Are Skulls That Scream Scary?

Another One That Came With A Free Funeral

If you worked in movies during the late fifties (or anytime), you almost certainly dreamed of the big score, racking up at pay-out end of a boom-bust industry. Most who toiled, however, were paid at minimum, as in scraps left after sharks swam. Actors especially took what could be got and knelt for a next short-term job, stars excepted of course, but how many of those were among thesping's horde? A minuscule percentage, said Guild warning to ones who'd aspire, them wanting to keep field to membership who could at least starve as a closed order. One who wanted more, thought he could get it via independent filmmaking, was Alex Nicol, who'd team with coffee and cake producer T. Frank Woods to do The Screaming Skull (C&C a term for "small-time, bush league," said Variety). One thing The Screaming Skull had was a keen title --- do skulls scream? --- I'd stay up for Dr. Evil's Charlotte broadcast on 6-18-65 to find out. Now, as if fifty-two years were mere blur, comes Blu-Ray release to confirm or deny if The Screaming Skull is every bit the dog we suspected despite youth impressions made. 1958 was peak of take-what-you-could-get where plate held horror-sci-fi. At least producer T. Frank Woods was buoyant at the time. He'd announce The Screaming Head as follow-up to The Screaming Skull, then The Haunted Hot Rod, followed by War Of 1995. None of these happened, of course. If IMDB is to be believed, Woods produced but one more film, Angel Baby in 1961.

There was glut on the market, as in too many of the sort to reasonably see, and not time/money enough to make most offerings good. It was assumed that youth didn't care. They listened to rock and roll after all, that between junk consumed off television. Why apply undue effort to movies aimed for such a market? It was for posters to close the sale, reality known by ever-on-alert Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff, whose American-International stayed on troll for skulls that could scream loudest to teens. Nicol (who would direct plus star) and Woods didn't start out to do a movie called The Screaming Skull. They thought more along line of remaking Rebecca, or any of pics where wives were gaslit by fortune hunter husbands. The gag was spent by close of the 40's, though trying it on horror terms was at least novel for that genre. I admire effort like The Screaming Skull for not laughing at itself, even where viewers later would. Makers like Nicol and Woods came earnest to the fray, their well-meaning a stamp of honor to forgive whatever deficiency in result. Yes, there was money as main object, but know too that The Screaming Skull was no sluff-off. Alex Nicol would go proud for remainder of a lifetime for having done it.

Now Jim and Sam were something different. Their having hooks in finished product was how The Screaming Skull became ... well, The Screaming Skull. Although he didn't claim credit, I'll bet Jim Nicholson dreamed up the title. It bespoke his credo as learned in fleapits where sale was had by hard sell alone, more lurid the better. A woman undraped at the shoulders and menaced by a grinning skull was proven pitch since pulps did it a first thousand times, and what better place for a Tortured Ghost to Claim Vengeance than a Bride's Bedroom? AIP would even chance a free burial should patrons suffer Death By Fright from The Screaming Skull. A safe bet, as Jim/Sam had seen The Screaming Skull and knew how scary it wasn't. Foregone was fact they would pair it, scurvy mate in this instance Terror From The Year 5000, a "Hideous She-Thing," which might describe the pic, if pics went by gender. The Screaming Skull took $164K in domestic rentals, which meant someone got profit, but who? Nicol and Woods were in for percentage, so said agreement w/ Jim/Sam, and we could wonder if that was handshake kind, or sort set down on paper. Either way, what money there was stayed in AIP pocket, per Nicholson/Arkoff norm.

They weren't crooks, but Jim and Sam paid first those guys that had to be paid first, like labs and franchisers who distributed, plus showmen who kept whatever they felt they had coming and to blazes with % negotiated with AIP. Exhibs loved Jim and Sam, so long as they let them have their cheap stuff for cheap, as in more cheap than majors. Arkoff resented all this but couldn't do much about it. An independent producer would realize a fee up front to help get his movie finished, but that was often the last money he'd see, unless AIP had compelling reason to pay him more later. In the case of Screaming Skull and most any farmed to Jim/Sam by free agents, a final check would be signed when time came for AIP to buy out rights so they could peddle the now-oldie to television. Until then, they'd claim product was still short of break-even, therefore no profit to split. Hard to altogether blame them, for Jim and Sam were just administering dosage routinely applied to them. This sort of thing was what made the movie business a hard business. The Screaming Skull and others of ilk would soon enough be tossed to blender of all-night drive-ins where ad art from cheapies not on the bill would be used to promote ones that were. At right is Prairieville, Illinois sampling: The Spider and Horrors Of The Black Museum (neither being shown) is wedged into pitch for The Screaming Skull, as if anyone would notice, let alone care. Of a likely $15 or $20 paid out for Skull booking, how much made way back to AIP, or back-of-line partners Alex Nicol and T. Frank Woods? Pennies, if that, I'd wager.

It's A Monogram Bulls-Eye!

Music and Merriment in Melody Parade (1943)

"A musical that will please the less critical," said Showman's Trade Review, so where does that leave viewers who'd pick Melody Parade over any number of deluxe tune-fests from war years? Monogram took pride in the show, previewing finished reels to visiting showmen during summer '43, touting Mono variant on an all-star singing cast: Mary Beth Hughes, Eddie Quillan, Tim and Irene Ryan, plus in-for-comedy Mantan Moreland --- all these familiar and liked faces to cheer customers staying for a second feature. Wartime boom in attendance was a help, patron appetite for musicals being acute so as to get minds off meatless dining and gas rations. Melody Parade got reward same as majors for supplying light-heart relief, scoring Broadway placement at the RKO Palace starting 8/19/43, a coup worth its weight in boastful trade ads that came after. Melody Parade was strong argument that Monogram was aiming for fences and could serve song-dance with the best of them.

Melody Parade Supports a '43 Reissue of The Oklahoma Kid

Parade's plot would neatly sustain 72 minute haul: Can a hat check girl headline for a struggling club and make the grade with Ted Fio Rito's orchestra? The conclusion, if foregone, was fun in the getting there, as was laff-making to bookend swing numbers. Monogram did their musicals a cunning way --- build one elaborate nitery set and confine action to it, with cleff and comedy enough to distract from fact we're riding coach. So who needed Technicolor all the time? Not a few MGM and Fox tuners were overstuffed turkeys, to which Melody Parade was modest and enjoyable appetizer, if not antidote. It doesn't take much watching of Tim and Irene to become a fan; coming away from this, you could hope there were a dozen more Monograms spotlighting the pair. Fact is, Tim was very much a creative influence behind this and others from the company, and rare though they are on DVD, some of the Mono musicals have shown up at streaming addresses like Amazon and satellite On-Demands. They were made humbly to please a crowd, even if those "less critical," which should include much of GPS readership.

Where Sirens Lay In Wait For Yanks ...

Lady Of The Tropics (1939) Sets Exotic Sail

Wrote about this three years ago, admitted then that I had never seen it. That changed when TCM had a run, not HD as hoped, but OK enough for a watch. Curiosity held from a 16mm trailer I once had, overblown dialogue and kiss after kiss between Robert Taylor and Ecstasy girl Hedy Lamarr. Lady Of The Tropics is romance of playboy Bob for half-caste Hedy, us knowing from early that he'll get same stern lesson as Leslie Howard in Never The Twain Shall Meet, a title that should have been affixed anytime a Metro leading man cuddled with dusky females (an isolated time it clicked: Clark Gable and Mamo Clark in Mutiny On The Bounty). Signals are out that this romance is doomed, MGM writers schooled at preparing audiences for a weepy finish. Taylor pays dear for interbreeding, his wardrobe and immaculate grooming a first to go. A man might dream about exotics like this, but for lord's sake, don't marry one. Friends will be first to desert, then your credit is ruined. We're made to know blunder Taylor commits in letting his white girlfriend of a first reel get away. But ah, there's that ecstasy he gets from Hedy in between. Miscegenation was a big tease and good boxoffice even under the Code, so long as you knew where limits lay.

Under heading of exposition comes dialogue that natives are saddest where mixed with western Europeans, let alone Americans (by all means, leave them alone). Visiting Taylor and yacht party accept these as home truths to Saigon and ports east. Look, but never touch. Hedy Lamarr is introduced right away as possibly kept woman of Joseph Schildkraut, a character on seeming layover from earlier Von Sternberg at Paramount, his civility a thin veneer for native treachery bred to the bone. This sort of setup needed all the fairy tale telling it could get, to which Sternberg could reliably apply himself and get brilliant result (as with a Shanghai Express), but Lady Of The Tropics did not have Sternberg, so fun lessens as Taylor learns folly of not sticking with his own kind. Directing Lady Of The Tropics was Jack Conway (w/, it's said, uncredited assist from Leslie Fenton). As most at MGM was pre-cooked before directors arrived, it makes little difference who pushes traffic. A second unit donates Indochina views, here as cutaways or rear projection. 30's patronage accepted such stagecraft, even where knowing it was fake. For all that, Lady Of The Tropics shows splendidly how Hollywood could duplicate faraway time and place.

Taylor's "Bill Carey" is a walking glossary of cultural insensitivity, a "You savvy?" spoke to every shopkeeper he can't otherwise communicate with. It's a same trouble he'd have, with darker consequence, when visiting Germany in a following year's Escape, citizenry there lots less benign than ones he can roll over in Saigon. It took WWII to teach us that the world was smaller than we thought, or hoped. A Lady Of The Tropics needed authenticity of foreign-born Hedy Lamarr as native guide to Yank viewership. She would wear clothes well and sacrifice all for a Bill Carey or whoever might teach her superiority of Yank ways. She can't share our moral rectitude, however, so is doomed for it. That's where Lady Of The Tropics gets heavy. A few years later could have made a downer end less necessary, though I can't picture Lady Of The Tropics even being made past closure of the 30's. Interest in the film holds thanks largely to Lamarr, her legacy now less as actress than inventor of certain digital technology (I'm not sure just what) that we use every day. Apparently, there'd be no cell phones without Hedy, who famously said that all acting required was to "look dumb and act stupid." This woman seems to have been neither. Lady Of The Tropics is available from Warner Archive on DVD.

An RKO Cast Talks Things Out

Trouble Among Privileged in Dangerous Corner (1934)

Disgrace, suicide, maybe murder, dredged from beneath upper-crust for an RKO cocktail hour that, surprisingly for me, gripped all the way to a low-key finish. There is such thing as saying too much where silence will serve better, the theme (and a good one) of this 66 minute exchange where questions probe ever deeper and confessions are drawn from party guests better off living with their illusions. There's always hint of real life in even silliest old films, here being occasion where curiosity kills a roomful of cats. Dangerous Corner was based on a J.B. Priestly play, he of The Old Dark House fame; according to Wm. K. Everson notes, there wouldn't be another Priestly adaptation after this one (does that still hold true?). Players are equal to heavy dialogue lift, Conrad Nagel particularly good, with Melvyn Douglas making early and vivid impression. You'd barely know it from the title and luxury settings, but Dangerous Corner is about the publishing business, and effort to keep the firm in question from "going smash," that term oft-used in wake of the Crash. Unfairly tagged as "teacup drama," Dangerous Corner rises above convention to become a real sleeper of its kind. Not yet at Warner Archive, but shows up on TCM occasionally.

Their First Starring Feature ...

A Longer Pardon Us (1931), But Is It Better?

A Laurel and Hardy feature (and first to star them) that's fifteen minutes longer than when new. Randy Skretvedt tells the whole story in Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind The Movies. I watched an I-Tunes stream after reading his chapter on Pardon Us. Added sections help/hinder in equal measure. Situations are fleshed out, seem less choppy than before, but a chase and fire finish ported over from the Spanish version, with English dubbed over foreign speech, has more curio than entertainment value, as if this expanded Pardon Us was more for committed L&H followers than general viewership. Question becomes, who watches today beyond the L&H fraternity? TCM plays the team, but in no organized fashion. A weekly program would seem a natural, but so far nothing, despite their leasing the package for years now. Still, it's a kick having fresh L&H footage on deck, even as the briefer Pardon Us goes way of extinction, old cassettes or 16mm a presumed only means to revisit that version now, but who'll go looking for it?

Stan Laurel didn't think much of features as showcase for the team. He was also on record against sound as opposed to silent shorts. To an end of days, Stan felt silence was purest format for Laurel and Hardy. Would his fans agree? I haven't given it much thought, but will admit to enjoying their shorts more than features, though not silence to talk. What frustrated Laurel was loss of universal language the early ones spoke through titles that could be freely translated to whatever language needed. Talkies had to have been a pain by comparison, especially when multiple takes were compelled by versions specific to foreign territories. Pardon Us was recorded in five languages, according to Laurel's 1930 reply to a fan letter. That's native English plus four, from which complication one can imagine. No wonder Stan longed for simpler days of silence. Those foreign versions paid off royally in terms of team popularity outside the US. I had a Spanish teacher in high school who was raised in Cuba, got run out in wake of Castro's revolt. I asked Mr. Ferias about Laurel and Hardy, and he remembered every one of their features, saw them repeatedly through the years, several right up to leaving Havana in the late 50's. All this makes me ask if more Spanish language versions survive to this day in Cuba. Has inquiry been made, or does bureaucracy forbid proper search?

Stan Laurel was also in agreement with critics that gave L&H features a pan, but who'd argue with success? Hal Roach was wise to put the boys in multiple reels, short format given less air to breathe as double-features muscled onto bills. Pardon Us is a hodgepodge, but it's pure L&H, them motivating all of action minus burden of subplots and dullish support players, a bane upon later long ones they'd do. Laurel and Hardy were far and away the most popular comics doing short subjects in the early 30's, others having gone over to features before sound came in. The longer form was surely addressed as possibility from the moment L&H spoke on screen. Could there have been shorts before Pardon Us that they considered expanding into a feature? Subject matter of this one does lend itself to added content, though it couldn't have been easy to dream up ways of padding it beyond originally intended two reels. Laurel felt Pardon Us lacked story enough to sustain an hour's footage, and Roach went forward on production without distributor MGM's OK for release, a risk, as they would have been within rights to turn Pardon Us down. Question he likely put to the mirror, What sane company would reject a Laurel and Hardy feature?, especially in peak period that was 1930-31, season when Pardon Us was produced and awaiting release.

Don't know how Laurel and Hardy circulated elsewhere, but we had their shorts non-stop on NC stations, the features far less so. My conception of Pardon Us was based on stills in the L&H books I had, and TV's twenty-five minute chop-down known as Whatta Stir!, which starts halfway into the feature and clunks along to abrupt finish. We get the jailbreak, Stan/Babe as cotton-pickers, then the last reel riot. None of remainder, including the schoolroom with James Finlayson, a dentist office, opener stuff at the hops store, was anywhere to be seen. Stan Laurel spoke in retirement of their films being mutilated, and right he was --- all the Roach features, save Babes In Toyland, were gelded to twenty-thirty minutes for inclusion to the syndicated shorts package. I'd peruse Blackhawk catalogues and dream of seeing them complete. Two-reelers on 8/16mm came hard enough at graduating price scale --- $12 or $13 for silents, twice that for talkies, assuming you had the machine to run them on (ever see an 8mm magnetic sound projector for sale in a retail store? I didn't). Features seemed distant as the moon. My first was an "answer print" of Way Out West for $59.98 in 1971, a by-far most I'd given for any 8mm print. Now we can have that plus nine other features, along with all their talkie shorts, in a DVD box set for less than $70, in far better quality and minus aggravation of threading. Why then, was it so much a greater thrill to receive and enjoy that 8mm print?

Documentaries Worth Seeking Out ...

A Last Round-Up Of RKO

My nominee for best of the studio documentaries is Hollywood The Golden Years: The RKO Story, done by the BBC in 1987 and spread over six hour-long episodes. Not many US stations played it. I had to cadge the set on VHS from a friend in Ohio. Like so much of oral history, The RKO Story has disappeared into cracks of time. Thirty years have gone by, after all. Like with Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series, there would be a devil’s own struggle clearing excerpts, these rights having expired since 1987. Visuals then look hopeless today beside digital rebirth of RKO’s best. Cloudy clips in The RKO Story made me wonder that anyone sought out the features if they looked no better than this. RKO surfaced on satellite broadcast, and minus commercials, during heyday of AMC when it was known accurately as American Movie Classics. These runs were for me an awakening. Gone were most C&C logos a stain on 16mm syndicated prints. We got back the beeping tower and new transfers in the bargain. From current HD perspective this seems primitive still, but progress, if slow, has been steady. When I compare highlights of King Kong from The RKO Story with superb quality we now have on Blu-Ray, the difference is startling.

Where The RKO Story has us beat, decisively, is then-access to surviving personnel from the legendary lot, faces and voices to tell first-hand what work was like from RKO’s inception. Gathering all these from fabled past makes The RKO Story a historic document to be treasured. It should be seen and seen again by everyone with an interest in movies past. I had not looked at the six since they were new, and so forgot how riveting all were. Edward Asner is host and narrator. He speaks from the very archive where RKO records were then-stored, pulling original documents from file drawers to illustrate points. This alone lends gravitas to the programs, along with Vernon Harbin, guardian of the archive, as documentary consultant. He had been with RKO from early on, taking an interest in the company’s history and seeing to its preservation. What we know of RKO may be attributed to his lifelong stewardship, plus research and writings by Richard Jewell, who had access to the files, his two volume chronicle of RKO a best ever history.

A highlight among many in The RKO Story is its second episode focused on the Astaire-Rogers musicals. Everyone relevant is there, that is of ones alive in the mid-80's, which fortunately included Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, choreographer Hermes Pan, producer Pandro Berman, even several of art director staff, plus writers. Never was coverage of these films so alive. They had passed into American folklore by this time, and that's told to Astaire who reassures us that object at the time was simply to "make a buck." Narrator Asner adds that Fred made his buck by way of percentage interest once the series caught on. We are guided through dance numbers as grinding ordeal, weeks of rehearsals, torturous route to a finish thanks to snafus of equipment or performance. Astaire says he was never really satisfied with work he did, couldn't bear to watch end result on film, even years later when he'd come upon past effort. This is all pretty generally known, but there's impact at hearing Fred at advanced age commenting on specifics that are then illustrated by clips. Same with Rogers, who remembers dresses from fifty years before and how they kinked up shooting progress. Having Berman aboard means we get dollar-cent reality of the A-R's and why they couldn't last forever. Astaire-Rogers in the end would be simply played out. The RKO Story is at You Tube. Catch it if you can.

A Best Of Hart Was Never Better

1919 Looks a Hundred Years Better with Wagon Tracks

Ring out news --- Bill Hart on Blu-Ray! Never thought I'd see the day, but here it is, courtesy Olive Films, and result is swell. Wagon Tracks looks last week shot, the way you dream all silents might register if only they'd been better protected. So are over 90% really lost? Painful to ponder, but after all, most of antiquity is gone, looted, unaccounted for. But think, once upon long-ago time, all the Harts looked like Wagon Tracks, better in fact what with nitrate projection. Viewers then beheld beauty we never will. Few times I saw nitrate projected was like stepping into a woodcut. At moments of Wagon Tracks, though, I felt I might do it again. Blu-Ray reclaims every tear Bill shed for big emotional scenes done here, him walking plank of a kid brother lost to crooked cards and back-shooters. Killing is by all appearance done by winsome Jane Novak, though Hart smells fish. A "good" woman just couldn't commit such an act. He knows, and will prove, her no-good gambler brother and snaky fiancée in back of the deed. How Bill unmasks them is stops-out application of Hart justice as fans expect from this hardest-bitten apostle of frontier realism.

Bill Uses Tried-True March and Thirst Method To Force a Murder Confession

But how real was Hart's west? Better to never mind that and just enjoy. Idea most of time was to lay moral dilemmas on Bill and let him sort out which loyalty to keep, which unworthy object to discard. Hart went swift as judge/jury, more so than moderns are comfortable with at times, which of course, is glory of work he did that we can still access. The Wagon Tracks finish is corkscrewed with punish of sins and sacrifice set at alter of love. It's all so precise that a slight misstep could bring the whole thing a cropper and see all of cast roasted over Indian fire. How careful-calibrated were Hart shows ... you come away satisfied that right is done, universal themes applied as they were to all media that told tales of the sweep westward. This was how a public wanted myths, and Wagon Tracks, like all of Hart, got it done to their liking. Even after a century, would we have it any other way?  I could hope Olive sells five thousand units of Wagon Tracks, but .... And yet Bill's one that even the uninitiated often take shine to. His persona is fresh wind against a current-day Code so strictly applied.

A James Bond Race For Space

When 007 Wanted To Be Star Wars

Comeback success of James Bond with The Spy Who Loved Me opened faucet of spending on the next one, which became the biggest of JB's in terms of gross, but a limp rag, if not insulting, to fans optimistic for future of the series. What tripped Moonraker was 007 again pandering to fads of the moment. This hadn't been an issue when Sean Connery played the agent; was it felt that Roger Moore needed all of help he could get? He'd been buttressed by comic cameos that weighed down from a start: Hillbilly J.W. Pepper smelling up Live and Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun, followed now by lethal Jaws enacting funny business (and with a girlfriend) in Moonraker. What maybe got cheap laughs in 1979 doesn't wear well now, nor is there Bondmaniac regard for sci-fi elements imposed on a format that Star Wars should have been paying homage to.

There was serious attempt to draft James Mason into villainy's role. Of course, he would have helped, most anyone a potential improvement on Michael Lonsdale's listless "Drax." Great actors just couldn't be persuaded to oppose James Bond. Was there understanding and agreement that such work was beneath them? I came away resentful from the dog Moonraker seemed in first-run. It plays better as I've had less emotion vested in the series. Moonraker was the first time a stunt opening (multiple falls from a plane) seemed truly outlandish, but with real people tumbling out as opposed to process or later-to-come CGI, you have to figure it could happen; known tag-line, You Will Believe A Man Can Fly, might have applied better here than to 1978's Superman where it was first used.

Roger Moore had settled into likeable complacency by this time, a room temperature Bond to demonstrate how the character might register had he begun, and remained, on television (where in fact, 007 was introduced, in 1954's tube-adapt of Casino Royale). There's never a point in pitting Bonds against one another. I've liked them all, as each represents nicely the era in which he thrived. Moore may have been a least dynamic, but seldom gave offense, coming across an affable chap, which I'm given to understand was Sir Roger's offscreen posture as well. Of all Bonds, he seemed to have embraced the character best (so far as look-backs), and always with good humor. Is it safe to say that Roger Moore had a happiest personal experience being Bond?

When Connery Became The Outlaw Bond

Never Say Never Again (1983) Takes On Embedded 007

Sean Connery came back in 1983 to show everybody what a real James Bond looked like. Roger Moore's jokes had gotten stale, and besides, he'd always seemed too civilized for the part. Moore comes off still as a 70's conception of 007, not a good thing with the 70's itself a largely discredited decade. Funny part was Connery having to encore in what was essentially an "outlaw" James Bond movie, Never Say Never produced by malcontent cast-off from the Eon team Kevin McClory, still sore over that and getting even by exercising remake rights he had in Thunderball. Reading court reports of the battle is a kick; these were cats and dogs warring over bounty that was Bond. It looked for awhile as if Never Say Never would go head-to-head against latest-with-Moore Octopussy, but that got averted when delays pushed Connery's return back a few months, allowing Octopussy to collect its pile first.

The movie must have seemed like an afterthought, but it got made. Connery trimmed down and had a new rug installed. I think he looks great in it now, but that's because I've aged along with Never Say Never Again. In 1983, the show seemed drab, mostly because it didn't bear signatures of legit entries (gun-barrel opening, John Barry music, distinctive main titles). Eon lawyers watched close to make sure this was indeed Thunderball remade, so there's no mistaking the thing having been done before, though only charter Bond clubbers would really notice. Connery's antipathy toward the Saltzman/Broccoli lot, plus a packet of money, led to participation here, McClory allowing his creative input as well. Connery always felt his old employers treated him like a stud puppet. Never Say Never Again looks like it ran short of cash just ahead of the third act, as underwater stuff is perfunctory and nowhere near the first Thunderball's. Bad girls had meanwhile become badder over intervening time, Barbara Carrera a psychotic update on Luciana Paluzzi. In some ways, it was hard to believe that only eighteen years had passed between the two pics.

New 007 For The 80's

Dalton Introduces a Sullen and Go-Rogue Bond

It became post-Roger Moore fashionable to anger up James Bond, the seek after "harder edge" meant to get us back to departed spirit of Ian Fleming and danger of Sean Connery. Neither of these was reachable because times had changed and so, irrevocably, had the series. Biggest barrier lay in fact that Bond was himself neither new nor a novelty anymore. The only way to reboot was to recast the part, that a most reliable means of juicing boxoffice. There was always curiosity when a new 007 took the stage, then disillusionment when understudies didn't measure to Connery's fit. Roger Moore had tough times adjusting, his first two raising doubts that the format itself could continue, and George Lazenby had problematic debut, so much so as to make his first Bond a last.

Now came Timothy Dalton, a splash (but welcome?) of ill-temper and doubtful commitment to Queen and country his forebears served w/o question. Just as we had come to doubt our federal law enforcing, so had he, to a point of letting MI6 "stuff it" rather than submit to further of that organization's discipline. Dalton was celebrated for stage background and dabs of Shakespeare to make playing of a pulp hero duck soup. He was good, at least to my mind, but there are ones who'd disagree --- one friend not normally misguided says he'd not watch Dalton's Bond again on a bet. Others complained that he lacked "humor," as if we'd not had surfeit of that over seven servings of Roger Moore. In fact, it was refreshing to see Bond taken seriously again, assuming that was possible after twenty-five years of increasingly degraded merchandise.

The Living Daylights' story was cold-warrish, never my favorite device, especially as I always found those hardest to follow, possibly due to my habit of not giving proper attention to 007 narratives. Also it's long, as in three or four endings like action movies today. Bond Girl rush was '87-reduced thanks to the AIDS scare; that aspect got as much press as Dalton and the pic itself. We didn't realize it then, but The Living Daylights would be John Barry's final turn at composing for the series. For me, he makes the difference as to re-watching Bonds, or not. Something like For Your Eyes Only, with Bill Conti styling, amounts to foul in the punch bowl for at least this viewer. We wouldn't be long after The Living Daylights losing faces and background participants who'd been there since a start --- it had been a quarter-century, after all --- and some had already moved on. Comforting continuity of this series couldn't last forever, but at least it would stay recognizable for a few more years, if not decades.