Tue 25 Aug 2009
THE SPY WHO PARODIED, Part 2, by David L. Vineyard: THE LIQUIDATOR (1965).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[5] Comments
by David L. Vineyard.
Previously on this blog: Where the Spies Are (1966).
THE LIQUIDATOR. MGM, 1965. Rod Taylor, Jill St. John, Trevor Howard, Wilfred Hyde-White, Akim Tamaroff, David Tomlinson, Eric Sykes. Song over opening credits sung by Shirley Bassey. Based on the novel by John Gardner. Director: Jack Cardiff.
The driving Bondian theme song by Shirley Bassey, accompanied by handsomely done animated titles, lets you know what you are in for in this well done British spy spoof based on John Gardner’s Boysie Oakes novels.
Rod Taylor is well cast as Boysie, a handsome amoral bungler, coward, and general screw-up, who is mistaken by Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard at his best) of MI6 for a cold blooded killer when they meet during the fall of Nazi-held Paris.
Twenty years later Mostyn is second in command of MI6, and a series of defections and had headlines has convinced his boss (Hyde-White) that what the service needs is an executioner, a liquidator who will rid them of embarrassment before it gets that far.
Mostyn remembers Boysie, whom he finds burying his partner (they owned a pub together) whose wife he has been having an affair with.
Mostyn jumps to conclusions, and before he can protest, Boysie finds himself the private executioner for the British Secret Service.
And it isn’t a bad life. He has a lush apartment, a nice stipend, a sexy sports car, a parade of beautiful girls, and there is always the sardonic Mostyn’s secretary Jill St. John — if only there wasn’t that silly rule about inter-service romance.
Then the first problem arises. They actually want Boysie to kill some one.
He does his best, but he just can’t manage it. But rather than give up his new life, he finds an out. Charlie Griffin is a sort of private version of Boysie, a likable Cockney (Eric Sykes) who finds this new political work both fulfilling and challenging. A perfect working relationship is formed.
Seems Boysie has it all now. If he could only control that libido.
Which is the one thing he can’t control. So he plans a little getaway with St. John on the Cote d’Azur. Just pull the wool over Mostyn’s eyes and have a little fun.
You know that won’t go well, and it doesn’t. Boysie is captured by a Soviet agent (Akim Tamiroff) and rescued by an annoying David Tomlinson, who puts him and St. John under house arrest.
But Boysie is as lucky as usual. They need him. There is a mission, a security test at an RAF base (wouldn’t you know it, just the idea of flying makes Boysie deathly ill), a mock assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.
Which is how Boysie ends up the only conscious person on a top secret RAF fighter plane with no idea how to land the thing.
Thanks to the cast and a script that closely follows Gardner’s novel, this spy spoof works both as a send-up of Bond and as damn good spy film on its own.
Taylor’s way around a reaction shot and his ability to look dashing and frightened out of his wits at the same time make him an ideal Boysie, and the direction by former cinematographer Cardiff is tight and well paced.
Howard, St. John ( who never got her due as an actress), Sykes, and Tomlinson are all superior, and you will find yourself humming the title song even if you don’t want to.
Gardner, a former commando who turned leftist Church of England reverend, wrote Boysie as a reaction to the Bond phenomena, proving himself a serious suspense and spy novelist. He guided Boysie, Moystn, and Griffin through ten novels with ironic endings, and then in the greatest irony, he ended up writing fourteen books about James Bond himself.
Boysie never made it to the screen again, but this was still one of the brightest moments of the spy craze.
Coming soon:
Agent 8 3/4 (1964) with Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Koscina.
Editorial Comment: For my review of this same film, check it out here, posted in July of last year on this blog.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Glad you mentioned those wonderful title credits, which are close to being the high point of the film. I rather enjoyed the solid supporting perfs from Akim Tamiroff, Wilfred Hyde-White and others; just enough to lift this thing solidly into the “enjoyable” category.
And yes, Steve, the movie did follow the book pretty closely.
August 26th, 2009 at 1:53 am
I went back and read Steve’s review of this film and Gardner’s book Understrike and thought I would touch on a few points. Warning though, there are some spoilers here for the series as a whole.
First, I would argue Taylor plays Boysie as about as much as a coward as he dare. Can’t very well have him puking on screen, and if you read this book you will find it is almost word for word the same as the novel. As for the change about mid way from send up to Bond to comedy adventure, again that is the way the book works.
If you read Liquidator you will find that Boysie never looks frightened. When he is nervous he tends to a rather cold smile that Mostyn mistakes for that of a cold blooded killer. A fact established in the opening credits of the film set in Paris. At several points in the movie Boysie makes awkward comments or shows that smile and Mostyn mistakes them for the actions of a cold blooded killer. Taylor is playing the role as written — in the books however we get to see inside Boysie’s mind while he is panicking.
Understrike is the second book of the series, and save for some good points the weakest in some ways. The third book Amber Nine, that finds him at an exclusive Swiss girls school for spies and battling a dwarf assassin, is much better.
In the fourth book, Madrigal, the books take a serious turn. Boysie is on a mission in West Berlin and encounters a stripper named Rosy Puberty (not Gardner’s brightest send up of the Bond thing), but by the end of the book Boysie has made his first kill (not without throwing up) and he Mostyn and Griffin have left the service and formed GRIMOBO, a private security firm.
Air Apparent has the three running a private lease air service and running into African troubles, with Boysie up to his old games of laying every flight attendant in the company.
But after this the books start to take a more serious turn despite the fact that even though he turns into a half decent agent Boysie is still a womanizer and coward. Eventually we learn Boysie’s father used to have Mostyn’s job and was disgraced and murdered — by none other than the head of the Secret Service (Hyde-White’s character in the film).
Boysie and Mostyn manage to reveal the truth and Mostyn rises to head of the secret service. Finally Griffin goes rogue, murders Mostyn, tries and fails to kill Boysie, and Boysie not only survives, but ends the series ironically where things pretty much began — only with Boysie now in his father and Mostyn’s old seat as second in command of the British Secret Service. He has come full circle, and while he may have learned a few things along the way, he is no more the man for this job than he was the man to be the countries secret liquidator. Sort of the Chauncey Gardner of the spy set.
Incidentally readers should know the ‘bloody minded’ Mostyn was something of a shot at Ian Fleming personally. During WWII Fleming was second in command of Admiralty Intelligence to Admiral Sir John Godfrey for much of the war.
Godfrey was the model for M (despite those who insist others fill the role) and Fleming for M’s number two man Bill Tanner. Gardner was making a sly comment about Bond and his creator with Mostyn and his creation, Boysie who is a fraud, a phony, and not what he is supposed to be.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Thanks, David. There’s nothing like another set of eyes, and another perspective, to make you want to see a movie again, to see what it is that you may have missed the first time. There’s a lot in what you say here that I need to take another look at.
But going back and reading my review of the movie myself, I see that I said:
“I’ve not read The Liquidator, the book, but at least one source says the movie people actually followed the book fairly closely. Perhaps they did, but they missed something, that something perhaps being that in spite of the movie being largely a spoof – which it definitely is until the shooting starts …
“That’s it. That’s exactly when things started going wrong. Right then, when the movie people began to make a straight (but still more than a little goofy) action picture out of what until then was a mild and gentle satirical poke at Mr. Bond.”
I’m going to retract what I said in terms of putting the blame on the movie people. The switch from genial satire to the less ept comedy adventure that I objected to (and which I remember well enough to discuss) should be laid to Gardner’s own hands instead.
Comedy is a tricky business, and in THE LIQUIDATOR the movie, the plot-driven stuff in the second half simply didn’t work for me. Up until the shooting started, it was a fine, fine movie (and likewise the book, I’m sure). But once the story line itself began, that’s when things started going downhill.
For me, that is!
August 26th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
The key in the book is the bit when Boysie is kidnapped and tortured. In the movie it is somewhat truncated, for obvious reasons, and played strictly for laughs, but in the book it provides that hinge you find missing for making the transition to more straight action.
I am probably mentally filling that bit in when I watch the film since I read the book first. That may explain why the transition doesn’t bother me. I know it is coming and I am expecting it.
But again, I should point out that while Boysie may be craven on the inside the point is that like Flashman he appears to be the typical cool eyed British hero on the outside. Taylor plays it as written, and the script may be too subtle at times in letting you in on the joke.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Even before this last reply from you, David, I’d convinced myself that I have to read the book before saying anything else, and then watch the movie again — and now even more so!
— Steve