Now, Mr Steed, you’re going to have to work for your supper.

The Avengers

4.9: Room Without a View

If The Gravediggers’ eccentricity feels entirely natural, Room Without a View’s seems plastered onto a standard issue spy plot, one that wastes the talents of the majority of its cast and leaves Steed polishing off the best table leavings.

Even the premise of Roger Marshall’s teleplay is the sort of thing we’ve heard every other week, with seven physicists having disappeared “over the past year or so”, accompanied by then-topical references to the Brain Drain. One of boffins has resurfaced, though, Dr Wadkin (Peter Madden, coming on like Father Jack), who “suddenly popped up in the middle of the chop suey”.

Lest this seem like a casually racist reference to Wadkin’s wife Anna (Jeanne Roland of You Only Live Twice), Marshall tempers Steed’s stereotyping by having her observe the doctor can’t bear to be around her anymore: “It’s because I’m Chinese that my husband can’t stand the sight of me. It’s like that bad joke; now we all look alike to him”.

Carter: In a Chessman Hotel, all service is superlative.

Yes, Marshall has been watching The Manchurian Candidate, quite overtly grafting a brainwashing plot line onto the otherwise innocuous Chessman Hotel setting, in which the kidnapped are led to believe they have been sent to a prison camp in Manchuria (that it is actually a mock-up of one in North Korea may be intended to emphasise such blasé stereotyping). Add in the Canton Chinese Laundry and some yellow face, and Steed’s stunt double pulling a rickshaw at the coda, and the attempts at sensitivity are, shall we say, somewhat insufficient. The broader problem with the episode, however, is that this simply isn’t inventive stealing. It only ever feels like a cheap rip-off.

Carter: I, er, hope you’ll give us your award of merit, sir.

Steed: You mustn’t ask that! Makes me quite nervous. I’m likely to get quite severe indigestion.

So it’s fortunate that Steed, posing as M Gourmet, the famous food critic, is on hand to enliven the proceedings. He has decent foils in hotel manager Carter (Philip Latham, The White Dwarf, and considerably livelier than as the final Borusa in The Five Doctors) and Paul Whitsun-Jones, Sir Charles in the previous Season’s The Wringer and Man with Two Shadows, and of course the Marshall in The Mutants).

The latter, a fat man with thin blood (he maintains the room temperature at 80 degrees) is on a diet – a pea and mineral water for lunch, forgoing the banana – living vicariously through his critic (“He’s very much looking forward to testing your reputation as a gastronome” – “Delighted!” responds Steed) and mortified when “Gourmet” informs him that salted Normandy butter was used on the rye bread. Steed also gets quite carried away describing his Cuban cigar (“Rolled against the thigh du jeune fille”).

Carter: For a receptionist, you undertake a great many tasks, Mrs Peel.

Mrs Peel: As a receptionist, I expect to, Mr Carter.

Emma, having decried the suggestion of going undercover (“I dislike the idea of working in a hotel”), soon finds herself in hot water when she comes under suspicion, gets gassed in the dreaded Room 621 and interrogated by a Chinese soldier and a made-up English actor, requiring Steed to rescue her.

Pushkin: It took nineteen seconds for this lift to arrive. This would not be tolerated at home.

The rest of the cast are put to mostly below-their-station work. Peter Jeffrey (The Macra Terror, The Androids of Tara), in his first of three Avengers appearances, probably enjoyed playing the buttoned-down, by-the-book Varnals, there to have his sexist assumptions about Mrs Peel dashed, but we can’t help but wish he was better serviced. Likewise, Peter Arne, who stole Warlock in Season Two, is all but forgettable as a red herring chemical company tout. In a more minor role, Vernon Dobtcheff fares better as a very precise Russian Chess grandmaster (working for the Ministry of the Interior and interested in doing a deal with Chessman in return for the latter building hotels on the Black Sea coast).

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

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Captain Freedom to wardrobe. Captain Freedom to wardrobe on the double.

The Running Man (1987)
(SPOILERS) Now here’s a Stephen King/Richard Bachman adaptation that could do with a remake. The actual date of futuristic dystopias clocking round is usually a cue to compare and contrast, and no doubt in two years there will be legion Blade Runner articles doing precisely that (and damning/feting the worthy/tragic sequel). Actually, they might be doing it with The Running Man too, since it’s only a worldwide economic collapse announced in the opening crawl that occurred in 2017; the events of the movie also take place two years from now. Nevertheless, it has garnered some attention (most notably an Empire article) this year. Working against celebrating its anniversary on either date is that isn’t much cop, nor was it ever considered to be.

Imagine a plant that could think... Think!

The Avengers 4.12: Man-Eater of Surrey Green
Most remarked upon for Robert Banks-Stewart having “ripped it off” for 1976 Doctor Who story The Seeds of Doom, although, I’ve never been wholly convinced. Yes, there are significant similarities – an eccentric lady making who knows her botany, a wealthy businessman living in a stately home with an affinity for vegetation, an alien plant that takes possession of humans, a very violent henchman and a climax involving a now oversized specimen turning very nasty… Okay, maybe they’re onto something there… – but The Seeds of Doom is really good, while Man-Eater of Surrey Green is just… okay.

Have no fear! Doc Savage is here!

Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975)
(SPOILERS) Forget about The Empire Strikes Back, the cliffhanger ending of Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze had me on the edge of my seat for a sequel that never came. How could they do that to us (well, me)? This was of course, in the period prior to discernment and wisdom, when I had no idea Doc Savage was a terrible movie. I mean, it is, isn’t it? Well, it isn’t a great movie, but it has a certain indolent charm, in the manner of a fair few mid-‘70s SF and fantasy fare (Logan’s Run, The Land that Time Forgot) that had no conception the genre landscape was on the cusp of irrevocable change.

This isn't fun, it's scary and disgusting.

It (2017)
(SPOILERS) Imagine how pleased I was to learn that an E Nesbitt adaptation had rocketed to the top of the US charts, evidently using a truncated version of its original title, much like John Carter of Mars. Imagine my disappointment on rushing to the cinema and seeing not a Psammead in sight. Can anyone explain why It is doing such phenomenal business? It isn’t the Stephen King brand, which regular does middling-at-best box office. Is it the nostalgia factor (‘50s repurposed as the ‘80s, so tapping into the Stranger Things thing, complete with purloined cast member)? Or maybe that it is, for the most part, a “classier” horror movie, one that puts its characters first (at least for the first act or so), and so invites audiences who might otherwise shun such fare? Perhaps there is no clear and outright reason, and it’s rather a confluence of circumstances. Certainly, as a (mostly) non-horror buff, I was impressed by how well It tackled pretty much everything that wasn’t the hor…

You better watch what you say about my car. She's real sensitive.

Christine (1983)
(SPOILER) John Carpenter was quite open about having no particular passion to make Christine. The Thing had gone belly-up at the box office, and adapting a Stephen King seemed like a sure-fire way to make bank. Unfortunately, its reception was tepid. It may have seemed like a no-brainer – Duel’s demonic truck had put Spielberg on the map a decade earlier – but Carpenter discovered “It was difficult to make it frightening”. More like Herbie, then. Indeed, the director is at his best in the build-up to unleashing the titular automobile, making the fudging of the third act all the more disappointing.

Don't worry about Steed, ducky. I'll see he doesn't suffer.

The Avengers 4.11: Two’s A Crowd
Oh, look. Another Steed doppelganger episode. Or is it? One might be similarly less than complimentary about Warren Mitchell dusting off his bungling Russian agent/ambassador routine (it obviously went down a storm with the producers; he previously played Keller in The Charmers and Brodny would return in The See-Through Man). Two’s A Crowd coasts on the charm of its leads and supporting performances (including Julian Glover), but it’s middling fare at best.

Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.

Nocturnal Animals (2016)
(SPOILERS) I’d heard Marmite things about Tom Ford’s sophomore effort (I’ve yet to catch his debut), but they were enough to make me mildly intrigued. Unfortunately, I ended up veering towards the “I hate” polarity. Nocturnal Animals is as immaculately shot as you’d expect from a fashion designer with a meticulously unbuttoned shirt, but its self-conscious structure – almost that of a poseur – never becomes fluid in Ford’s liberal adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel, such that even its significantly stronger aspect – the film within the film (or novel within the film) – is diminished by the dour stodge that surrounds it.

You can look dope, can’t you? Sure you can.

xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (2017)
(SPOILERS) Is there a new “Vin Diesel model” for movie successes? The xXx franchise looked dead in the water after the Vin-less 2005 sequel grossed less than a third of its predecessor. If you were to go by the US total, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage was a similar flunk. And yet, a sequel is guaranteed. The key to this rehabilitation appears to be borrowing from the Fast & Furious franchise rule book (or the one operating since entry No.5, at any rate): bring on the international casting and sit Vin at the top as their leader. The only difference being, here Diesel is having appreciably more fun.

It could have been an accident. He decided to sip a surreptitious sup and slipped. Splash!

4.10 A Surfeit of H20
A great episode title (definitely one of the series’ top ten) with a storyline boasting all the necessary ingredients (strange deaths in a small village, eccentric supporting characters, Emma even utters the immortal “You diabolical mastermind, you!”), yet A Surfeit of H20 is unable to quite pull itself above the run of the mill.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog