Some of Loveless's greatest machinery comes in his final appearance, "Night of Miguelito's Revenge." Perhaps taking a page from the Joker’s playbook, the short-statured supervillain is kidnapping various people he wants revenge on in order to put them on trial before a jury of clown puppets. As you do if you’re a supervillain, even a diminutive one. He’s also created a steam-powered robo-man who wears a judge's wig that Loveless (dressed as a ringmaster, naturally) controls by playing a pipe organ. The steambot never actually passes judgement on anyone, though; all its creator really uses it for is fighting Jim. That makes sense, but as remarkable as the technology is, the robo-judge proves a somewhat limited fighter owing to its short range steamhose connecting it to the pipe organ.

Loveless's love of steampunk technology was carried even further when he was played by Kenneth Brannagh (legless rather than loveless) in the disastrous 1999 film version of the Sixties series. Brannagh's Loveless had a particular proclivity towards mechanical spiders (borrowed, according to Kevin Smith, at least, from the film's producer Jon Peters). He uses robotic spider legs to augment his own legless torso and skitter about his lab, and he echoes that design on a much larger scale with a giant, steam-powered robotic spider for... I honestly have no recollection at all of what it was for and also no desire to rewatch the film to find out. If the film even bothered to explain it at all, which isn't a given.

Loveless isn't the only villain on the series who employs futuristic technology to carry out his evil deeds. Other villains create mechanical krakens to terrorize the coastline from their Stromberg-like underwater lairs, or "cars" seemingly inspired by Dr. No's dragon tank. "Night of the Juggernaut" is a familiar story from TV Westerns of homesteaders being chased off their land because some tycoon wants it all for himself. Instead of being chased off by standard-issue gunmen in black hats and bandannas, however, they’re chased off by a fantastic tank-like vehicle concocted by an evil would-be oil baron ahead of his time. Although it shares a similar design to Dr. No’s dragon and a similar destructive capacity, this vehicle is painted bright orange. It’s a story we’ve seen before, yes, but the futuristic technology combined with a great villain lifts this telling well above average. This was a feat the show pulled off again and again thanks to its fantastical mechanical inventions.

Metallic robo-men return in the series finale. The Wild Wild West wraps up, appropriately, in the vein in which it began: with a very Avengers-ish plot about board members of a large corporation being bumped off one by one. In addition to a monkey assassin dressed in a Civil War uniform, we're treated to a freaky group of mannequins who suddenly open their eyes revealing themselves to be people, looking like Fantomas in their mannequin get-ups. That’s a good shock moment, and a good bit of Prisoner-like imagery. It doesn't matter if they don't turn out to be actual robots; the iconography is what's important to the scene. And The Wild Wild West exploits steampunk, "Man vs. Machine" iconography again and again throughout its run, probably moreso than any other spy show save for maybe The Avengers. If you like your spies fighting machines, be sure to give this series a look.

Read my full review of The Wild Wild West - The Second Season

Read my full review of The Wild Wild West - The Third Season

Read my full review of The Wild Wild West - The Fourth Season

REPOST: Movie Review: Eagle Eye (2008)

Here's one from just last fall that really epitomizes the Man vs. Machine theme as portrayed in contemporary movies. So much so, in fact, that it appears to have already been remade to some extent in Echelon Conspiracy! Shia Labeouf seems to specialize in playing men who find themselves pitted against machines again and again in movies produced by Steven Spielberg. This summer he'll take on an army of transforming robots for the second time. Eagle Eye may appear slightly more down-to-earth than that... but not really. It's pretty much equally far-fetched, only with a more cerebral machine as antagonist. Read on for the original review...

Eagle Eye had the unfortunate fate of opening up with beepy text typed across the screen right after Burn After Reading made beepy text too hilarious to take seriously (for at least a few weeks), and so, whether it was the fault of the movie or not, I found myself already chuckling in the first few seconds of what’s supposed to be a serious techno-thriller. By the end of the movie, however, most of the theater was laughing, so I suppose maybe it set the right tone after all. Eagle Eye is a supremely silly movie–and probably more entertaining for that than for any legitimate suspense it ever manages to generate on its own.

Even that’s a bit unfair. Eagle Eye doesn’t really generate anything on its own; instead it summons up a slew of images and sequences from other movies, and often relies on the audience’s associations with those movies to elicit suspense, thrills, awe, or whatever that scene conjured up in the original movie it was used in. Film buffs will catch snippets of countless classics from every era. Off the top of my head, I can recall spotting bits of Saboteur, Strangers On A Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, In Like Flint, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The President’s Analyst, The Conversation, The Fugitive, Enemy of the State, The Matrix, Live Free or Die Hard and many more. Perhaps Eagle Eye is some sort of intricate, post-modern Finnegans Wake of film studies, only fully appreciable by scholars who take the time to decipher every allusion and put them all together into some whole far greater than the sum of its parts. If that’s the case, though, it’s sure to fly over the heads of most of the audience members who contributed to it’s $29 million haul this weekend; the majority of them were probably seeing these images for the first time. So how is the film judged on its own visible merits? Still silly.

As you’ve no doubt gleaned from the trailer (which seems to have shown before every movie I’ve seen since mid-May when it debuted with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), the plot finds Shia La Boeuf and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Michelle Monaghan framed or extorted into following the orders of a disembodied, female phone voice which commands them to commit crimes, make leaps of faith (and logic), and go on the run across the country. Who is the mysterious voice? Who’s behind all this? Who’s manipulating every cell phone, security camera, GPS device and automated crane in the vicinity?

Well, I’m going to tell you. There’s sometimes a fine line between a spoiler and a warning, though, and I’m going to walk it now, so if for some reason you really want to see Eagle Eye knowing nothing about it, read no further. If you’re the cautious sort, though, and want to know what you’re wading into, here’s the warning: it’s a computer. The disembodied female voice belongs to a computer, and yes, that’s as much of a letdown in the movie as it is here. It’s a computer that’s smart enough to control every electronic system in the country, but relies on a pair of amateur human beings to take care of some of the most complicated legwork. It’s a computer with an astounding capacity for killing... until the third act, when–as my pal T-Bone pointed out–it conveniently forgets how to kill. Not so our heroes though. They know perfectly well that the way to kill a computer is to smash it in it’s big, red, HAL-like eye. Because the most advanced computer in the world, naturally, has its processor inside its camera, just like all computers do. Right?

The movie’s basic premise is that all of the nation’s intelligence data is fed into HAL-9000, and like a latter-day J. Edgar Hoover, HAL uses it to run the country. HAL makes decisions on who lives or dies. And HAL has decided that one or more very important person(s) has to die, and starts running a vicious program to make that happen through a chain of Rube Goldberg-like events. Abuse of power and the hazards of trusting all intelligence and surveillance to one all-seeing entity is an interesting topic, but this particular computer, Eagle Eye, is such a lame villain that there’s no opportunity to explore those issues. Instead, the climax finds the computer frying circuits everywhere and spitting out deadly electrical charges (as computers are want to do) and the humans trying to bash its eye in. The preposterousness of the mechanical villain renders impossible any serious exploration of intelligence oversight. The movie seems to want to raise that age-old question "Who watches the watchmen?" but doesn’t have enough respect for the intelligence of its audience to do so, instead giving them some lame man-vs.-machine action and a hollow patriotic message (in speech form) delivered over the final montage.

It’s all so silly, though, that I wouldn’t describe Eagle Eye as a wasted night of entertainment. There’s fun in watching something so inane, and some of the car chases are entertaining, even if they’re filmed in that Transformers-style that renders it impossible to really tell what’s actually going on. Furthermore, despite its inanity, Eagle Eye is one slick production, and the actors are all game. The movie would probably prove more fun, though, in the comfort of your own home with a large supply of beer.

REPOST: Movie Review: Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill

Robots and supercomputers and evil machines are such common themes in spy movies (especially Eurospy movies) that they feature prominently in quite a few films I've already reviewed. But with nearly three years' worth of old posts that tend to get lost in the depths of the blog a few months after they're first published, this whole COBRAS "Man vs. Machine" event provides a good excuse to dust off some of those old reviews and repost them. (Hopefully the older ones, like this, will be new to quite a few readers I've picked up since then!) In this case, it allows me to revisit one of the Kommissar X movies. That's one of my favorite Eurospy series, despite (or because of?) the fact that it features probably the most loathsome of all Eurospy heroes in Joe Walker (Tony Kendall)! Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill was a particularly fun entry that (eventually) found Walker and his perpetual cohort Tom Rowland (Brad Harris) facing off against an army of beautiful blond robots. Well, they were called robots, but they were actually robotized humans (another common occurrence in the Eurospy world), made to do their master's bidding with daily injections of some sort of robot formula. Read on...

The Kommissar X movies sort of have one foot in the Krimi genre (German mystery/crime films, especially popular in the late Fifties and early Sixties) and one in the Eurospy genre (which took over everything after Goldfinger hit). Walker and Rowland are detectives who get involved in globetrotting espionage cases. Walker’s a private eye (supposedly the best in the world), and Rowland is a New York City Police Captain who is for some reason assigned to cases all over the world.

When we meet Joe Walker (accompanied by his catchy theme music, "I Love You, Joe Walker"), he’s... somewhere, and he’s taken a case to do... something. Neither is entirely clear. Soon he meets someone else, who’s dressed very similarly to him, confusing matters, and they fight, because, as I mentioned before, Walker likes to punch people. It turns out this other man is none other than Captain Tom Rowland, and the two are best friends. A group of people who I at first thought were milkmen, but then realized were supposed to be policemen, cheer and clap. Meanwhile Joan, a blond assassin, blows someone up in an exploding outhouse. (Yes, exploding outhouse! That’s definitely creative enough to make up for naming your assassin "Joan.") Later, she and another woman both hire Walker to find a missing physicist, and soon he and Rowland are working the same murder/missing person case.

You’ll be no less confused watching the movie.

Additionally, every male character wears a red shirt at some point, which later also turns out to be the uniform of the villain’s henchmen, so events are somewhat difficult to follow.

Walker drives a nifty convertible Porsche (a red one) which sadly isn’t equipped with an ejector seat. Walker makes do, though, by pulling the unwelcome passenger’s seat belt release, then stopping suddenly so he jerks forward, then punching him so that he flies out the back of the car. Not graceful, but effective. Who needs Q? Tipping their hat to Bond, the car does have a homing beacon very similar to 007's, and Walker (evidently something of an interior design buff) says of the villain’s house, "This place is done up in early Ian Fleming." If only! But it’s close enough.

Walker also gets a Geiger counter, something Bond uses a lot in his first few adventures. "What do you expect to find with that Geiger counter?" inquires Rowland. "Unfortunately, not girls," cracks Walker, revealing what’s always on his mind. And he manages to find plenty of them even without the help of a Geiger counter.

In fact, he soon encounters a whole army of robotic blondes clad in black leather. They kidnap him and all pile into the back of a battered El Camino (glamorous, I know), with Joe in the middle. He looks positively delighted, and promises, "I’m not going to escape from this!" "I Love You, Joe Walker" kicks in again on the soundtrack, and the women drive Joe to the villain’s underground base. Not content with ripping off only one Bond movie, the lair is a low-rent combination of two famous Ken Adam sets: Dr. No’s nuclear facility and Goldfinger’s Fort Knox. The villain, Oberon, has been stockpiling gold to... irradiate, I guess? I’m not quite sure what he gains by irradiating his own gold; Goldfinger’s plan was to irradiate the United States’ gold reserves, for the benefit of China. I guess Oberon wasn’t paying careful attention. Who cares? Neither should you, here; just go with it. Whatever the plan was, apparently it would have been good, because Oberon exclaims to the meddling Walker: "You have just destroyed my dream of becoming the most powerful man on Earth!"

So, to recap: Gold + Radiation = Power

It certainly seems like a feasible equation; I’m just not convinced Oberon had actually worked out the optimal way to combine those assets.

He was similarly short-sighted in building his army of robotized women. They require a fresh injection every 24 hours to keep them drugged into doing his bidding; without it they become instantly susceptible to Walker’s, er, charms. Luckily, Oberon also has a loyal male henchman, but he’s not really that big or anything. (In fact, his only "scary" factor seems to be that he has a beard.) Still: gold, nukes, fetishized robot women, a beard and an underground lair are more than enough to react with Joe Walker and form a highly satisfying, explosive (obviously!) finale.

Things turn out the way they usually do in this sort of situation, and the guys each end up with some girls. One of Joe’s girls, though, is the jealous type, and she does what we’ve all wanted to do the entire movie and uses a judo movie to throw him into the water. Everyone else, including Tom, laughs at him. So do we. It’s cathartic.

Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill only really contracts a plot about halfway through, but once it does it’s impossible to turn away. If you happened to catch it on TV during the second half, you’d probably think you’d just discovered a really GREAT Sixties spy title, and might even list it as one of your favorites. Unfortunately, if you'd turned it on during the first half, you probably would have turned it off.

But you would have missed out on a whole lot of fun.

Read my other Kommissar X reviews here:
The Kommissar X Collection (DVD)
So Darling, So Deadly
Death Is Nimble, Death Is Quick

Also be sure to read Jason Whiton's take on this film as part of his examination of "fembots" at Spy Vibe for the COBRAS "Man vs. Machine" week here!

USA Butchers Casino Royale

Yesterday I was excited that USA was making the most of its pricey Casino Royale cable deal, airing the Daniel Craig Bond debut (making its own basic cable debut) for four nights in a row. Then I happened to catch the end of it right before the Burn Notice season premiere. It's a great finale and always worth watching... except in the way that it was presented on USA! Even though the last seconds of that film are crucial to the story, and to Craig's arc of becoming the James Bond we know, the cable network decided to smush up the picture right after Mr. White gets shot in the leg and run promos for Burn Notice in the lower left half of the screen and scroll the credits of Casino Royale at lightning speed on the lower right–while the film was still running! Furthermore, they tuned out the movie's sound right after Craig says "Bond, James Bond" in order to allow their announcer to tout the Burn Notice premiere. (Or maybe he was talking about that horrible looking doctor show they're promoting so heavily; I don't recall.) The point is, in doing so they omitted the film's final music cue, which I think all Bond fans will agree is actually as integral to the film's story as any line of dialogue! Of course I'm talking about "The James Bond Theme," which comes up on the soundtrack only at the very end, when Craig's 007 has finally "earned" it. USA's decision not to allow that music to play–even for a few seconds–is downright shameful. I hope the network realizes their error and rectifies it for future broadcasts. It's one thing to tune the sound out over the end credits, but quite another to do so while the film itself is still playing! Especially for a film that ends with such a big moment.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Superargo Vs. The Giant Robots

Want to see more spies versus robots? How about a costumed adventurer versus robots? How about a costumed adventure versus giant faceless robots? Would you believe a costumed adventurer versus large men (though actually slightly smaller than said adventurer) dressed as robots and wearing stockings over their faces? Well, despite the evocative title, that's pretty much what you end up with, but then again, that's exactly the sort of thing I want to see! DVD Sleuth reports that the second Superargo movie (following 1966's Superargo vs. Diabolikus), a Eurospy/Costumed Adventurer flick known alternately as Superargo, Superargo vs. the Faceless Giants , Superargo vs. Giant Robots and The Invincible Superman (among many, many other titles) is coming soon to Region 1 DVD via Code Red. Code Red (also the company behind the upcoming Internecine Project DVD) announced the title on their blog as part of a post about comedy troop Cinema Head Cheese, who will be providing a Mystery Science Theater-style "comedic commentary" for the film. Apparently the release will be part of the Exploitation Cinema series from Code Red parent company Navarre. The film was previously available in America only in a severely butchered format as part of a similar MST3K-style series called Cinema Insomnia featuring late-night TV host Mr. Lobo constantly interrupting the feature. Thankfully, Code Red's DVD apparently relegates such shenanigans to an optional commentary track! So you should be able to watch the faceless robots attack a station wagon without listening to someone making fun of that if you want to.

Burn Notice Returns Tonight

Michael Westen returns when Season 3 of Burn Notice kicks off tonight on USA–and apparently the paradigm has shifted. Having (sort of?) gotten out from under the thumb of his mysterious controllers at the end of last season, it appears that Michael is no longer confined to Miami. According to USA's description of tonight's episode, "Michael emerges from the water free from interference by the organization that burned him. But he's no longer under their protection, and is being investigated by the police. He gets out of prison with help from an old friend who has a job for him: extraditing a thug who's displacing landowners in a Latin American country." Michael Westen in Latin America? Sounds good to me! (And easy enough to film in Florida.) The new season of Burn Notice kicks off tonight at a new time, 9/8 Central. After that, it's sure to air again and again and again all weekend long. That's the way they do things on USA. And making tonight's premiere night a whole spy night, USA is also airing Casino Royale tonight at 6–and for the next three nights on top of that, for four nights in a row of Casino Royale! You can't beat that.

Meanwhile, Burn Notice: Season 2 comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray on June 16.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Echelon Conspiracy

So while we're on the subject of men fighting machines, and supercomputers bent on world domination, does anyone remember Echelon Conspiracy, that movie that wasn't Eagle Eye that was out briefly this past spring? Well, even if you don't, you'll be able to brush up on it now because DVDActive reports that Paramount will release it on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 21.

Echelon Conspiracy, starring Edward Burns and one-time Bond baddie Jonathan Pryce, concerns a guy whose cell phone starts giving him mysterious instructions that attract the attention of the CIA and the NSA, so it's definitely a similar premise to Eagle Eye. According to Wikipedia, ECHELON itself is "a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network." In other words, an all-knowing computer system, pulling data from phone calls and email and eavesdropping and other electronic resources all over the world via sattellite. It comes up again and again in modern spy movies and TV shows, from Alias (which made wide use of it) to the aforementioned Eagle Eye. Echelon is the very embodiment of the whole "Man vs. Machine" theme we're exploring this week. The idea of an all-knowing computer system is a scary one that comes up again and again in popular culture in various forms, from Metropolis to Alphaville to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Terminator. It's even more scary if it becomes sentient.

The website for Echelon Conspiracy, however, diminishes that scariness. It contains a feature that lets you input questions for ECHELON and have a "conversation" with the scary know-it-all machine. I had a conversation with ECHELON on its own website last February that's worth reposting:

Visitor [That's me]> when does echelon conspiracy open?
ECHELON> What if I said it never does?
Visitor> Does it?
ECHELON> Suppose I said it does.
Visitor> Is the movie any good?
ECHELON> If it is, then I'll be very surprised.

Yes, that's how the computer advertised its own movie. Super-intelligent? I'm not sure. So maybe we're further away from sentient computers taking over the world than popular culture would have us believe!

All kidding aside, though, the movie looks at least worth a look on DVD. Who knows. Perhaps it will be a worthwhile addition to the "Man vs. Machine" part of the spy genre. It can't really be much worse than Eagle Eye, can it?

Tradecraft: Covert Action

Following their huge success with Burn Notice, USA Network is moving forward with another spy series, Covert Affairs. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the cable net has hired a casting director and "put out feelers" to agents with an eye toward casting the lead roles--signs that they're getting close to ordering a pilot. The trade describes the show as centering on Annie Walker, "a linguist and CIA trainee who is summoned to headquarters and given assignments assisted by blind tech expert Auggie Anderson. While she believes she's been recruited for her language skills, it might be an elusive former boyfriend her CIA bosses are after." Hm. The Alias-ish logline doesn't exactly brim with excitement (or convey an accurate understanding of what linguists do and how their skills apply to intelligence work), but exec producer Doug Liman (director of The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and the upcoming Valerie Plame movie) has lots of impressive spy cred, so I've got faith. Plus, Burn Notice is the best spy show in a long, long while, so the network has a good track record right now. Covert Affairs is written by Matt Corman and Chris Ord.

Commencing Collossal COBRAS Crossover Event: Man V. Machine!

It's funny how often spies find themselves fighting robots and super-computers, isn't it? Following our impromptu four-week jam session that grew out of Costumed Adventurer Week back in March, the loose Coalition Of Bloggers wRiting About Spies, or "COBRAS" for those in the know, will attempt a planned-in-advance, honest-to-goodness cataclysmic crossover event, Marvel-style! But, as such things tend to go (even when they are planned in advance), I'm already running behind. Look for my first real Man Versus Machine post a bit later in the week. In the meantime, though, be sure to check out what's already been posted at other COBRAS sites! David at Permission To Kill kicked things off with an overview of the "Man vs. Machine" concept, then launched into reviews of Alphaville (the only Eurospy movie they show you in film school) Colossus: The Forbin Project, and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. (That's the good Dr. Goldfoot movie, for those who keep track of such things! Apologies to Bava.) Wes Britton followed those up with a lengthy and meticulous history of "Spy-Fi" at the Spy Wise Blog, and Jason at Spy Vibe wrote a fascinating and lavishly-illustrated history of the robot. Finally, Armstrong at Mister 8 reviewed an appropriate episode of Johnny Quest. Whew! I've got some catching up to do! Which will start later today...

Man Vs. Machine Week
Read my review of Attack of the Robots here.
Read my review of Billion Dollar Brain here.
Read my review of The Fantastic Argoman here.
Read my review of The Amazing Screw-On Head here.
Read my article Man Versus Steam-Powered Machines: Technology In The Wild Wild West here.
Read my review of Eagle Eye here.
Read my review of Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill here.