It seems that an international criminal organisation has centred itself on London.

The Avengers

2.15: Intercrime

Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke return, showing how to engineer a plot revolving around a syndicate of international criminals and not make it pedestrian. In many respects Intercrime is a standard issue piece for the series at this point, but it succeeds thanks to all the inter-Intercrime intrigue, making the bad guys’ machinations as interesting as Steed and Cathy’s.

Intercrime have impressive credentials. They’ve pulled off 12 major robberies in the previous few weeks, most recently snatching three quarters of a million pounds and a couple of Modiglianis. Their behaviour doesn’t exhibit the hallmarks of British criminals, and anecdotally Germany, Holland and France have experienced a 200% increase in crimes over pasty two years!

But all is not wine and roses in their ranks. There are internal ructions, led by Felder (Kenneth J Warren, in his second of four Avengers appearances; he would die a little over 10 years later, at only 43). He plans to usurp their chairman Manning (Patrick Holt) and take over the crime ring, supported by Lobb (Jerome Willis, Stevens in The Green Death) and Moss (Alan Browning, who makes a particular impression and would return in the final season). The boss’s girlfriend Pamela (Angela Browne, 86 in The Prisoner episode A Change of Mind) has found out about the organisation, and she’s to be bumped off by the fearsome and ruthless Hilda Stern (Julia Arnall). On top of this, some of the help have gotten greedy, and Moss has bumped them off. Or thinks he has; the survivor, Palmer (Donald Webster), falls into Steed and Cathy’s hands.

There’s quite a lot going on here, then, and our heroes’ “in” sees Cathy posing as Hilda, who is doing stir in Holloway. Until the real Hilda escapes, that is. In the meantime, Cathy has to defend Kressler (Paul Hansard) who is being stitched up for five grand that has gone missing from a job; it becomes clear that Felder has no interest in justice being served, and Cathy’s cover is blown after the real Hilda shows up and she refuses to off Kressler.

Steed: So you’re not a British firm?
Lobb: Oh no, sir, We have associates all over Europe.

Steed: One up for the common market.

As with The Big Thinker, Steed is less prominent here, the donkey work and danger making being done by Cathy. He poses as Cathy’s solicitor in order to lay the groundwork for her escape from Holloway, then as a posh fellow (what, never!) intent on opening his own shooting gallery. He also attempts to persuade Pamela of the danger she is in (“Good evening Miss Johnson. Not dead yet?” he asks when they next meet). And then again, he arrives to release Cathy from bondage.

The climax is the usual flurry of activity, in which Hilda is shot in the hand by Cathy and Lobb stabs Moss by mistake when he is going for Steed. While director Jonathan Alwyn handles this reasonably well, a resounding gaffe (I don’t usually bother noting them) is evident about 43 minutes, with the camera and operator revealed very clearly behind a closing door. This one, like its predecessor, is extremely well cast, with the added benefit of a tight structure. The final laugh-down is also quite a good one; Steed’s apartment is full of weaponry (“In an expansive mood, I made a rather large order for Rifle Ranges International Limited”).

Comments

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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