Tag: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

The Mighty Peking Man (1977)

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977) ***

The Shaw Brothers (Runme 1901-85 and Run Run 1907-2014) have rarely ever let me down and they provided some of the greatest entertainments of all-time, like THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, INFRA-MAN, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, and CLAN OF THE WHITE LOTUS.

The Shaw Brothers did not (and still do not, in death) cheat us.

For example, in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, their 1977 spin on King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, and Tarzan (not to mention Godzilla) that’s not quite peak but still good Shaw Brothers, we don’t have to wait very long whatsoever to see the title character. No, life is short, time is precious, so director Ho Meng-hua gives us our first monster encounter in the first minute of screen time. Okay, to be exact, it’s 1:45 into the movie, but that still beats most every other entry in this distinguished genre.

That establishes a tone for a very generous entertainment package. Find a copy and buy it for somebody, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN not only provides a sympathetic monster in the grand tradition, but also (in no particular order) a plucky explorer hero (Danny Lee) who’s been betrayed by his lover with his playboy brother so he’s drowning his sorrows in booze when he’s recruited for a jungle mission, a scantily-clad leading lady (Evelyne Kraft, a regular Swedish Fay Wray) who’s grown up with the animals in the jungle after her parents died in a plane crash (she’s been raised by the Mighty Peking Man, in fact), an earthquake, elephants, tigers and leopards (oh my!), a fight between a leopard and a snake, quicksand, vine swinging, flashbacks to key moments in both the hero’s and the leading lady’s life, callous and shady businessmen, heartless authority figures, mucho destruction of miniatures galore, and a grand finale that boggles the mind even after everything that came before.

My favorite scene, however, begins around the 33-minute mark.

It involves the Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude, a term made famous by the late Roger Ebert. Here’s the definition from Ebert: “Scene in which soft focus and slow motion are used while a would-be hit song is performed on the sound track and the lovers run through a pastoral setting. Common from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s; replaced in 1980s with the Semi-Obligatory Music Video.”

The Simon and Garfunkel songs in THE GRADUATE epitomize the Semi-OLI.

The one in THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN rates below Louis Armstrong singing “We Have All the Time in the World” over George Lazenby and Diane Rigg in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and the foreboding use of Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in Clint Eastwood’s PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Ebert himself said Eastwood filmed the first Semi-OLI that works.

In THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN, our hero and leading lady embrace and lock lips for the first time (watch her eyes after this first kiss) and they unleash the awesomely banal love song “Could It Be I’m in Love, Maybe.”

This is one helluva old-fashioned love song and one helluva Semi-OLI.

I mean, I believe it’s the only Semi-OLI in the history of motion pictures to incorporate a leopard.

Not only that, but the leading lady seems more interested in the leopard than our poor, poor hero. You really sympathize for this guy even more after this scene.

Let’s get back to those lyrics for a second here.

“The love you gave me then showed me a thing or two / I guess I saw it in your eyes / And the look of love upon your face is too hard to disguise / Maybe just a smile will say [cannot make out, even after watching this scene 500 times] / Could it be I’m in love (Maybe? Baby?)” (To hell with it, I already chose “Maybe.” Why does life have to be so difficult?)

“I can’t begin to say what makes me feel like this / I never knew what love could do / But if this is love, it’s here to stay / [Don’t want to make this part out] / So all I have to hear is I’ll give it all to you.”

There’s more lyrics, but we all catch the drift and there’s not any need to drown in banality.

It all totals about 3:30 of pure junk food cinema bliss.

I definitely love it because it’s so utterly ridiculous.

Then again, utterly ridiculous describes THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN.

I should end this review with a consideration of the ending of THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN. Just imagine the ending of KING KONG times 10 times 10.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) Three-and-a-half stars

This is the best of the James Bond films starring Roger Moore (1927-2017) and the one that ranks with the Best of the Bonds like FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, TOMORROW NEVER DIES, and SKYFALL.

I believe it’s no small coincidence that after our small Kansas town of Arcadia finally picked up cable TV, I became hooked on watching James Bond films on TBS. It also helped that I hit puberty during this Bond discovery. Bond just fits perfectly with an adolescent mindset.

Moore had the unenviable task of replacing Sean Connery as Bond. Connery established Bond in the hearts and minds of the public after playing the character in DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER, THUNDERBALL, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, and then DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER after the George Lazenby Bond Experiment proved disastrous. (I’ll argue that ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE is one of the two or three best James Bond pictures.)

Connery’s first three Bond pictures especially worked as legitimate thrillers. He brought a conviction and toughness to the character that Moore generally lacked during his run from 1973 to 1985. Moore made seven Bond films, beginning with LIVE AND LET DIE and ending with A VIEW TO A KILL. In 1983, both Moore and Connery starred in competing Bond pictures, Moore in OCTOPUSSY and Connery in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, the latter title a reference to Connery’s reported quote from 1971 that he would never play James Bond again.

Moore played a radically different Bond than Connery and his worst Bond films descended into campy territory, everything from the cheesiest double entendres and over-the-top product placement to a cartoonish character like Clifton James’ Sheriff J.W. Pepper in two films and a Bond-meets-Blaxploiation plot like 1973’s LIVE AND LET DIE.

Connery got down and dirty, whereas Moore never soiled his suit. That’s at least the perception.

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is a cinematic exhibit for that old phrase “third time’s a charm,” since this is Moore’s third outing as Bond.

Moore fits the character better and let’s face it, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME benefits significantly from a great Bond girl, Russian agent Major Anya Amasova a.k.a. Agent XXX (played by Barbara Bach), and a great henchman, Jaws (played by the 7-foot-2 Richard Kiel). Both Agent XXX and Jaws stand among the great Bond girls and great Bond henchmen, respectively.

On top of that, we have Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” one of the great Bond songs with music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager.

Jaws puts a genuine fright into Bond and we like the British super agent a lot better under such circumstances. Bond’s one-liners won’t save him against this relentless Jaws, who does take a licking and keeps on ticking. He’s a dedicated henchman.

We cheer on Jaws’ destruction — he does some great work on a truck — and we especially love him when he makes Bond squirm. Of course, we’re rooting for Bond, but it’s still more fun seeing the indestructible Bond against the indestructible Jaws. It’s a fair matchup, for a change. Silly fools that we are, we believe for isolated moments that Bond might finally meet his match. We hadn’t felt that way since ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and before that GOLDFINGER.

Not only does Bond face Jaws, but Agent XXX wants revenge on Bond once she finds out that he killed her lover Sergi Barsov (in the movie’s opening). Will she or won’t she kill Bond? Of course, we all know the answer.

Production designer Ken Adam (1921-2016) did some of his best work for THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, and he earned an Academy Award nomination. Our megalomaniac Stromberg (Curt Jargons) wants to destroy the world and build a civilization under the sea … designed by Adam.

Veteran cinematographer Claude Renoir (1913-93) worked on his uncle’s films TONI and THE GRAND ILLUSION. His work on THE SPY WHO LOVED ME should have been a fourth Academy Award nomination for the film.

In other words, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is a first-rate production and entertainment that ranks among the very best James Bond films.

Five best James Bond films:

— ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969)

— GOLDFINGER (1964)

— FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

— SKYFALL (2012)

— THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)