PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Invasion Quartet 1961

Invasion Quartet 1961 Story by Norman Collins, screenplay by Jack Trevor Story and John Briley, directed by Jay Lewis. A British comedy set near the end of World War 2.

Wounded military men are billeted in an old manor house near the southern coast of England. They're considered unfit for duty and need some recuperation. Bill Travers plays Freddie Oppenheimer, he's lost a leg but he's raring to get back to active duty. Grégoire Aslan plays a French officer called Debrie, he shares Freddie's passion for active duty despite losing a hand. Spike Milligan plays Godfrey Pringle, he's an expert on explosives, John Le Mesurier is a Colonel in the Home Guard, Thorley Walters plays Cummings and Millicent Martin plays a nurse called Kay.

Their recovery is interrupted daily by the firing of Big Hermann, a giant canon on a rail car. A plan hatches in Freddie's head, he's going to blow up Big Hermann. He recruits Debrie, Godfrey and Cummings. After BH blows up the Colonel's squad car he joins forces with Freddie and co. Freddie gets a boat and sails for France with the other 4 men, poor Cummings gets hurt and they have to leave him behind. In France they disguise themselves as Frenchmen and travel to Big Hermann's location by bus. They cheat some drunken German soldier's out of their uniforms and gain access to the cannon.

It's a rather slight comedy, there's plenty of slapstick. It's slightly above average but I still enjoyed it. I'd watch it again which is lucky as I bought the Warner Archive DVD.

Operation Bikini 1963

Operation Bikini 1963 Written by John Tomerlin and directed by Anthony Carras. An American International Picture that was produced by Lou Rusoff, James H Nicholson and Samuel Z Arkoff. William Shatner is the uncredited narrator.

Tab Hunter is the head of a Navy underwater demolition team that's been assigned the task of blowing up a sunk US Navy submarine before the Japanese can get their hands on the new advanced radar system. The team has to travel by submarine to Bikini Atoll where they find the Japanese have already located the sub. With the help of some locals they battle the Japanese and blow the hell out of the sub.

It's a B&W film with odd bits of color inserted. Frankie Avalon sings a song while dreaming of his girl. The dream is in color, a truncated version of that scene is shown again later in the film. At the end of the film there's a scene of the Bikini atomic test and then it switches to color with scenes of girls in bikinis running around on a beach while the credits roll past.

It's the directorial debut of Anthony Carras, he edited a lot of AIPs films, he directed one more film in 1971. Sadly his debut is pretty basic with little to stand out. The cast is some better than the script.Besides Tab and Frankie we've got Jim Backus, Scott Brady, Gary Crosby, Michael Dante, Jody McCrea, Aki Aleong and a bunch of people I didn't know. William Shatner is the uncredited narrator.

I watched it and after a short while I switched to 1.5 speed to move things along a bit faster. There's a lot of cliched scenes, typical friction among the two different Navy teams to make it tense in the sub. An island romance develops, while on a mission, and the native woman later dies in a fire fight. Who needs that? You can find out if it's worth your while, I'm thinking it's below average enough to give it a 4, there's a link to the film on YouTube.

36 Hours 1964

I'd seen 36 Hours in the past but not for many years. It's a 1964 James Garner film set during World War 2. James is a military man who gets kidnapped in Lisbon by the Germans. He's taken to a fake US Military Hospital. It's really the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Nice looking place. They actually shot scenes in Lisbon.

In the fake hospital Doctor Rod Taylor tries to convince James he has had amnesia and it's really 1950. Rod has 36 hours to make his plan work or James gets taken away by the SS. A simple mistake breaks the amazingly crafted lie and James figures out what's going on. Eva Marie Saint is a Jew who was recruited from a concentration camp to plays a nurse who had met in a previous session of amnesia. In the fake story she had married James. Now he doesn't know her. Her life depends on her performance.

Once the invasion starts happening Rod helps them escape and they get some more help from an old lady and John Banner. John plays a German sergeant that's not to happy with the war. He helps them cross the border to Switzerland. It's an entertaining movie with lots of stuff going on. I was glad to have seen it again. I might have to get a copy for me to keep. I borrowed this one from the library.