Kill the earthworm, Steed, and ultimately you kill everything. Soil, birds, animals, man.

The Avengers

4.13: Silent Dust

Revisiting Season Four, several episodes have fallen slightly in my estimation, but Silent Dust (along with Dial a Deadly Number) is one that has gone up. The plot isn’t all that, continuing the horticultural (and pesticide) theme of Man-Eater of Surrey Green, but it has a great supporting cast, and in Avengers terms that’s often the difference between a hit and a dud.

Juggins: And what if they don’t pay up?

Omrod: Oh, they will. After we destroy Dorset.

The prologue shows birds dropping dead (so decisively, they look taxidermied, although much more convincingly than the plastic bat on a wire that menaces Emma later), meaning Steed and Mrs Peel are called on to investigate rural crimes in rural climes, she posing as a representative for the British Trust for Ornithology and catching the eye of local rich landed fellow Omrod (William Franklyn, Quatermass 2, Cul-De-Sac, GBH). Who, of course, is up to no good, planning to hold the country to ransom with his three accomplices. They want £40m, or they will release a failed-and-deadly-to-all-plant-life organochlorine fertiliser.

A very definite environmental theme can be found in this one, much as in the earlier The Grandeur That Was Rome (the very visible hunt protesting also signposts current themes in Roger Marshall’s teleplay). Steed is informed “Kill the earthworm, Steed, and ultimately you kill everything. Soil, birds, animals, man”. If Sir Manfred Fellows (Charles Lloyd Pack, father of Roger and grandfather of Emily Lloyd) had changed worms for bees, he’d be remarkably topical. Sir Manfred, of Fellows Fertilisers, meanwhile, reliably informs Steed regarding marketing that “If it smells like peaches, people won’t believe it does any fertilising. We had a winner last year. Smelled like old socks”.

There's a subplot concerning Claire Prendergast (Isobel Black), the daughter of the man who developed Silent Dust, that fails to go anywhere very interesting (aside from Mrs Peel posing to have her bust sculpted. No, not that bust). Omrod brought the scientist to the village (Manderley, but there are no du Maurier references).

Omrod’s cohorts, who will get £10m a piece, are thuggish Juggins (Jack Watson, Edge of Darkness), Miss Snow (Joanna Wake), whose family has lived in the area for centuries and whose land recently turned sour (Omrod has only been there 14 years, so is considered a newbie) and Croft (Norman Bird, Mr Braithwaite in Worzel Gummidge, amongst many others), who is out of sorts over not receiving royalties for the roses he bred.

Juggins: I just slit a sow’s throat. You could hear the squeal three mile away.

All these characters are memorable, with Juggins a “bloodthirsty brute” keen on slaughtering bullocks and knocking back scrumpy by the flagon. He also has a hankering to breed cows (“You’ll be able to cross an Aberdeen Angus with a cottage loaf” Omrod tells him of his prospective fortune). When he hears Steed is looking for land to buy, he’s forthright with his threats (“I’ll give him some free, for nothing… Ay, six foot of it for nothing”).

Juggins particularly relishes the hunt (“Tally ho. Tally bloody ho”), announcing “I’ve got a brand-new cleaver that needs christening”, so it’s particularly fitting the he should be dispatched in embarrassing fashion by Steed, on horseback, with a hunt sab “Down with violence” placard smashed over his head.

Croft is less notable (“His roses bloom but he got the blight”), although one must assume that, during the hunt climax, he gets as far as he does attempting to do for Steed with a sickle because Steed has already taken a bit of wear and tear previously.

Steed: Raging drunk.

Miss Snow: I beg your pardon?

Steed: If it’s a man, raging drunk. If it’s a horse, raging colic.

Miss Snow: You think so?

Steed: All the classic symptoms.

Wake, who has something of the Joan Greenwood about her delivery, is one of the episode’s great delights, her indulgent interaction with Steed (putting on the extra-posh gentry pose) proving laugh-out-loud funny. Steed furnishes her with advice on her horse’s symptoms (“Fire the vet. Don’t let the horse lie down. Keep him walking”), leading to the following exchange:

Miss Snow: Tell me, do you know a lot about horses, Mr Steed?

Steed: Do a bit of steeplechasing.

Miss Snow: Oh? I’d have thought you were a little too tall in the saddle.

Steed: Oh, I don’t know. Comes in handy. Pop the old feet down. Help the animal over the sticks.

Besides Snow’s amused response, there’s Emma’s reaction to “too tall in saddle” and as is her initial one to Steed going to talk to Snow (“I’ll see what I can pick up here”: “Mmm, I’m sure you will… Pick up something”). Later, when it’s decided Steed must be rid of, Miss Snow comments “Such a pity, he’s just the sort of risk I fancy”.

There’s further innuendo when Emma and Steed are sussing out the suspects: “Miss Snow? She’s got a good seat” observes Mrs Peel. “She’s got a good seat” concurs Steed. Miss Snow later beckons Steed aside on the pretext of further horse problems: “Can’t keep him away from the trough. Just seems to want to keep on drinking all the time”. “Oh dear. Once had an auntie like that” he replies. Appropriately, its Emma who takes her down during the hunt.

Omrod: Ever done any hunting, Mrs Peel?

Mrs Peel: A little.

Omrod: Fascinating. Pit your wits against a master of craftiness and deception. Point and counterpoint, finally cornering him. And killing. It’s a wonderful day spent. Well, what about it?

Mrs Peel: I’ll let you know.

Franklyn also makes the most of enjoying his villainy, be it putting the moves on Mrs Peel or engaging in an exchange with Steed, now up and about after being shot by gamekeeper Mellors (Conrad Phillips, also seen as a doctor in The Prisoner episode The General). Neither shakes hands when Steed arrives unannounced. “Sorry, oil” comments Ormrod, who has been seeing to his shot gun. “Sorry, buckshot” replies the slinged Steed.

Steed: He mistook me for a partridge. Seriously ruffled my, eh, wing feathers.

Omrod: Oh, I must speak to him. Tell him to be a little more–

Steed: Accurate?

Omrod: Careful.

The incident with Steed and Mellors takes place after the former has been earlier warned off (“I have orders to shoot poachers”. “That’ll keep them down” Steed ripostes cheerfully). He’s then winged by Mellors (there’s no visible blood, however) and steps in an animal trap, hiding from the gamekeeper, before later stumbling in on Emma in one of the farm buildings.

The scene in which she extracts the bullet finds Steed hallucinating himself as a sheriff, along with Wild West wanted posters for Omrod and Mellors. Emma’s a quack doctor, sporting a moustache, mutton chops and an over-sized bottle of Red Eye, extracting an enormous bullet (“I prefer you clean shaven” he comments, when he comes around). Perhaps the dream sequences in Too Many Christmas Trees went down so well they thought they’d have some more of that.

Quince: Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. You gave me quite a turn.

Mrs Peel: Why were you watching me?
Quince: Watching you? You’re mistaken. I was watching for the birds.

Mrs Peel: Oh? Any particularly one.

Quince: The black-capped pectral.

Mrs Peel: The black-capped pectral hasn’t been sighted in England for a hundred years.

Also worthy of mention is the great Aubrey Morris (The Wicker Man, The Prisoner’s Dance of the Dead, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Deadwood) as birdwatcher Quince, who is concerned about the missing martlets and ends up strangled by Juggins and buried under a pile of apples (“Cut off in mid-warble?”).

Steed: As you know, in this estuary there used to be all sorts of lovely martlets. ‘The temple-haunting martlet.’

Mrs Peel: Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 2, Banquo.

Steed and Mrs Peel as should be evident, are on fine form. There’s an amusing opening scene in a punt, with Steed chilling a rosé in the river (“Ah, I like a wine that fights back”) and advising Emma why they should be concerned over the absence of feathered friends (“Think of the poor bird watchers. Their gumboots and disappointed faces”).

Mrs Peel obliges with much of the action work, as per usual, although it has to be said common sense deserts her on several occasions, most notably when Omrod confronts her with a gun; she overcomes him, then leaves it to flee from Juggins.

The coda is one of the most heightened yet, with the duo in a balloon, Emma concerned over whether he knows how to control one of these things; Steed giving a puzzle look in response to “And what happens when we run out of ballast?”

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

This risotto is shmackin’, dude.

Stranger Things Season 4: Volume 1 (SPOILERS) I haven’t had cause, or the urge, to revisit earlier seasons of Stranger Things , but I’m fairly certain my (relatively) positive takes on the first two sequel seasons would adjust down somewhat if I did (a Soviet base under Hawkins? DUMB soft disclosure or not, it’s pretty dumb). In my Season Three review, I called the show “ Netflix’s best-packaged junk food. It knows not to outstay its welcome, doesn’t cause bloat and is disposable in mostly good ways ” I fairly certain the Duffer’s weren’t reading, but it’s as if they decided, as a rebuke, that bloat was the only way to go for Season Four. Hence episodes approaching (or exceeding) twice the standard length. So while the other points – that it wouldn’t stray from its cosy identity and seasons tend to merge in the memory – hold fast, you can feel the ambition of an expansive canvas faltering at the hurdle of Stranger Things ’ essential, curated, nostalgia-appeal inconsequentiality.

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

Is this supposed to be me? It’s grotesque.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) (SPOILERS) I didn’t hold out much hope for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent being more than moderately tolerable. Not so much because its relatively untested director and his co-writer are mostly known in the TV sphere (and not so much for anything anyone is raving about). Although, it has to be admitted, the finished movie flourishes a degree of digital flatness typical of small-screen productions (it’s fine, but nothing more). Rather, due to the already over-tapped meta-strain of celebs showing they’re good sports about themselves. When Spike Jonze did it with John Malkovich, it was weird and different. By the time we had JCVD , not so much. And both of them are pre-dated by Arnie in Last Action Hero (“ You brought me nothing but pain ” he is told by Jack Slater). Plus, it isn’t as if Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten have much in the way of an angle on Nic; the movie’s basically there to glorify “him”, give or take a few foibles, do

Whacking. I'm hell at whacking.

Witness (1985) (SPOILERS) Witness saw the advent of a relatively brief period – just over half a decade –during which Harrison Ford was willing to use his star power in an attempt to branch out. The results were mixed, and abruptly concluded when his typically too late to go where Daniel Day Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro had gone before (with at bare minimum Oscar-nominated results) – but not “ full retard ” – ended in derision with Regarding Henry . He retreated to the world of Tom Clancy, and it’s the point where his cachet began to crumble. There had always been a stolid quality beneath even his more colourful characters, but now it came to the fore. You can see something of that as John Book in Witness – despite his sole Oscar nom, it might be one of Ford’s least interesting performances of the 80s – but it scarcely matters, or that the screenplay (which won) is by turns nostalgic, reactionary, wistful and formulaic, as director Peter Weir, in his Hollywood debu

What’s so bad about being small? You’re not going to be small forever.

Innerspace (1987) There’s no doubt that Innerspace is a flawed movie. Joe Dante finds himself pulling in different directions, his instincts for comic subversion tempered by the need to play the romance plot straight. He tacitly acknowledges this on the DVD commentary for the film, where he notes Pauline Kael’s criticism that he was attempting to make a mainstream movie; and he was. But, as ever with Dante, it never quite turns out that way. Whereas his kids’ movies treat their protagonists earnestly, this doesn’t come so naturally with adults. I’m a bona fide devotee of Innerspace , but I can’t help but be conscious of its problems. For the most part Dante papers over the cracks; the movie hits certain keynotes of standard Hollywood prescription scripting. But his sensibility inevitably suffuses it. That, and human cartoon Martin Short (an ideal “leading man” for the director) ensure what is, at first glance just another “ Steven Spielberg Presents ” sci-fi/fantas

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

Get away from my burro!

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) (SPOILERS) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is beloved by so many of the cinematic firmament’s luminaries – Stanley Kubrick, Sam Raimi, , Paul Thomas Anderson and who knows maybe also WS, Vince Gilligan, Spike Lee, Daniel Day Lewis; Oliver Stone was going to remake it – not to mention those anteriorly influential Stone Roses, that it seems foolhardy to suggest it isn’t quite all that. There’s no faulting the performances – a career best Humphrey Bogart, with director John Huston’s dad Walter stealing the movie from under him – but the greed-is-bad theme is laid on a little thick, just in case you were a bit too dim to get it yourself the first time, and Huston’s direction may be right there were it counts for the dramatics, but it’s a little too relaxed when it comes to showing the seams between Mexican location and studio.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… dyin’ time’s here!

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) Time was kind to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome . As in, it was such a long time since I’d seen the “final chapter” of the trilogy, it had dwindled in my memory to the status of an “alright but not great” sequel. I’d half-expected to have positive things to say along the lines of it being misunderstood, or being able to see what it was trying for but perhaps failing to quite achieve. Instead, I re-discovered a massive turkey that is really a Mad Max movie in name only (appropriately, since Max was an afterthought). This is the kind of picture fans of beloved series tend to loathe; when a favourite character returns but without the qualities or tone that made them adored in the first place (see Indiana Jones in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , or John McClane in the last two Die Hard s). Thunderdome stinks even more than the methane fuelling Bartertown. I hadn’t been aware of the origins of Thunderdome until recently, mainly because I was

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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