Cinema
Scripture and kung fun
Duncan Fallovell
Craze Director: Freddie Francis. Stars: Jack Palance, Edith Evans, Diana Dors, Julie Ege, Trevor Howard, Michael Jayston, Suzy Kendall, Martin Potter, Hugh Griffith. New Victoria and Astoria, Charing Cross Road, 'X' (96 minutes) The Deadly Trackers Director: Barry Shear. Stars: Richard , Harris, Rod Taylor. Focus 1, Wardour Street; ABC Fulham Road and Edgware Road 'X' (105 minutes) Black Belt Jones Director: Robert Clouse. Stars: Jim Kelly, Gloria Hendry. Focus 1, Wardour Street; ABC Fulham Road and Edgware Road 'X' (83 minutes)
Sorry, who wrote the script? Abel Kandel and Herman Cohen. Who? Aben Kan ...Oh, forget it. One thing that this new cinema column has so far taught me is how appalling, I mean appalling, is the standard of script writing in the industry. Directors are capable of being no worse than adequate, sometimes in fact they are tortured on the rack of inspiration. You can usually see the right people on the screen at the right time in the right clothes and quite often they are walking in the right direction and doing other things propos. The cameramen too are reliable workers, riding about in the airs snapping a throat-gagging sunset, being discreet with the shadow as they pan across the amplitude of Burt Lancaster's or, Elizabeth Taylor's belly in one of those geriatric bed scenes with the stars. Now, even in hack commercial films where one would have thought the exertion did not justify the appreciation, it is fashionable to climb underneath tables or on to the top of wardrobes for the perfect angle.
But the script writers? Oh my, where were they dragged up? No one expects anything as timeconsuming as manifest literacy these days, and conceivably some of the more blasé production companies use computers programmed with the lowest common denominators of the lingo, but when they do come round to using actual human beings something not far short of cretinism takes over. As you can see, Craze, is not under-endowed with names but how can Jack Palance's majestic talent uncoil its vigour, through lines like, "Some day, Ronnie, all this will be yours"? And Edith Evans, who is normally quick off the mark in a cameo part, has hardly any opportunity to get her cadences going before an early stake through the throat shuts her up for good. Coming off best is Chuku, the African idol, to whom Palance underneath his antique shop sacrifices a lot of the milk and a dash of the cream of English thespians. However attractive this idea, it is sad to report that a wooden carving can only survive it aesthetically by virtue of a regal silence throughout. Hammer might have carried off this script because they are such a dotty crowd anyway, but no one else could. Despite the ghastly deaths which can give a malicious thrill, this is a waste of a roster.
Never mind, they should not feel too desolate, because Richard Harris has precisely the same _ problems in The Deadly Trackers, another. pursuit-across.-the-wasteland western. Jose Ortega, one of several Ortegas in the production credits, avoids some of the buck by being billed as 'script supervisor', so perhaps the entire family chipped in with lines culled from the The Lone Ranger (and Teach Yourself Psychology. As well as being beaten up, half hanged, blinded for a day bY gunshot, Harris has to undergo the greatest indignity of all, that of trying to follow the line, "Tell me about yourself," or maybe it was "D'ya wanna talk about it?'' Situations like that are simply not made to be pulled out of the bag, not even by a blarney Irishman. But Rod Taylor as the bandit being pursued justifies Harris's determination to carry on. Taylor plays it like a pig, the meanest man in many a moon. To hell with the process of law, someone's just gotta shoot. that guy.
Black Belt Jones, which is on with it, in effect dispenses witha script altogether. It is not that it does not have one, people do talk from time to time, if grudgingly. And there is a plot too: ultra-v between some spade lackeys of the Mafia (heavy satire) and the new upright black independents who — and this is where the kung fun starts — happen to be karate students. Old time pot-bellied thuggery versus black is beautiful. Rightly beauty wins but the whole affair is no more than an excuse for witnessing a high-speed performance in the ballet of violence from Jim Kelly who, as Bruce Lee would have said, ain't bad for a beginner but he better keep hitting the blocks if he wants to catch up with Big Daddy. No nonsense about this film, no bogus attitudinising, some skit here and there, it almost amounts to a celebration of pure dance. Insofar as I could hear anything between the loud lashing noises as hands and feet whizzed into stomachs and necks the dialogue boiled down to one word, 'bullshit,' repeated at regular intervals by all the players. In a film quintessentially physical it was encouraging to find chatterboxes Put in their place, although Jim Kelly's body gave me a terrific guilt complex about not using the swimming pool more often so that I too can have a tummy like his.
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